Lecture given at Bartos Theater on March 15, 2010
Discussion moderated by Amber Frid-Jiminez

Magda Fernandez creates synthetic video worlds that question our real lives in these contemporary times. She is drawn to the strengths and weaknesses that make us tick, how those characteristics spill into our social behavior, and how greater forces in turn shape us. Power and helplessness, reality and fantasy, memory and history are some of the themes in her art. Fernandez's videos rely liberally on composite technology and special effects to make sense out of the nonsensical. Fernandez will screen four of her videos and discuss their subjects and means of production. In Song of a Bordertown Artist, a clown in a junkyard leads us on a mystical tour of the artworld. Family ghosts respond to the Cuban Revolution in Cuba Diaries, Part One. A crone conjures a virtual landscape in Desert. In Softie, a middle-aged woman's face waltzes in and out of soft-focus before a high-definition camera.