Portfolio Susana Pedrosa

SELECTEDWORKS

SusanaPedrosa

1. Research Practice:

Space Becomes Text that Becomes Space Again

2. Studio Practice:

Notations

Scripting and Scoring

3. Playing with Mediation and Immediacy:

Shuffle Ball Change

stampSTEPstepHEEL

4. Topos

4. Documenting as an Act of Transforming:

References – Synthesis and Transformation

À Pas de Loup

5. Explanation and Play:

Diagrams and Schemes

6. Collaborations / Workshops

Collaboration with Linda Quinlan

Collaboration for Seminar with Chris Evans

7. Amateurism:

No Previous Rehearsal

8. The Viewer: the Ceremony of the Artist as a Host:

Dispute of Impatience

9. Collaborations:

How to Develop a very Interested Attitude an Full of Pos-

sibilities?

Running to be an Artist

10. Time and Rhythm as Structural Devices:

3288 Hours

11. What’s & Why’s

2009

CONTENTS

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2011 2010

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Original scribbled notes of the observational pieces of writing.

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1. SPACE BECOMES TEXT THAT BECOMES SPACE AGAIN

Sitting on a bench, being there, and observing people moving, relating, acting and reacting.

Grabbing a gesture, hold-ing to it, then to another one, and watching how one affects

another. Placing that gesture in space and time, together with

others, and seeing what gradu-ally comes out of it.

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Departing from my direct observa-tion of social spaces like the zoo,

a concert hall or the public library, I have been compiling a series of

writing pieces that correspond to immediate descriptions of my

experience of these spaces. Follow-ing this exercise, writing became a performing practice: performing a practice and a practice that is a

performance.

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Original scribbled notes of the observational pieces of writing.

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So I thought that in the end I hadn’t exactly listening to the concert nor I had wrote about my experience of the concert: the writing became the mediator of the experience and the text as a sort of proof or simply the result of that experience; it wasn’t exactly a conscious experience of scrutinizing what was

happening, nor an experience of simply enjoying: it was both. It occurred to me that belonging has to do with sharing something in common: I was watching the

concert together with everyone else, but I was also watching me watching the concert together with everyone else, this caused a deferral and so the awareness interrupted the process of belonging. Although I was an audience member, I was

there to observe more than listening. The fact that I was missing out on some-thing (the listening), enhanced something else (the observation). And maybe that’s what I find so fascinating in the act of direct observation: it’s not thinking

about the world from above, but from a very mundane position: I am a common person - I do what everyone else does. Nonetheless I’m still aware of what we

do, or how we do it, and I recognize myself by watching the others. Before, my work would depart primarily from philosophy: I would find a triangle of tensions that I wanted to explore by making work. But when I would confront the ideas with reality I would find out that my initial suppositions could not be verified. I then decided to invert the process: departing from reality to propose another way of seeing things, or a movement of transformation. Following this way of

thinking, maybe the observer is in between the philosopher and the expert: the philosopher proposes from thinking, from seeing things as a whole through the

eyes of a fly, and the expert is interested in optimizing the functionality of things, by being specialized in a particular field, seeing it through the eyes of the lynx.

Maybe the observer oscillates in between these two ways of seeing.

The texts that I’ve compiled informed the work in different ways: taking each text as an integral piece, I selected the ones, which I found more appealing piec-es of writing and will compile them on a book. I’ve also used the texts as material

by selecting certain gestures or actions that I found compelling, repeating and photographing them. I then displayed them in an aluminium board in my studio.

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Example of gesture no. 1: Falling.

Example of gesture no. 2: Blowing up an inflatable pillow.

Example of gesture no. 3: Waving for the bus to stop.

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Example of gesture no. 3: Playing with a spray can.

Example of gesture no. 4: Wheeling a trolley bag.

Example of gesture no. 5: Dancing with a domestic object.

Examples of composer’s scores and other references, displayed in the studio.

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2. STUDIO PRACTICE

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The blind French resistance fighter Jacques Lusseyran, writing about the inner sense of vision which enabled him to see and manipulate forms and thoughts, famously described it as being like a boundless mental canvas or screen which

existed “nowhere and everywhere at the same time.” The blind mathemati-cian Bernard Morin described his envisioning of the process of everting a

sphere in a similar manner. And so it is with the choreographic object: it is a model of potential transition from one state to another in any space imagin-able. An example of a similar transition already exists in another time-based

art practice: the musical score. A score represents the potential of perceptual phenomena to instigate action, the result of which can be perceived by a sense

of a different order: a transition via the body from the visual to the aural. A choreographic object, or score, is by nature open to a full palette of phenom-enological instigations because it acknowledges the body as wholly designed

to persistently read every signal from its environment.

(Forsythe, Choreographic Objects)

Notations

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Images of the gestures displayed in the studio.

This year I found a new interest in composers’ scores and choreographers’ registers as examples of ways of visual notations. My research included studying ways of framing movements in spaces such as the circus, the swimming pool, or the zoo; a series of spaces distributed and aligned according to a certain met-

rics. During the process I started to develop my own system of notations, which are visual registers of a thinking process, they were useful both for me to think through and also to be able to share this process with others. I plan to archive the process in a blog so that it can be easily accessed and updated. It will allow me to, on a regular basis, add gestures that will contribute to create a repertoire

of movement.

My notations consist on arranging the prints of photographed gestures in an aluminum board, hold with magnets. The magnets allowed me to play around with them instead of keeping them in a fixed position. I started combining the pictures of isolated gestures with others and also with images and texts from other sources, and finally defined four groups of actions that later on would

become my choreographic themes.

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Script writings displayed in the studio.

2. STUDIO PRACTICE

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I see scripting as a gradual process and scoring as interpreting the result of that process. In all the process there is a constant movement

of observing, experiencing and transforming, by re-framing, repeating and rehearsing. By running the material through the process I control

the results, in the sense that I decide how to frame them but also I accept the results without changes – what happens is supposed to hap-

pen within that frame that I have chosen.

