Sinopse

Enquanto via o seu estúdio a ser infestado por formigas, Catarina Simões, começou a aperceber-se do seu potencial distópico, e resolveu transformar as suas características em traços de carácter.

The Home Planet é uma meta-ficção vídeo e um case-study sobre a natureza narrativa da percepção da realidade, que documenta a reacção da artista a uma praga de insectos.

Ao combinar o encenar de um documentário com a construção de uma pura “verdade cinematográfica” (fazendo referência ao Kino-Pravda de Dziga Vertov): o vídeo assume a forma de uma história de ficção científica composta por 3 níveis:

1) Uma narraç ão desconcertante em relação ao que é mostrado.

2) Um monologo que dá voz às próprias formigas enquanto personagens de uma ficção científica.

3) Uma meta-referência à estranha “ant-farm” que a própria artista constrói enquanto reacção à invasão do seu estúdio e documentação das tácticas do inimigo.

Dissecando a relação entre a representação da realidade e a realidade da representação, The Home Planet é um objecto escultural que toma forma na mente do observador.

 

Catarina Simões

Informações técnicas

The Home Planet, 2006

vídeo, DV PAL SP, cor, 07'40’’; projecção 720 x 480 cm

 

Guião

It dawn on them. / Under a strange sun the new simulation began and they got back to work. / - So far we’ve been playing against the computer, or against each other. But starting now… / - And then, said nothing more about it, until he ordered the envoy to use it where the enemy fleet was most concentrated. / The thing jolted setting up a chain reaction that leaped from ship to ship to ship. / All but the last orbit of formic ships were destroyed. / - Next time they’ll have learned! / - It smelled fishy… / - These aren’t tests, these are setups! Preparations for the scenario that might come when they’ll face the actual bugger fleet, near the home planet. / - This is the home planet – / He almost said the words but caught himself. / A long time passed. Many seconds perhaps a minute. / - Ready to move? / (by now he usually had them all deployed). / A light blinked on console. He knew what it meant. / There is no strategy. / A formation orbiting the display. / For one thing he told them to ignore the manoeuvre in the centre of the display. / - It was a decoy! But how could he know that!? / Thought back to those videos watched over and over in training, all the film of the last invasion. / - They never showed the battle, because there wasn’t one. That’s why there’s no video of hand to hand combat. Killed the queen. Killed the queen. / The second thing that he knew and they didn’t was the use of a weapon that hadn’t been in any of their simulations, till this first test. They called it master device. / - The XF is getting preliminary information back from the sentinel fleet. / Then came the first of these tests. / Heard that and it made him flinch. / - An invasion sequence!? Why a scenario like that? Why not routines before a single battle?! / Because the buggers had more than one world. They found this planet and expected to turn it into yet another colony, just as they’ve done before. / Put on his headsets as he asked. / – Would it be true? // Nodded. / - Yeah… well I don’t think it would make much difference. Besides, all that matters is the queen. Like the one killed in the last invasion. / - There’s a queen here. / - Where!? / - On the planet surface. / - Master device needs glass. / - I guess, since you seem to know everything… / Even though he already knew it. / The thing is… / He was the last of the battery leaders to do so. / - Are you there!? / Over the head sets. / - All of us… / - Kind of late for practice this morning aren’t you? / - Sorry I overslept. / They laugh. / Except. Their fleet was deployed around the centre of the display. There have been battles near towers before but every other time the outpost was near the edge of the display. / - This time there will be no trap, just a formic swarm. / Always staying a certain distance away from each other, followed random intertwining paths, near enough to the planet to deploy master device. / The bugger queen couldn’t give up control of her ships to subordinates. / The individual buggers are like her hands and her feet. Now she has hundreds of hands and feet or perhaps thousands of them, all wiggling at once. That’s why she wasn’t responding intelligently, from taking his battery ever closer to the tower, with every swing and dodge and shift that he made. / In fact, penetrated deeper and deeper into the planet’s gravity well. / The buggers were building a thick wall of forces behind formation. / - It was this! / - Maybe there is some way to get down to the planet surface and annihilate the buggers once and for all. / - Now is the time! / For the others will do their best work, and this time they’ll have figured it out how to make master device themselves. / - Do it! / There flashed into mind the words said in their first day of training. / - Remember… The enemy’s gate is down. / Deploying master device against the planet surface, to obliterate the whole thing, one for each formic world. And the reason they can learn from battle to battle is because, they too, have quantum communication across interstellar space. / All guesses were confirmed. / The only function was to watch how it flowed and then coach after-words, on what the enemy’s strategies meant and how to counter them in the future. / That was why they were giving them most of their commands orally. / Means that. Without a visible quam, the simulator came to life. / - It’s time. / - Good luck! / - Captain may go on strike again. / - When it seams completely unfair and utterly pointless! / - What if I promised him continuity? / The bugger home world was the last one. The fleet there now had left after any of the other fleets. / - It was impossible to determine the number. How the display kept loosing track. How the total amount kept fluctuating. / - You just couldn’t get there from here, to do work. / - We’re done! / - Remember…/ - Fixer! / Mad tom didn’t seem to get the joke, didn’t seem to understand that there was no way to get master device to the planet surface. / Instead, pulled into a tight formation. / - Sure they see, how every other move takes us closer and closer to the planet. / At any moment the enemy could destroy them quickly, by concentrating their forces, and could use master device against them. Having them dodge through the ever shifting formations of one glass tower, the last piece. //Another explanation: could it be? That the queen, or queens, had to spend all their concentration, all their mental strength, just keeping thousands of ships swarming through space, without getting too close to each other?// End.

