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COMMISIONS
~ As editor
~ Forensic Architecture

OID (Collective)
~ Oficina de Investigación Documental

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Digital reconstruction of El Valle de los Caídos’ exterior.

TRANS-MEDIA PROJECT
Atlas of Disappearance

2018

Atlas of Disappearance is a forensic documentary that relies on new architectural technologies to digitally unearth crimes that have largely disappeared from memory. In hidden ossuaries inside Franco’s mausoleum and war monument known as ‘El Valle de Los Caídos’ lie an estimated 33,800 human remains. A still unknown number of victims of enforced disappearance were brought here clandestinely during the dictatorship. The scale of this atrocity has only recently come to light.

For the families of the disappeared, recovering the bodies of their parents and rebuilding what happened to them is an urgent task in order to seek closure and justice. With the passing of time witnesses, victims and perpetrators have died: memory is relegated to the dark silence of oblivion; Time has ravaged the evidence the victims need in order to understand their family histories. For 4 years, filmmaker Manuel Correa has worked with a group of families fighting to recover their parents' remains from El Valle de los Caídos. Involving architects, forensic scientists, digital artists, and other experts, a comprehensive vision of the largest mass grave in the modern world emerges. This hitherto impossible task adds an important piece to the families’ puzzle, as their time is running out.Atlas of Disappearance is currently being developed into a documentary film with the support of the Fritt Ord Foundation and Sornorsk Filmsenter.


Mercedes Abril reads a letter she wrote to president Pedro Sánchez, asking for her father’s exhumation.
The filmmakers have become active collaborators of the two largest associations of relatives seeking to exhume their missing ones from El Valle de los Caídos. AFPERV headed by  Silvia Navarro-Pablo, 51, who since 2007 has assumed the representation of 35 families demanding these exhumations. For decades, Silvia has tirelessly researched the cases of the disappeared families she represents. She has introduced us to many other families and is the most central character in the film.

Chapel of Santísimo, El Valle de los Caídos
Working intimately with Silvia, her research became a point of departure. Together with her, we have scripted scenes focusing on the architectural vestiges of the violence against Pepe Viedma -her great-uncle- in the town of Calatayud. The sites of detention, torture and execution have mostly disappeared or are in ruinous decay, in many cases a result of policy.

This is significant to us, signaling an intentionally induced generalized oblivion. We followed her as she reconstructed-in-situ in what she believes were his last hours: We visited the house where he was detained, the site where he was executed, and ultimately, the disappeared mass grave where her family used to bring flowers.

Silvia Navarro-Pablo, leader of the pro-exhumation association, in front of the basilica of El Valle de los Caídos



Fausto Canales, 88, heads the second-largest association of families. In 2001, he collected funds to locate and exhume his father from a dry well in Avíla’s barren countryside. To everyone’s bewilderment, only a single finger was discovered, which led the experts to determine that the grave had indeed been stolen. Years later, further evidence verified that the mass grave had been brought to El Valle de Los Caídos when a photograph of the ossuaries surfaced, Fausto saw in it the name of his town. The 87-year-old  collaborated with us on recreating a model of the ossuaries in El Valle de Los Caídos, to locate the possible resting site of his father's remains.  Our collaboration with both communities is guided by the care and seeks to make accessible and public the state violence inflicted upon them and aid the process of accountability.



As filmmakers, we have been given the trust required to follow this story to its conclusion. Atlas of Disappearance will be a beautifully told David and Goliath story about persistence in the face of an inapprehensible force.  
Map of all the mass graves moved to El Valle de Los Caídos



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FILM
The Shape of Now
2018


Do you remember the war?
Ask seven people, and you will get seven different versions. "The Shape of Now" is a creative documentary that
addresses the challenges and paradoxes of historical memory.

Like Benjamin's Angelus Novus, this film is situated in the advancing present, yet keeping a gaze on the past.       It looks the conflict in the eye, questions it, and doubts its supposed truths.

"The Shape of Now" had its world premiere in the Next Masters competion at the DOK Leipzig Film Festival.




