SEMANA 7 GOOD TIME IS REAL TIME

SATURDAY, 2 APRIL 2022, 9 PM 
farO presents GOOD TIME IS REAL TIME
Jane Veeder and Phil Morton

We're approaching the end of our 8 week programme.
To celebrate, we’ll pay tribute to two of our long time heroes, Jane Veeder and Phil Morton, and their collaborative work that pioneered the pre-digital adventure of analogue video.

We welcome everyone to join us for dinner, at 9pm, while playing three road trip video tapes, shot on the mythical path of America Deserta:

Program 7
32’21’’, 1978

Program 9 (Amateur TV)
30’56’’, 1979

and

Ha-Ha, Many Mammals, Leary, Jane’s Fall (unedited raw material)
12’30, 1980

Analogue video, processed on Sandin Image Processor, colour and b&w, sound
Transferred to digital by The Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive
Shown with kind permission from the Archive and Jane Veeder

*

In the late seventies, during the summer breaks of the Chicago Art School, Jane Veeder and Phil Morton left their Electronic Visualization Center to travel out west, to work on a new type of art.

Phil had converted a General Motors van into 
a mobile video station, with customised windows and an awesome paint job. Equipped with two cases of video tape and the most advanced portable (though heavy) sound and video technology they migrated to the 
West towards the Sun. They snaked the trails of America Deserta, where nothing officially exists and everything can happen, set up camp and took day trips to their favourite places, collecting footage of a joyful journey that collapsed mythical with real time, under the surveillant eyes of cactuses, ongos and wild animals.

In the fall, they would drive back to Chicago, far from the desert where the years are counted by the thousands. In their video lab they would rework the material to recover real time. 
The footage was expanded adding other image sources and using Dan Sandin’s real time image processor and Tom Defanti’s ZGRASS graphics language, both fellow teachers at the same Art School. Sometimes this recycling process was edited into Video Programmes, presented at schools and media centres to introduce early video practitioners into their philosophy of the immediate through experimental electronic image visualisation. 

Sitting and contemplating the reverberating light going through the cathode ray tube was like sitting again under the desert sun. Like the Sun, the TV would become a model of 
an unmediated life source. With this 
live production-reception feedback network, they conceived video beyond a recording medium, as a system for interactive learning that would allow us to tune in through real-time communication. Theirs was an art programme for a social revolution, rewiring consciousness to be closer to desire and imagination.

Woody Vasulka’s interview with Morton and Veeder (1977) has great insights on the artists visionary project. It can be found at www.vasulka.org.
jonCates’ article Phil Morton and Jane Veeder: Our Desired Futures and the mobile Media Art lab (2014) speaks in more detail about the video programmes. Available at www.joncates.medium.com

*
Thank you
Jane Veeder, for kindly accepting this invitation.
jonCates, founder of the Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive, for the generous effort in making Morton’s work accessible under the free-distribution policy he stood for. The archive can be followed at www.copyitright.org

This session had the technical support of Borja Caro and Carlos Gaspar, and photo coverage by Pedro Alfacinha. The programme was printed by António Rijo de Carvalho and Gonçalo Duarte. Camping food by João Simões with the support of Conserveira de Lisboa. 
At the entrance, on display for the last time, the SLANT STEP.

Produced with the support of Fundo de Fomento Cultural Garantir Cultura–Compete 2020, República Portuguesa–Ministério da Cultura.

Programme (PDF)

SEMANA 6 SOUNDS GOOD

SATURDAY, 26 MARCH 2022, 10 PM 

farO presents SOUNDS GOOD

A video lecture on language feel and form, meaning and meaninglessness

by Peter Rose, co-directed by Jessie Lewis 

The Pressures of the Text 

analog video transferred to digital, color, sound, 17', 1983

A logical deconstruction of the duck's speech

and the encoding of a Nokia 6150 user manual 

by Cátia Serrão

A Fala do Pato

powerpoint animation, color, sound, 5'7'', 2010

(alternate cut)

 

Book 

offset print, 92 pp, 17 × 12 cm, 2007/2022 

edition of 250, issued by farO 

A reading on nothing

by Clark Coolidge 

Nothing I-XIII, 1968

SOUNDS GOOD

A person, when speaking, walks, as a pig walks, as a duck walks, as a hound walks, and so on… 

This can be thought of as a short form of travelling, which comes from the Greek word quel "to move”, often used with the word quela (pronounced qua! ).

