Free Agent Media

Courtesy Renée Green and Free Agent Media.

Read Renée Green's article Reflections: Seven Years Plus hERE

My Own Private Angkor

Simryn Gill, My Own Private Angkor #2, 2007-09.

Simryn Gill, Where to Draw the Line, 2011-012.

Suely Rolnik: Deleuze, Schizoanalyst

 Read an article by Suely Rolnik hERE

Jill Magid: Evidence Locker

As the artist wrote in 2007, “I seek intimate relationships with impersonal structures. The systems I choose to work with, such as police, secret services, CCTV and forensic identification, function at a distance, with a wide-angle perspective, equalizing everyone and erasing the individual. I seek the potential softness and intimacy of their technologies, the fallacy of their omniscient point of view, the ways in which they hold memory (yet often cease to remember), their engrained position in society (the cause of their invisibility), their authority, their apparent intangibility and, with all this, their potential reversibility.”

On Desire and Power: A Conversation with Solange Freitas

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Synopsis: Offside is about desire and its relationship to power, about strategies to escape the boredom, the crisis and the everyday. How long can you hold your desire without letting it fade away?

What can we desire today? Can we desire to act? Can we act? And do we have to be many or only a few? What measures do we adopt when desire becomes too urgent and extreme, asking for a radical action in an area greater than the individual, the scope of their relationship with the other?

The presence of video puts into question and sharpens the boundaries of desire, embodied or in a state of latency. How can desire become conscious and how does it materialize? Through the possibility of being said or materialized into an image? What are the fictions produced by desire? 

 

Performer and theatre director Solange Freitas talks to curator-on-the-move Rosana Sancin about her latest project Offside (Fora de Jogo, 2011) . Desire and its relationship to power, agency and participation are being questioned in this piece, which premiered at the Festival Temps d'Images. The two engage in an e-mail conversation about the economy of desire, tackle the uncanny situation in Performing Arts, and touch upon the intermingling relationship between Visual and Performing Arts as can be observed in the art-theatre hybrid Eleven Rooms.

Solange is an artist based in the cosmopolitan city on margins of Europe, surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, and connected to Africa and Americas through infinite migrations. However, what is less known is that Lisboa is also one of the most vibrating art capitals in the world.

She entered the art sphere in the noughties after studying clinical psychology and participating in numerous workshops by renown artists. Since Here and There (Lá e Cá, 2007) , a theatre trilogy that was presented at major art institutions such as CCB and Museu Serralves, Solange works together with the performer and co-creator Catarina Vieira. To this we might add an ongoing collaboration with the filmmaker Carlos Conceição. Amongst their projects is also a dyptich Temporary (Temporária, 2010) , a theatre piece and a video-installation that explores the relationship between the individual and work as well as the individual's (in)visibility in the city (temporary being the condition of our times) , which might be presented in Ljubljana in the near future... Demand it!

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Rosana: Solange, tell me why you do what you do and how would you define your practice?

Solange: I believe the main focus is set on the invisibility, or rather, to procure and shed visibility of what apparently is hidden, camouflaged or deemed unimportant that is reflected on the collective space. I aim to reflect on the relationship of the individual with desire: his own, the desire of the Other, or the mass to which it belongs to and how this relationship is tense and unpredictable.

Various types of materials such as plastics or texts serve as starting points of the dramaturgy for the creations that are intersected by different landscapes.

Rosana: Fora de jogo is a piece about desire, current state of affairs, agency and to certain extent participation. What is the relationship between desire and power? And what fictions desire produces?

Solange: The performance reflects on the relationship between power and desire: on the way desire manifests itself, hides away as a consequence of a collective gaze. This signals another reality that is hidden and which is materialized through negotiation with the collective space.

These questions imply necessarily a reflection on Power. According to Zizek: When we are subject to mechanisms of power, the subjection always leads by definition to a libidinal investment [. . .] This subjection is expressed through a network of material bodily practices and thus we cannot untangle ourselves from it by means of a simple intellectual reflection – our liberation must be staged through a type of bodily performance.”¹. There are a series of questions that trouble me but I believe that in art we should not seek answers, they aren’t the fulcral point, but search and raise questions. In what concerns this creation: What type of power does mass have on an individual’s desire? In order to accomplish certain desires, unions must be formed, groups, and on the other hand there are desires that occur as a response to peer pressure. Is there any point in talking about limits?