Produced & Directed by
Manuel Correa

Coproduced by
Emil Nygard Olsen
Augusto César Sandino

Original Music
Simón Mesa Giraldo

Sound edition & mix
Emil Nygard Olsen

 Asistant Director
Sebastián Munera

Location Sound
Francisco Londoño
Camera
Manuel Correa
John Jarlen Quiros
Angélica Toro

Colombia / Norway.
70 minutes, Colour

HD Video 71’15’’ 2018

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Entrance to El Valle de los Caídos.

SHORT FILM
Four Hundred Unquiet Graves



The Valle de los Caídos, sixty kilometers from Madrid, features a colossal basilica and an eightymeter-
high cross. Commissioned by Franco’s government, it possibly holds the world’s largest
mass grave with 33,843 bodies, including many victims of enforced disappearance. Despite 45
years since Franco’s death, the exact number of his victims burried in the site remains unknown.
Over a decade ago, the families of Franco's victims discovered their missing loved ones might
be buried there. Their quest for exhumation has faced systemic resistance from courts, media,
state institutions, and the Benedictine monks overseeing the site.

This short film was commisioned by Het Nieuwe Instituut and e-flux architecture.
     Directed by
    Manuel Correa

    Produced by
    Emil Nygard Olsen

    Sound edition & mix
    Emil Nygard Olsen

    Graphic Design
    ALEJANDRA jARAMILLO

    NARRATION
    maría selas






    CLICK HERE TO WATCH
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    SHORT FILM

    Peñoncito
    2018


    Peñón de los Baños, 
    Mexico City

    Local elder Don Facundo Rodriguez attempts in vain to recall the story of the day he discovered a human skull in his backyard which was later revealed to belong to the earliest known inhabitant of the Americas.

    With a sense of dread, he instead remembers encountering a crying legless woman hovering in mid-air near the dig site, calling to his mind a witch that is known to appear and disappear in Peñon to mark significant occasions. The 90-year old still carries a grudge towards his late cousin Pedro Cedillo who delivered the skull to the museum of anthropology without his consent. Now deceased, Pedro Cedillo himself is impossible to trace on account of there being many Pedro Cedillos buried in the local cemetery. In Manuel Correa’s odd chronicle of rumors and distant memories, questions and answers play tricks on each other - All of this invites us to ask, how much of our own history is fiction?


    Based on Research by
    David Somellera

    With
    Audino Diaz
    Facundo Rodríguez

    Produced by
    Emil Olsen
    Manuel Correa
    David Somellera

    Sound edition & mix
    Emil Olsen

    Location Recordings
    Jacobo Zambrano

    Assistant Editors
    Signe Tørå Karsrud
    Daniel Holten

    Director, Editor, Camera
    Manuel Correa

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    SHORT FILM

    Agente
    Biológico
    2023


    Co-directed
    with Marina Otero Verzier

    The Almeria landscape bears the imprint of the terraforming processes carried out in Spain by the Franco regime.
    The architectures of the colonization towns and infrastructural projects erected at the time were means to convert bodies into laborers and landscapes into resources to be exploited. Their logic persists to this day, prominently displayed in the sprawling network of greenhouses that span hundreds of kilometers and produce the food that sustain us: tomatoes, zucchinis, peppers, watermelons. The plastic skins that build them wrap around the bodies of those who work tirelessly in the service of the production chain. Each is specialized in discrete but interconnected operations: planting, pollination, pest control, and harvesting. Absorbed in the familiarity of their tasks, they perform a choreographed dance every day in the factories where bumblebees are produced; in the rows of zucchini where humans work with repetitive manual movements, fueled by energy drinks; in the sheds where tomatoes are sorted; in the areas that accumulate discarded wrinkled skins, once greenhouses. Despite automation's tendency to mold workers into disciplined beings, their dances render bodies as generative mediums of embodied knowledge, places of agency and desire.



    CURATORS
    Eduardo Castillo Vinuesa and Manuel Ocaña

    Biological Agent was commisioned by the Spanish Pavillion at the 18th Biennale Architettura, 2023.

    HD Video 24’45’’ 2023

    Installation in the Spanish Pavillion, 18th
    Venice Architecture Biennale
    Installation in Casa de la Arquitectura, Madrid

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    FILM
    #art
    offline
    2015


    “Contemporary art is at a standstill, and partially because of technology” -  
    Mohammad Salemy


    In 2015, making selfies is part of the experience of visiting a museum. Digital technology has
    completely transformed the experience of art forever; #ARTOFFLINE provides an insider's view of
    the contemporary art-world, and explores the significance of audiences choosing experience art
    primarily through digital devices.

