Marcio.carvalho

Marcio.carvalhoArtist I Curator

DesignJoana Silva

PhotosCover & ‘Now an Impossible Presence’Henry Chan

‘Impossible Chronologies’Joana Silva

‘I will Never be Corrupted’Serge Olivier FoukuaLandry Mbassi

‘Here After There n2’Andres Galeano

‘Homework’Joana Silva

‘Never/Again’Matthias Pick

‘On Memory’ Joana Silva

‘The Corner’ Joana SilvaStephan Bauer

‘Appointment’Joana Silva

© Márcio Carvalhowww.marcio-carvalho.comcontact@marcio-carvalho.com

For many centuries memory has been an important subject for the construction of human history and the self. One of the first manifestation can be found on Greek mythology with Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory and remembrance. She represented the rote memorization required, before the introduction of writing, to preserve the stories of history and sagas of myth, through oral traditions. At that time, for most Greek philosophers, memory and forgetfulness were opposites. To lack memory was to lack knowledge and ultimately to lose oneself.

Today many scientif ic studies confirm that memory is not a passive reservoir of information that maintains itself intact or available all the time. Memory only exists in the present time as information that is constantly reshaping itself, influenced by the present context and landscape.Márcio Carvalho artistic practice is interested in topics related to memory emerging from collaboration works between art, science, archeology and social studies. For the last 3 years he has been focused on the influences of memory upon collective groups and individual

people. Science and human behavior, perception, network sciences, appropriation and fiction are some concepts and forms used by the artist to research on autobiographical, collective and cultural memory, and its impact into social, cultural, political and economic contemporary life. The multidisciplinary ability of crossing disciplines reframes his work in various formats such as live performance, f ilm documentary, video art, photography and sculpture, always attempting specif ic relation with the context and site in which he is operating.

Workinprogress

How did you become an artist?

I got involved with art when I was 16 years old. I was painting reproductions of well known artists such as Claude Monet, Marcel Duchamp, René Magritte, between others, at the same time that I had a hardcore band named ‘The windows’. Painting and music was a very important part of my life. I remember to wake up listening hardcore music and after lunch I was painting listening to the Nocturnes of Chopin. I always wanted to be an artist but only when I entered in University I understood that art was the only thing I could do in my life. Art became a way of living.

Do you have a main topic in your

work?

I am interested in many topics but recently, for the last 3 years, I have been working around notions of memory. I started with my autobiographical memories that triggered me the interest in working with f iction and appropriation, dealing with collective memory and cultural appropriation. Through many interviews, and works dealing with

specif ic sites and communities I found context and landscape as 2 important concepts for my artistic practice. In the end of 2012 I worked together with Dr. Christoph Ploner, co-Director of the department of neurology at the Charité, Berlin. This collaboration was very fruitful and opened many doors for thinking memory specially concerning network sciences in relation to cultural and autobiographical memory. The final stage was a 1h15m performance, named ‘Impossible Chronologies’. The performance rendered science and art/performance practices together through the topic of memory. Through body based work, through formal or punk lectures, through drawings or transfers of data from one field to the other, the performance and its documentation became clearly an enormous performative experiment in which memory was being tested, debated and experienced through possible and impossible relations, through collective data and subjective experience. I am planning to continue this work based on memory for the next years.

You are a multidisciplinary

artist working with a wide

range of medias, but for the

last 4 years you've been more

actively engaged, physically and

conceptually, with performance

art. Why performance art?

