Solo Show at ISE Foundation @ Front Space
Reception: Friday, October 23, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Houyhnhnm, Susana Gaudêncio
From October 23 to November 20, 2009
Address: 555 Broadway,
New york, NY 10012 | 212.925.1649
www.iseny.org
Video Screening at Horton & LIu
Tuesday, October 13, 7:00 pm
Seven Easy Steps: SOCIAL IMPROVEMENT
Video Series, curated by Amanda Schmitt
Address: 504 West 22nd Street, Parlor Level
New York, NY 10011 | 212.243.2663
www.hortonliu.com
13.10.09
27.7.09
Blocking in..., 2009
Blocking in Maria Hernandez Park, Ink Jet Prit on Graphite paper, 2009
Installation view of Blocking in...2009
Blocking, 2009
Tienanmen Square, Graphite on Ink Jet print, 130x170cm, 2009
Tienanmen Square 2, Graphite on Ink Jet print, 130x170cm, 2009
Jornalist's tower, Graphite on Ink Jet print, 130x170cm, 2009
Blocking, 2009
Plaza de Mayo, Graphite on Ink Jet print, 130x150cm, 2009
Place de l'etoile, Graphite on Ink Jet print, 130x140cm, 2009
Azavi Square, Graphite on Ink Jet print, 130x140cm, 2009
Augustus Platz, Graphite on Ink Jet print, 130x170cm, 2009
Alexander Platz, Graphite on Ink Jet print, 130x160cm, 2009
Blocking - Installation View - Carlos Carvalho AC Gallery, 2009
Blocking - Installation View - Carlos Carvalho AC Gallery, 2009
Building Icons-Installation view - Carlos Carvalho AC Gallery-2009
Building Icons-Installation view, 2 channel Animation -
Sound, Carlos Carvalho AC Gallery, 2009
12.11.08
26.5.08
4.5.08
The Equestrian Project, 2008-excerpt
D.José I, Terreiro do paço, 3 channel animation, 3m45s, 2008
The Equestrian Project, like the Provoking Theatre series, speaks of my wish to set sail on an impossible task that pokes fun at established cultural and political symbols and normative social behaviour. I am blurring the line between real life occurrences and fiction. This project engages with Psychogeography and its concept of Dérive.
3.5.08
From the series" Bilboard Cities"_ work in progress
Billboard city#4
30x60x60cm Drawing on Photographic image, Pine wood, 2008
From series "Billboard Cities"_ work in progress
Billboard city#3,
30x60x90cm Drawing on Photographic image, Pine wood, 2008
An important aspect of my scenarios is a concerted effort to bring imaginary projects/events to reality despite the fact that their viability in real life is fairly impossible. The stories dissolve the symbolic line between proposed projects of impossible endeavours and real life occurrences. In my videos or animations I have been experimenting with narratives that portray characters, sometimes self-portraits, performing invented acts of insubordination and symbolical theft.
5.2.08
The Equestrian Project, 2008-work in progress
New York, November 1st, 2007
To: Mayor of Lisbon, Dr. António Costa
Dear Mayor Costa,
I would like to begin by congratulating on your election last July. I wish you the best in achieving the goals you set forth in your campaign.
I am writing in hopes to gain your cooperation on an endeavour that only your office can help me accomplish.
My name is Susana Gaudêncio I am an artist, born in Lisbon, living and working in New York City. I would like you an the city hall to consider the possibility of lending me the D. JoséI equestrian statue from Terreiro do Paço. This monument has been there since 1776, following the urban renewal led by Marques de Pombal after the tragic earthquake.
I would like to borrow the statue for one month, the length of time it would take a horse to trot from Lisbon to the nearest desert.
I am aware of the high esteem in which you regard the arts. I hope you will reflect upon my request and invest in the wishful thinking of an artist.
Yours sincerely
Susana Gaudêncio
22.1.08
The Equestrian Project, 2008-work in progress
The Equestrian Project, 1st part: Lisbon, D. Jose I Equestrian Statue,
Test shots for animation
17.1.08
Red carpet series 4, 2008
Diptic #3#4, Digital Photoprint 50cmx70cm, 2008
“Either in an enclosed or open space, scenic or nomadic, close or distant from itself, theatre is always a public meditation on the relationship or non-relationship between artifice (device) and life. All texts from theatre theory, from Aristotle to Brecht or Grotowski, from Diderot to Meyerhold, deal with this subject.
