BlackBox – Marco Godinho

Left to Their Own Fate, 2016
Colour video, sound, 12 min
 
Left to Their Own Fate is a perambulation, a voyage of discovery on which the artist sets out to explore Macau, specifically the Luís de Camões Garden – one of Macau’s oldest gardens – seeking traces of the grotto where the 16th-century poet is said to have written part of his epic poem Os Lusíadas (The Lusiads). The artist takes viewers on a physical and mental ramble that questions the colonial era, while at the same time initiating a dialogue about the present-day situation of peoples who, left to their own fate, are forced to emigrate, to live in exile in foreign countries, leaving everything behind in search of a better life.
 
 
The End of Winter, 2013–2016
Colour video, sound, 2 min 40 sec
 
The End of Winter is a long take of the light emanating from a bonfire at Luxembourg’s traditional end-of-winter Buergbrennen celebration. Held on the first Sunday of Lent, this originally pagan ritual features huge bonfires lit to symbolically burn away winter and welcome the return of spring.
It marks the triumph of warmth over cold, of light over darkness. The images were captured in a single tracking shot that begins with reflections of the fire’s light on the ground and ends in the total darkness of the sky. The omnipresent sound is that of an aircraft, recorded during a trip to
the Italian island of Lampedusa in 2015; the narration blends autobiography and fiction, recounting the experience of a forced journey that leads to a permanent state of rootlessness.
 
 
ET (Le dernier dialogue possible), 2015
Colour video, sound, 16 min 44 sec
 
In the video ET (Le dernier dialogue possible), two characters – “space” (male voice) and “time” (female voice) – ponder their own existence and enter into a long dialogue that could well be the last. They discuss invisible phenomena, imperceptible forces that determine the degradation of the human condition. They also puzzle over phenomena and instruments that have served to measure time and map space and the earth’s rotation; instruments/inventions such as Foucault’s pendulum and the mysterious remains of the giant wind compass, 43 meters in diameter, that lies within the Sagres Fortress, in Portugal.
 
 
A Moment Out of This Time, 2012
Colour video, sound, 15 min
 
This video is devoted to observing a construction site in the Kirchberg district of Luxembourg city, an area rapidly expanding as a European hub and a symbol of EU economic prosperity. During the excavation work, the artist spent a day deciphering the attitudes, rhythm and operation of the site. The result is a series of fixed shots that project the thinking behind a poetic gaze, at a given moment, outside of time. The artist appeals to the viewer’s imagination by avoiding overly obvious connections with a local or individual context. Expressed in a universal language, the shape-shifting ideas lend themselves to different levels of interpretation, which, in large part, are a means of resisting a society obsessed with consumption.
 
 
Disappearance, 2011
Colour video, silent, 6 min
 
The shadow of a transparent flag appears and disappears with the passage of clouds and floats with the changing movement of the wind. Lost bearings, doubts, uncertainties, drifting territories – always present.
 
 
Something White, 2008
Colour video, sound, 10 min 42 sec
 
While strolling the Norwegian countryside with the writer Tomas Espedal, the artist accidentally comes upon the entrance of an abandoned tunnel. This single-shot video documents the two men’s trek through the underground stone passage. Camera in hand, the artist films the entire time, even when they find themselves in pitch-black darkness.
 
 
Cabo da Roca, 2007
Two-channel projection, colour video, sound, 8 min 45 sec
 
Physical limits and the origin of geographical boundaries, are experienced in the form
of a two-channel video projection in which the artist films himself walking on the Atlantic coast, following the contours and rhythms of the jagged Cabo da Roca headland to its farthest reach. Portugal’s Cabo da Roca is the westernmost point of continental European. Without physical preparation or adequate equipment, the body is at constant risk of slipping. The sense of danger sustained by the life-size projection is amplified in the moments when the voids encountered in descending and climbing back up the cliff overlap.