Greetings community members
This proposal is a request for support to a Brazilian artist, who had her project approved to participate in pIAR an artist residency pIAR – Kumasi, Ghana, Thaís de Almeida Prado filmsdeinfiltracao.near.
Me as curator and founder of Nomade Label, I decided to create this topic on the Forum, to support her project.
The continuation of this topic will be held by @pinkalsky , other Nomade Label contributor.
I’m proud to introduce to the community this beautiful project:
Thais de Almeida Prado(a.k.a. @filmesdeinfiltracao) :
"I propose a site-specific project where we will play with the idea of a foreign body. We will develop micro videos and micro performances that will be posted on pages such as Mintbase, Instagram, Youtube, among other platforms.
As a foreigner, for this project, the proposal is to look at Kumasi, in Ghana and discover little by little about the place, through the relationship with the people, through walking through the town or village, through the weather.
From this feeling of foreignness, I want to deal with the idea of affectivity, I want to affect and be affected by the space and, with that, realize how the cosmology of art happens by the presence of these strange bodies (us) there.
The idea of arriving without knowing the place is supported by a fresh look, a look of discovery, a child’s non-judgmental look that observes, perceives, and wants to interact, an excitement to discover the new, even if this new is very old. This will open the way to interact with the local population, to listen to the stories of the place, the hidden stories, to observe the ruins and imagine what might have been there. The point is to create a relational cartography of the place, to create fictions and frictions (fiction + documentary) of reality.
Inspired by a paragraph from the novel “Estar Sendo, Ter Sido”, by Hilda Hilst, I will move like a train, and I will try to move from myself.
To Where are the trains going, my father? To Mahal, Tamí, to Camirí, spaces on the map, and then the father laughed: nowhere, my son, you can go and even if the train moves, you don’t move from yourself.
For the last 17 years I have been developing hybrid works that touch on fRictionalization, transitoriness, displacement, return to places and borders, either artistic or geographical. I develop activities that intervene in spaces, creating transits and approximations; works that provoke displacements in the structures that control the social-spatial dynamics; poetic practices that friction/fictionalize territories; works that deal with dichotomies, polarities and existing contradictions; collaborative actions and realizations that respond to the needs and urgencies of the current context. My most recent works bring at their core precisely poetic practices that friction territories. The interest in participating in this residency comes from the desire to develop new fictional cartographies.
Initial Budget:
About The Artist
Thais de Almeida Prado
Filmmaker, multidisciplinary artist and performer; Thais’ work permeates the interdisciplinary boundaries between cinema, performance, dance, theatre, visual arts, music and literature, often in collaboration with other artists.
In 2021 two of Thais’ films had a premiere: “Nowhere” (71 min) and “Aller / Retour” (3min30). In quarantine times, Thais’ also participated in several Online projects with her audiovisual works. In 2019, she made the project “The Purge. From Violence. From Bodies that Collide. From Asphyxiation. From the fear of a metropolis”, at the artistic residency at Centro da Terra, SP (BR). During the same year, was awarded with the Odyssée fellowship developing a project in the artistic residence Saline Royale d’Arc-et-Senans, France.
With the artist Lucas Bambozzi, she made the video installation “Icamiaba-Beatnik”, also made VR video-dance, “Coordinates’’, and was the curator of the audiovisual project “Luz de 5ª”, in Sao Paulo. Between 2015 and 2017 Thais spent a season in Germany where she collaborated with several artists such as November Wong, Rachel Alliston, Lee Cofa and Mareike Spendel. Also in Germany (Cologne) she developed the choreographic-installation “Co2 and other Toxins”, inspired by the dam disaster in Mariana (MG, Brazil) in 2015.
Filmography: “My Part” (2021 – 7min); “With My Dog-Eyes” (2021 – 45min); Aller/Retour (2021 – 5min); B - There is something wrong with Charlie (15min, 2021); “Threesome” (2020 - 5min); “Nowhere” (2020 - 71min); "About Watching – a witness-film in miniseries” (2015 - 103min); “Os Barcos” (The Boats, 2012 – 23min); “Exercice du Regarde” (2010 - 8min); “Passagens” (Passages, 2011 – 9min); “Disturbios no Vazio” (Noises in the Void, 2009 – 3min).
WHAT IS pIAR?
perfocraZe International Artist Residency- [pIAR] hosted by “crazinisT artisT studiO” is an interdisciplinary artists’ program and a performance ‘hatchery’. It serves as an incubator, laboratory and an interactive platform for artists, activists, researchers, curators and thinkers to develop and engage with one another on a rich variety of artistic research projects. The studio is located in the hub of Kumasi, the second largest city of Ghana and the capital of Ashanti Kingdom.
pIAR has been designed as a site and point of contact for promoting cultural exchange between international and local performers, interactive artists and film/video/photography artists. Participants are encouraged to explore the contemporary spirit and rituals of performativity in multigenerational societies and cultures, as well as questions of race and politics, especially through performance art, installations, music, video, and film/moving images. The residency runs from January to end of August each year. We invite and accept proposals from international and local artists to stay and develop their projects over a period of 4 weeks. By focusing on processes and projects rather than products, we encourage collaborative relationship between local and international practitioners while sharing experiences through discussions, research, workshops, presentations, lectures and experimental performative/participatory works. Projects developed in the residency will be eligible for exhibition at Chale Wote Art Festival, Alliance Francaise, public spaces, schools and other alternative art spaces.
Our focus is on performativity while aiming to merge contemporary art, culture and the people through collaborative practices. The Ashanti Kingdom is full of performative expressions, rituals, festivals and artistic cultures that we believe our artists in residence will gain from collaborating with and learning from.
WHY SHOULD I BECOME A PATRON?
Your donations/contributions will directly support the artists and workers in residence for effective administrative works
Due to our logistical inability to fully fund our diverse and talented selection of participants each year, we are appealing to our audience, fans, organisation, art enthusiasts and the general public for gap funding. With this gap funding, pIAR will be able to move forward and enhance Kumasi and surrounding regions with an influx of creative energies, projects, and dialog from fellow artists from all over the world. Without this support, the residency program will require participating artists to host themselves, unduly weighting the pool of participants to non-African participants from wealthier nations. We would be glad to accept any contributions so that the program can run effectively and encourage this critical cultural project of artistic development and cultural exchange.
WHAT WILL MY DONATIONS AND CONTRIBUTIONS BE USED FOR?
pIAR hosts over 60 international artists from January to August each year:
- pIAR team is made up of selfless volunteers without any salaries or wages. We therefore hope with the supports from our donors and patrons we will be able to create reasonable salaries for all our workers for effective administrative responsibilities.
- Our hope is to be able to support artists from developing countries who cannot afford their travel expenses should we get enough fundings.
- Feeding of artists and interns daily: Though artists are to take care of their own meals, it will best to reduce any financial burden on the participating artists and interns especially from developing countries who cannot afford for themselves regular meals.
- Material costs: We will be able to cover reasonable production and research cost for less privileged artists in residency should we get enough support from our patrons.
- Utilities (Wifi, Gas, Water, Electricity): It will be important for constant internet availability and access to facilitate research and internet activities for the artists. We are on prepaid electricity system that required regular reloading of credit for usage.
- Organising Artist Talk, Public Presentations and Workshops: We understand the financial commitments in organising these activities that demand the provision of refreshment (water, drinks, snacks), running of errands, renting spaces, equipments and printing of materials.