    This documentary illustrates the ways in which digital technologies are also creating new
    audiences, and a participatory culture that exists outside of traditional elite spaces for art.                                     The artist and director Manuel Correa takes us behind the scenes, and provides a glimpse inside the
    minds that are already shaping the art of tomorrow.



      #ARTOFFLINE had its world premiere in 2015 at Rotterdam International Film Festival Directed by
      Manuel Correa

      Produced by
      Emil Nygard Olsen

      Coproduced by
      Anna Kasko
      Cavo Kernich

      Original Music
      Cayne McKenzie

      Sound edition & mix
      Emil Nygard Olsen

      Asistant Director
      Joseph Strohan


             Researchers
      Jon Peters
      Joseph Strohan
      Mike Burnside

      Camera
      Maxime Cyr-Morton
      Manuel Correa
      Joseph Schweers

      Editing
      Emil Nygard Olsen
      Manuel Correa
      Joseph Schweers

      Technical
      Distributed by IndiePix Films
      Norway. 60 minutes, Colour. HDVIDEO

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      ARCHIVES

      Press

       “ En esta entrevistal, el director de cine habló sobre la memoria y su película más reciente “Peñoncito”, que también se relaciona con este tema y fue rodada en México.”

      Laura Camila Arévalo Dominguez, for El Espectador, December 2022
      Peñoncito

      “Directed by young Colombian visual artist and filmmaker  Manuel Correa, #artoffline premiered in 2015 and has been to international film festivals since 2016. It’s now 2020 and so this is no longer a new film. However, not much has changed in the art world in the past five years and with the new coronavirus, the issues Correa discussed then are worth our serious attention now. ”

      Napat Charitbutra, for Art4D, 2020


      “ As #artoffline explores, the Internet has been seen by artists either as a transformative tool (think Instagram) or as a roadblock (again, think Instagram). Yet even with the Internet’s ascendency, cinema is the only remaining mainstream art form of our culture.”

      Aaron Peck, for Canadian Art, 2017             #artoffline
      “The film started as an exploration of what it means to be able to create the past – and the role of verification. Because if you accept that you can implant false memories into people then how is our own autobiographical memory a reliable source for testimonies and truth-claims? In this sense, it is evident that we have no access to the past. We can remember the past, but every time you may remember something differently and memories may change. I am interested in the idea that the memory of the past is always created in the future. The past is ground for experimentation.”

      Interview by Tomáš Hudák, for Desist Film, April 2020


      “More than anything, The Shape of Now is about the process of creating historical memory: its promise and its fallibility. Correa interviews a logician, an arms dealer, a peace negotiator, journalists and neuroscientists as well as ex-combatants from all sides and, most touchingly, a group for the mothers of people who disappeared. All of these individuals are, in their own way, trying to piece together what has happened (or what they’ve done) and figure out why, so that they can move on.”

      Jenna Sauers, for Cultured Magazine, March 2020


      “Por estos días, y por los días pasados, y seguramente por los días siguientes, el gran reto será admitir que, para entender, habrá que dejar que el otro hable sin que necesariamente eso signifique asumir que lo que dice es cierto o correcto. Coexistir es, en resumidas cuentas, lo que propone Correa en su película.”

      Laura Camila Arévalo, para El Espectador, Noviembre 2019


      ” ... Manuel Correa’s new film, The Shape of Now, takes on the gore-soaked mess that is Colombia’s civil war in a sly and inventive way: by casting a cool eye on the oddly surreal social landscape of the country as it is now, with the war officially over and the entire society attempting to move on.”

      Michael Atkinson, for Progressive, May 2019


      “One of the standout works of ARTBO was presented in the fair’s Artecámara section for emerging Colombian artists. London-based, Medellín-born Manuel Correa’s 70-minute documentary The Shape of Now ... ”

      Jenna Sauers, for Cultured, October 2019


      “...Qué pasó con los sobrevivientes de más de 50 años de conflicto interno? Esta es la pregunta que se propone resolver ‘La forma del presente’, del director Manuel Correa, de la mano con las víctimas que narran no solo su dolor, sino cómo lograron edificar a partir de él.”