* Apresentado em inglês por indicação da artista, que considera qualquer tentativa de tradução seria infiel ao original, dada a natureza deste.

O guião de The Home Planet foi escrito por Catarina Simões, com a colaboração de Matthew Michel, Adaptado a partir de cut-ups de textos de ficção científica de Orson Scott Card, Ray Bradbury e William Gibson.

Catarina Simões - Biografia e currículo

Catarina Simoes (Lisboa, 1973) fez o curso avançado de artes plásticas do AR.CO, e mais tarde completou um mestrado em artes plásticas na School of Visual Arts em Nova Iorque. Viveu 6 anos em Nova Iorque e em 2004 mudou-se para Berlim onde actualmente vive e trabalha.

Trabalhando sobretudo com novos media, a sua obra foca-se sobre a investigação documental como uma forma de produzir meta-ficções.

Exposições individuais e com mais um artista

2004 Preview, Pappellallee, Berlim

2002 The Least, Praxis Space, Nova Iorque

Selecção de exposições colectivas

2006 Das Fest, Portuguese Embassy, Nova Iorque

2005 Props for a Romantic Comedy, Longwood Arts Gallery, Bronx Museum, NYC

2004 Daydreaming, Slight Alienation, Cruel Kindness & Detached Sentimentality,

Joymore's Gallery, Nova Iorque

2004 Drawing Out Loud, HDC Gallery, Nova Iorque

2003 Post-Portugal, Off-loop-Video Biennial, Met-room, Barcelona

2002 By Numbers - 6N-G, Nova Iorque

2002 Expect the World – Sparwasser HQ, Berlim

2002 Moi Non Plus – Parkhaus Treptaw, Berlim

2000 Apart235, NYC

2000 2000greenspaces, Greenhouse, Lisboa

1999 Espaco1999, Sala do Veado, Natural History Museum, Lisboa

1999 7Artistas ao Decimo Mes, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisboa

1999 BM, Maia Biennial, Maia

1998 Marzee Gallery, Nijmegen

1998 Casaderute, ZDB Gallery, Lisboa

1998 NHXXI, Greenhouse, Lisboa

1997 Lisbona, PD362 Gallery, Pádua

1996 Talent96, Munique

Bolsas, projectos e screeenings

2006/07 Spaced – S3D (com Ana Pinto e Nuno Cera), Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisboa

/ Instituto das Artes. Lisboa

2006 Emerging Video – Influences and Shifts, Pépinières européennes pour jeunes artistes, 19th FIPA, Biarritz

2005 Was Machen Sie, Akademie de Schloss Solitude, Estugarda

2003 Alive and Gone – Video Screening, BAM, Nova Iorque

2002 Drawing The Line – Video Screening, Z-Bar, Berlim

2002 Kunstlerhaus Bethanien – Video Screening, Berlim

2002 Museu do Chiado – Video Screening, Lisboa

2000/02 Research Grant – Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisboa

2000/02 Research Grant – FLAD, Fundação Luso-Americana para o Desenvolvimento, Lisboa

1998. Exchange Program AR.CO/SVA, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian and FLAD, School of Visual Arts, Nova Iorque

1994/98 AR.CO, Centro de Arte e Comunicação Visual, Lisboa

Colecções

PCR / Col. Lisboa

AR.CO, Centro de Arte e Comunicação Visual, Lisboa