Scripting and Scoring

References displayed in the studio during the process of scripting.

Images from the storyboard.

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Images from the storyboard.

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Story board - study for camera movements.

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3. PLAYING WITH MEDIATION AND IMMEDIACY:

Shuffle Ball Change

Booklet compiling the observational pieces of writing resulting from research.

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Booklet:examples of some pages.

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Booklet:examples of some pages.

Shuffle Ball Change, 2011, 59 A2 black and white posters, 1 A0 black and white poster, 2011.

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For the show “Anthem for the people’s tomorrow“, by the graduate students from the MFA at Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam,

curated by Ellen Blumenstein, I decided to transform the booklet into post-ers, displayed on the wall, as part of the installation: space becomes text that

becomes space again.

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Still from the piece: stamp STEP step HEEL, 2011, video installation, video PAL, colour, sound, 15’’, 2011.

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3. PLAYING WITH MEDIATION AND IMMEDIACY:

stampSTEPstepHEEL

Stamp STEP step HEEL departed from collecting observations from public spaces in Rotterdam, studying the interaction of people in social space and the effects of urban planning. The observations translated into scripted forms that

were developed in ordinary public spaces. Common daily routines become estrange and absurd actions are presented as banal. The video plays with the re-lation between fakery and realism and the relation of the interior to the exterior.

The immediate is in terms of the performance. It doesn’t become too formal-ized, so there is a resistance to a structured performance, being very conscious and doing things very deliberately, so being affective instead of being scripted.

They were about to attempt a crash landing.He needed an expert to solve his problem.

She was waiting for the bus that never came.

They didn’t realize it, but they were always walking and falling at the same time.

StampSTEPstepHEEL, video PAL, colour, sound, 13min, 2011. (Text for press release)

Still from the piece: stamp STEP step HEEL, 2011, video installation, video PAL, colour, sound, 15’’, 2011.

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I think it is because as an artist you are always expected to do something and I came to the conclusion that you break this in two moments: one of them is

when you are so aware of what is expected from you that you can’t fit the role and the other time is when it is so immediate that you don’t have time to think, and just react and sometimes you “lose it” – that’s what I try to allow for in the

performers: I don’t give the participants time to learn the action, they just have to react to what I ask them to do in a very immediate way. But as a video piece,

I’m not purist in terms of keeping the all action, I adapt it to the medium: I make cuts visible and assume that it is a mediated experience. The immediacy

becomes a weird thing, because it looks almost as if I went to the street and recorded common people, but then they are doing absurd things but still it has

a sort of lightness or vitality for them not being actors and not exactly fol-lowing a role. But, at the same time, it is very specifically framed, intentional,

deliberate and places them in the frame. There is always a play and action between immediacy and mediation. I provided an immediate experience by taking gestures from everyday life and other sources, framing them out of

context and having them repeated by amateur performers, so they stand for being an example of the things they have in common with a certain class. And then I mediate that experience, by recording the actions and editing it. That’s how I understand choreographic thinking: space becomes text that becomes

space again. I departed from direct observation, which both develops the sense of vision and elicits a direct relation from a body in a space. After, I built a system of notations that allowed me to create a script, that can potentially be scored and therefore interpreted in many ways. Then, I scored it and mediated

the result of that scoring: drawing an action upon an action. I like to see my notations as choreographic objects (refer to Forsythe) a place to incite action

and therefore space.

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Image views of the installation at: “Anthem for the people’s tomorrow“, by the graduate students from the MFA at Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam,

curated by Ellen Blumenstein. Photos: Edward C. Thomson

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Image views of the installation at: “Anthem for the people’s tomorrow“, by the graduate students from the MFA at Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam,

curated by Ellen Blumenstein. Photos: Edward C. Thomson

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Study diagram.

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4. TOPOS

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I remember following with close attention the exercise that a close friend who was studying architecture was asked to do. It was called: “Topos”. They were

asked to create a territory, its mountains and rivers, latitude and longitude, and afterwards build something there, in accordance to the environment they had previously created. At the time I was fascinated by it. I feel that I am creating

my own topos here: a space whose gravity, measurements, distances and prox-imities are determined by me, informed by what I feel drawn to, and building

something on and with it, within the circumstances that I have established, but yet aims to be attentive to what happens around, to the processes and contri-

butions from those involved within it.

Silently as a wolf, the rain came and went away, the helper stopped helping, things are never what they seem, whenever you see a hole in the sky believe your eyes, if you are scared by a dog, throw him a ball.

All are movements. Almost.

À pas de loup, performance, 15min, 2011. (Text for press release)

Study drawing for À pas de loup, performance, 15min, 2011.

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5. DOCUMENTING AS AN ACT OF TRANSFORMING

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Study drawing for À pas de loup, performance, 15min, 2011.

References – Synthesis and Transforma-tion

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À pas de loup, performance, 15min, 2011.

À pas de loup, performance, 15min, 2011.

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The process of direct observation developed along with readings, discussions, constantly negotiating with other things that I had in mind for a long time.

One of my goals when I came to Piet Zwart was to develop a system or work that would be a synthesizing organism with the capacity of absorbing learning experiences from different sources and transforming them into art practice.

Back to 2007, in Intermediate Space of Partial Vision (sound installation, 3’57’’, video PAL, color, 2’17’’, 2007) I used a text from a documentary on Derrida,

where he tells the story of Eco and Narcissus, I combined it with images of two interpreters translating in real time. Already at that time Derrida was an im-

portant reference to my work and I decided to directly quote him by using the text and translating it to Portuguese, combining the sound recording with the sound excerpt from the movie. I thought that the story was somehow related with translation issues and my understanding on the story was also a transla-

tion, so I decided to use it in a very literal way, as if I was Eco and he Narcissus, somehow re-enacting the story. In my graduation proposal, late in 2010, I

brought up Derrida again and explained why his writings were still a reference for me:

What most calls me in Derrida’s writing is the desire to meet and the awareness of the impossibility of an absolute

encounter, yet following a philosophical exercise of building a road while walking towards what we don’t know, collecting

each step and each stone on the way.

