CAM in Motion: 'Audio and visual collage'
Film cycle 'You can't see a thing there'
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Date
07 Aug – 09 Sep 2024
Location
Jardim GulbenkianPricing
- Free entry
In the new CAM in Motion film cycle, curated by Katherine Sirois, the title ‘You can’t see a thing there’ is a slight provocation that refers to questions of visibility and perception in images in motion, conditioned by effects such as unfolding, superimposition or multiplication, defocusing, transparency, obstruction or brightness, fragmentation or pixelation.
The title of this programme is a tribute to Daniel Arasse (Alger 1944-Paris 2003) who dedicated a large part of his life as an art historian to questions of representation and the journeys of the gaze in Italian Renaissance painting. Sensitive to the dazzle aroused by painting, he developed the practice of seeking out and detecting the subtle, humorous and often hidden stories behind the wonder of what appears at first glance. In his book ‘On n’y voit rien’, published in Paris in 2000, Arasse pointed out the enigmas and games of meaning contained in artists’ compositions.
The cycle exhibits a selection of videos which, in many cases, present an experimental work involving playful alterations of performative or pre-existing visual material through the use of current technologies. It aims to offer a reflection on the paradox of analogue and digital images, between their triumphant role of showing and their simultaneous dynamics of artifice, manipulation or deterioration.
The selection offers the public a mix of pioneering works that use analogue media and manual techniques, landmarks in the recent history of video art, and recent works produced by emerging artists.
The programme is divided into three sessions organised around various technical and conceptual approaches: ‘Obstruction, Blurring and Deterioration’, from 18 May to 24 June; ‘Manipulated ready-mades’, from 26 June to 5 August; ‘Audio and visual collage’, from 7 August to 9 September.
CAM IN MOTION
CAM in Motion is an ‘outdoor’ programme that brings together a series of site-specific interventions by artists and exhibitions with works from the Collection in different spaces in the city of Lisbon and its surroundings. More info
Biographies
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Katherine Sirois
Katherine Sirois (Montreal, 1975) is a Lisbon-based Canadian art historian and curator. In addition to writing essays for exhibition catalogues, she has authored texts on artists and artworks for museums, galleries and private collections. Most recently, she has worked with a number of young artists and curated exhibitions of contemporary art in galleries, private or public institutions and associations.
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Bertrand Dezoteux
Bertrand Dezoteux (Bayonne, 1982) makes animated films, exploring diverse computer-generated imagery in fictional assemblages. His narratives, in films and digital installations, question our relationships, future imagination, and desires, deliberately diverging from mainstream aesthetics. His exhibitions include ‘Mémoires d’un touriste’, HAB Galerie, Nantes (2022), ‘Children Power’, Le Plateau Frac Île-de-France, Paris (2021) and ‘Futur, ancien, fugitif’ at Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2019).
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Jorge Varanda
Jorge Varanda (Luanda, 1953 – Lisbon, 2008) was a Portuguese artist whose work was developed in a field of experimentation ranging from comics to artist’s books, from painting on three-dimensional supports to digital animation – an area in which he was a pioneer in Portugal. His work is represented in the CAM Collection with works such as ‘S.L.N.D. (Sem Lugar Nem Data)’ (2001), ‘A Queda das Jóias da Luísa Todi’ (1987) and ‘Sem Lugar Nem Data’ (1993). In 2012, CAM – Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian presented ‘Pequeno-almoço sobre Cartolina’, the artist’s first anthological exhibition.
Programme
'Audio and visual collage'
Far from producing an explicit and coherent narrative, these projects develop surreal and dreamlike universes that interweave diverse visual and sound sources, such as 3D modelling and animation, filmed images, edited and synthesised images, video captures, photography, drawing, 3D scanning, musical recordings, interviews, WhatsApp vocal messages or resurrected magnetic tapes.
These digitally constructed universes create a mesmerising effect that captures the viewer. Whether through night visions produced by a handheld camera during lockdown or wanderings in artificial worlds, the viewer's perception is confronted with the possible amalgamations in digital arts between immersive, fantasised realities and virtual fictions.
Jorge Varanda, 'S.L.N.D. (Sem Lugar Nem Data)', 2001
Digital animation. Colour, sound, 8’57’’
In this animation, people and objects appear as imaginary, animalistic, surreal and improbable beings. Everything can become a journey, a visit, an experience, a challenge. All the figures are animated and/or static, human and/or humanoid, pictorial, sculptural or virtually real. The museum or art gallery room becomes a place of phantasmatic presences.
Bertrand Dezoteux, 'The Prison of Poets', 2020
This project was developed during lockdown in a neighbourhood in Marracq, Baiona. This autobiographical series crosses family and colonial history, nocturnal wanderings and Basque identity, against a background of committed artistic vocations. The composition tries to create a place out of darkness and shadow, the prison of Marracq, the hope of encounters, the design of an escape plan.
Credits
Curator
Katherine Sirois