Another way of saying this is that there is a language to be heard which is no word of any kind. It is understood that things, like a candle or a sword, are sound-made. Whereof it is understood that sound is made by sound itself, which in itself is no-thing at all of an origin.  

 

The object of nothingness, requires a speech of continuum airy words. If we cannot speak we must remain quiet, and thus is born the name of a creature, or a thing, given to the object of silence, just as the name of a house when man made it visible. 

One can use language to explore meaning and meaninglessness. Linguistic and ideographic symbols can, in practice, be combined into a broad set of dialects. They are in fact a "sign language”. Its function and purpose is not in the point of impact but in the language itself, which can be measured again and again, with the result that one can think in terms of how the sign has evolved to allow us to interpret and express. 

This sort of linguistic analysis is part of “the dialect", at the heart of the art we’re making of words. It is usually understood by the people who have the means to listen to it. The problem is that this language doesn't have a grammar (an automatic set of rules that we can learn by doing things). The qua is a one-liner about the nature of our own reality, in other words, QUAQUA=LL, which is short for "novel".

SOUNDS GOOD

The previous text was generated by Artificial Intelligence, using an unsupervised language model, inputting sentences from:
But It Says Nothing (Clark Coolidge, 2000); scripts of Duck's Speech (Cátia Serrão, 2010) and The Pressures of the Text (Peter Rose, 1983); excerpts from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1921) and Bouvard e Pécuchet (Gustave Flaubert, 1881).

*We thank the artists for their contribution to this session*
This session had the technical support of Borja Caro and João Simões and photo coverage by Pedro Alfacinha. 
The display shelf for Cátia Serrão’s edition was made by Gonçalo Barreiros. 
This week's programme includes ideograms designed by Cátia Serrão and Jessie Lewis, and was printed by António Rijo de Carvalho. 
At the entrance, on display as always, the SLANT STEP.

Produced with the support of Fundo de Fomento Cultural Garantir Cultura–Compete 2020, República Portuguesa–Ministério da Cultura.

Programme (PDF)

SEMANA 5 THIS

SATURDAY, 19 MARCH 2022, 10 PM
farO presents THIS
this video by Maarten Ploeg
and this poem by Robert Lax

THIS by Maarten Ploeg is a 32 bit colour video with pitch variations of the word THIS. Made in 1991 with a COMMODORE AMIGA for a Pure Image and Sound broadcast on Park4DTV.
Robert Lax's poem was originally included in the compilation New Poems, designed by Emil Antonucci and published by Journeyman Press in 1962.

We thank Maarten Ploeg Trust, Ryu Tajiri, Peter Mertens and Park4DTV for making possible the presentation of THIS long time favourite.

This session had the technical support of Borja Caro and João Simões and photo coverage by Pedro Alfacinha. This programme is printed weekly by António Rijo de Carvalho. At the entrance, on display as always, this SLANT STEP.

Produced with the support of this cultural fund, Garantir Cultura Compete 2020, of this Ministry of Culture of the Portuguese Republic.  

Programme (PDF)

 

SEMANA 4. HOT WHEELS

SATURDAY, 12 MARCH 2022, 10 PM
farO PRESENTS HOT WHEELS

With works by  Susan Mogul, Anne Lefebvre, Chris Burden and David Askevold 

Rua de S. Joaquim nr. 2, Campo de Ourique, LISBOA
(entrance on the left side of Igreja de Santa Isabel)

From a failed project to build an auto-tuned mandolin was born a faster and cool-looking matchbox vehicle:  THE HOT WHEELS. These tiny wheeled cars have been rolling with calculated hazards for more than sixty years, on a plastic orange track (sold separately). 
Sixty four times smaller and as easy to grab at the supermarket checkout as colourful candy, Hot Wheels finally fulfil Ford’s dream of making the car affordable and accessible to everyone. 
But regardless of the scale, when it comes to wheeled vehicles, there’s about two kinds of people. Those who couldn’t care less, for whom they’re just shuttles to get on track from A to B. And those who have a spitfire connection to the machine, a group that includes car lovers and car haters. 