After 2007, I refused to use text in my work because I thought I was using it as a “support”. After 2009, I started using my own writings in my art practice, for instance in Dispute of Impatience (installation, mixed media, variable dimen-sions, 2010), which questions the relations between the host and the guest. In this work the text comes from personal experience, written in the first person

of speech.

Recently, in the beginning of 2010, I used for a scripted dialogue the lyrics of a song by Laurie Anderson (in À pas de loup, performance, 15min, 2011). She is also a constant orientation for my practice. She disturbs categories as her work

is informed by music, performance, video art, poetry … it ’s sharply aware of the world, it assumes a highly critical position towards society in a way that is

nor moralistic nor demagogic. While performing she also assumes ambiguous characters: an androgynous figure that plays with that ambiguity but doesn’t

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aim to be a man. Sometimes she assumes the role of a sensual mysterious woman yet she is uncanny and not vulgar. I like the fact that not only she

conducts her pieces, but that also she plays and performs. Her lyrics are very rhythmical and intriguing: they use common places in language but by using

the language with precision they assume a cynical tone, always playing with re-lations of power and expected roles or social demands. For the piece À pas de loup I imagined that I’d like a scene of a dialogue over the phone, but I didn’t exactly know what would they say. I knew I wanted it to be about a difficulty in the communication between a man and a woman, almost a cliché. I bumped

into Laurie Anderson’s song:

She: It looks. Don’t you think it looks a lot like rain?He: Isn’t it. Isn’t it just. Isn’t it just like a woman?

She: It’s hard. It’s just hard. It’s just kind of hard to say.He: Isn’t it. Isn’t it just. Isn’t it just like a woman?

She: It goes. That’s the way it goes. It goes that way.He: Isn’t it. Isn’t it just like a woman?

She: It takes. It takes one. It takes one to. It takes one to know one.

I decided to turn it into as a dialogue between a couple on stage talking over the phone. In the initial scene, the male figure says, “Isn’t it. Isn’t it just. Isn’t it

just like a woman? ” And the female figure responds the other sentences (refer to the script above). In the final scene, they seat side by side, both gazing to a point far behind the audience and swap their lines; their positions become

destabilized by that. One of my drives to use other people’s texts is to prevent the piece from becoming a monologue solely from my own voice, this is not a question of support it’s a question of creating a dialogue with an already exist-ing piece or voice that for some reason or another interested me. I need this

sort of exteriority of having other voices in my pieces, because orchestrating a single voice (my own) would be extremely boring and self-centred.

During the past summer I read “The beast and the sovereign” by Derrida (2009), this book compiles a series of lectures he gave, about power and

sovereignty, insistently mentioning the wolf in comparison to the sovereign, the person who has the power to suspend the law, like a beast to whom human law does not apply (as it is an animal). And at a certain point, of his performa-tive speech, full of long pauses and insistent repetitions, he says: “stealthy, as

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a wolf”, which refers to a way of coming without being noticed. I associate this term with a necessary interruption: it is frightening, for we don’t notice what

comes stealthy, as a wolf, trying to make itself unnoticed and suddenly surpris-ing us with its’ unexpected presence. My urgency in the necessity of interrup-tions comes from a tendency I have towards systematization and one of the risks of systematizing is when a system becomes closed in itself and doesn’t

allow for change to happen. This can also be verified in social systems, where certain actions or behaviours become so naturalized that they are not ques-

tioned anymore – that’s when I find an interruption to be necessary, as it opens up for a change.

For a long time I had been wondering how to interrupt loop processes and suddenly I had the solution: a loop needs an interruption to open up to gener-ate an unexpected movement. Later on, a friend recommended me the book “Women who run with the wolves” (Estés, p. p. 296/297), which became my

reading before going to bed. The book explores archetypes of a wild woman and how feminine animal instincts (that Estés compares to the ones of the wolf), reinforcing that they should be preserved and survive social format-ting. Although I find the argument problematic – as it appeals to a “natural

condition” that comes before a social formatting, an argument that has often been used to legitimate certain dominating behaviours or power positions

– I found inspiring the possibility of thinking through intuition: what escapes reason, what we learn through experiences that are not immediately accessible through language as they come through different mediations, like the senses, or living experiences that are not always rationalized that sometimes escape

our control and appear in the work as a strong force.

At the same time I started my tap dance classes, following a drive towards doing something outside school and taking part of an amateurs’ class. There is something about walking that I find interesting: it sets a rhythm. It’s something

so naturalized in human behaviour but in fact that determines a social and individual rhythm. And tap dancing emphasizes a direct relation to the ground,

when the feet become instruments by tapping a rhythm.

À pas de loup, performance, 15min, 2011.

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À pas de loup, performance, 15min, 2011. À pas de loup, performance, 15min, 2011.

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À pas de loup, performance, 15min, 2011.

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À pas de loup, performance, 15min, 2011. À pas de loup, performance, 15min, 2011.