The actor or performer inhabits the centre of this meditation, because he is the focus of this conjunction-separation between both. He is the living being that sacrifices or in the other end exhibits the vital spontaneity in service of a collective effect.
What can became a problem is; or to dissimulate the artifice in order to mimic the natural, or to show the artifice in order to criticize the natural, or to attest that all nature is an artificial construction, or even the attempt to naturalize the artifice.”
Alain Badiou
Bowing, 2007
2 Animations in 2 channel video/audio installation, Projector and screen, 2m20s, dvd, 2007
In Bowing, a two channel animation, I make the familiar become strange through the insertion of a character that represents me in an implausible environment, the back entrance/exit of the White House. The image used as background to the animation was appropriated from their official internet site, a photograph taken during an official visit by Queen Elizabeth II to the US. It portrays both countries’ heads of state and their spouses, which I purposely digitally erased. This image was then printed and painted in order to become a stage or scenario for the narrative to come. In Bowing I recorded myself in the act of exiting a door, walking toward the camera), bowing and finally crawling, then, after printing and painting onto the frames, I re-photograph them and superimpose them onto the initial background of the White House. In the narrative there is a gate that descends and restrains my exit. My presence in such a scenario is unfamiliar and I am out of context. The narrative becomes absurd when I end up crawling on the White House red carpet, in the realm of a “Non Sequitur”.
Agent Provocateur, 2007
2 channel Video/Audio animation, 2m45s, dvd,2007
In Agent Provocateur I wanted to create a poetic maneuver which was not a representation of life, but life itself. I consciously cast myself as a hacker performing an impossible task which takes place in the “International Court of Justice” during a session of judicial activity between two nations. As an artist I gave myself the opportunity to actualize this venture through means of animation. The intention was to counterpoint the subjectivity of an individual against the vast system of the world – a place where the sound and fury of political decision would be present. But is there access to such a place of important resolution? The script for the performance was that every time the voices of the opposing nations in the trial would reach a high decibel level, these voices would activate a mechanism which would then force every door and window to open, bringing air and chaos to the room. The intention was to create an uncanny situation to provoke a disruptive moment in the courtroom’s regular function and be a small poetic/metaphoric gesture, a magical event, of the court papers blowing, the chandeliers swinging and windows and doors shattering furiously.
Provocking Theatre, 2007
Diptic Photo digital prints, 70cmx70cm, 2007
Provocking Theatre in the International Court of justice
Provoking theatre was the accidental working title for my International Court of Justice piece, it is a video animation and a photography series.
Subject matter:
There is a Set of political conditions.
The Subjectivity of an Individual against the vast system of the world. There is someone following someone into the wall of justice.
There is the Sound and fury of political decision. There is Freedom. And Access to a place of important resolution.
There is a Smile, half smile, a character--the artist--witnessing something. And then there is a disruptive moment, a small gesture. A Magical (illusion) gesture.
Subject matter:
There is a Set of political conditions.
The Subjectivity of an Individual against the vast system of the world. There is someone following someone into the wall of justice.
There is the Sound and fury of political decision. There is Freedom. And Access to a place of important resolution.
There is a Smile, half smile, a character--the artist--witnessing something. And then there is a disruptive moment, a small gesture. A Magical (illusion) gesture.
The comedy of Humours, 2006-2007
Drawings, graphite powder, 21cmx29cm-29cmx21cm on paper
Selected Drawings for the 4 Video-Animations,
Selected Drawings for the 4 Video-Animations,
The Comedy of Humours, 2006-2007
The comedy of Humours, 2006-2007
4 channel Video/Audio installation, 9m45s, DVD, 2006-2007
4 animations-The Sanguine, The Choleric, The Melancholic, The Phleugmatic
4 animations-The Sanguine, The Choleric, The Melancholic, The Phleugmatic
The comedy of Humours, 2006-2007
4 channel Video/Audio installation, 9m45s, DVD, 2006-2007
4 animations-The Sanguine, The Choleric, The Melancholic, The Phleugmatic
The comedy of humours
The Comedy of Humours, a four channel animation, departs from these notions of memory and theatre. With this project I intended to deliver a critical reading on dialectical processes of theatre by rendering Ben Jonson’s Theatre “The Comedy of Humours” in terms of the “Theatre of the Absurd.” In particular, I rendered Jonson’s construction of stereotyped characters in the language of Absurdist writers, such as Samuel Becket, Harold Pinter, Eugene Ionesco and Jean Genet, appropriating from scripts that portray the influence on individuals of an increasingly mechanized and hostile society using his construction of stereotyped theatre characters.