Rosana: Ranciere has a famous thesis that the political in art is what brings to the public domain voices that are unheard, and by that opens-up the society and offers potentially new social practices. What do you think, Solange?

Solange: I am mostly attracted to the possibility of giving voice or visibility. The tension between the individual and the collective. The idea that something is imminent, latent or potentially about to surface at any given moment.

Rosana: Concerning the OWS (Occupy Wall Street) and the massive protests all over the world including Lisbon and Ljubljana, what means agency nowadays and how can we act off-stage? Can art be a catalyst for social change?

Solange: I think it is possible, especially when it disturbs us, makes us act, question and reflect on our role and position as individuals that are a part of society and are responsible for it.

Rosana: Did someone say participate?

Solange: Yes.

Rosana: I'd like to know everything about the process of making the piece together with Catarina Vieira. You once told me that you often proceed from an image you spot somewhere and not from the text as it is usual in the theatre. This opens up a new perspective on what theatre might be and brings it closer to contemporary dance. What image triggered the creative process in Fora de jogo and how did the piece evolve from that moment on?

Solange: In general terms there is always an image that haunts us. In the case of Temporary- Cookies and Cream (2010), it was a photo by Izima Kauro, Reika Hashimoto wears Milk, in Offside, it began through images of rallies, confrontations, revolt that occurred throughout 2011 and then a few other plastic and textual materials appeared for the creation.

Rosana: Where did you meet Catarina and how you ended up working together? Once I read somewhere that working in a duo it's like being a mirror of each other.

Solange: We studied in the same drama and cinema school and we wanted to work together. In terms of working as a mirror of each other I do not agree – in truth we never thought of things in those terms.

Rosana: How does being a lisboeta affect your practice? The city is bursting with creativity. That is surprising due to the fact that the country was isolated for so long [Portugal had dictatorship until '74] . Besides that, Catarina isn't based in Lisbon and is always going back and forth. How does this dynamic add to the creative process?

Solange: The place where we live always affects the work process, just like the space where a certain performance is rehearsed and created. The fact that we are, we live, in different places contributes to bringing new variables to the work.

Rosana: In terms of theory, what we have here in Ljubljana is the so-called Ljubljana Lacan School, a pure fiction to tell you the truth, of which the most notorious 'export' is Slavoj Zizek. Let me quote the famous psychoanalyst: “ To love is to give what you haven't got. “ In a sense to give what you lack and not what you are, to become rather than offer luxury gifts. What are the viable artistic strategies against the current socio-economic paradigm? And what do you become when you're in love?

Solange: Desire is linked to what we do not have, to what we look for that is missing. History tells us that in times of crisis artistic production becomes edgy, fruitful, urgent and vital. One way or the other, one always finds a way to produce. It is in these moments that we position ourselves in the world.

Rosana: “ A espetadora emancipada participa na performance a retrabalha-la à maneira dela, evitando, por exemplo, a energia vital que este supostamente deveria transmitir, e fazendo dela uma imagem pura para associar depois essa imagem à história lida ou sonhada, vivida ou inventada. “

Solange: “The emancipated spectator” is the result of the final montage, by using cinematographic language the spectator is – at its limit – responsible for the final cut.

Rosana: You say in the piece that you feel like a zombie. In turn, I feel like a homeless woman. Aren't they the perfect subjects of capitalism? Do you know Bruce La Bruce's film “L.A. Zombie” ? In this experimental art film, a zombie comes out of the ocean and wanders around the city in search of corpses in order to fuck them back to life. However strange it may appear, he seems to be looking for love...

Solange: I think that in a certain way that word occurs as a reaction against the state of apathy.

Rosana: “ All love affairs happen in foreign cities” says Jalal Toufic. We go to foreign cities in search of sensuality and we fall in love to turn our cities foreign. Why do you travel, Solange?

Solange: When I travel I am appealed by the sense of leaving, of living other experiences in other places.

Rosana: I'm sure you've seen the film “The Wayward Cloud” (O sabor da melancia) . The watermelon sequence in Fora de jogo also recalls another film:

“The Roof “ , by Emilie Jouvet, where two women are on the rooftop taking photos and filming each other. What does a hommage to photography on a Paris rooftop have to do with watermelon scene in a theatre play? It's the way it involves the spectator, it feels like menage-à-trois (two actresses and the spectator) . The spectator participates without being actually allowed to participate, which is as we know the necessary unovercoming condition of the theatre.