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A woman and a man on stage, seated, their back facing each other. There’s a telephone waiting, on the floor, in front of each. She holds the telephone, dials a number and says a sentence. He takes his phone and answers. They have a dialogue, on a mechanic tone. She hangs up the phone, takes the bench, changes her position, he does the same, still not facing each other. She holds the telephone, dials a number and says a sentence. He takes his phone and answers. They have a dialogue, on a mechanic tone, the same as before. Her tone increases in intensity, as if she would be try-ing to convince him, but he seems distant. They both hang up and change their position, he is now facing the audience; she is turned to the right, still not facing each other. She holds the telephone, dials a number and says a sentence. He takes his phone and answers. They have a dialogue, on a mechanic tone, the same as before. She gets involved; he distances himself. They both hang up and change their position, each turned to a dif-ferent side of the stage, she is facing the audience and he is turned to the right, still not facing each other. She holds the telephone, dials a number and says a sentence. He takes his phone and answers. They have a dia-logue, on a mechanic tone, the same as before. She talks revealing a bit of emotion, though. He talks calmly. They hung up. Leave the stage. The benches stay on stage. There’s a woman tap dancing from right to left, over dressed as if in a cabaret show. A tall guy enters the stage, wear-ing a cap, carrying a woman on a trolley. He takes her to the left of the stage, lands her, helps her to climb on top of the bench. She takes a device from her pocket, looks at it, points to the front, he carries her to the bench placed on the other side of the stage, lands her, then helps her to climb on top of the bench and stands next to her, waiting for something. She takes a device from her pocket, looks at it, looks at him, points to the front, he looks at her, helps her to come down from the bench and to get into the trolley and takes her to the other bench placed on the other side of the stage. The tap dancer is now doing some tap dance steps. The other two repeat the action. He places her on the bench, stands next to her, looks at her and waits for the order. Helps her down. The tap dancer swings, jumps, looks at the audience, she seems to be rehearsing. The woman is now standing on the bench, repeats the action, he seems to be tired, rolls his eyes and helps her down. The tap dancer gained confidence and rhythm. The woman points at something on the direction of the opposite chair. He helps her down and to step on the trolley, takes her and she sud-denly says a few sentences loud that correspond to measures. The other two stop, look at each other and to the audience, the tap dancer takes the hat off, he leaves the stage. The bossy woman takes the trolley and wheels it through the stage, then takes a bench, places it at the trolley and wheels it. The tap dancer seats on the other bench and changes clothes. The guy comes back to the stage wheeling a big plant on a trolley, carrying a pair of gloves and something to water the plants. The bossy woman looks now more vulnerable and hesitant then before. It doesn’t seem that she got

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rid of the guy, but that she can’t rely on him for help anymore. He is now a plant caretaker. She places the bench, climbs up to the top of it and stands still for a second, like a statue. The tap dancer drinks water from a bottle and takes her shoes off. The woman gets off the bench while the caretaker puts on the gloves and wa-ters the plants. The woman repeats the action with the bench, this time placing it behind the tap dancer, which is now putting some sneakers on. She pushes the trolley again through the stage and places the bench behind the caretaker, climbs up to the top of it and stands still for a second, like a statue, gets out of the bench, the tap dancer changes her clothes. She takes the bench, places it between the caretaker and the tap dancer, the caretaker leaves the stage, the tap dancer leaves the stage, she stands on top of the bench, looking serious, but this time more confident, she puts her hands on the pockets, gets down, takes the trolley and leaves the stage. The benches are still on stage. The couple from the first scene comes back to the stage again, they take the benches, place them facing the audience, side by side, and seat, facing the audience. The caretaker comes wheeling another big plant that he places behind the couple. They repeat the opening dialogue, in a conversation kind of tone, swap the sentences, the care-taker brings more plants, they end the dialogue, stay for a minute facing the audience and looking far behind the audience, leave the stage.

The caretaker brings the last plant and leaves the stage. the stage.

Description from the piece: À pas de loup, video PAL, color, sound, 12min, 2010, as I was watching the video.

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À pas de loup, video Pal, color, sound, 12’’, 2011, shown at Piet Zwart Institute, 2011.

6. DOCUMENTING AS AN ACT OF TRANSFORMING

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À pas de loup is a French expression that means: on wolf ’s steps. It relates to a certain idea of coming without making oneself being noticed, which can also

be threatening, because it’s about coming when not expected. The wolf walks carefully, without making noise, seeing but not willing to be seen, discreetly and silently, almost invisibly. The piece develops around a central body of

actions happening simultaneously but with no apparent relation or interaction: a tap dancer and the artist being carried on a trolley by a helper. This triangle

brings issues of presence, visibility and awareness. There is also a couple saying an absurd dialogue on the phone who appear both in the beginning and the in the end of the piece. There is a non-synchrony of actions, which are happen-ing simultaneously and interfere with each other in terms of perception but that are not directly related. In this piece I explored how formal aspects of

repetition, intensity and variation create meaning – both in the text and in the gestures/movements of the performers.

Using the footage from the recording of the public presentation I developed a video piece that doesn’t work as documentation, but as an autonomous piece that resulted from the live event. I consider that the most faithful documenta-tion I can have from that piece is actually the script, once it will be performed with variations each time, depending on the space, situation and performers.

I added subtitles to the video. This caused an element of “disconnect ef-fect” to the work that at this stage of the process I wasn’t entirely conscious

of; nonetheless it seemed to open up for a new set of possibilities. Later on, I came to the conclusion that it was important for me to keep a sort of freshness or vitality of a first encounter of the performers with the tasks, the event and of

all of them developing the tasks at the same time.

À Pas de Loup

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Study model departing from the rubix cube.

7. DIAGRAMS AND SCHEMES: EXPLANATION AND PLAY

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To be able to explain the process I made some diagrams, which function like mind maps, yet in a narrative way. It explains how things happen step by step, organically. To make it more simple and visual, I’ve used the rubix cube as a

concrete example to help me draw a more schematic and layered diagram of what I’m doing. The rubix cube functions by playing with multiple combina-

tions and that has its limitations but also many possibilities. I want to avoid that my process becomes closed inside itself, so it’s vital for me to keep an open-

ness.

But for the moment, what I like about this example is that the rubix cube is a playful object that generates a sort of magnetic field, which keeps the cube as a form, while at the same time allowing things to keep moving – they inter-re-late and aren’t static – I find it useful as a visual aid to the explanation process. Both the thesis and diagrams gravitate around my work process, helping me to

communicate it.