I have been using video, photography, installation, sculpture and painting to produce my work for the last 8 years. Only 4 years ago I understood that performance art was the “stage” in which I could be free to engage as much medias as I needed to frame and form my ideas. It is not a easy task to be in front of an audience but in the end it became addicting. It is not an art form that you can build a safe economy, at least for now, but even though it is very challenging to produce content within an ephemeral, time based, process orientated framework, in relation to specif ic sites, contexts and audiences. I have traveled to 3 different continents for the last 3 years and produced a large networking with artists and curators from all over the world, that work within performance art realms, using its potentialities to discuss about the contexts in

interview

which they are based. Concerning my curatorial practice it is really interesting to give use to the term and concept of curator (taking care of) within this discipline. It is other kind of deal to curate people, it becomes about the event and its possible social, artistically, poetical or political relations and less about a market. Performance art is creating history through events and processes for dealing with contemporary life, becoming perpetuated through the event itself and its documentation.

What is performance art?

Are we still looking forward to narrow the definition of performance art?What is art? What is sculpture or painting? A narrow definition of art and its disciplines will only define borders and exclude possible relation with the world. We don’t need a narrow definition of performance art, specially today when art is providing an important stage for many social, political, cultural and ecological problematics worldwide to be discussed. Many people, including performance artists,

have been repeating this same question for too long. It became a waste of time to ask or answer to ‘What is performance art?’. it is really not adding much to the history and contemporary practice of this discipline. I believe that Performance art is a lens to perceive and discuss contemporary life. Its ephemeral and time based particularities created what I call ‘The last community’, a group of international artists and curators that share the same problematics, that create a mutual encouragement on organizing and curating programs and festivals that can extend the practice of this discipline through debates about contemporary life. It is about discussion and not about competition. What is performance art? only focus in performance art for the sake of performance art. It is important to look through the history of the discipline, to f ind its genesis, track its changes and understand that it was always a form of art that allowed artists to develop critical points of view about specif ic contexts and the state of economy in arts, always in relation to other f ields of thinking. Today it

is still a lens to perceive, discuss and leave traces about today’s contemporary, cultural, social and political problematics in life. Through collaborations with other branches of knowledge such as philosophy, poetry, politics, science, sociology, ethnography, activism, between others, performance art can affect local and global contexts and raise awareness on many issues we face on a daily basis. By narrowing the definition of this form of art we will loose future possibilities for its development and its relations with the world.

Guillerme Gomes Pena, in an

interview for TEDxCalArts

about the role of the artist in

activism, argue that ´´In times of

crisis, today more than ever, we

need critical artists that can

perform multiple roles, because

they are not only image makers.

Artists can be alternative

journalists, vernacular

philosophers, experimental

linguistics, doctors for

rebuilding communities, etc``

Do you agree with this?

Yes. I think that Guillerme can be placed between a wide range of artists such as Ai Wei Wei, Jelili

Atiku, Wafaa Bilal, Tanja Ostojic, Yingmei Duan, between others, that are committed in affecting the reality that surrounds them through the production of performance art works in relation to politics. Art platforms and art institutions are considered to be the stage for today’s cutting edge social, political and ecological debates, and artists are usually giving use to performance as a form to create awareness to a broader audience. Performance art doesn‘t sit well in many formats created for showcasing artifacts, becoming eventually an art form that, most of the times, f inds its place directly in mundane reality.

Documentation is an important

topic for Performance art.

Today museums have a clear

objective on finding ways for

preserving and archiving past

process orientated art, within a

collaboration with artists and

the new technologies available.

Is this good or bad?

I believe that it can be both good and bad. In the one hand it can be good because the process for preserving these documents is already developing a tracking system that will allow to discover more performance works, increasing the history of this discipline and making it

accessible for a wider audience. It can as well highlight the importance of performance art in art history and for art critics and trustees increasing the possibilities for having funding systems dedicated to this form of art and more critical feedback from visual art departments. In the other hand these documents came from a very specif ic scene made by a community of independent, alternative art spaces and artist studios and there is the risk of introducing and returning these objects, once politically, socially, site or context specif ic engaged, into commodity relationships within institutionalized settings.

What is the importance of

documentation in your personal

work?

