Film Guide
All films courtesy of the artist and CAM-Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, Lisbon.
Untitled, 1972. 4 minutes, 15 seconds.
Bubbles fall against an orange and green backgrounds. Close-ups of bubbles are interspersed with wider shots. Lens flares transition to footage of a dark blue surface bubbling up. An image of a body part is overlaid. The lens zooms in and out of bubbles, blurring the light reflections on them. A translucent tunnel distorts the edges of the composition, leaving only a sharp image at the centre. A ball of light in a dark room appears blurred. The camera zooms in on it revealing it to be a crystal glass lampshade.
Drawings/Lines, 1971. 10 minutes, 9 seconds.
Dizzying white lines appear in free-fall against a muted background. They resemble scratches, tears, dents, scuffs, brushstrokes, punctures, knife cuts, splatters, etchings, city lights, sound-waves. These marks gradually present colours: icy blue, light orange, cold white, cobalt blue, purple, turquoise, pink and yellow. At 00:06:54, a distinctive segment of green-tinted marks takes over. Extremely dimmed footage of spaces and figures plays in the background.
Untitled, 1972. 22 minutes, 53 seconds.
The artist films himself in a bathroom mirror. Blurred shots of undressed young men follows. Various sources of light are filmed: a lamp, the flame of a candle, the sun, the reflection on a fish-tank. Several water-themed scenes follow: ocean waves, a shoreline, rainwater, puddles. Suddenly, a vintage title card – ‘The end’ – cuts the flow. A slideshow follows: faces, Marilyn Monroe via Andy Warhol, and Adolf Hitler’s face behind blocks of colour. It turns into a stop-motion animation: cutout bodies dance above Pop Art icons. At 00:15:50, a close-up of the artist shows him looking at the camera while smoking. His naked body moves. More iconography and lights are overlaid. Gradually, both the artist and images fade out. Only orbiting lights remain.
Untitled, 1976. 2 minutes, 15 seconds.
Something is set ablaze. The lens captures the flames, zooming in and out. At 00:00:48, the film abruptly cuts to a white container with blue ink being stirred in a clear liquid. Fuzzy lines from pouring the ink give way to a homogenous dark body. Clusters of something curdled float in the surface. A new white bowl appears, this time with red ink poured into clear liquid and stirred. The mixture turns light pink. Blue ink was added and stirred, forming dark traces. A whirlpool appears. Green, or yellow, ink is added and stirred, giving depth to the whirlpool.
Untitled, 1968. 2 minutes, 50 seconds.
A female figure wearing big earrings and a hat leaves the frame. It kicks offa black and white stop-motion sequence featuring a boot, a loafer, torsos in undergarments, a mourning widow, armchairs, crotches of runners, fine art nudes, ring-shaped cutouts, and celebrity portraits. Female breasts appear after a drawing of circles, and before what looks like a diorama. It seems to present a flat surface being perturbed. At 00:02:29, the artist films a photograph of a female with short hair. She is smirking. Fifteen seconds after, the film returns to the previous diorama.