Tonight we’re presenting personal accounts by artists who take this matter to heart.

* TRUE STORY * TRUE STORY * TRUE STORY * TRUE STORY * 

Mourning the loss of his partner 
and disenchanted by being an artist, Chris buys a 1952 Ford freight-truck 
named Big Job. He set off with 
huge business prospects. He would 
either turn it into a cross-borders roadshow truck or a mobile 
TV station or the first mobile car factory to build cheap cars on site… Right after the purchase he realises the huge wrecked tin is barely able to drive around the block and even just that was illegal, since he didn't have a license to drive it. After six months of nightmares about the truck rolling backwards and killing someone, 
he sells it half price. But the truck continues to haunt him with the burden of a crime he didn’t commit…

* TRUE STORY * TRUE STORY * TRUE STORY * TRUE STORY * 

Susan has just moved to LA to study at Cal-Arts and there’s only one thing stopping her from making it in Hollywood. She can’t drive and is afraid of learning because she had been in a fatal car crash with her boyfriend. After several feminist attempts she’s no longer stuck on that passenger’s seat, she’s mobil! She cruises town on a 1967 
Volvo Amazon, making a name 
for herself pasting billboards. 
Now she runs her own merch line, selling great art at budget prices, which she’s sure will help advance her career.


* TRUE STORY * TRUE STORY * TRUE STORY * TRUE STORY * 

David knows nothing, and doesn’t care, about cars. He talks to his gallerist who knows everything about them. Every time a car passes outside the window, David asks what colour it is and takes a bite off of a different chocolate, while the other spills information about costs, horsepower, fuel consumption… With this process, 
he conditions himself to memorise what is useless. For David, cars are just metal shells wrapped in colour, with different fillings.


* TRUE STORY * TRUE STORY * TRUE STORY * TRUE STORY * 

To this day Anne can’t drive a car, but she set herself the challenge of taming a 200 kg Honda VF400 sports bike. She managed to beat the clock every time and became a master of bike acrobatics, but only on a fixed circuit. As soon as she got off the track she would become a disaster. After an actual accident, 
in which she hit the breaks instead of accelerating and landed on her head, Anne dropped the steer forever. 
She sold her bike to a famous wheeling champion and became 
a passenger on glider aircrafts.

* TRUE STORY * TRUE STORY * TRUE STORY * TRUE STORY * 

David Askevold 
LEARNING ABOUT CARS 
AND CHOCOLATES
analogue video transferred 
to digital, b&w, sound, 21’11’, 1972
courtesy of Canada Gallery 

Chris Burden
BIG WRENCH
analogue video transferred 
to digital, 15’12’’, colour, sound, 1980
courtesy of Chris Burden Estate
copy from the EAI collection

Susan Mogul

MOGUL IS MOBIL VOLUME III REDUX
analogue video transferred 
to digital, b&w, sound, 
4’38’’, 1975/2022
courtesy of the artist

MOGUL IS MOBIL POSTCARD
offset print and stamps, 
13.3 × 25.6 cm, 1974
courtesy of the artist
*reprint comes with a bonus car charm!*

Anne Lefebvre
BX 1 
digital colour photograph, 
variable dimensions, 2019
courtesy of the artist

We thank Susan Mogul and Anne Lefebvre, Canada gallery and David Askevold Estate, Chris Burden Estate and Electronic Arts Intermix for making this session possible. 
Produced with the support of Fundo de Fomento Cultural Garantir Cultura Compete 2020 República Portuguesa–Ministério da Cultura.   
The session had the technical support of Carlos Gaspar and Borja Caro; and photo coverage by Pedro Alfacinha. Anne Lefebvre’s photograph was printed by Blues studio. Our weekly programme is printed by António Rijo de Carvalho. At the entrance, as always: THE SLANT STEP.