Solange: The scene is not related with the two movies you mention. Of course there is a space for the spectator to envisage his links, associations that lead him/her to other places.

Rosana: In Butler, yet another ghostly presence animating this conversation (it's unavoidable) , desire and gender are perceived as all flexible and free-floating. What about your practice in general and Fora de jogo in particular?

Solange: In Offside (Fora de Jogo) we were interested in the way desire is manifested, how it hides or masks itself as a consequence of a collective gaze and in which way it can surface.

Rosana: Tell our emancipated readers about the uncanny situation in Performing Arts in Portugal. I mean especially concerning the funding-system (editor's demand) , how the financing is affected by the crisis and the times of 'zombie economy' if at all, what kind of work gets money and what doesn't, etc.

Solange: The crisis has been affecting the artistic production. However, with more or less funding – or none at all – we keep on struggling to achieve creation, finding means and strategies to do it, never giving up.

Rosana:We just stayed without Ministry of Culture that was funding about everything in Performing Arts. On the other hand, we have a new Centre for Contemporary Dance. Where do you get funding for your projects from and what are the alternative ways of funding when the State ceases to support art?

Solange: I do not know where we are going to due to the fact that it is increasingly harder to find state funds – Portugal is currently without a Ministry of Culture, more and more state funds are being cut and this affects us all. We look for other institutions and agencies to support our projects and this is what I have been doing.

Rosana: Insofar desire is coproduced by economy, how do you see your work in this regard?

Solange: This is approached also in Offside but desire can also be rebellious, wild and bursting and then it is in some way or the other organized in various levels. The co-production you mention can have its effect on the work just like in life.

Rosana: In the end, art in the West has always had this ambiguous relationship with power, at least since the Renessaince, while theatre as far as I know had a more disruptive function (to turn down the authorities, to overcome taboos existing in the society, etc. ) .

Solange: In its origin theatre is intimately linked to that drive. If we look at the Dionysian cult of ancient Greece, namely in the Euripides play The Bacchae, the hidden drive, the Eros and Thanatos, burst against the logus, the order and the authority.

Rosana: Can you speak for a while about the art-theatre hybrid “Eleven Rooms” . Curated by HUO, it abruptly mixes visual and performing arts, creating ephemeral situations where artists give instructions to performers what to do. Perhaps this kind of mash-up provides the answer of how to resist the hegemony of the art system?

Solange: Eleven artists, eleven rooms in the Manchester City Art Gallery. The artists aren’t present in the rooms but give instructions to the performers. The rooms are small and most of the doors are shut. We could knock on the doors before entering thus turning it into an intimate experience.

Probably yes, and as an example of this we have the works of Tino Sehgal and Santiago Sierra. Santiago Sierra placed a soldier in an empty room, facing a corner, without answering or reacting to our presence. He was there, relegated to a corner in order for us not to see his face. In Tino Sehgal’s room, we were face-to-face with a young girl of about 11 years of age, with make-up and knee-high socks. She would speak with a robotic voice and tell us she is not real. She said that her existence began as an animation but was then bought by the artist which transformed her into a three-dimensional character.

Rosana: What do you think about the work of Tino Sehgal? His pieces like "The Kiss" , for example, performed at Solomon R. Guggenheim, are not easy to sell or to turn into commodities, as in the case of latter it consists of "constructed situations" in artist's words, where two strangers, following artist's instructions, kiss on the floor of the one of the most powerful art institutions in the world.

Solange: The most interesting is the process itself and the necessary mechanism to produce the final situation, or rather, the power of persuasion, of seduction of the artist’s words in making people that have never met each other before to follow his instructions. Also, the fact that it is made on the floor of one of the most powerful art institutions in the world.

Rosana: Back to Fora de jogo. I think one of the best moments comes at the end of the piece, when the frontier between fiction and reality, between staged and live experience, is blurred. I'm talking about the drama, the emotionally invested part, where besides you two, other participants (musician, dramaturgy, light boy, etc. ) come to the stage and it is unclear whether this is part of the performance or not, whether it's time to applaude or remain quiet. The spectator has to make a decision. And it's dangerous or risky at least...

