Alice Furtado
River view - Installation - 2014
presented as part of the exhibition Panorama 16
Installation
Between the corporeity of a window impressed with human presence and the virtuality of images that follow on in the algorithmic programming of software inspired by Google Street View – a conceptual tool that has haunted our imaginary apprehension of space for years now – River View offers us an unusual and mysterious excursion through an exuberant natural setting that fiercely rejects the mathematical grid that now lives off and interferes with our reality. The ghosts sometimes seen flitting through the heterogeneous and temporally discontinuous images of street views now become identifiable bodies, “characters” fixedly present in this intangible space, seemingly insistent on the organic and palpable aspect of the world’s moving fabric. The anonymous and unrooted gaze of utilitarian, computerised abstraction now yields to the gaze of a camera mounted on a means of transport conceived as the material bearer of our gaze, giving another meaning to the notion of “location”. While transposing the artist’s distinctive poetics into a hybrid installation, this piece shows the concerns running through her earlier films from a new angle. The idea of a dreamlike journey undergone by a man’s or woman’s body to the rhythm of enveloping shadow and light and uncertain emotional outflows is something that informs her work in general, where, under the sign of water and trees, a sensuality tinged with mysticism brings to mind a journey into the beyond. -Tatiana Monassa
Production
Acknowledgments
À Elisabeth Caravella, pour son immense générosité. Et à Gulnar Azevedo, Sergio Mendonça, Carol Freitas, S. Santana et famille, Juliana Lins, Marina Vieira, Bárbara Palomino, Paul Guilbert, Raphael Hölt, Robert Henke, Luisa Marques, Claire Denis, Daniel Dobbels, Madeleine Van Doren, Maya Da-rin, Sérgio Andrade, Rummenigge Wilkens, Emerson Medina, promotion Raul Ruiz, l'équipe du Fresnoy et tous les ribeirinhos qui ont croisé notre chemin...
