Fernando Llanos is a man with a mission and a short and simple slogan: "Be Happy, Consume Video!" With this ambition he has set out to establish himself as a veritable one-man production house accompanied by a streamlined distribution centre on the world wide web. In July of 2000 he started sending a couple of videos as emails to an intimate circle of friends, and now that list has expanded to include over 500 people from Mexico, to Brazil, to Cuba and America. As his collection has grown, he stores his videos at his own little empire: FLLANOS.COM. Short and sharp, the clips are less than 500k. They are bite size vignettes portraying everyday musings, desires and frustrations. Upon entering his site, you are given instructions for basic flight safety. The message is clear: Better buckle-up because you're in for a turbulent ride. Lasting only 16 to 26 seconds, Llanos's videos are candy-coated if not verging on psychotropic urban hallucinations. In the piece, '!999', a fish-eye lens pans across roof tops revealing an infinity of television antennae and cooling systems. The familiar becomes alien as the camera absorbs the scene. Another video 'Idee Fixe' shows a slumbering woman with small animations of brightly coloured pretzels floating across the screen. There is something simultaneously restful and neurotic about the image. In 'The Firm',perhaps the most striking clip in the collection, pornographic images of women performing fellatio are transformed by replacing the penises with floral animations. The crass becomes a Disneyland-like encounter as the flowers tickle the tips of the women's tongues. All of the videos are jolting. Due to their brevity they are dream-like; just as your brain apprehends what is happening the video is over. The compulsion to rewind and replay is inevitable.
– Renée Turner
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Specs
Video mails, a collection of short videos originally distributed via e-mail,
less than 500k, viewed with Quick Time/Real Player
Fernando Llanos,1974, Mexico
Lives and works in Mexico City, Mexico
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