       Valentina Valencia, Para El País, Octubre 2019             The Shape of Now








      MANUEL CORREA                   ABOUT                 BACK





       Manuel Correa is a Colombian artist and filmmaker based in Madrid. His work explores memory and post-conflict reconstruction in contemporary societies. 



      Manuel’s work is exemplified by the difficult task of negotiating highly complex and fragile social relations formed in the aftermath of trauma. He has used documentary filmmaking as a tool through which to bring people together: creating meeting points for war victims, survivors, activists, and scientists.

      Correa has an MA in Research Architecture from Goldsmiths College, University of London. He was part of the Forensic Architecture project. 

      His works have been presented in venues such as the Spanish Pavillion at the 18th Venice Architecture Biennale, Kunsthaus Graz, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Museo Tamayo in Mexico, Presentation House Gallery in Canada, MediaLab Matadero, The Medellín Museum of Modern Art, The 8th Norwegian Sculpture Biennial, Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos in Chile, e-flux Architecture, DOK Leipzig international documentary film  festival, amongst other spaces.
      Education
      2011 - 2015 Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver.
      2018 - 2019 Centre for Research Architecture. Goldsmiths College, University of London. UK.

      Academic
      2021 - Lecturer, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia

      Exhibitions (Selected)
      2010. Salón Regional De Artes (Antioquia). Medellín
      2014. INDEX. Gallery 295. Vancouver
      2015. For Machine Use Only (Curated by Mohammad Salemy). Schneiderei Gallery. Vienna, Austria
      2015. Quoting the Quotidian. WAAP. Vancouver, Canada
      2015-16. 8th Norwegian Sculpture Biennial. (Curated by Anne Szefer Karlsen) Vigeland Museet, Oslo, Norway.
      2017. This is the Sea. Art Montecarlo Special Projects. (Curated by Mohammad Salemy). Monaco.
      2017. II Coloquio Latinoamericano de Arte No-Objetual. Museo de Arte Moderno De Medellín. (Curated by Sofía Hernandez Chong Cuy). Colombia.
      2018. Fake Art. Fake Museum. Fake You. (Curated by Gerd Elise Morland) Norsk Nasjonal Museet. Oslo, Norway.
      2019. Artecámara. ArtBo. Bogotá, Colombia.
      2020. God in Reverse: When Wisdom Defies Capture. Richmond Art Gallery, Canada.
      2020. Esa Historia no es la Historia. Espacio Odeón. Bogotá, Colombia.
      2021. Huellas de Desaparición (como parte de Forensic Architecture). Museo Miguel Ángel Urrutia. Bogotá.
      2022. Forensic Architecture (como parte de Forensic Architecture). Louisianna Museum of Modern Art. Copenhagen. 
      2023. Huellas de la Desaparición (como parte de Forensic Architecture). Museo la Tertulia. Cali
      2023. Spanish Pavillion at Biennale Architettura, Venice.
      2023. Lo Que nos Queda Por Hablar. Museo de la Memoria y los DDHH. Santiago de Chile

      Screenings (Selected)
      2015. Bergen International Film Festival
      2015. Kabuso Kunsthal. Norway
      2016. Bomuldsfabriken Kunsthal. Norway
      2016. Museo Tamayo. México
      2016. Lo Schermo dell'Arte Film Festival. Italy
      2016. Palazzo Grassi. Venice. Italy
      2016. Il cinema del carbone. Mantova. Italy
      2016. Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín. Colombia
      2016. A4 Centre for Contemporary Culture.  Slovakia
      2016. TranzitDisplay Gallery. Czech Republic
      2016. Kunstnernes Hus. Kunsthøgskolen i Oslo, Norway
      2016. International Film Festival Rotterdam, Netherlands
      2016. Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands
      2018. New Politics of Labour. Medellín, Colombia.
      2018. DOK Leipzig International Film Festival (Next Masters Golden Dove Nomination), Leipzig, Germany
      2019. Bogotá International Film Festival. Bogotá. Colombia.
      2019. Cinematik International Film Festival. Piestany, Slovakia
      2021. Utopías de la Proximidad. MAM Medellín, Colombia
      2021. Arqueología de la Desaparición. CAR, Madrid, Spain
      2021. Lo Mejor de Colombia Viva. BIFF. Bogotá, Cali, Medellin, Santa Marta. Colombia
      2022. Postcarbon Timelines. Universidad Politecnica de Madrid. (ETSAM)
      2023. Bogoshorts. Bogotá, Colombia. 
      2023. Rotterdam Architecture Film Festival. Netherlands
      2023. Effigies. TEA. Tenerife. Spain
      2024. Écrans Urbains. Lausanne, Switzerland 