In my artistic practice, documentation starts to emerge when the performance is still a draft. I have been producing work books, that we can call common places, in which the work is being produced in its conceptual and practical forms. These books allow me, and other people that might be interested, to track the development of the work. Each drawing produces possible actions or concepts providing a “stage” for small rehearsals. I can say that the documentation of

my work is not something inert that belong only to memory. It is indeed something that come from the working process or from a final presentation of the work in the forms of writing, drawing, image or video. By allowing this materials to “haunt” my future works I allow my conceptual and formal practice to grow in a “work in progress” basis in which all the performances are related becoming one body of work.

I understood that you are

using many objects in your

performances. How do you

choose these materials?

I guess there is a very intimate process for recognizing belongings in oneself. They are between things that make part of my autobiographical history but as well objects that affected me on a daily basis. They can be toys, daily artifacts or precious materials. I choose them based on many factors such as the place I found them, their nature, symbolism, color, shape and specially their potentiality to produce other functions than the ones they normally do. Working in specif ic sites and contexts allow me as well to f ind very specif ic materials to address site and context problematics. Antoni Karwowski, a Polish

performance artist that I had the pleasure to collaborate with, have a very interesting way of teaching young students about what is at stake when we perform. He never starts by allowing them to grab the first object they find to play with it. He prefers to take the first days to make the students come back to themselves and look for their own objects and actions. When talking about materials and documentation we cannot avoid mentioning about today’s networking systems, such as social networks, in which we are constantly being confronted with images of performances happening worldwide. These images are stored in our sensory memories allowing our brain to retrieve them when facing a certain stimuli in our daily lives. What happens is that we start seeing many actions and objects being repeated by different artists in different festivals, specially the younger generations, creating what we can call the cliches of performance art.

And why this is happening?

Probably is due to a lack of responsibility on the production of work and knowledge. Performance art can be everything, and this everything many times is mistaken by

anything. Performance art has strategies and technics likewise painting or sculpture. When producing a random collage of actions it is common that artists rescue many objects and actions that they have seen before, creating a repeating loop on the using of several materials that leads, most of the times, to predictable actions and less an exercise of communication through artistic, symbolic, ambiguous or clear narratives.

You told me previously that you

are creating a film documentary

dedicated to performance art

activity worldwide. Do you

want to talk briefly about this

upcoming project?

I consider it as a long term curatorial project in a format of a f ilm documentary. I am producing since 8 months and will continue for the next 2 to 3 years. I am planning to visit 5 continents and approximately 18 different cities, in several countries, that have performance art programs and festivals running since many years. The project started in Yaoundé, Cameroon, inside the frame of RAVY (Rencontres d’Arts Visuels de Yaoundé). I was invited to present my work and for documenting a workshop in the Bakassi Peninsula about the

previews conflicts for territory and natural resources. I immediately understood that the Cameroonian context had many things to offer concerning its local history and its own understandings related to the using of performance art and activism. After coming back from Cameroon I had the idea for this f ilm documentary. By choosing several artists and their works to be part of this project I aim to highlight problematics that each context, in each country have, their commonalities and differences, and how performance art can be a lens for perceiving and discussing these same issues.

What are your future plans?

I will try to give continuation to my studies. I just f inished a MA in Performing arts, in Berlin, and I am planning to start a practical PhD on the crossing between memory and network sciences through the lens of performing arts. I will continue developing my practice as artist and independent curator, working in specif ic sites and contexts and approaching methodologies for dealing with memory in collaboration with other f ields of thinking such as science.

performance .work

Carvalho’s performance on Sunday afternoon, Now – an impossible presence, was an intricate navigation through time, memory, presence, and the impossibility of the now. The artist facilitated this navigation vis-à-vis a highly considered and layered engagement with the object world. Carvalho highlighted the shifting nature of the materials he used – material that disintegrates (a pear), material that reveals itself in very short amounts of time (polaroid pictures), things that break apart (tea sets), objects where the meaning has changed (a toy that has become a vehicle for a sound memory), as well as actions and images that are impossible to fully process

