"A complex cut in space and time, dimensionless in itself as the intersections and the figures in Euclid's elements… and in the mind, precisely as real”
Hollis Frampton in On the camera arts and consecutive matters, 2011 MIT press

Not every screen receives images passively. Some resist, opposing their role as image receivers. These kinds of screens try to assert themselves as autonomous forms rising to a status of an object with an end in itself, just like with painting or sculpture, emanating a selfimage. Consequently, these screens react to the projections, in a permanent conflict between their self-sufficiency and the purpose for which they have been destined. However, some projections can penetrate the barrier created by the screens, supplied with images with continuous and repetitive movements. The limp persistence of the images can even corrupt the consistency of the matter, in an erosion process that consumes the physical certainties. The solid screens enter reluctantly into the unreliable limbo of perception, a space of conflict between the image itself, the autonomous one, and the image of surface, which is imposed, projected.                       

In Wall Against the Sea several intersections between matter and image are presented, and these intersections are fertile in resonances that promote uncertainties and instabilities in the matter and in our perception of it.

Assistance and video post-production: João Graça | Sound post-production: Fernando Fadigas | Design and technical monitoring: Outros Arquitectos | Silkscreen: Mike Goes West | Thanks to: Natxo Checa | Co-production: Estaleiro/Curtas Metragens CRL and Circular Associação Cultural.

The Project Estaleiro is co-financed by ON.2 - O Novo Norte (North Portugal Regional Operational Programme), National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) and European Regional Development Fund.

Project CAVE (complement to the exhibition "Wall against the sea"):

"A Place Where the Unkown Past and the Emergent Future Meet in a Vibrating Soundless Hum" 

Carlos Godinho

Solar - Cinematic Art Gallery

24th September to 13th November 

opening 24th Sept 18:00

+ info [here]

Image:" Wall Against the Sea", Alexandre Estrela, 2011 © all rights reserved

(M)IMOSA, a choreographic collaboration between Cecilia Bengolea, Francois Chaignaud, Marlene Freitas, and Trajal Harrell, is the title given to the Medium version of Harrell's series in five sizes, (XS) - (XL), entitled Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church. The propositional departure for the series- "What would have happened in 1963, if someone from the voguing ball scene had come down to Judson Church in Greenwich Village to perform alongside the early postmoderns?"- is not addressed but reconfigured by (M)IMOSA into a encounter between these four artistic voices.

The Voguing dance tradition refers to the competitive balls staged in Harlem dance halls beginning in the 1960's. A form of social performance practiced primarily by African-American and Latino gays, transvestites, and transsexuals, voguing imitates archetypal social and gender identities through fashion, movement, and behavior. At the same historical moment, in the 1960’s, the pioneers of the postmodern dance broke with the traditional representations of classical and modern dance and sought to make dance without artifice, based in authenticity.

Inspired by Paris is Burning, the seminal documentary film about voguing; their personal research on voguing; and their collective experience as makers, the four collaborators in (M)IMOSA dare to own and share the immediate distance between themselves, between them and their inspiration, between what they portend and what they perform, and between their counteracts. 

Choreographed and performed by: Cecilia Bengolea, François Chaignaud, Trajal Harrell, Marlene Monteiro Freitas | Light design: Yannick Fouassier | Shoes: La Bourette | Light manager: Sylvain Rausa | Sound manager: Enora Le Gall | Production: VLOVAJOB PRU with Le Quartz - Scène nationale de Brest | Coproduction: Le Quartz - Scène Nationale de Brest (FR), Théâtre National de Chaillot (FR), Centre de Développement Chorégraphique - Toulouse (FR), The Kitchen - New York (US), Bomba Suicida (PT), FUSED (FR) | With the support of: Ménagerie de Verre (FR), Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers (FR), Lower Manhattan CC (US), Presidência do Conselho de Ministros/Secretaria de Estado da Cultura - Direcção-Geral das Artes (PT) | Cecilia Bengolea and François Chaignaud are associated to Ménagerie de Verre - Paris | Special thanks to: Matthieu Banvillet, Sarah Michelson, DD Dorvillier, Ben Pryor, Lasseindra Ninja, Alex Mugler, Rumi Missabu, Pascal Queneau, Archie Burnett, Javier Madrid, Matthieu  Bajolet, Donatien Veismann, Miguel Bengolea, Marianne Chargois, João Figueira, Rio Rutzinger, Emmanuelle Huynh, Jessica Trossman.

VLOVAJOB PRU is supported by DRAC Poitou-Charentes and gets the help from Institut Français for its foreign projects.

Vídeo You Tube (excerto) | www.vlovajob.blogspot.com

Image: "(M)IMOSA - Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church (M)", Cecilia Bengolea, François Chaignaud, Trajal Harrell, Marlene Monteiro Freitas © Paula Court

The musical piece In C, written by the American composer Terry Riley in 1964, is invested with huge historical importance because it started the North-American minimalist movement and it promotes the principles of the open work of art. The free improvisation of the score, made up of 53 cells (musical phrases) in a single page and with no specification on the number of “musicians”, was proposed to Drumming and also to a group of choreographers, and it supports the inclusion of research and experimentation processes, inherited from the Judson Generation, usually integrated in the practice of many contemporary artist integrated in the Improvisations/Collaborations series.

