The 18th International Images Festival of Manizales in Colombia invited Santiago Tavera in collaboration with textile and performance artist Laura Acosta, and civil engineer and media artist Milton Riaño to develop an experimental workshop in June 10th, 2019. This workshops invited artists and researchers to collaborate on a series of 360° video productions using Virtual Reality (VR) technologies, interactive motion interfaces and live image alterations. This projects explored the expanded body as a virtual cyborg – a being composed of artificial and human components. Through cross-discipline interactions between bodies, spaces and digital media, the project investigated the effects these connections have on social and personal processes of identification and representation.
Furthermore on June 14th, Santiago Tavera and Laura Acosta gave an artist talk on their collaborative project, The Novels of Elsgüer, which has recently been exhibited in Montreal at Articule and in Colombia at the Cultural Center Rogelio Salmona in 2018. Their participation in this international festival has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.