Welcome to a nebula in the Mboike Galaxy.
The particles in this nebula are documentations of the public presentation of my final PhD artistic work.
This PhD project has focused on considering, processing and redenring documentation through artistic practice.
The article “Evocations- towards a poetics of documentation” published in the VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research (issue 10, 2023) frames my thinking in regard to these exploratory approaches to documentation.
The final artistic work delivered for this PhD included video, object and printed-text installations, and a durational performance. It was presented to the public at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts on 20-24 June 2024 - in three gallery spaces and on the academy's outside wall.
The performance exhibition was designed as follows:
Sympoiesis – durational performance installation
Redrawing – video installation
Words Wordling – installation of fanzine publications
Itinerant Words – wheat pasting on an outdoor wall
The durational performance was documented by a text by dramaturge and critic Sidsel Pape,
and the installations through drawings by my son Francisco Blixt.
Durational performance installation
June 2024
3 hours
Oslo National Academy of the Arts
Gallery Seilduken 1
Sympoiesis is a durational performance installation that explores poetics narratives to engage with ecological and existential crises. It is inspired by spiral temporalities and cycles where the performer walks backwards.
Alongside the live performance, the installation consists six film performances and one short video. All the film performances were filmed in Atafona and are part of the Atafona series.
Atafona is a beach on the Brazilian coast experiencing severe erosion.
Concept. Performance. Film Performances: Fernanda Branco
Scenography Mentor: Marcelo Lipiani
Assitant: Carla Wexels
Video Mapping: Andreas Arena Zanabria
Technician: Emil Kristoffer Gustafsson (KHiO)
Sympoiesis, noun; collective creation or organization
...saelkie, selky, seilkie, sejlki, shelky, silkey, silkie, sulky...
....are mythological creatures that can shapeshift between seal and human forms by removing or putting on their seal skin. They feature prominently in the oral traditions and mythology of various cultures, especially those of Celtic and Norse origin.
The sound of grinding stones. Waves washing furiously on a beach. A loose weave of tangled roots of an old tree half buried in the sand.
Woman (Fernanda Branco) in a sea green silk dress, is searching for places to rest on the bare branches of an inverted tree, endlessly, as the sea herself. A steady wind blows patches of foam onto land, Woman's land, or that which once was a home.
Woman leans against this live image of herself in the video of the remote beach, projected onto tall white walls. She, in the same outfit, is physically present in the gallery at Oslo National Academy of the Arts this high summer solstice evening.
Woman tries out the flat surface against her back, as if the sharp corner will eventually conform to her body. - Will the wall let Woman into the world of the stranded tree? - Will she find her way back to the land where roots blow wildly in the wind?
Woman keep changing places and positions on the cold concrete floor made of gravel, ground into a smooth and solid surface, a steady ground for spectators to step on. - Will the floor eventually let Woman through its impenetrable plane and back to where concrete once came from?
- Is my vision coloured or is the floor tinted sea green?
. Atafona series of film performances
2024
Whittling away - with a spider (12 min)
- projected on a wall encapsulated by hanging fabrics
2023
Whittling away - with a tempest (30 min)
- large projected on two cornered walls
Whittling away - with a dog (7 min)
- projected on a hanging fabric
Whittling away - with a tree bark (6 min)
- projected on a hanging fabric
. Video
time on time of the time (1 min)
-projected on the floor
. Installation
WeAreAway
. Material
Embroidered fabrics, threads, a dress replica,
Atafona's sand and 3 pieces of Atafona's
house walls.
Woman lying on her side, lights above leave spots on her skin and dress, shaped as amoebas in motion. Lit up, she resembles an oceanic creature, on the surface only. As she gets up and walks over to a cubicle in the otherwise open gallery space, she has no fins, bare legs of bone.
Behind a long curtain made of the same fabric as her dress, Woman stands. Her bodily curves shape the silky textile, create a wavy vertical landscape, as if the sea herself has risen. Then, a longing whale song wells out of her depths, echoes in the acoustics of the gallery.
- Or is it my hearing that has altered entirely?
After an immeasurable amount of time inside this cosmos made of hypnotic sound, the music of sand in creation, a landscape in transmutation, I am turned upside down. My weight is pulling my crown to the ground and beyond, deep into the waters in me.
Somebody's body is no longer searching restlessly. Me, Woman have found a way home and become with each other, with waves in fury, flying foam, grinding stone.
. 7 star-creatures
Branco's speculative narrative tells the stories of seven creatures, illustrated by AZA, in origami-folding fanzines. The creatures are laid on the floor and could be taken and read by the audience.
The creatures also exist in a sound format. The music is composed by Stephan Meidell, and the soudscape is played from a small vinyl player and heard with headphones.
. Alice and the Snake
It is a story in form of a dialogue between those two caracters that had invaded Branco's writings. It took the format of a folded fanzine and laid on the floor together with the creatures.
All the folded fanzines are hand-made by Branco.
Fifithy chairs composed an installation in dialogue with the projection of the film performance Woodling.
A side room corridor has one chair and a projection of two film performances from the series Atafona: Redraw.
The three films feature the encounters and interactions between the performer, chairs and other objects while walking backwards.
. Traces
Documentation of two of the performances from the series Traces, which was performed by Branco and documented by the visual artist Hilde Grønner Flikke through drawings and poetic descriptions with a timeline. This printed version took the form of two folded fanzines displayed on a shelf.
Concept. Film Performances. Installation: Fernanda Branco
Assitant: Alice Vanini
Video Assistant: Andreas Arena Zanabria
Technician: Emil Kristoffer Gustafsson (KHiO)
This work consists of 50 sentences, each printed on A4 paper in black font. There are 360 papers with three different-coloured backgrounds each: red, blue, and orange. The sentences are extracted from Branco’s PhD writings.
The singular sentences bleed out from the coherency of a text on a page. It breaks through the university's structure to paste itself into ít’s outside wall, invading the urban environment. It is a performative act of wheat pasting the PhD on the university’s wall. The text can be read in all directions, like the flight of a dragonfly: up, down, left, right, forward and backward. To read the wall is an invitation to the reader to become a dragonfly.
. Meditations Upon
A calendar with 52 sentences to be read weekly for a year as scores, meditations, actions, spells, or mantras. The sentences were written to reflect upon Phd processes and engage with care. They have also been shared via text message once a week with ten PhD fellows. The calendar was placed in a corner of the room, where the audience could sit in a card-box cushion and flip through it.
All booklets and cards were designed by Amanda Costa.
. I remember - a hundred times
The participants testimonies, presented as sentences on small cards, document four embodied practice workshops held by Branco. All sentences starts with: I remember. The cards were displayed on shelves and inside a hand-made box.
. Wonder in Wander
An artist book in a format of 365 cards from one year of practising walking and writing a poem daily. The cards were displayed as a hanging installation in the room, where the audience could walk underneath it. They could also be touched and read from a box.
The boxes for the two above projects were made by the designer Anna Weilhartner and Branco.
The Reflection delivered as part of this PhD result has been presented as a paper reading room installation, designed for the audience to have an embodied experience of the writings and documentation. All the furniture was made of card boxes by the scenographer Alice Vanini. Branco and Vanini co-designed the installation.
. Liwzines
A series of eleven publications in dialogue with Branco's practices or artistic works written by her and several invited collaborators, culminating in the PhD reflection. Printed in pocket-size fanzines, the booklets could be found hanging by the entrance door and laying on a reading bench.