I decided to inscribe words in the faces of the cube, which would correspond to the “what’s & why’s” of the work. I first named the steps of the process:

observation, experience and transformation. Then what the steps related to: gestures, script and inter-relations. Then, I defined verbs to name what I was doing: re-frame, re-enact and rehearse. Finally, I added the products of my

research: texts, notations and performance (that became a video piece).

By seeing the words coming together I found out a very close relation to rhythms: social, individual and fictional rhythms. And from this scheme, I wrote

the first draft of my thesis.

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Study diagrams departing from the rubix cube.

Study diagrams departing from the rubix cube.

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Study diagram departing from the rubix cube.

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Linda Quinlan & Susana Pedrosa, Drawing on paper, 210 x 297mm, 2011.

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8. COLLABORATIONS / WORK-SHOPS

Anthem for the People’s Tomorrow (artist book) - collaboration with Linda Quinlan

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Linda Quinlan & Susana Pedrosa, Two Drawings on paper, 210 x 297mm, 2011.

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Linda Quinlan & Susana Pedrosa, Two Drawings on paper, 210 x 297mm, 2011.

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Linda Quinlan & Susana Pedrosa, Two Drawings on paper, 210 x 297mm, 2011.

AT Ten o’cLock THey wILL meeT. THey wILL meeT AT Ten o’cLock.on THoSe LAST dAyS, before, TreeS were TreeS And rockS were rockS. THey meT on A SHIp mAde of eArTH And STone, An ISLAnd fLoATIng LooSe, SeT AdrIfT on THe oceAn.IT IS Here THey wILL meeT, THey wILL meeT AT Ten o’cLock.

THey ALL SHAre green, buT Some Turn yeLLowfour IS To THree

one fALLS from THe Sky, for THem To meeT on THe groundfour IS To one

(wHAT do we Add up To? IS THAT wHAT we Are?)

He wAS TALkIng To HImSeLf. He doeSn’T See Her. TALkIng wHILe mAkIng LITTLe noISeS wITH HIS Tongue. of courSe SHe HAd expecTed Some reSISTAnce And THIS mAde HIm Angry becAuSe IT wAS True.[HAve A bAnA-nA!]LookIng up THey excHAnge A gLAnce of underSTAndIng.SHe feLT SHe HAd To keep IT preSenT.

THe nexT dAy SHe wAS A LITTLe uneASy, becAuSe ALL four were reSTLeSS, un-denIAbLy HoTHeAdS. IT wAS cLeAr To ALL THey were on edge wITH eAcH oTHer. He Looked AT Her wITH An ASSurIng gLAnce, AgAIn mAkIng LITTLe noISeS wITH HIS Tongue. SHe reALISed He wAS nIcer THAn SHe HAd fIrST beLIeved poSSIbLe. THere wAS SuddenLy no confLIcT.cLIck.He SAT fIrmLy on THe ground eATIng A rIpe bAnAnA, And LIvIng for THe mo-menT.SHe AccepTed IT. THey ALL AccepTed IT And for A wHILe ALL four were TogeTH-er. THey HAd reAcHed SucH A pITcH of compLIcITy, eAcH recognISIng SomeTHIng In THemSeLveS.

THey ALL HAve curveS, buT none HAve A wAISTfour IS To fourcLIckoooooo LA LA LA oooooo

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cATcH THem by THe TAIL, don’T HoLd Her by THe HeAd.four To THree.

(wHAT do we Add up To? IS THAT wHAT we Are?)

AT nIgHT, THe STArS Looked on, LISTenIng To THeIr converSATIon:‘THAT’S wHAT’S wrong wITH uS’, SHe SAId, feeLIng SuddenLy THey were on THe edge of SomeTHIng dAngerouS THAT mIgHT deSTroy THem. SHe wAS forcIng THem To breAk THe HAbIT. buT In cHoruS THe THree pIped up, ‘ Hey…. LeTS noT TALk AbouT IT. IT doeSn’T do Any good To TALk AbouT IT.[HAve A bAnA-nA!]

THey Are ALL THIck SkInned, buT juST THree weAr ScALeSfour IS To THree

SHe wAS noT effIcIenT AS SHe HAd been, converSATIonS of THIS kInd IrrITATed And SAddened Her.

SHe wAS TIred, SHe wAS very TIred.wHAT THen wAS goIng To SATISfy Her? A voIce reAcHed ouT, ‘you And I Are THe SAme kInd of AnImAL’.THIS SnAke HAd LegS. And He couLd wALk ALL Around THe ISLAnd.SHe foLLowS HIm.

Two HAve jAwS, buT THeIr TeeTH Are yeLLowfour IS To Two

for Two dAyS THere wAS AwkwArdneSS beTween THe four THAT LefT THem HArdened AgAInST eAcH oTHer. buT on THe THIrd mornIng, over bAnAnA breAk-fAST, THey AS cuSTom defer To Her, gLAd To defer; THInkIng How pLeASAnT To LeT IT reST on Someone eLSe. THIS TIme SHe puLLS HerSeLf TogeTHer, STAndS up on Her feeT, mAkIng Her-SeLf THInk.

[HAve A bAnA-nA!]

THe Sky, THe LAnd, THe SwIrLIng AIr, SpInnIng TowArdS THe ISLAndS InTerIor, cLoSIng In Around THem In An excHAnge of wATer And HeAT, HummIng In THeIr bLood, rIngIng ‘wHAT do I conTrIbuTe To ALL THIS’.

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[HAve A bAnA-nA!]

THey cAme ouT of THeIr HouSe And wALked InTo THe wATer, LeAvIng THe STone rAfT, grInnIng wITH THeIr bIg yeLLow TeeTH.

