Nehemías

Not understanding has gradually become a core motivation in Jacoby’s oeuvre. Uncanny situations, dystopian realities, eccentric characters, ambiguous concepts: the more puzzling the things, the more he feels drawn to them and rejoice in their exploration. Dealing with the ungraspable elements hidden around us is what gives his work the mysterious sensibility he’s after.

As much as the artist can be critical of a fictionalized, made-up, biased portrayal of others, he also question the distant documentarist who only observes and doesn’t let her/himself be (emotionally) affected by the subject nor incorporate her/his own opinions. Jacoby strongly believes that the artists are inevitably reflected in every work made and will, consciously or unconsciously, shape its message according to their own personal views. There’s no such thing as an objective portrait.

Under the premise of a scripted reality, Jacoby tries to engage with the people and elements in the framework that he decides to explore and collaborate towards merging his voice with theirs. As opposed to giving voice to someone, which is often a problematic gesture, he works in dialogue with others to find a negotiated middle ground between his personal (and admittedly biased) point of view and the one that only they could ever think of. Through this method, a new representation of the subject that is neither faithful nor inconceivable is created: it’s a fictionalized portrayal made by the real subjects.

Throughout his three-week stay in the Amazon Rainforest, Jacoby engaged in visits to the Gocta waterfalls and tried to develop skills working with clay and wool together with local craftsmen, and in general participate in the various communal activities of the village. The ultimate goal of the project, in its final phase, was to complete a cinematic work — a short film — which agglutinates the materials gathered during this research trip in an audiovisual, abstractly narrative work.