21-22 October, 2021: 11:00 – 17:00 – Media School
Workshop Description
My practice draws from film history, literature and anthropology, finding its expression in process-based and collaborative formats – often as experimental dramaturgic processes, leading to the production of films and object ensembles. At times the outcome of my research takes on an essayistic tone and a documentary approach and at other times it follows a path akin to documentary theatre – grounded in rehearsal, collective writing exercises and improvisation.
For the upcoming presentation I will be focusing on SOAP, a film in episodes which I started producing in the summer of 2020, during the first lockdown. SOAP would not have been possible without the engaged participation of several collaborators, and the forms of collaboration in entails have grown since the project started.
SOAP imagines what it would take to create a soap opera, which could infiltrate the far right in Bolsonaro’s Brazil. It imagines that a group of idealistic left-wingers might join forces to play a populist system at its own game. But how can this small group of artists, writers and activists avoid the struggle of ideologies, avoid their internal bickering and the absurdities of their various privileges to create something that resonates and has real impact? SOAP is an essay, or a soap-essay, and my aim for the presentation is to discuss the reflexive and pedagogic potential of the form, to consider what it can achieve as a narrative that grapples with contemporary history.
BIO
Tamar Guimarães (b. Belo Horizonte, BR, lives and works in Copenhagen and Berlin) is a visual artist working with film and other forms of time based media, exploring situations both residual and contemporary, of art, architecture and the institutions that present them. She often works with actors alongside non-actors in semi-fictional films. Social commentary and satire are recurring themes in her work.
For the upcoming presentation Guimarães will be focusing on SOAP, a film in episodes which she started producing in the summer of 2020, during the first lockdown. SOAP would not have been possible without the engaged participation of several collaborators, and the forms of collaboration in entails have grown since the project started.
SOAP imagines what it would take to create a soap opera, which could infiltrate the far right in Bolsonaro’s Brazil. It imagines that a group of idealistic left-wingers might join forces to play a populist system at its own game. But how can this small group of artists, writers and activists avoid the struggle of ideologies, avoid their internal
bickering and the absurdities of their various privileges to create something that resonates and has real impact?