Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Bio

Pilar is a poet, video artist, and translator. She was born in Mexico City, but lived in California, Texas, and New Mexico, for a total of 13 years; presently she is living in Tijuana, BC, Mexico.

She originally wanted to become a filmmaker, and started doing video while in college. Her piece “The Idea We Live In,” won first place at the 1991 Athens International Film and Video Festival, in Ohio, and at the Bienal de Video de México, 1992 (plus an honorary mention for scriptwriting); “The Unexpected Turn of Jim Sagel,” was “Best New Mexican Film” at the Roswell Film Festival in 1994. Her video work has been shown in several festivals and museums in Europe and America, among them, International VideoPoetry Festival in Greece, VideoBardo Festival in Argentina, Festival Instants Vidéo in France, and Museo Reina Sofia, in Spain. She received grants from the Mexican Institute of Cinematography (IMCINE), the National Fund for the Culture and the Arts (FONCA), and the City of Austin Arts Commission, among others.
As a writer, she published her first poem in a student magazine, and since then, she has continued to publish poetry, articles and reviews in various magazines and anthologies in North America. For more on Pilar's work as a poet, please visit: ella es poema
Pilar Rodríguez Aranda is an artist and her main tool are words; she is a poet, but also, a Video-Poet. Both languages, similar and different, become mixed in their essence and intention. In her video work, Pilar transforms and transmutes the word into the audiovisual vocabulary of video, creating layers which form palimpsests, chorus, whispers, poetic instants...