Alan Martín Segal: Two Films

Argentinean artist-filmmaker Alan Martín Segal (sometimes referred to as Alan Segal) has been making experimental work since graduating in 2014. He has also been an editor for Gastón Solnicki, as well as being involved with the art/culture publication Labor (founded 2012). In 2022 he participated in Jeonju Film Festival’s annual production project with Via Negativa.

Key, Washer, Coin (USA, 2018)

An unclassifiable, 15-minute film that moves at will between the realms of conceptualism, wry comedy, sound art, everyday anecdote, and a grim accounting of our hyper-managed society of control.

Departing from the weird experience of being a “language strategist” in the modern workplace, Key, Washer, Coin sketches out multiple systems of words, symbols, diagrams, gestures and exchanges – only to deconstruct them all, and constantly return us to the realm of pure signifiers, the noise that exist before any identifiable meaning, the lines and colours that precede a recognisable image.

In a world of logos and clichés that are designed to trigger and manipulate our emotions, Segal makes the effort to give us back our perceptual freedom.

Incomplete Disappearance (Desaparición incompleta, Argentina, 2020)

“May I disappear in order that those things that I see may become perfect in their beauty from the very fact that they are no longer things I see” (Simone Weil). May I Disappear was the working title of this enigmatic, haunting, 15-minute work by Segal, which is more coherently unified than Key, Washer, Coin.

It may or may not have been designed to reflect on the 2020 pandemic, but its resonance with that global crisis situation is profound.

Mainly comprised of images without people – humans have largely disappeared, it seems – the film takes us through a loose cycle of almost ritualistic images: coins dropped in a tray of water, candles set within flimsy sculptural constructions, small objects placed under a table leg.

A discontinuous tale is narrated only in printed subtitles: it speaks of clocks that once adorned public buildings, clocks that were effectively penalised for telling the correct time.

Things are truly out of joint here – especially the world itself.

© Adrian Martin September 2018 / October 2020