“In this piece we begin by improvising already in the choice of instruments. Aside from the score contents, we will only determine the approximate duration of the performance beforehand. Everything else will be left to the interpreters decision(…)" Miguel Bernat

“For us the main challenge will be to know how to navigate through the musical score and transpose it to an equally open dance score. Each show will be ‘site-specific’, and therefore the approaches will necessarily adapt to circumstances, as the construction of the choreography will be established according to tasks, actions, temporizations and spatializations (…) 

The performance takes place in the Memorial Centre, a cultural centre with a hillside park, designed with three terraces, built and surrounded by stone walls. The audience will be invited to come and picnic in the park on the lower terrace. I imagine a more informal and playful performance, a pageant show(…)" Mark Tompkins

Improvisation on the basis of Terry Riley´s In C | Drumming GP directed by: Miquel Bernat | A group of choreographers/performers coordinatde by: Mark Tompkins | Members: Elizabete Francisca, Frans Poelstra, Mariana Tengner, Sofia Dias, Vera Mantero, Vítor Roriz  and Mark Tompkins.

This show is integrated in the Improvisations/Collaborations series, programmed by the Serralves Foundation and integrated in the Circular Performing Arts Festival, as a result of a partnership established between Circular Cultural Association and Vila do Conde’s Town Council.

The Project Improvisations/Collaborations is co-financed by ON.2 - O Novo Norte (North Portugal Regional Operational Programme), National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) and European Regional Development Fund;
Institucional Support: Ministry of Culture  | Diffusion Support: Oporto’s City Council | In association with: Circular Cultural Association | Vila do Conde’s Town Council 

www.serralves.pt | www.drumming.pt

In 2007, Francisco Tropa and Laurent Pichaud presented their work in the 3rd edition of Circular Performing Arts Festival ("Um traço sobre um muro" and "à t i t r é - deux sujets à interprétation", respectively). It was at that time that both artists realized that it was appealing for them to develop a creative collaboration in the future.

“Literal” is the outcome of this collaboration, which began a year ago, prompted by an invitation from the organization of the festival for an artist-in-residence programme.

Conception: Francisco Tropa and Laurent Pichaud

Image: "Literal", Francisco Tropa & Laurent Pichaud © Margarida Ribeiro 

A hunched figure is walking slowly in the distance. A gust of wind brings a smell that makes your thoughts wander off. When you look up next, the figure seems closer. You sense that there could be other figures in this land, but you can’t see them. The floor is rocking softly beneath your feet. One of the performers comes closer and looks at your hands. The room feels warmer. Is it the thick, colored light projected on your skin that makes you feel this way? Now the floor is cracking ,opening holes in which figures keep falling and then reappearing. As if fictions were folding and unfolding around you. 

Conceived and performed by: Sidney Leoni & Luís Miguel Félix | Sound design: Peter Lenaerts | Fragrance design: Laurent-D. Garnier | Light design & technical support: Nick Symons | Advisor: Manon Santkin | Co-productions: Jardin d´Europe/Cullberg Ballet, MDT, Circular Festival and WorkSpace Brussels | Funded by: Nordic Culture Point, Nordic Culture Fund, Konstnärsnämnden - the Swedish Arts Grant Committee and Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian | Supported by: Institut Français du Portugal and Alkantara.

Image: "War of Fictions", Sidney Leoni & Luís Miguel Félix © all rights reserved

The Trap emerges as a way to continue working on the theme of the body’s identity and the power of the representation of the body in art and in the media, exploiting its relevance in the social phenomena of “fame”, of “outward impressions” and “simulacrum”. THE TRAP is a snare, it is about the ultimate trap (the society of show business) along with the freaks it presents, the happiness it induces, the way people represent and show themselves, the tensions between “seeming” and “being”. It is about the glamour and its destruction, as well as about the sense of the ridiculous that emerges in the processes of construction and deconstruction of our own image and identity. One of the paradigmatic points of reference of that construction of identity is, in fact, related to the television influence on society, currently hyperemphasized by the “fame” and “icon” phenomena, while sifting the feelings of “winning” and “achieving”. I was interested in digging out these modes of presenting and “embellishing” the body, the ways of promoting the body aiming at “to besuccess” goal (whatever that represents to the individual). This “to besuccess” is the almost pathological manifestation of the ideology of progress/capitalism. In the ultimate analysis, and in a humorous tone, we will be facing that distant illuminist hangover, if “to besuccess” is the last stage of progress.

Mariana Tengner Barros 2011

Direction, conception and performance: Mariana Tengner Barros | Artistic consultant: Mark Tompkins | Creative Assistant: António Mv and Nuno Miguel | Dramaturgical support: João Manuel de Oliveira | Video: António Mv e Mariana Tengner Barros | Texts: Mariana Tengner Barros e Nuno Miguel | Costume designer: António Mv | Scenic design: Nuno Miguel, António Mv and Mariana Tengner Barros | Original Music: Filipe Lopes| Administration and Production: EIRA | Art director: Francisco Camacho | Production, Diffusion and Public Relations Director: Rui Silveira | Administration Advisor: Nuno Miguel | Project financed by: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian - Dance Support

EIRA is an organisation supported by the Ministry of Culture - Directorate-General for the Arts (DGARTES) and a member of REDE – Association of organizations for Contemporary Dance.

www.eira.pt

Image: "The Trap" Mariana Tengner Barros © all rights reserved