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8. COLLABORATIONS / WORK-SHOPS

Collaboration for Spastic Logic seminar with Chris Evans

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It was sun. I was outsIde burnIng under my orange vest. another workIng day. today I had to take measurements of the maurItsstraat to see If the houses were vertIcally straIght. I went one by one, house by house, un-der my orange vest, the sun burnIng. and here I am, another brIck buIldIng, takIng measurements. PeoPle Pass by. I Placed my trIPod wIth the trImble eyes and looked through It. took one PoInt, then another and calculated the angles. then I’ve wrItten them In the trImble calculator. one by one down the street. I’m actually not a toPograPher I’m a cIvIl engIneer. the trImble yellow devIce Is actually called a theodolIte and Is basIcally a telescoPe, mounted on a guIded trIPod and had vertIcal and horIzontal coordInates. to calculate angles and areas of a Place, the theodolIte Is PosItIoned at the fIrst PoInt, levelled wIth the axIs of gravIty and the zero horIzontal movement Is dIrected to a reference PoInt. then the sec-ond sectIon, marked through another PoInt and the angle obtaIned Is mea-sured horIzontally and vertIcally. It Is an electro-oPtIcal devIce, based on electronIc technology. I love the PrecIsIon of thIs Instrument and Its effIcIency In communIcatIng. I lIght a cIgarette and contInue my task. the sun Is shInIng. PeoPle Pass by. and I’m burnIng under my orange vest. stIll have a couPle of houses to measure untIl the end of the street before lunch. In thIs street the buIldIngs tend to bend towards the front. when I look through the trImble eyes, all I see Is angles and coordInates. buIld-Ings are a comPosItIon of PoInts In sPace, lIke a dIagrammatIc drawIng. anythIng can be calculated: It’s just a matter of measurement and PrecI-sIon, forces and gravIty. I wIsh It could all be as sImPle as thIs. somethIng has been worryIng me for a whIle. I’m concerned wIth the dePosIt of lan-guages. I call It so because for now I can’t come uP wIth a better defInI-tIon. wIth what resIsts communIcant IntentIons. I even thInk that a bIg Part of what we belIeve to be communIcated actually doesn’t communIcate, doesn’t transfer. only a tIny Place: the Place of a kInd of agreement, a vIr-tual consensus that allows the IllusIon of communIcatIon, an economIc logIc of sIgns. but It’s not so much the Problem of communIcatIon that occuPIes me. It’s more the sIlence, or maybe the voId, In each exPress sIgn. I fInd It hard to exPress thIs InexPressIble In a non-PoetIc, metaPhorIc, clear and concIse way, wIthout the geometry of an exPlanatIon. now Imag-Ine the confusIon of thInkIng In the meetIng of dIfferent languages, dIf-ferent IdIoms, even more If we thInk In all PossIble forms of exPressIon...

Trimble, Text on Paper, 2011.

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Trimble, Text on Paper, 2011.

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what lasts from the sense durIng thIs trIP through dIfferent bodIes of exPressIon? and nevertheless, everythIng, In the vItalIty of a movement transPorts the most Pure sIgnIfIcatIon of the emotIon of an exPerIence. maybe what worrIes me Is the hard love between vItalIty and code. I won-der If we could fInd a better way of communIcatIng our Ideas. a devIce lIke the trImble that could read our thoughts and communIcate them.

Trimble, Text on Paper, 2011.

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Trimble, Text on Paper, 2011. Dear Bob, 12 drawings on paper, paper, tape, black marker, 148 x 210 mm, 2011.

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Study drawing.

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9. AMATEURISM

No Previous Rehearsal

The work departed from a simple task that I proposed to a female conductor and another one that I proposed to myself. I asked the conductor if she could

conduct without an orchestra, imagining the orchestra there, just by hear-ing the music from headphones and without the scores. I then mimicked her gestures, without having access to the music and made three shots from the same action: one frontal shot from my position to hers, another frontal shot

from her position to mine and a third one filming both from the side. The first two frontal shots were installed facing each other, at a close distance, in two

acrylic screens hanging from the ceiling. It’s apparent that I am facing the con-ductor, who doesn’t face me back, so the eye contact doesn’t happen. In the third projection, the viewer can see the action from the side, so what actually happens between the characters. There is a table placed in the middle, where a set of headphones plays the recorded sound of the room during the action. The table holds the projector of the third video. If I had left only the first two

projections, the viewer would be always positioned as if he would be inside the action. By inserting a third projection, the viewer becomes excluded, which

generates different levels of proximity with the piece.

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Image view of the installation at the Piet Zwart Institute, 2010.Excerpt from a previous conversation with the conductor, while giving her

instructions about the performance.

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Image view of the installation at the Piet Zwart Institute, 2010.

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Image view of the installation at the Piet Zwart Institute, 2010.

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Text from the piece: Dispute of Impatience, mixed media, variable dimensions, 2010.

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14. THE VIEWER: THE CEREMO-NY OF THE ARTIST AS A HOST

Although the viewer is always present in mind since whenever we make some-thing, we always make it to be seen, it’s easy for a producer to be so absorbed

by the process that he can’t distance himself enough as to gain the perspective of an observer. One of my primary concerns is how the work addresses the

viewer and how it creates a deliberate engaged or disengaged relation with the audience.

I was thinking when did I consider a work to be successful, as a viewer I came to the conclusion that this happens when I recognize myself in there, when I

feel that I belong to that picture, by sharing some of the concerns that I would see there: by thinking I’ve thought this before, or I could have done this piece. I want my pieces to generate an affect in the viewer, by recognizing himself in certain gestures, actions, thoughts, which will lead them to relate to the piece

from their own experience, via an emotional way or a rational one, or both simultaneously. I feel that for that to happen, there needs to be an openness in the work: so that the viewer feels like its up to him to complete the piece, like a dinner that is not complete without the presence of the guest. That’s what I

call “the ceremony of the artist as the host”.

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Invitation card and study drawing.

