AnaStef
João Maria Gusmão
and Pedro Paiva
Camden Art Centre
30 January 2015 - 29 March 2015

I visited Portuguese artists Joao Maria Gusmao and Pedro Paiva's exhibition in Camden Art centre March 2015. They presented a film installation for their first major exhibition in London. It consisted of twenty seven 16mm films and two camera-obscures. Their films are exploring various subjects by closely observing the objects, animal and human behaviour.
I entered the room full of projections and into to different world. Choice of any position around the room would offer to the observer the view of multiple projections. This unusual experience of being faced with various films competing for attention at the same time presented a perceptual challenge of keeping the attention focused on one projection and a very clever way of examining our visual sensory limitations. Their films are projected in slow motion and as a result the ordinary and usually unobservable details reveal extraordinary nature with hypnotic and magical seducing power. They are concerned with the paradox of the appearance of reality and the nature of the truth, perception and the objectivity of vision.
I found myself hypnotised by 'Falling trees', featuring wood cutting. By removing the sound and slowing down the action, an astounding experience emerged. Slow moving wooden particles, exposed to incredible lighting through the trees were revealing another nature. The journey into science, philosophy and religion that Portuguese artists have taken us on with this exhibition was an important one for my practice. I discovered that I share their ideas and their interpretation of the world. I connected to the need to appeal to a different kind of reason and I was relived to learn that I was not alone. Through reviews, I learned about the science of imaginary solutions- Alfred Jarry's Pataphysics.

I can sympathise with this position, as for some time now I have been dishearten by the ability of current knowledge to engage in solving problems that humans are facing and the obvious problematic discrepancies when it is applied. For example, the pharmaceutical industry makes money from sick people and therefore it is not in their interest to support preventive medicine and everlasting health. As a result, dreaming about alternative solutions is almost an involuntary need and part of the context that I am working with.