Programme (PDF)

SEMANA 3 FOOD OBSERVATION

SATURDAY, 5 MARCH 2022, 10 PM
farO PRESENTS FOOD OBSERVATION
With works by Donald Burgy, Åsa Ersmark, Hollis Frampton, João Maria Gusmão + Pedro Paiva, Martin Laborde, Daragh Reeves, Aki Sasamoto

Rua de S. Joaquim nr. 2, Campo de Ourique, LISBOA
(entrance on the left side of Igreja de Santa Isabel)

Can It be eaten? Is it edible? Should it be eaten? Is it safe to eat?… 

These questions get all the more complicated if you’re suspicious of the hand that feeds you. Let us be clear: we strongly support the poisoning of any dictator. But to give the tyrant an indigestion you’ll first hit the food taster. The master strategy of the taster is to savour deep in existential thought. While the warm food makes its way down to the guts of the taster it gets cold on the dictator’s plate. 

In the 19th century the Western world tried to slow down the cooling of food by adopting the service à la russe, by which the courses in a meal are served faster in sequence, like a movie. With this new type of rapid service, the food taster could no longer resort to the old ways to buy time for the cold served revenge… 

On March 5th, 2022 at 22 pm, farO will work as a set for the sequential observation of food-like things, reflecting on what seems edible beyond the sensitive radar of sight and sound.

Saturday's
7 COURSE MENU

APÉRITIF
Coke Sculptures
by Daragh Reeves
(glass vessels and coca-cola, variable dimensions, 2011. courtesy of the artist)

SIDE ORDER
Carrots and Peas
by Hollis Frampton
(16mm, colour, sound, 5’5’’, 1969. copy from Film-makers Coop.)

AMUSE BOUCHE
Casting
by Åsa Ersmark
(video, colour, silent, 2’, 2010. copy from the Filmform archive collection)

MAIN
Food Observation Idea
by Donald Burgy
(video, colour, sound, 4’24’’, 1976. courtesy of the artist)

DESERT
Do Nut Diagram
by Aki Sasamoto
(video, colour, sound, 20’01’’, 2018. courtesy of the artist and Bortolami Gallery)

SALAD AND FRUIT
(all you can eat)
Chopping fruits and vegetables
by João Maria Gusmão + Pedro Paiva
(16 mm, colour, silent, 1’31’’, 2016. courtesy of the artists)

DIGESTIF
Super Weekend
by Martin Laborde
(three reloaded/combinatory compositions, mixed media, 100 x 70 cm, 2021/22. courtesy of the artist)

We thank the artists for the generous contribution to this session.
The lenders. Anna-Karin Larsson and Stefania Bortolami.
This session had the technical support of Carlos Gaspar, Borja Caro and João Simões; and photo coverage by Pedro Alfacinha. The screens were produced by toca do mocho and the projector stands by Gonçalo Barreiros. 
This week our exquisite staircase made of Aalto, Herzog/de Meuron and Breuer is replaced by a food staircase by Martin Laborde. 
At the entrance, as usual, will be THE SLANT STEP.
Produced with the support of Pato em Pequim and Fundo de Fomento Cultural Garantir Cultura Compete 2020 República Portuguesa–Ministério da Cultura. 

Programme (PDF)

SEMANA 2 CARTOONS

SATURDAY, 26 FEBRUARY 2022, 10 PM
farO presents works by Bill Brand, Ben Patterson and Ana Jotta

Attention! The films will be shown only once.
Atenção! Os filmes rodam uma só vez. 

Dear Little Friends, 

Let us briefly introduce you to the life of Pink Panther’s Portuguese father also known as Vasco Granja. Born in Campo de Ourique, not far from farO, at the age of 10 he was already breaking shop windows in the city centre. By 16 he had dropped out of school and was selling silk samples to the bourgeoisie, and later tobacco and books to well-known intellectuals. Schooled over the counter by day, by night he was screening neorealist movies at film clubs channeling the box office return to the anti-fascist struggle, which in return gave him free tickets to torture and prison. 

In the seventies, just after the Portuguese revolution, and 100 jobs later, he became a TV host for the first public television programme dedicated to animation film. Taking inspiration from Norman Mclaren’s film ‘Neighbours’, his programme called for peace by presenting films, independent and commercial, from the two colossal neighbours fighting a Cold War. He proved that American jaw-dropping blocbusters like Tex Avery and Chuck Jones’ Looney Tunes could coexist with the utopian inventiveness of Eastern Bloc experimental animations, like those of Piotr Kamler and Zbigniew Rybczyński. Before running the reel he minutely introduced the cartoons, at length, speaking to all ages and to great despair of a crowd of children anxiously awaiting the pictures to start. 