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An invitation card was distributed to the audience, which had the story of a pillowcase that was supposed to be offered as a gift and was lost. In the instal-lation space, there was a screen propped against the wall, on the floor, on the

corner, and two cube monitors, also on the floor. The screen had a text in white letters with a black background, with a monologue from someone that was

apparently waiting for a guest to come, but didn’t know what that person would expect or what could she offer to the guest. The text is suddenly interrupted

by the images in the two monitors. In one of them there is something hanging and in the other one there’s something being fulfilled with water. Both show a

specific relation with time. A text appears in the two monitors, describing a pil-lowcase, which could almost coincide with the description of the lost pillowcase from the invitation card, thought it doesn’t. On the opposite side of the room there is a light box, also sitting on the floor. The light box emanates a white

light. On the facing wall there is a slide projection with white letters on a black background: “The dispute of impatience”. The work doesn’t have sound, the

room is dark and all the objects are sitting on the floor.

There’s a relation of timing and expectation mediated by a gift / offer. The expectation here is also the one of the observer, who expects something to

happen. The story of the gift presents itself as an invitation, since it was written in a kind of invitation card. There is a struggle between a contemplative pace and the nervous rhythm of the videos. The work invites the viewer to question who are “we” or “them” from the video, directly addressing the audience in the

piece and also questioning what that might mean.

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Text from the viideo for: Dispute of impatience, installation, mixed media, variable dimensions, 2010 and image view of the installation at Piet Zwart Institute, 2010.

Will you accept if I draw it like this:Pillow case ZaraHome

60 x 25 cm(approximately)

linenwith white, vinyl letters,

hollywood font typesize: 4,5 x 20 cm(approximately)

where it could be read“ “

with a good lightor by touch

the pillow of your dreamswhich remains without a trace.

Image views of the installation at Piet Zwart Institute, 2010.

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Image views of the installation at Piet Zwart Institute, 2010.

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Scheme used during the lecture-performance.

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15. COLLABORATIONS

How to Develop a very Interested Atti-tude an Full of Possibilities? (The Spe-cialist in Generalities)

In July 2010, the artspace Nieuwe Vide in Haarlem, Netherlands, invited me together with two fellow artists Rachel Koolen and Camilla Wills to send a pro-

posal for their curatorial platform: “The Object Lag”, a concept by the artist Emilly Williams, which was “an open self-evolving structure conceived to coun-

ter the ever-present tendency to focus primarily on the material presence of the (art) object” (text by the curator, Emilly Williams). We developed a project in collaboration during the residency period of five weeks, between September and October 2010. Our project was called: “DEAR AUDIENCE, I WOULD LIKE TO INVITE YOU TO ANTICIPATE A MOMENT OF RECOGNI-

TION WITH ME”. We investigated the dynamics of the host-guest structure within artistic agencies, questioning modes of address, politics of display, and a

potential space for a shared moment of recognition.

We had two public moments: one introductory moment and a final presenta-tion of our project. For the introductory moment, we were invited to present past work and talk about our current project. We decided to present a com-posed dramaturgy, where each of us would present her work, addressing the

audience on a different level. I decided to make a lecture performance, where I would present a scheme that supposedly would represent my artistic process. The scheme resulted from an attempt to represent my process of thinking and making in order to communicate it, which became rather artificial and absurd by being so rigid instead of fluid and open. So the lecture was given in a very ironic tone, with a laser pen, explaining to an audience composed by mainly art related people the steps one should follow to produce art, resulting in a

provocative but also humorous piece.

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Image view of: How to Develop a very Interested Attitude an Full of Possibilities? (The Specialist in Generalities), lecture-performance, 20 min, 2010, in Object Lag:

Cross-Reference.

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Image view of: How to Develop a very Interested Attitude an Full of Possibilities? (The Specialist in Generalities), lecture-performance, 20 min, 2010, in Object Lag:

Cross-Reference.

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Running to be an artist, performance, 9 years, 2000 - 2009, postcard for a publication, 2009.

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15. COLLABORATIONS

Running to be an Artist (contribution to an artist book)

This work was an answer to an invitation from a group of friends to make an artists’ publication. We decided that all the contributions should be a kind of

artists’ statement. I sent a postcard, in a casual way of writing.

It’s written in the first person, sharing my concerns as a young artist and ex-pecting a solidary understanding from my fellow artists friends.

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Study for 3288 Hours, installation, 7 slide projectors, 2009.

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8. TIME AND RHYTHM AS SC-TRUCTURAL DEVICES

The project was conceived as a response to an open call from the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art from Porto, in Portugal, in June 2009. 3288 Hours is an installation composed by seven carousel slide projectors aligned

side by side on an aluminum table with 11 meters long and 70 centimeters high. All the projectors are inter-connected and also connected to a computer.

All the connections are visible. They display pictures from seven different agendas, framed slightly different, some more close up, others from a more

wide angle. The images can be read from left to right and the agendas follow a chronological order. All together, the seven slide projectors display the seven days of the week, from Monday to Sunday, from the 30th of June until the 11th

of November. The dates correspond to the period between my application for this exhibition and the date of the opening of the same exhibition. From the entrance door you could already hear the sound of the slide projectors,

synchronized like a metronome.

I’m quite interested in exploring rhythms and patterns in relation with time or how they can be measured and analyzed through time related devices. This

work deals with tension between expectation / realization. The images become characters of a piece that shows time as an everyday life experience of a group

of people, displayed as a mechanical time machine. The agendas have been carefully choreographed, in the sense that each day was deliberately chosen and framed. The structure of the piece was built according to the dimensions

of the space.

The work exudes a tranquil temporality, where, inclusively, the mechanical sound of the slide projector marks time as if it were a metronome, in stark con-trast to the cascade of images shown at vertiginous speed, that we encounter

3288 Hours

Study for 3288 Hours, installation, 7 slide projectors, 2009.

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every day. The accumulation of time specified in the work’s title is embodied through its public exhibition using a device

that is highly familiar to the artist, indeed with which she maintains a kind of mothering relationship that enables a wonderful understanding.

(Fernando José Pereira, Bes Revelação 2009 (cat.), Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art from Porto, Portugal, 2009.)