7a11d FESTIVALToronto 2012

nowanimpossiblepresence

‘

’until after the performance (i.e. the artist’s crazed dance, flying little plastic wind-up birds, self-flagellation with a wet shirt, etc). Carvalho’s performance created situations and constellations of materials that appear f ixed, but are in fact morphing through time. We get snap shots of the art object as a kind of stable entity (as portrayed on the gallery wall, for example), but in Carvalho’s work, the past, present and future all inform the ontology, or way of being, of “now”. Carvalho’s “nowness”, like scholar Peggy Phelan’s “liveness”, is a term that contemplates what performance art is about – its ontology, as well as the unique presence of performer

and audience member in shared space-time. Phelan’s “liveness” is about the unique features of live performance: its unrepeatability – its “appearing as it is disappearing”. Carvalho, on the other hand, takes the purity of this concept of “liveness” – this immediate, singular witnessing – and turns it into something fragmented and disjointed. By destabilizing the “now” he reveals the promiscuity of temporalities that span a singular presence, as well as the kind of being-towards-death that his manifesto impels us to take to heart: “All of these ‘nows’ will never be now again!”

Review by Christine Korte

The work ‘Impossible Chronologies’ renders science and art/ performance practices together through the topic of memory. Through body based work, formal and punk lectures, drawings and transfers of data from performance to neurology, the performance and its documentation became an event in which memory was being tested, debated and experienced through possible and impossible relations, through collective data and subjective experience.

In collaboration with Prof. Dr. Christoph Ploner, Co-Director, Department of Neurology, Charité Universitätsmedizin.

HTZ ZETRUM TANZBerlin 2012

IMPOSSIBLE CHRONOLOGIES ‘

’

In March 2012 I was invited to participate in the 2nd biennial of visual arts in Yaoundé, Cameroon (RAVY) in which I proposed a close look into the performance art activity created by a local scene. “I will never be corrupted” was a performance made in the public space in Yaoundé, Cameroon. It relies on several writings from the Nobel Price Prof. Bole Butake about Cameroonian today’s political, social and cultural issues.I spent 3 weeks in Cameroon where I interviewed many artists, curators, and responsible organisms from the cultural minister in Yaoundé, having as well the chance to document several performances made by local and international artists. All the video documentation trigger me the will to produce a film documentary that could research on local and global phenomena through the

RAVY BIENNIALYaoundé, Cameroon 2012

I will never be corrupted

‘

’lens of performance art.Today, performance art became a lens to perceive and discuss local and global phenomena. What can performance art be? How does local and global problematics manifest themselves through performance art? The objective of this f ilm documentary is to research on how performance art festivals and programs, in specif ic communities worldwide, are bringing attention to their local problematics. By visiting 5 continents and approximately 18 cities in different countries, the film documentary aim at gathering site and context responses to specif ic problematics, through the documentation of live performances, panel discussions and round tables, between local and international artists. The assemblage of these materials will facilitate the understanding

of local phenomena in relation to a global knowledge, and how performance art can help on raising awareness.How does context and landscape influence local and international artists and what does become their goals when practicing and presenting performance art? This f ilm documentary believes that context and landscape are conditions for understanding art activity and vice versa. It will give a special attention to national Tv programs, newspapers information, the city advertising landscapes, art programs and cultural policies, aiming to create links between the artists works and the environments they face on a daily basis.

*Image 1: Performance Images 2,4,6 & 7: Documentary video frames

1

2

4

6 7

“Here after there #2” presented a space where autobiographical memories and appropriated memories are in relation creating “Impossible Chronologies”. From Angola, to Portugal, Berlin, Cameroon and back to Berlin, several contexts and landscapes were brought together speculating about tradition, continuity and obligation, though a memory lens.