Solange: I agree, the decision in that given moment is entirely of the spectator precisely because of the fact that the frontier between fiction and reality is so thin. In Offside (Fora de Jogo), we explore the link between drama and video through the construction of a binding dramaturgy of different materials and video. Through archive historical images, of movies, video-clips, and also images shot specifically for this creation, we created. The images as psychic landscapes of unconscious tensions between Desire and Power. We aimed for video to ‘invade’ the scene which was achieved with the invasion of the stage by the performers that appear in the last scene and that had already been present in the video – a sort of materialization of the latent desire.

Rosana: Tell me about your next project/s.

Solange: The next Project will be titled O Festim- Do Fim Das Coisas Nada Sabemos which is a new creation.

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1 The subjectivity to come, p.73

One World in Relation

In 2009, the filmmaker Manthia Diawara joined the poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant (1928-2011) on his journey across the Atlantic, while travelling from UK to Brooklyn and to Martinique, his native land. In long-lasting, inspiring and profound conversations, Glissant shares his thoughts and ideas, which are at the same time poetic and philosophical, while arguing for “one world in relation” , instead of using solid categories like identity, ethnicity or similar. Glissant is, no doubt, one of the most important thinkers of our times. His ideas, inspired by the condition of archipelagos (islands in relation) , take shape according to the poetics of multiplicity- a fragmentary theory of global relations. Glissant doesn't allow space for hegemonies to form. Instead, the ideas migrate and mix just like people, while respecting the cultures and their complexities. The differences between us are no longer irreconcilable; rather they permit us to relate to each other. And this suggests imense possibilities.

Initially conceived in the air, “the most transitional of all zones” , while flying above Europe, One World in Relation will take place at São Vicente Island in Cape Verd (West Africa) .The harbour of what nowadays became an artistic center of the archipelago used to be an important trade route in transatlantic slave commerce (connecting Africa to Lisbon and Americas) . In a world of proximities, the project is a collaboration between a curator-on-the-move and a tropical filmmaker.

OWR brings together a constellation of artworks that deal with the issues often avoided in contemporary art exhibitions like colonialism and its resonancies, (insupportable) labour conditions, (forced) migrations, and the role of art in our present condition.
Although not strictly African, all of the artists have a strong relationship with the continent and live either in the self-proclaimed capitals of modernism (London, Paris, New York) or in the emerging art centers (Luanda, Jo'burg) .

Zarina Bhimji uses poetic imagery to explore history and memory, especially of postcolonial Africa, Asia, and Europe. For the film-installation "Waiting" she made an investigation of this portion of history, constructing a fragmentary narrative and connecting it to our present moment. Shot in a factory in Kenya, the resulting artwork is an abstraction that hovers somewhere between film and painting- a monochrome that combined with a soundtrack becomes immersive.

Neil Beloufa's "Kempinski" is a fiction-doc that features people in Mali revealing their hopes and dreams for the future. Emerging from an impenetrable dark background, the protagonists are filmed against the fluorescent lights, a detail that provides the surrounding jungle with a promise of an urban city. The "actors" recount in present tense how they envisage the future. Their imaginaries reflect (un)realizable utopias. And precisely there lies their potential. Since we arrived at a point in history- perhaps a major historical turning point, a rupture in space and time- where we cannot any longer continue to "move forward", putting the western fiction of progress into question.

Love as a Truth Procedure

Read the article about FORMER WEST and the rest below (in Portuguese):

A PROPÓSITO DE ‘FORMER WEST: Documents, Constellations, Prospects’ | ROSANA SANCIN | ARTECAPITAL.NET

Fantôme Créole

Isaac Julien, "Fantôme Créole", video-still, 2005.

 "Fantôme Créole is a four-screen installation which juxtaposes African and arctic spaces. The two actor-protagonists (Vanessa Myrie, who also appears in Baltimore 2002, and dancer Stephen Galloway) are not characters with dialogue and implied interiority, rather they serve to link scenes together between African city- and desert-scapes, and between the arctic north and the arid south. The lack of narrative connection signals an intellectual proposition concerning issues connecting these spaces, as well as Julien's interest in 'creolised' vision - to create new ideas from the movements and connections between spaces. The 'disjunctive juxtapositions' (in film parlance, 'parallel montage') put the spectator in the position of constructing meaning and, through a positioning of screens which forces the viewer to change position to grasp the totality of the presentation, challenge the fixed position that single-screen work entails." Mark Nash

Untitled

Monika Sosnowska, "Untitled", 2005.

Artist

 Dan Perjovschi, "Artist", drawing, 2008.