This piece is structured around four different characters who each enact one of four humours (after Ben’s Jonson four stereotypes: The Sanguine, The Melancholic, The Phlegmatic and The Choleric). These four humours give psycho-physiological or hyperbolic traits of character to the main figures in the action, a definite bias of disposition that provides the main motive for their actions Using characters that lacked spontaneity or originality and parodying dialogue that obeyed the archetypal vision of “The Theatre of the Absurd,” I wanted to make people aware of the possibility of going beyond speech conventions, to reveal that, definitions are not static, that two kinds of theatre seeming to be opposite in their intentions can be rendered to create new approaches. I wanted to comment on their construction by a reinterpretation that gives them a new formal existence.
In the animation Sanguine, a character mimicking a political leader in campaign addresses an audience that is never shown but that is embodied by us, as viewers. This kind of approach is used by several authors that inform my work, such as filmmakers Ingmar Bergman and Michael Haneke whose work, like mine, is deeply inspired by theatre mechanisms forwarded by Bertolt Brecht in his Epic Theatre.
This piece is structured around four different characters who each enact one of four humours (after Ben’s Jonson four stereotypes: The Sanguine, The Melancholic, The Phlegmatic and The Choleric). These four humours give psycho-physiological or hyperbolic traits of character to the main figures in the action, a definite bias of disposition that provides the main motive for their actions Using characters that lacked spontaneity or originality and parodying dialogue that obeyed the archetypal vision of “The Theatre of the Absurd,” I wanted to make people aware of the possibility of going beyond speech conventions, to reveal that, definitions are not static, that two kinds of theatre seeming to be opposite in their intentions can be rendered to create new approaches. I wanted to comment on their construction by a reinterpretation that gives them a new formal existence.
In the animation Sanguine, a character mimicking a political leader in campaign addresses an audience that is never shown but that is embodied by us, as viewers. This kind of approach is used by several authors that inform my work, such as filmmakers Ingmar Bergman and Michael Haneke whose work, like mine, is deeply inspired by theatre mechanisms forwarded by Bertolt Brecht in his Epic Theatre.
16.1.08
White Night, 2004
Video-animation (4 frames),
(Graphite powder and photocopy toner drawings)
Video/Audio, 1m,45s (loop), DVD, 2004
Corner to Corner, 2003
Two Channel Video installation-Projected in two corners of a room
Video/Audio, 3m (loop), DVD, 2003
Audio: Sarah Vaughan " Corner to Corner"
5.1.08
Epifania
"Conhecemos tão pouco da vida, do mecanismo complexo que deve ser este do mundo que, segundo me parece,o decidir-se não tem grande valor, senão no que respeita à estima que poderemos manter por nós próprios, à confiança que talvez seja absurda, mas que em todo o caso nos pemite o viver. Creio que, sejam quais forem as circunstâncias, tanto faz decidir-se atirando uma moeda ao ar; meditamos gravemente, pesamos todos os elementos, depois fazemos exactamente o que faria o homem que tendo visto apenas a milésima parte de um milímetro do dente de uma roda de engrenagem tivesse opiniões firmes sobre o género de papel ou de bolacha fabricada pela máquina que não a percebe no seu conjunto. Só por um extraordinário acaso se poderá acertar; temos todas as possibilidades, caro Amigo, de tomar sempre um decisão errada; a sorte da moeda ainda deve talvez ser a melhor, porque, pelo menos, suprime do sistema, já complexo, um elemento que pode perturbar: o da nossa vontade."
Agostinho da Silva in Sete cartas a um jovem filósofo
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