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Antonio Jose Guzman / Guzman Films

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Antonio Jose Guzman is a Dutch-Panamanian audiovisual artist.

He works with a variety of medias, mixing issues as migration and gravity.

Born in Panama City, Panama. He became interested in photography and video at early age. In 1989 Guzman started communication studies but soon in 1992 he had to flee Panama, after the United States invasion of Panama. He first fled to Costa Rica where he studied cinematography, but later moved temporarily to Madrid. A year later in 1993 he was back in Panama and started working freelance for Agence France Press and as a staff photographer of the advertising giant Foote, Cone & Belding. In 1994 he graduated from the Ithmus University. He wrote a thesis on the psychological effect of advertising photography.

In the summer of 1996 he was part of the African American Studies, Race & Popular Culture Seminars in Brooklyn College New York. In 1997 he moved to Europe and started working as an artist, editorial photographer and as an editorial staff of different magazines in Barcelona, London and Amsterdam.

In 2003 he produced and directed his first documentary "Representando", about Hip Hop and Spoken Word in La Habana, Cuba. (Official Selection Museum of Modern Art of Bogota Colombia Film Festival, Africa in the Picture Film Festival Amsterdam, Atlanta HipHop Film Festival, Ryhthm of the Line Berlin International Film Festival, Latin American Film Festival London, Drop Breaks and Beats Festival Amsterdam, Black Soil International Film Festival Rotterdam, Shoot Me Festival Den Hague, Latin American Film Festival Utrecht).   Click for Poster Representando

In 2003 he started studies on audio visual arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie of Amsterdam. While studying at the Rietveld, Guzman got inspired to work with electronic art and began to work with gravitational issues, migration and the life of Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader. His examination projects were the installation "Gravitational Experiences" and the documentary "The Miracle". (Official Selection Nederlands Film Festival, Amsterdam Film Experience, Yuri's Night NASA Anniversary Film Event).   Click for Poster The Miracle

The Miracle was selected in April 2008 to participate at Yuri's Night, Nasa 50's anniversary STEAM Documentary Event in San Jose California.

Click for Poster Yuri's Night NASA   Click for Yuri's Night PDF

"El Milagroso (The Miracle) represents Dutch/Panamanian artist Antonio Jose Guzman dream about building a giant glass sphere in which he can cross the atlantic ocean. His project is an ode to late Los Angeles based Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader. Ader dissapearead in an attempt to travel in a small boat from the US east coast to Ireland. Ader's project the Miraculous became an urban legend for many artists on both sides of the atlantic. In his film Guzman tries the convince his friends and family of the possibility of such an attempt's success. Other main inspirations for Guzman are based on his fascination with gravity and diaspora." Yuri's Night

"In 2007 Imagine IC invited audiovisual artist and filmmaker Antonio Jose Guzman to develop a digital storytelling tool for new presentations and exhibitions. He wrote the concept for the Chain Diary, a chain reaction of multiple identities and a interactive multimedia installation with 4 channels, 8 multiple projections, and 12 oversized photos". Imagine IC.

During 2008 - 2010 Guzman will be working in the project "State of L3" (Brazil, Senegal, The Netherlands), subsidised by the Mondriaan Foundation of the Netherlands.

In "State of L3", participants of African descent upload their work onto a database so that their partners and later on other visitors can access, watch and react with their own ideas to what they see. In this way the database will create and ever-growing and expanding online community based on either personal histories or just interest in Africa and all its cultural and social expansions over the entire globe.   

His new project "The Day We Surrender to the Air" is subsidised by The Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture, "Surrender" is a DNA Genovideographic Proyect. The concept of the multimedia installation documentary is based in the results of Guzman's DNA haplogroups. This DNA markers has been giving to him by the Genographic Project from National Geographic and African Ancestry

The Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture, Fonds BKVB is the national body responsible for making grants to individual visual artists, designers and architects. Its objective is to nurture excellence in visual arts, design and architecture in the Netherlands.

The Genographic Project is seeking to chart new knowledge about the migratory history of the human species by using sophisticated laboratory and computer analysis of DNA contributed by hundreds of thousands of people from around the world. In this unprecedented and of real-time research effort, the Genographic Project is closing the gaps of what science knows today about humankind's ancient migration stories.

The importance of Guzman work relies in the symbolism of his work as a social artist, his installations are emanating from a cycle of migration, African diaspora and gravitational situations. His current work includes worldwide art projects, documentaries, videos and portraits for museums, galleries, magazines and audiovisual foundations in Europe and Latin America