Extension ExtraBerlin 2012

HereAfter there n2

‘

’

“Homework” was a response to the thematic of the Festival Home Sweet Home. The performance relied on scientif ic and poetic strategies to analyze the memory of a house. I built a house of clay where I took from inside a metaphor of the inside of my body in the form of several objects. Between them there was 8 barbies, 1 heart, 1 bone, an audio tape, a money box and a letter that i sent to myself with memories, specially produced for the moment of the performance.

Home Sweet Home FestivalWerkstatt der KulturenBerlin 2010

homework‘ ’

In collaboration with Elisa Haug.

Both artists, in a collaboration basis, used memory to remember who they were in front of a stranger. From zero they started to tell small stories about their lives taking that information as the basis for understanding common interests and possibilities for working together. There was a wall in the middle of the gallery. In one of the sides of the wall was projected Márcio’s frontal body and in the other side Elisa’s back part of the body. The audience navigated between both spaces where the artists were constantly projecting their relations to their own memories.

Extension Series GrimmuseumBerlin 2010

Learning you‘

’

“Never/Again” works the fact that we will never be child again, dealing with existential questions in relation to death and to the natural growing into an adult position. I built a sequence of actions that aimed to investigate possible identities of myself within all contexts and landscapes I ever been. By going against the wall, where it was written NEVER and falling down on the floor, where it was written AGAIN, I created a dialogue between child memories and an attempt of dreaming forever.

Men OnlyKunst FabrikBerlin 2010

NEVERAGAIN‘

’

Both artists embrace memory as one of their primary topics for the development and understanding of their artistic practices. An ongoing process of perceiving fragments situated in many different chronological pasts of their lives, allow these 2 artists to produce artistic work in relation to the intimacy of their own memories. In one side Antoni Karwowski question identity as a danger blurring in his surrounding reality, as a result of “memory decay”, on the other side Márcio Carvalho believes that the blur produced by the capacity of forgetting details, of past events, is the key point for memories to become new living material in a constant transformation from past into present.

Collaboration between Antoni Karwowski and Márcio Carvalho.

Co-LAB EditionsSavvy ComtemporaryBerlin 2011

OnMemory ‘

’

“The corner” is a long durational performance, by Márcio Carvalho, that reflects about mobility in relation to art making. Carvalho aim to relate the history of such concepts with the Artist today’s stretching capacity to engage and research possibilities of showing and/or adapting work to different art frames and cultural, social or political contexts, leading these same artists to a long-term exhaustion and a BURNOUT syndrome. Carvalho aimed, within a boxing frame, with the duration of 90 rounds, 2 minutes each, to physically and conceptually perform the artist everyday struggle to keep on working and living inside transnational mobility systems.

Nomadic Settlers - Settled Nomads Künstlerhaus BethanienBerlin 2011

TheCorner ‘

’

Collaboration with Yingmei Duan

“Appointment” was a 18 days collaboration in which the artists Márcio Carvalho and Yingmei Duan performed meetings and meet as performance WITH different locations throughout Berlin. Examples were: Appointment with tree, Appointment with Amadeus, Appointment under the car, Appointment with neighbor and Appointment with audience. All the project was built under a performative process developed through several happenings. The final stage of the project was presented in an exhibition setting with 7 videos, 1 sound piece and a live performance (appointment with audience).

Hotel25artist in residence programBerlin 2010

APPOINTMENT‘ ’

EDUCATION 2011 -2013Master Degree - SODA Performing Arts UDK/HZT, Berlin, Germany

2004-2006Master Degree - Visual Arts University of art and design (ESAD) Caldas da Rainha, Portugal

2001 -2003Bachelor Degree - Visual Arts University of art and design (ESAD) Caldas da Rainha, Portugal

GRANTs & RESIDENCIES Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, PortugalRAVY Biennial, Yaoundé, Cameroon HAU - Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, DE Buda Kunstcentrum, Kortrijk, BELProject Arts Centre, Dublin, IRL Mousonturm, Frankfurt Main, DE Avan’t Rue, Paris, FRE.R.M. Wittemberg, DE INOV Arte, DG Artes, PT

WORK PRESENTATIONS (selection)

2012. 7a*11d Festival of Performance Art, Toronto, Canada . 7th Berlin Biennial - The Pornography of Everyday Life, Berlin . X-Choreographers, Tanz im August, Tanz Nacht, Berlin . RAVY Biennial - Rencontres d’Arts Visuels de Yaoundé, Cameroon

Márcio Carvalho, born in 1981 in Lagos, Portugal, is a visual artist and an independent art curator.

