Welcome to a nebula in the Mboike Galaxy.
The particles in this nebula are documentations of the public presentation of the PhD artistic work.
This PhD project has focused on considering, processing and rendenring 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 Branco's thinkings regarding to these exploratory approaches to documentation.
The final artistic work of this PhD included video, object and printed-text installations, as well as 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 Francisco Blixt - Branco's son.
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
This printed version is featured in origami-folding shape fanzines, which were placed on the exhibition room floor and could be taken and read by the audience.
The creatures manifested as sounds played from a small vinyl player, which the audience could hear with headphones.
Fanzines 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.
Concept. Film Performances. Installation: Fernanda Branco
Assitant: Alice Vanini
Video Assistant: Andreas Arena Zanabria
Technician: Emil Kristoffer Gustafsson (KHiO)
. Traces
The documentation performance series Traces was displayed on shelves in the format of two folded fanzines.
Fanzines by Flikke and Branco.
This work consists of 50 sentences, each printed on A4 paper in black font. There are 360 sheets with backgrounds of red, blue, and orange. The individual sentences are extracted from Branco’s PhD writings, bleeding out from the coherence of the text on a page. They break through the university's structure to paste themselves onto the outside wall, invading the urban environment.
This is Branco's performative act of wheat pasting her 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 backwards. The act of reading the wall can be an invitation to the reader to imagine becoming a dragonfly.
. Meditations Upon
The printed version of the 52 meditative sentences is featured as a calendar. In the exhibition, the calendar was placed in the corner of the room, where the audience could sit on a card-box cushion and flip through cards.
. I remember - a hundred times
The documentation of Branco's embodied practices workshops is printed on cards placed inside a hand-made box. In this exhibition, the cards were displayed inside the box and spread on shelves on a wall.
. Wonder in Wander
The documentation of 365 days of walks and written poems has a printed version as an artist's book in the format of cards inside a hand-made box. In this exhibition, the cards were displayed as a hanging installation where the audience could walk underneath them. The audience could also have a tactile experience with the cards by taking them from the box for a closer reading.
The boxes for this and the above project were designed and crafted by 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.
