Carolina Grau /Curator
LOOK AGAIN: Fiven visions in Contemporary Art
Filipa César, Marine Hugonnier, Rosalind Nashashibi, Anri Sala and Rui Toscano
To ‘look again’ is to return one’s gaze to what has already been seen, perhaps to notice some detail for the first time. It is also to observe what one has in front of oneself with different eyes or a new perspective. The five artists in this exhibition are engaged, in very different ways, in observing our world. Inspired by their surroundings, they look at our daily routines, private and public spaces, cities, panoramic views, landscapes and history.
César filmed people waiting in a train station in Berlin. To begin with they are unaware of being observed, and in that transitional state in which the mind is adrift. Standing alone in the crowd, looking at the information board or waiting for the train, they are in suspension.
She frames the figures tightly, concentrating on faces and expressions, leaving out all those small details that could label or identify the professions or social class of her subjects. Later, in the editing room, she orchestrated relationships between these anonymous characters, constructing conversations, affairs and rapports with glances and
In 2006 The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation commissioned César to make a work focusing on itself. The Portuguese foundation includes a museum, with a collection, a modern art centre, a large auditorium and an art library, all located in the Gulbenkian Park in Lisbon. The result is a video that appears to be a single travelling shot inside the basement of the foundation.
César decided to film the areas closed to the public. The camera rolls through the basement at one metre height, trying to keep a constant velocity as she went through the different spaces.
Hugonnier ‘s trilogy is formed by Ariana (2003), The Last Tour (2004) and Travelling Amazonia (2006). Each film is made in a different location and culture: Afghanistan, the Swiss Alps and Brazil. Hugonnier researches the politics of landscape and its representation in this trilogy, questioning our preconceptions and assumptions of these places and the images we have of them.
Ariana, is the story of a film crew’s attempts to film a panoramic view from a high vantage point in the Pandjshêr Valley in the north of Afghanistan. A landslide makes it impossible to film the overview, beginning a process of reflection about how the panoramic view is used as a form of military and political control.
The second film, The Last Tour, Hugonnier has described as a “science fiction essay, a lyrical piece” in which we are going to take the ‘last’ hot-air balloon flight over the famous Matterhorn mountain in the Swiss Alps, before the national parks close down for ever.
The final part of the trilogy, Travelling Amazonia, was filmed on the Transamazonian highway, a straight line crossing Brazil from east to west, initiated under the dictatorship during the 1970s. This utopian project has never been completed; as one of the locals says: “It exists on the map but not in reality”
The trilogy is a reflection on how we gaze, as Hugonnier has said, “Ariana is about the military gaze, The Last Tour the tourist gaze, while Travelling Amazonia is about what had inspired the gaze in the first instance. They raise questions about the process of viewing.”