Pola Weiss Álvarez

It is believed that after her father's death, Weiss fell under deep depression and committed suicide in front of her camera, in 1990.

Although Weiss never received any awards, her most notable recognition happened in 1987, during the Festival Internacional de Video, in Montpellier, France. A homage is made recognizing Weiss as the most important video artist of Latin America.

In 1985, Mexico City suffers from a catastrophic earthquake devastating its people. In this ten-minute video, Weiss draws on the relationship between the body and the city again like she had done in Ciudad-Mujer-Ciudad and Somos Mujeres. As the video begins, the camera focuses on Weiss' mouth as she spells out mi co-ra-zón. She continues to say “mi ojo es mi corazón" which means my eye is my heart. In doing so, she is reinstating her belief that seeing is equivalent to feeling. She, also, presents a new allegory between the real seismic movement and the internal convulsion within herself due to the loss of her baby. Beats of a living heart are heard and, simultaneously, she makes references to menstruation through a flower that drips blood. As she twists and dances, Weiss' figure acquires a greenish tint. Flashes of an electrocardiogram and crystalline tears are presented. Weiss makes an analogy between her pregnant figure and Gustav Klimt's painting, Esperanza I, of 1903. Weiss enters the hospital and the word fetus is written on a skull. Weiss illustrates an intersection between her personal imaginary and scenes of the earthquake in Mexico. Then the word Mexico emerges. A naked Weiss stretches and dances on a background of the ruined city. The fragments of another Klimt painting, Life and Death, of 1911 overlap. The specter of a skull with a scythe announces death. She positions herself in a V, face down, with a red and alive heart in the background that is beating. Her body, then, collapses, suggesting the death of her child due to a spontaneous abortion.

In 1977, Weiss presented her first work Flor cósmica (Cosmic Flower), in the 9th Encuentro Internacional del Videoarte at the Museo Carrillo Gil in Mexico City. Additionally, this is the same year that, as a professor of UNAM, Weiss founds the first educational space for the production and research of video,Taller Experimental de Video, in the Facultad de Ciencias Políticas at UNAM. From the time of her first release until her death in 1990, Weiss embarked on multiple projects and exhibitions throughout the United States, Venezuela, France, The Netherlands, Uruguay, Poland, Canada, Belgium, Brazil and Argentina.

Weiss attended the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Although her intended major was political science (which she would later change), Weiss enrolled in cinematography courses in the Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos (CUEC) at UNAM. As a student, she worked in broadcast television, specifically with Televisa and the state-owned Canal 13. Defying institutional policies, Weiss presented, for the first time in the history of UNAM, a thesis in the format of a videotape. Despite this, in 1975, Weiss graduated receiving her degree in mass communication and journalism. Thereafter, she began to produce works for public and commercial television. Later coining the term “teleasta” to describe herself. It derived from a similar word “cineasta” meaning filmmaker, but instead alluded to television. Similarly, scholars such as Dante Hernández Miranda agree that Weiss's playful and creative nature was evident through the continuous wordplay of her own name. For example, she used neologisms such as POLArizado, POLAca, POLAina, POLAr, POLAnco, POLAque, etc.

In the late 1970s, video as a medium of art in Mexico was relatively new. As Weiss began to experiment with videography, scholars agree she developed a kind of performance relationship with her camera. In a special issue of the magazine Artes Visuales, Weiss describes her conceptualization of video as a negotiation between its personal depictions and relationship to mass media and the public sphere. She used broadcast television as a frame that allowed her to access a large and diverse public that was not found in artistic institutions such as galleries and museums. However, Weiss carefully used television to the extent that it provided a platform in which she could exhibit her work but refrained from working under the uniform and commercial practices of television and cinema.

Her works were largely influenced by the Fluxus movement which emphasized the process of creating art rather than the finished product. She was also influenced by the works of Nam June Paik and Shigeko Kubota. After a trip to New York, she came into contact with Nam June Paik and his wife Shigeko Kubota. Both were influential artists of the late 1960s that experimented with videography. Paik was a principal exponent of the Fluxus movement and pioneer of video art famously known for his experimentation with televised images. Kubota pioneered North American and European video sculpture and continuously embedded feminist discourse in her works. At this time, artists experimented with sound and image through technology for creative zeal because no platforms for the distribution and exhibition of this type of work existed. Therefore, Weiss sought to use television as a possible medium for artists to display their artwork. Weiss founded the arTV production company, in 1977, with the objective of providing a space that facilitated the creation of audiovisual productions. In an interview, Weiss stated that television served as the mother of video and could be conceived as a form of art. For this reason, she named her artistic productions “arTV” for their ability to engage in mass communication.

Weiss was born in Mexico City in 1947 to a father of Alsatian descent and Mexican mother. She grew up, at a time, when television was rising as a dominating platform of mass communication. Her younger sister, Kitzia, recalled that Weiss had always been attracted to motion pictures as a child.