      Conferences, Talks
      2015. Speaking off it. Field Contemporary, Vancouver, Canada.
      2016. Our Digital Selves, Kunsternes Hus. Oslo. Norway
      2016. Bots. Bodies. Beasts, Studium Generale Rietveld Academy. Netherlands.
      2018. The Missing Circle, Kadist Art Foundation, (Curated by Magalí Arriola). Merida, Mexico
      2019. NYU Madrid, Politics of Memory (Invited by Allen Feldman). Spain
      2019. Interlocutories Symposium. Spike Berlin. Germany
      2020. Online: The Missing Circle (Conversation with Pavel Aguilar) Kadist/Museo Amparo. Puebla, Mexico
      2020. Online: Los Límites de la Evidencia. Abrazando la Ficción. Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, Colombia
      2020. Online: Unearthing Monuments and the Construction of History. With Dima Srouji and Marina Otero Verzier. e-flux Architecture /Het Nieuwe Instituut. Netherlands
      2020. Online: Sala de Estar. With Rafael Ortega. Museo Amparo. Puebla, Mexico. 
      2021. Utopías de Proximidad. Conversación con Oswaldo Osorio. Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, Colombia.
      2023. Journalism and OSINT for Human Rights and the Prosecution of Atrocity Crimes.  Facultad de Ciencias de la Información, Universidad Complutense. Madrid. Spain.
      2023. Methodological Exchanges: Urbanism and Dictatorship under the Franco Regime. RCA, London.

      Residencies
      2018. CAR Madrid. Centro de Acercamiento a lo Rural. (Invited by Fernando García-Dory) Madrid, Spain
      2022. MediaLab Matadero. Research residency. Madrid, Spain
      2023. Laboratorio y Foro de Coproduccuón. Ventana CineMad. Madrid.

      Collections
      Kadist Arts Foundation 
      Norsk NasjonalMuseet

      Bibliography (selected)
      2014. Aint-Bad Editions. Issue No.9
      2015. Kunsten Tilhører Dem Som Ser Den. 8th Norwegian Sculpture Biennial Catalog
      2015. Bergen International Film Festival Catalog
      2015. A democratic project, Interviewed by Erlend Hammer. Kunstritikk.no
      2016. Vancouver At The Movies. Canadian Art Magazine, By Aaron Peck. Canada
      2018. DOK Leipzig International Film Festival Catalogue 
      2020. DesistFilm, Interview by Tomáš Hudák. Online
      2020. Manuel Correa Reckons Violence and Memory. Interview by Jenna Sauers, Cultured Magazine. USA 
      2022. Capturar la Vida Mientras Sucede, La busqueda de Manuel Correa. El Espectador. Print

      Text
      2015. The Philosophical Origins of Digitality. Manuel Correa interviews Alexander R. Galloway for #Artoffline. &&& Journal.
      2015. Harun Farocki: On the Documentary. e-flux conversations: Day 5. online
      component of Venice Biennale Super Community.
      2016. Embracing the Digital. Manuel Correa interviews Benjamin Woodard for #Artoffline. &&& Journal.
      2016. Nowhere, Today. Terremoto Journal. (Edited by Natalia Valencia) Mexico City
      2016. Talbot’s Dream. For Machine Use Only (Contemplations on Algorithmic Epistemology). &&& Publishing in association with Gwangju Biennale.
      2019. Politics of Math in the Age of Post-Truth, an interview with Fernando Zalamea. &&& Journal.  

      Films
      2015. #ArtOffline (Feature Documentary).
      2018. La Forma del Presente (Feature Documentary).
      2020. Didn’t Know I Died (Short documentary).
      2020. 400 Unquiet Graves. (Short documentary). Commissioned by e-flux and Het Nieuwe Instituut.
      2023. Peñoncito. (Short Documentary)
      2019 - Ongoing. Atlas de la Desaparición (In production).





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      info@manuelcorrea.com      2024