In his film “As Far As We Could Get” that contains documentary and fictional elements Iván Argote digs an imaginary channel from Indonesia to Colombia, or from the municipality of Palembang to a town called Neiva. The two cities are exact antipodes (a rare coincidence that only six more pairs of cities share worldwide). In both locations, the artist rented large billboards to announce simultaneously a feature film named “La Venganza Del Amor” (The revenge of love).
Iván Argote boarded a plane to fly from South American to Asia. In either continent, and with the same directives he met locals on a level playing field. His main focuses are young adults that are coincidentally born on the day the Berlin wall came down. While enriching a once-in-a-century event with personal biographies, Argote investigates feelings (another sheer unlimited profundity) as the tissue that takes influence on both, history and memory.
Switching back and forth between two locations the camera records more similarities than differences, brought to the point by bouncing basketballs always obeying gravity, thus drawing an imaginary line to the center of the world. The balls read as agents of globalization mediating between continents but also between the world of leisure, sports marketing (the branding of basketball players began in the USA in the 1980s), Neo-Liberalism, and Contemporary art.
- Gianni Jetzer, March 2017
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