All videos comprise a multi-channel installation that enables the coexistence of multiple temporalities — a reflection of the figures’ fragmented structure. Each video fragment is singular, making it difficult to collapse into a linear narrative without compromising its specificity.
To merge them into a single sequence would betray the underlying conceptual model of an anachronistic, fragmentary body. Only through simultaneous projection could the fragments cohere — producing a layered, plural perception. As a multichannel installation, the work offers simultaneous viewpoints, reimagining the body through a montage of anachronisms and cultural signifiers. This is a legitimate mode of presentation, grounded in a belief that thought gains richness through multiplicity and inclusion, by granting space to the other — a space to participate in the work through their own interpretation.
Like imagination, fiction has often been relegated to the realm of escapism — tolerated only when subordinated to the pursuit of truth (Coelho, 2009, 269). Yet fiction, by imagining alternative circumstances, displaces so-called “reality” to a homogeneous field of potentiality: a field governed by the conditional what if… For me, this is merely another dichotomy to be dismantled.
I chose the theatre stage as the setting for the Charms videos. The stage, as the embryonic space of fictional narratives and make-believe, functions metaphorically as an extension of the body. Indeed, theatrical terminology extends the metaphor of the body: in portuguese, boca de cena (proscenium) literally means "mouth of the stage.” The theatre is the site where what lies within (emotions, passions) can appear as if external. "It is the locus of fingimento (pretence), a term whose Latin etymology, fingere, encompasses “to form,” “to represent,” “to mold”, “to sculpt”, “to create”, “to compose”, “to imagine,” “to forge”, and “to pretend” (Pimenta, 1995, 97). We speak of legs, mouths and wings.
Additionally, the grid — in portuguese teia (web) — suggests a net of delicate illusions that ensnare both performer and spectator. In the video-performance recorded at the rehearsal room of the Sá de Miranda Municipal Theatre (Viana do Castelo, Portugal), I constructed a scenic environment as an extension of Charms’ body. The use of red and white symbolized bodily fluids of high significance: blood, breast milk, semen.
As the video progresses, red stains within the scene shift and transform, mirroring the organic rhythms of bodily adjustment, the movements of liquid flows, or the slow metamorphosis of mental imagery. These transformations invoke a conceptual order of the image, governed by the magical logic through which the body imagines itself.
Charms is composed of synthetic materials: vinyl, plastic, gloss, it is deliberately artificial. Similarly, Gyu, the other figure of this project, embodies a kind of artificiality: constructed from layered faux leather with high-contrast, symbolically charged colours: a visceral red suggestive of blood and flesh, and a stark white evoking bones, teeth, eyes, and again, breast milk and semen. The plastic artificiality reflects my interest in the brain's operative modes of perception, such as pareidolia. Perception, proprioception, and hypnagogic visions serve as affective producers of relationships between space and imagination. Our gaze — indeed, mammal's cognition — is neurologically attuned to seek order in apparent disorder. Neuroscientific discourse frequently describes the brain’s operation as plastic, suggesting that capacity to be shaped, a fundamental property of neural substance. Roland Barthes describes plastic as a “ubiquity made visible” (Barthes 2018, 238). Such a conception rescues the mutable forms of liquids and gases from Aristotelian rejection, making them eloquent metaphors for the internal motions and flows of the body. Plasticity is to these videos, which afford an exogenous view of the body, the materialization of alternative temporalities, and the metamorphic potential of objects through shifts in light, scale, and perspective. This mode of perception often exceeds reality — becoming more real than real.
As the video progresses, red stains within the scene shift and transform, mirroring the organic rhythms of bodily adjustment, the movements of liquid flows, or the slow metamorphosis of mental imagery. These transformations invoke a conceptual order of the image, governed by the magical logic through which the body imagines itself.
Charms is composed of synthetic materials: vinyl, plastic, gloss, it is deliberately artificial. Similarly, Gyu, the other figure of this project, embodies a kind of artificiality: constructed from layered faux leather with high-contrast, symbolically charged colours: a visceral red suggestive of blood and flesh, and a stark white evoking bones, teeth, eyes, and again, breast milk and semen. The plastic artificiality reflects my interest in the brain's operative modes of perception, such as pareidolia. Perception, proprioception, and hypnagogic visions serve as affective producers of relationships between space and imagination. Our gaze — indeed, mammal's cognition — is neurologically attuned to seek order in apparent disorder. Neuroscientific discourse frequently describes the brain’s operation as plastic, suggesting that capacity to be shaped, a fundamental property of neural substance. Roland Barthes describes plastic as a “ubiquity made visible” (Barthes 2018, 238). Such a conception rescues the mutable forms of liquids and gases from Aristotelian rejection, making them eloquent metaphors for the internal motions and flows of the body. Plasticity is to these videos, which afford an exogenous view of the body, the materialization of alternative temporalities, and the metamorphic potential of objects through shifts in light, scale, and perspective. This mode of perception often exceeds reality — becoming more real than real.
To imagine such a body is to conceive of it as a vehicle visible and inscribed in the world, yet manipulable from within through a heightened internal sensitivity. Often, this internal force overflows, expanding beyond the corporeal surface, the skin — our sensory interface with the world. Imagination engages perceptual mechanisms that impose logic and meaning upon what is glimpsed.
In Charms video works, this process unfolds through fragmentary constellations of the character’s body. These fragments emerge through dissimulated bodily gestures, disjointed movements, close-ups of objects, and a theatrical umwelt (it should be noted that all the videos included in this study are not yet fully completed).
The images are marked by transformational rhythms, as both bodies and images undergo metamorphosis. Nevertheless, a counter-force also appears: deformation. According to Deleuze, “the transformation of form may be abstract or dynamic. Deformation, however, is always deformation of the body; it is static, takes place in the same location; it subordinates movement to force and the abstract to the Figure” (Deleuze 2011, 115). This tension becomes apparent in a moment of the video where Charms’s body lies still, surrounded by a scenographic structure that trembles and shifts around it. Here, matter does not simply transform, it deforms: creating a zone of indiscernibility between forms. Space itself is reshaped by the affective quality of perception, capturing the imaginary within us and reflecting it in return.Transformation also requires temporal atmosphere. Time is the principal operator of metamorphosis. When suspended, it halts transformation and crystallizes form.
