The earliest video works from Raul Marroquin are very much performances made for video, short experiments altering our perceptions of everyday life. Among them, "About the News" consists of an audio compilation of excerpts from various international news reports while the camera pans over a scene of a man reading the newspaper. The action is mundane, and the man sits in an armchair with a cigarette not so dissimilarly to anyone casually perusing the papers. Marroquin's critical twist occurs when we see that the newspaper the man concentrates upon is upside-down. Is he reading at all, we question, and further, does it matter? With the enormous stack of newspapers before him and the drone of the news reporter's voice in our ears, Marroquin points out the massive…amounts of media information we are bombarded with daily. But even if we do pay attention to current events, how much is understood, objective and/or applicable to our daily lives? (Elaine W. Ho) Read more...