Soy Cámara online
The CCCB’s video essay channel
Soy Cámara Online is a laboratory for new audiovisual formats on the web produced by the CCCB in collaboration with various universities and audiovisual practitioners. It is an experimental and participatory space in the internet ecosystem that reflects on the most pressing issues in contemporary society, with the emphasis on the way images are produced, both in traditional fields and on the Internet.
Soy Cámara, the CCCB's TV programme, began as a proposal by Radio Televisión Española to take part, together with other cultural centres in Spain, in a monthly slot dedicated to the world of culture called La Sala, on the broadcaster's second channel, La2. The initial team, made up of Joana Abrines, Andrés Hispano, Angela Martínez and Félix Pérez-Hita, produced their first episode of Soy Cámera in October 2010. The main aim was to become a television laboratory using an informative, creative, essayistic and critical approach.
After five years and forty-eight programmes, and with Ingrid Guardiola joining the team, it became clear that the CCCB needed a space that would give us more freedom in terms of format, language and time, as well as getting closer to our public, goals which were unlikely to be compatible with TV audience ratings. That's why, from May 2016, the programme transformed from a television format to a more participatory and experimental audiovisual project, with the aim of turning it into a space for audiovisual essays addressing the most urgent issues in contemporary society. At the same time, it has also become a laboratory for new formats in collaboration with the media studios of several universities, professional filmmakers and other groups external to the CCCB. This collaboration with universities has resulted in all the programmes appearing on the "Campus" playlist.
Over its ten years of history, Soy Cámara has made it evident that the audiovisual medium is an extremely valid tool for thought, even more so in a visual culture such as our own, which dates from our Christian past right up to our technological present. Thanks to the media and social networks, we're so immersed in images they've become a second language. For this reason, Soy Cámara is more relevant than ever and its way of reflecting on and through images is a much-needed tool.
This project came to an end in 2020 with the digital publication of Imágenes, un dominio público [Images of a public domain]. The idea is for these texts to collate the experience and reflections of some of the creators who've taken part in the Soy Cámera project, with a critical, introspective approach which we hope will help to cultivate the genre of "video essay" even further.
The programmes can still be enjoyed on YouTube.
Micro-formats of Soy Cámara online ↓
- Campus: Docu-essays made by the university community. Currently working with UPF, UAB, UB, Elisava, URL, UIC.
- Km0: Not just the voices of the neighbourhood and its human geography in the form of chronicles or diaries, but also those capsules that reflect on the concept of neighbourliness, and the urban and social environment of neighbourhoods.
- Gramatikon: A space for meta-reflection on audiovisual language and the actual images from their different production spaces (advertising, cinema, television). The idea is to create new audiovisual grammars, new ways of seeing images. This section includes the exercises from Pantalla Partida (images bought together to dialogue in new and apparently implausible relations) or Reversibles (humoristic manipulations of audiovisual productions from the internet), among others.
- The Black Box: A space to give a voice to those who have none, to adjust the congenital asymmetries of today’s economic system from a viewpoint of gender, class, ethnography or cultural supremacy.
- Not a Lab: Experimental essay space for reflection on the most pressing issues of our society. Includes ongoing dialogue with innovation and university research.
- Lost Objects: Projects that were simply never carried out, or that it was impossible to carry out, but which act as cultural seeds.
- Found objects: Different influencers offer their particular audiovisual selections in the form of personalized itineraries through online video.
- Right to Reply: Analysis of works or events in our cultural history from a critical distance by present-day cultural agents.
The team ↓
The project is coordinated by the Audiovisuals Department, headed by Àngela Martínez, with Ingrid Guardiola as coordinator and producer of contents, Andrés Hispano and Fèlix Pérez-Hita as curators and creators of contents, and José Antonio Soria, Toni Curcó and Joan Carles Rodríguez responsible for audiovisual and technical production. Our collaborators include UAB, UB, URL, UPF, UIC and the Elisava, and external practitioners.
Related contents
A different remedy for the same complaint. Soy Cámera online
How do you follow a (cinematographic) remedy that insists there is no remedy? Feminist approaches represent a perpetual provocation, difficult to assimilate and defying the classification systems of the past. One of the practices most often repeated by female cineastes, from the early days ...
The Global Disco: Technology and Surveillance
Soy Cámara online
George Orwell alerted us to the dangers of totalitarian technology under the sinister slogan: "Big Brother is watching you." Orwell sets the story in 1984, a decade that made digital technology a proving ground for innovation and connected digital technology. It was what Nam June Paik called ...
