Beatriz Santiago Muñoz: Elogio al disparate – New Experimental Films on Nonsense and Meaning

This exhibition showcases three new films by Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, focusing on the potential of nonsense, free association, and formal experimentation to challenge conventional meaning. Inspired by Caribbean 'jitanjáforas' (invented nonsense words), the works explore themes of political and ecological crisis, using film as a form of poetry.

Beatriz Santiago Muñoz's exhibition 'Elogio al disparate' (Praise of Nonsense) delves into the transformative power of cinema to rethink the world and renegotiate fixed meanings, with a central focus on absurdity. The three new films presented were shot on 16-mm film and transferred to video, employing free association and a playful approach to form to create relationships between sound and image that intentionally evade rational interpretation. These works are inspired by 'jitanjáforas,' invented nonsense words prevalent in 20th-century Caribbean poetry and music, celebrated for their phonetic qualities over fixed meanings. The exhibition title refers to an essay by José Carlos Mariátegui, who highlighted the potential of nonsense to expose hypocrisy and destabilize the old order. Muñoz's practice often centers on her native Puerto Rico, referencing Haitian poetics and feminist speculative fiction. The island, a long-standing colony, is frequently presented through exoticizing lenses, but Muñoz examines its political and ecological crises, gentrification, displacement, and former military spaces. She collaborates with local non-actors, including activists and healers, inviting them to restage events from their own popular culture, history, and indigenous mythology. While rooted in long-term observation typical of ethnography and documentary film, Muñoz uses film poetically, adopting language from theater and expanded cinema to blur the lines between fact and fiction and explore possibilities for rewriting history. The exhibition creates a state of productive disorientation where new meanings emerge from the breakdown of the old, offering alternative interpretations and possibilities, as Muñoz aims to advance the dissolution of orders overly reliant on reason.

General information and ticket purchasing details are available on the Secession website. Visitors are directed to an external ticketing platform for booking tickets, and general opening hours are listed for the venue, which is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10 AM to 6 PM, suggesting exhibition access is covered by museum admission or exhibition-specific ticketing via the provided link.