UBI SUNT I-III, Project (2017)
[Ubi Sunt I 2017 – Core of the Project, Ubi Sunt II 2017, Ubi Sunt III 2017]
Ubi Sunt (2017), Project comprises the film Ubi Sunt I (2017) — core of the project, and the installations Ubi Sunt II (2017) and Ubi Sunt III (2017).
Ubi Sunt I–III is the outcome of an audiovisual research residency of human and urban exploration of an expanding city. It hosts two performances – ‘One Life to Live’ and ‘Requiem’ by Christoph Both-Asmus and counts with the participation of CESA – Centro Educativo Santo António.
The project was developed under the frame of a commission by Cultura em Expansão, a program by CityCouncil which takes the form of different artistic initiatives in residents’ associations, communities and different venues throughout the city, and first exhibited at Cinema Trindade, Porto (18 December 2016). The other productions were developed due to other partners and exhibited accordingly.
UBI SUNT I (2017)
HD video, 2:39, color, Dolby 5.1,
26min. Portugal Commission: Câmara Municipal do Porto – Pelouro da Cultura
Production: Lamaland, O Som e a Fúria
Additional support: Grupo de caretos de Lazarim, Capitania do Porto, Centro Educativo Santo António, Direção Geral dos Serviços Prisionais, Screen, ZTFlores
Support: Câmara Municipal do Porto – Pelouro da Cultura
Distribution: Agência Portuguesa da Curta Metragem — Curtas Metragens CRL, Kinoscope, RTP – Radio Televisão Portuguesa
Batalha Centro de Cinema – collection, Portugal
Ubi Sunt. Porto. Cartography of an imaginary place attracted by the margins (social and geographical).
Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt? meaning “Where are those who were before us?”. Reflective essay on mortality and life’s transience, it emerges from that dialectic, of a and episodic and fragmented structure with a choreographed cinematography; where the memory intersects the contemporary.
UBI SUNT II (2017)
HD video installation, 2:39, color, stereo sound, 90min loop. Portugal
In collaboration with Christoph Both-Asmus
Commission: Câmara Municipal do Porto – Pelouro da Cultura
Production: Lamaland, O Som e a Fúria, Curtas Metragens CRL / Solar – Galeria de Arte Cinematica
Development support: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian
Additional support: Centro Educativo Santo António – Direção Geral dos Serviços Prisionais, Screen, ZTFlores, Dgartes – Direção Geral das Artes
Support: Câmara Municipal do Porto – Pelouro da Cultura
15.10.2016 Lisbon, Portugal – A few days after the performance Christoph Both-Asmus text message read: “With the approaching tidal flow it became simultaneously cold and wet from below and warm from above. I felt lingering between water and fire. (…)” I was intrigued when he mentioned that the touch of the flowers was perhaps gentler than the human touch. I let the performance run until his wish.
It was produced for the anthological exhibition Solo at Solar – Galeria de Arte Cinemática, Vila do Conde (14 October – 25 November 2017)
UBI SUNT III (2017)
Three-channel HD video installation, 2:39, color, stereo sound, 22min. sync in a loop, Portugal
In collaboration with Christoph Both-Asmus
Commission: Câmara Municipal do Porto – Pelouro da Cultura
Production: Lamaland, O Som e a Fúria, Agência Portuguesa da Curta Metragem — Curtas Metragens CRL / Solar – Galeria de Arte Cinematica
Develpement support: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian
Additional support: Centro Educativo Santo António – Direção Geral dos Serviços Prisionais, Screen, ZTFlores, Dgartes – Direção Geral das Artes
Support: Câmara Municipal do Porto – Pelouro da Cultura
03.07.2017 Costa Navarino, Greece – Email from Christoph Both-Asmus: “05.08.2015 Acropolis of Corinth, Greece. Excerpt from sketchbook – Since I remember that I wish to be here, with the nature, an almost painful desire.” So he attempts to encapsulate this nature but I know that he won’t find peace in his restless search.
It was produced for the anthological exhibition Solo at Solar – Galeria de Arte Cinemática, Vila do Conde (14 October – 25 November 2017)
What leads any of us to seek to preserve the life of the other?”
Freud, Einstein, Foucault, Fanon, Benjamin, Gandhi, Kant, Hegel, Klein, Butler
Some abiding truth of infantile life continues to inform our political lives as well as the forms of dissociation and deflection out of which phantasies of sovereign self-sufficiency are born.” We encounter ourselves in each other. We are, as it were, always given over to another, to others.
Violence thrives in our denial of this given-over-ness through complex fantasies of self-sufficiency.
Violence shouldn’t be seen as tactically necessary in order to defeat structural or systemic violence, or to dismantle a violent regime,
The practice of nonviolence requires an opposition to biopolitical forms of racism and war logics that regularly distinguish lives worth safeguarding from those that are not.
We need an altered state of perception, another imaginary, that would disorient us from the givens of the political present,” the givens of prisons, of policing, of military occupation: the givens of violence.
When I do violence to another human being, I also do violence to myself, because my life is bound up with this other life.
Yaron Dahan, On Mortality MUBI Notebook
What leads any of us to seek to preserve the life of the other?”
Freud, Einstein, Foucault, Fanon, Benjamin, Gandhi, Kant, Hegel, Klein, Butler
Some abiding truth of infantile life continues to inform our political lives as well as the forms of dissociation and deflection out of which phantasies of sovereign self-sufficiency are born.” We encounter ourselves in each other. We are, as it were, always given over to another, to others.
Violence thrives in our denial of this given-over-ness through complex fantasies of self-sufficiency.
Violence shouldn’t be seen as tactically necessary in order to defeat structural or systemic violence, or to dismantle a violent regime,
The practice of nonviolence requires an opposition to biopolitical forms of racism and war logics that regularly distinguish lives worth safeguarding from those that are not.
We need an altered state of perception, another imaginary, that would disorient us from the givens of the political present,” the givens of prisons, of policing, of military occupation: the givens of violence.
When I do violence to another human being, I also do violence to myself, because my life is bound up with this other life.
Yaron Dahan, On Mortality MUBI Notebook
Yaron Dahan, On Mortality MUBI Notebook