One month without filming
at REDCAT

João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva, One month without filming (installation view) (2015). At REDCAT, Los Angeles. Photo: Rafael Hernandez.

The American system of art would lead us to believe that political subjectivity is drawn by the hard codes of medium—that somehow the mind of the employer of 16mm film greatly differs from that of the maker of Epson Ink on canvas wall works.  Or at least that’s how certain curatorial and art consumptive practices seem to play out—just flip through an auction catalogue or look to numerous medium driven exhibitions for direct examples.    

While serious artists do interrogate the material hard coding that structures the distribution of their project; it is the liminal, sometimes transitory, hard-to-easily-track soft codes of practice that open the door to social meaning.  More often than not, these subtle yet central nuances produce some form of transposition from one system to another. In the case of One month without filming, the current exhibition by João Maria Gusamão and Pedro Paiva at REDCAT, the space of everyday experience encountered in travel is shifted to the field of art through slowed films made by literally multiplying the number of frames shot during production.

As one spends time observing the effective yet relatively simple moving images, the incessant whirling of 16mm film projectors fills the room, reminding us of how equivalating the hard codes of materials are.  Still, the effective strategy of expanded documentary stretches out the content in front of the lens from film to film.  Herein, a generous temporal space is opened up in the darkened room, made dense with numerous projections.  Certain works such as Shisa Dog with Chicken (2015) are replete with a freshly charged practice of the everyday, creating a slowing and expansion of time, a gift aesthetics can provide to us as subjects of a volatile and precarious first world.  

One month without filming runs from July 11, 2015–September 20, 2015 at REDCAT (631 W 2nd St, Los Angeles, CA 90012)

João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva, One month without filming (installation view) (2015). At REDCAT, Los Angeles. Photo: Rafael Hernandez.

João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva, One month without filming (installation view) (2015). At REDCAT, Los Angeles. Photo: Rafael Hernandez.

João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva, One month without filming (installation view) (2015). At REDCAT, Los Angeles. Photo: Rafael Hernandez.

João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva, One month without filming (installation view) (2015). At REDCAT, Los Angeles. Photo: Rafael Hernandez.