Study for 3288 Hours, installation, 7 slide projectors, 2009.

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Study for 3288 Hours, installation, 7 slide projectors, 2009. Study for 3288 Hours, installation, 7 slide projectors, 2009.

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3288 Hours, installation, 7 slide projectors, 2009, image view of the installation in the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art from Porto, Portugal, in the context of the

exhibition “Bes Revelação 2009“, curated by Aida Castro

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3288 Hours, installation, 7 slide projectors, 2009, image view of the installation in the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art from Porto, Portugal, in the context of the

exhibition “Bes Revelação 2009“, curated by Aida Castro

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The expression “ just life” carries a lightness and vitality of something that just is as it is and therefore shows itself as it is, that sometimes is lost in representa-tion. The fact that my research is now more focused on direct observation and

borrows experiences from music and dance walks hand-in-hand with a drive towards amateurism: going to tap dance classes or working with amateurs. This

helps me to assume an attitude of learning and experiencing by playing with things.

Before, I would consider that my work departed from a need to assume a positioning towards things by experiencing them. Later I found that position-ing couldn’t be a law nor a rule, instead a decision towards a certain situation;

such decisions would naturally be influenced by ethic, political and ontological questions: how do I see what I see, what do I accept and what do I refuse, how do I frame it and suggest another form for it. Simultaneously I would have a resistance towards assuming a fixed position because a position, according

to the train of thought I just followed, would have to be always relative to the circumstance. Looking back at the work I’ve developed so far, I’ve been pro-

posing situations where I try to question hierarchies and social conventions and afterwards mediating that experience. I think I’ve been searching for a transfor

“Pilar, come here.” She murmurs. “I just said a beautiful thing”, he looks at her, on the right. “What, love?” she asks distracted, as she passes behind him.

“That I have ideas for romances”... Yes. “And you have ideas for life”, “Very beautiful”, she murmurs while she walks behind him. “And I don’t know what is more important”, he looks to the left, where she is now standing, waiting for an

answer. “I don’t know what to tell you, I think it’s life”, as she walks to his right again.

Description of the trailler “José and Pilar”, by Fernando Meirelles, as I was watching it.

Today I remembered something that one of my performers told me. I told her that it had some theatrical elements, but it was not theatre, it had some choreographed elements, but it was not dance, it was just …

people developing an action. And she told me: than it’s just … life.

I wish my work could be just life.

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Or in others words, looking at things in the way they are also what they can be. This is motivated by a drive to find a balance between a feeling of belonging and preserving vital aspects of one’s own singularity. Often I’ve been ques-

tioned if my pieces relate to the construction of a feminine identity and if so, how do they relate. They are about the construction of a feminine identity,

because they are about the construction of my own identity and I’m a woman and I can only speak from my own experience of things. Nonetheless that is only one aspect amongst all the others that define my identity. If we think of

identity as a process, it is always in a state of bare stability, waiting for a stimu-lus from the environment to destabilize it. I guess that my research follows a drive to observe reality in order to provide situations where gestures, clichés, categories and recognizable positions, when orchestrated and framed out of

context, can be shown and therefore destabilized.

For me, the movement of re-staging, performing and transforming the ordinary can be a liberating ritual. What interests me in investigating social spaces is to see how people compose a social choreography by performing

ordinary activities from everyday life framed by a certain space, and how they follow certain learned rules or protocols. Without being conscious of it, our

daily movements and rituals are partially determined by power structures that exert power upon the individual; in this way, individual rhythms have to adapt to social rhythms. Within a social space there’s always the question of sharing,

belonging and positioning.

The characters from my last pieces stand for themselves and for those who share something in common with them. I could see them working as an ex-ample, refer to Agamben (Agamben, p.10.1). The helper is not John or Peter but a helper, the helper, this helper, that belongs to the class of helpers, but by showing it a possibility is open for stepping out of it. To be able to discuss things, we need to make them concrete by giving an example that one can relate to. An example shows, rather then mentioning. The example solves the dichotomy between universal and particular. The example by itself is a place in language, thus stands for itself but also shows communalities of a class, as Agamben puts it to example: “transforms singularities into members of a class, whose meaning is defined by a common property (the condition of belonging ∑)”. In very simple words, Agamben’s argument is that an example shows that it belongs to a class, but at the same moment that it is exposed, by doing so, it becomes excluded from it. I provided an immediate experience by taking gestures from everyday life and other sources, framing them out of context and having them repeated by amateur performers, so they stand for being an

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example of the things they have in common with a certain class. And then I mediate that experience, by recording the actions and editing it. That’s how I understand choreographic thinking: space becomes text that becomes space again. I departed from direct observation, which both develops the sense of vision and elicits a direct relation from a body in a space. After, I built a system of notations that allowed me to create a script, that can potentially be scored and therefore interpreted in many ways. Then, I scored it and mediated the result of that scoring: drawing an action upon an action. I like to see my nota-tions as choreographic objects (refer to Forsythe) a place to incite action and therefore space.

This book shows the work I’ve been developing for the last two years, that cor-respond to my MFA at Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, where my practice found a methodology of research that I intend to follow as a basis for further work. My practice has been one of experimentation and non compromise, fol-lowing a logic of synthesis and transformation.

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I’ve been thinking about form and content. I thought that may-be what people sometimes call content I call form. Or in better

words, what to answer when people would ask me about content since I don’t pose this question as such for myself. And than I

thought what is content? And I thought that content is the mo-tivation, the idea in my head, where it comes from. Once I can verbalize content it’s already form, because we think through

language and language is form. And from then on, it’s all form. So if it’s only content before I communicate it, before I express it somehow, than it’s only content while I don’t share it. And if I don’t share it, it doesn’t exist. So content actually doesn’t exist. Anything that exists is form. Content is only before the trans-

formation operation starts to progress. Content is potency, the transformation operation is latency, is a chemical reaction in my

brain and after that, there is form and affect.

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