Troco (2019-2023) by Azucena Losana, is an expanded cinema performance piece that took place at PIX FILM gallery on Saturday May 27, 2023, as part of the concurrent events of the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT) Analogue Resilience: Film Labs Gathering. This piece was created during a residence in the 12th Strangloscope Mostra in Florianopolis, Brazil, and premiered at the Cinemateca of the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro in September 2019 during the 5th Dobra International Experimental Film Festival.

Troco offers an important reflection on the material conditions of film production by experimenting on the screen with the images used to calibrate and test colours for filmmaking: the “China Girl” (also named “China doll”). Used by lab technicians to calibrate the colours when processing film, the “China Girl” works as a point of reference for the colour structuring of the whole film. However, while the images of these women are constitutive for the film processing, they also sit—traditionally—outside of the cinematic aesthetical focus of any film. Losana’s cinematic practice not only gives new life to the “China Girls’” found-footage but she engages materially with them by cutting and recomposing, creating loops in combination with other film bits and fragments that have followed a similar destiny as the women used for calibrating colours: staying at the margins of the film.

The main structuring operation of the film is an interchange of images through film perforation, and subsequently a rhythmic iteration of sounds and images that create the atmosphere of the piece. The name Troco means “interchange” in Portuguese, making very evident, through the title, how the focus of the artist is in the corporeal relationship with analogue film media production, where touching, smelling, and seeing are needed. When speaking directly with the artist, she explained how the piece is a poetic exercise on the film medium, particularly with respect to the relationship between the outside and inside of film practices. 

The interchange of faces that Losana performs on the “China Girls” can be interpreted in many ways that connect to the Analogue Resilience spirit of the LIFT gathering, particularly by offering an intervention on the inside/outside limits of a film community. The repetition and insistence on showing the “China Girl” for more than four seconds, and instead forcing the audience to see her repeatedly, subverts the expectation of women’s representation and the time dedicated for a technical moving-image. By re-centering and re-formulating the time spent on screen looking at the women, Losana offers a chance to really observe them. Changing faces, footage in combination with other women that appear overlapped on the screen, and the syncopated original music by Hernan Hayet, create a sensitive atmosphere for the audience where the artist’s performing body becomes the thread that keeps us present in the journey. 

Historically, the faces used as “China Girls” tended to belong to white women that were so still on screen that they would seem like a photo, and often, the women would look awkward while performing the static “China Girl.” This inverted cinematic time-space that Troco creates for 30 minutes is a strong comment on how bodies are always gendered and how this gendering is related to navigating the cinematic fields differently. The whiteness of the “China Girls” also becomes a site of focus, since it would not mark so much a racial preference but instead would highlight the implications of a position in the global economy of image creation and film distribution—most of the film industry was and is located in the Global North. Technology is imbricated with modern development and Troco works as an insistence and reminder that some territories and some bodies have a different history with the same media. By insisting on the “China Girls,” Troco becomes a marker of resilience for women and gender diverse filmmakers: what was once outside of the focus of a film practice can be centered now. Troco also offers a set of strategies to navigate the relationship that Latin American and Global South filmmakers have with technology in general and with moving images in particular, and how that is also connected to global capital and the history of accumulation. As Losana shows with her work, carving out a space for yourself is a matter of creativity, punk attitude, and the motivation to perforate the (film) frame and the (film) field, to make space for yourself, your community, and your films.

Manuel Carrión Lira (he/they) is a Pikunche researcher, video-artist, and curator from Pikunmapu/Qullasuyu (Quillota, Chile). They are a PhD Candidate in Cultural Studies in Department of Literature at the University of California San Diego. Manuel holds a M.A. in Latin American Art, Thought and Culture from the Instituto de Estudios Avanzados at Universidad de Santiago de Chile, and a B.A. in Design at Universidad de Valparaíso. Member of the Catrileo+Carrión Community, where they have collectively published the books “Poyewün Nütramkan Pikunmapu/Qullasuyu” (2020), “Poyewün witral: bitácora de las tejedoras de Neltume” (2019), “Torcer la palabra: escrituras obrera-feministas” (2018) and “Yikalay pu zomo Lafkenmapu” (2018). Manuel is part of the Global Center for Advanced Studies Latin America Collective. Manuel’s work focuses on Indigenous Media at the intersection with Trans-indigenous/Transnational kinship networks beyond the nation-state framework, all of this with special attention to queer/trans/2S/epupillan Indigenous cultural production.