We cannot say Vasco’s vision was decisive to the lift of the iron-curtain splitting the world, but he certainly planted the seed of curiosity and kind transgression in many generations. farO’s Cartoons is a tribute to humour as the medium par excellence for the Delicate and Great causes. As Patterson would say,  it is the path  of least  resistance to implant subversive ideas. 

ON THIS WEEK'S EPISODE

6 Cartoons
by Bill Brand

BEFORE THE FACT 

16 mm, b&w, sound, 6', 1974

THE CENTRAL FINGER 

16 mm, color, silent, 5' 30'', 1974

AN ANGRY DOG 

16 mm, color, silent, 5’ 30’’, 1974

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

16 mm, color, silent, 7', 1974

NEW YORK STATE PRIMARIES 

16 mm, color, silent, 5’ 30’’, 1975

STILL AT WORK 

16 mm, color, sound, 5', 1975

all copies from the Film-makers' Coop.

A SIMPLE OPERA 

by Ben Patterson 

mono sound, 15' 51' ' , 1995

narrated in his own voice, performed by Amerigo Ormea, Davide Mosconi, Elisabetta Roncucci, Gabriele Bonomo, Philip Corner, Phoebe Neville and Walter Marchetti

courtesy of the Estate of Benjamin Patterson

and

UP THE FALL 

by our neighbour Ana Jotta

a new wall drawing especially for this occasion

and yet again...

The Slant Step

This episode had the technical support of Carlos Gaspar and Borja Caro, and photo coverage by Pedro Alfacinha

The evening programme is printed weekly in Pontinha by Antonio Rijo de Carvalho and, this time, also by Gonçalo Duarte in the ruins of Quinta do Ferro

A Loving Neighbours production, with the support of Fundo de Fomento Cultural Garantir Cultura-Compete 2020 / Republica Portuguesa-Ministerio da Cultura

Thank you Bill Brand, The Estate of Benjamin Patterson and Barbro Patterson, Ana Jotta and her Krazy cat. To Vasco Granja and Amos Vogel.

Programme (PDF)

SEMANA 1 THE IDLE LINE

SATURDAY, 19 FEBRUARY 2022, 10 PM

Rua de S. Joaquim nr. 2, Campo de Ourique, LISBOA 

(entrada do lado esquerdo da Igreja de Santa Isabel)

It’s so difficult to talk about something so vast but so simple as the way of Tao. To talk about the immobile centre of all moving things, that irradiant cluster where all things fall and from where all things a-rise.




We are not in the position to say anything about the invisible membrane from which all is made, the infra-thin line that warps on the threshold of opposites. 




How idle, how fleeting is that frontier!

But the turbulence in the pond, the spasms of the fishing line do nothing, yet there’s nothing they don’t do.

ON THIS SESSION

☯

by Rick Silva

3D animation, colour, silent, 2014

courtesy of the artist

Gnuśna Linia

by Józef Robakowski

VHS transferred to digital, colour, sound, 3’, 1992
courtesy of Modern Art Museum in Warsaw

and again

The Slant Step

found by William Wiley & Bruce Nauman, 1968

replica produced by João Cabral Coutinho

We thank the artists and the lenders, without whom this session wouldn’t have been possible. To Pedro Alfacinha, João Simões, Carlos Gaspar and Borja Caro Montes for the technical support.

With the support of Fundo de Fomento Cultural Garantir Cultura–Compete 2020 / Républica Portuguesa-Ministério da Cultura.

Programme (PDF)

farO SEMANA 0 JACOB'S LADDER

SATURDAY, 12 FEBRUARY 2022, 10 PM

Rua de S. Joaquim nr. 2, Campo de Ourique, LISBOA 

(entrada do lado esquerdo da Igreja de Santa Isabel) 

ON THIS SESSION

William Anastasi 
Without Title (Jacob’s Ladder), 1968


Light, nails, dimensions variable (site specific)
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Jocelyn Wolff 


Standish Lawder 
Necrology (“The sickest joke on film”* H. Frampton), 1970 
16 mm, b&w, sound, 11' 25’’
Copy from the Film-makers’ Coop.