He holds a master degree in performing arts at HZT/UDK Berlin and a master degree in Visual Arts at ESAD in Portugal.

He works with installation, photography, video and performance participating in exhibitions and festivals all over Europe, Africa and North America.

He is the founder and curator, together with Dr. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and Savvy Contemporary, of the performance art program CO-LAB editions, in Berlin, he is the founder and art director of the artist residence program Hotel25 in Berlin and he initiated “The Powers of Art”, the first international TV Show dedicated to showcasing a crossing between performing arts and paranormal activity.

bio cv

. Blauverschiebung 5, Galerie KUB, Leipzig, DE

. Paersche, performance art event, Cologne/Bonn, DE

. Extension Extra, Kunsthalle am Hamburger Platz, Berlin

. Go West Festival, Frankfurt, Berlin

2011 . Nomadic Settlers, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin . Infraction Festival, Sete, FR . Kontrapunkt Festival, Szczecin, PL . 24h Festival, Szczecin, PL . Infraction Festival, Venice, IT . Co-Lab editions 3, Savvy Contemporary, Berlin . Blauverschiebung 4, Galerie KUB, Leipzig, DE

2010 . Project Brand New, Project Arts Centre, Dublin, IRL . Home Sweet Home Festival, Werkstatt der Kulturen, Berlin . Extension Series 5, Grimmuseum, Berlin . Appointment, Performance project with the collaboration of Yingmei Duan, Hotel25, Berlin . M5-Differential Festival, Galerie Nord, Berlin . Plot in Situ Festival, Acud Theater, Berlin . Men Only, Kunst Fabrik, Berlin. ‘The Powers of Art’, Alex TV, Berlin

CURATING 2012 . CO-LAB Editions 7-10: Mind Pirates Gallery, Berlin Invited artists: Olivier Foukua (CM), Mark Patrick Tchambou (CM), Nathalie Bikoro (GA), Willem Wilhelmus (NL)

Freies Museum, Berlin Invited artists: Leena Kela (FI), Tomasz Szrama (PL), Juha Valkeapää (FI), Kimmo Modig (FI) SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin Invited artists: Jacques Van Poppel (NL), Ieke Trinks (NL), Jelili Atiku (Nigeria), Lan Hungh (TW)

. RAVI - Rencontres d’Arts Visuels de Yaoundé, Cameroon

. TV Show, The Powers of Art 3 and 4, Alex TV, Berlin

2011 . CO-LAB Editions 1-6: SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin Invited artists: Alastair Maclennan (SCT), Nezaket Ekici (TR), Kurt Johannessen (NO), Ruth Feukoua (CM), Serge Olivier Fokoua (CM), Antoni Karwowski (PL), Andrés Galeano (ES), Essi Kausalainen (FI), Magnus Logi Kristinsson (IS), Márcio Carvalho (PT), Maurice Blok (NL), Stefan Riebel (DE)

2010 . Founded the artist residence Hotel25 in Berlin . PLOT IN SITU, Live Art Festival, ACUD Theater, Berlin . Exhibition curator from Hotel25, artist in residence program, Berlin . TV show ‘The Powers of Art’ edition 1, Press Conference, Hotel25, Berlin. TV show, ‘The Powers of Art’ edition 2, Alex TV Studios, Berlin . ‘One more land be twin’ Exhibition by Luis Simões and Rita Manuel, Theaterhaus Mitte, Berlin

www.marcio-carvalho.com

www.marcio-carvalho.com