Jim Melchert 
Location Project #10 (Paramount Theater), 1974
6 b&w slide projections
Photo documentation by Peter Ogilvie, transferred to digital
Courtesy of the artist


THE SLANT STEP, found by William Wiley and Bruce Nauman, 1968 

Replica produced by João Cabral Coutinho

***

We are now at farO, far from Oporto. 
It’s been just over a year since we left our former headquarters and moved here, a modernist parish theatre unsuspiciously wedged between the thick walls of an XVIII century church and its mortuary chapels.

Closed off for years, this theatre has grand features. Velvet curtains, wooden walls, a 10 meter wide panoramic screen and a museum grade 35 mm projector which is way too much for us to handle. The best experience of the light cone is from the balcony. It comfortably seats 200, in classic cinema folding chairs. Only there are no stairs to access it, just a hole, cut open between the floors.

We’re all familiar with the feeling of walking up the stairs in the dark and encountering that phantom step at the top of the flight which makes your foot fall in the air and causes a sickly 20 cm vertigo. That last step is Mike Kelley’s definition of art, which was perhaps inspired by the mysterious slant step, a Duchampian cult relic once exchanged among artists, that according to some theories is a toilet footrest to put the guts in the right position.

In this artist tradition, to attune ourselves to a new beginning, for the next six weeks we’ll share pieces, stories and artists we love. Each work of art is a step of a virtual slant staircase for a hole that, up or down, will connect ideas, mediums, places and audiences.
We invite you to step with us into this new programme, climb blindly and walk lightly.





Thank you to Tiago Fortunato, Ricardo Lima, atelier José Adrião, João Maria Gusmão, Galen Melchert and Pato em Pequim for the technical support. To Jim Melchert, William Anastasi and Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, without whom this session wouldn't have been possible. 
With the support of Fundo de Fomento Cultural Garantir Cultura–Compete 2020 / Républica Portuguesa-Ministério da Cultura.

Programme (PDF)

We've moved from Oporto to farO, but always in Lisbon

Jornadas Lúcidas *6*

Jornadas Lúcidas *6* - Oh BLUE!

We're too sad to tell you that Oporto is coming to an end. Our last and longest séance is a listening session dedicated to the supra-sensitive BLUE LIGHT.

Oporto has specially prepared an audio interpretation of K4 the BLUE square, the ecstatic rhapsody from 1917, written in one blow by the genius 1 José de Almada Negreiros. Issued as a K7/cassette (two channel recording, 46' 44'', 2020), starring the voices of the British-European islanders Lotte Allan and Adrian Dannatt and an original soundtrack by Von Calhau, bearers of the square tattooed in blue.

For the first time available to English readers the BLUE square will also be published in its original pamphlet format. Inside it, K4 is announced by a graphic collaboration between Ernesto de Sousa and Carlos Gentil-Homem (silkscreen print, 53.5 × 75.5 cm, 1971), designed for the ever upcoming, open and in progress, mixed media installation Almada, Um Nome de Guerra.

Running on the Portuguese predisposition for sadness, we'll follow with Derek Jarman's final masterpiece, the IKB monochrome classic, BLUE (stereo sound, 79', 1993), so you can shed a tear for our ending without shame. For those who don't meditate or sit cross-legged, this is a much needed guide on how to become a light body towards the immaterial.

Jornadas Lúcidas  6 Oh BLUE! 

Oporto cries its Swan Song, on the weekend of

The Faithful Departed of the socially distant year of 2020 

For the last time, at Cç. Salvador Correia de Sá, 42, 2º Frente,

1200–399 Lisbon. 

Lighter towards the end Æ

*This session will be repeated from Saturday 31st October to Tuesday 3rd November, 2 sessions per day, starting at 7 and 10 pm. Each session has the total duration of 3 hours but you can book to see the pieces separately. There is a limited capacity of people per session.

To make the reservation for the first daily session (from 7 to 10 pm) go to:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/jornadas-lucidas-6-oh-blue-1900-to-2200-tickets-127306642595

To make the reservation for the second daily session (from 10 pm to 1 am) go to:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/jornadas-lucidas-6-oh-blue-2200-to-0100-tickets-127350598067

As usual, entrance is free.*

This session was made possible thanks to the support of the estate of Almada Negreiros, Ernesto de Sousa's estate, Rodrigo Bettencourt da Câmara and DGartes–Governo de Portugal.