ERNESTO DE SOUSA CENTENARY 1921–2021/22
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CEMES NEWSLETTER 2021-05-18
MY FRIEND
WORKS AND DOCUMENTS FROM THE ERNESTO DE SOUSA COLLECTION (1921-1988)
MNAC - Rua Capelo 2021-05-18 - 2021-09-26
The work of Helena Almeida - Meu Amigo (My Friend)- which gives the title to the exhibition, symbolizes the sharing and artistic companionship that punctuated Ernesto de Sousa's entire life. His aesthetic, historical and critical activity developed from neorealism to the most revolutionary neo-avant-garde of the 60s and 70s, including the dawns of post-modernity and reference studies on popular sculpture. The actions and art projects he carried out were always marked by multiple relationships of creative complicity, which are very evident in the multiplicity and representativeness of the works in his collection.
These artists and these works are an emotional and aesthetic resonance of Ernesto de Sousa's unique path, and also allow us a retrospective look at the panorama of contemporary Portuguese art and its international context. (E.T:)
1. David Santos - Ernesto de Sousa e o Neorrealismo - 16 june
2. Mariana Pinto dos Santos - Almada - 30 june
3. Delfim Sardo - Ernesto de Sousa e as Neo-Vanguardas Portuguesas - 8 september
4. Sofia Nunes - relações Ernesto de Sousa e Fluxus - 15 september
5. Paulo Pires do Vale - Alternativa Zero - 22 september
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CEMES NEWSLETTER - 8 APRIL 2021
The Appleton Associação Cultural presents the Ernesto de Sousa Cycle from April 2021, 8 to 22, to celebrate the centenary of this free and experimental artist, who dedicated himself to the study, dissemination and practice of the arts, criticism and essay, photography, cinema , curatorship and theater, a program divided between the before and after the day of his birthday, on April 18th.
The Cycle starts with Revolution My Body no. 2, a 1976 work that consists of the projection of a film in Super8 and that invites the public to intervene on 3 sheets of paper / screen. On Sunday, April 18, the date on which Ernesto de Sousa would celebrate his 100th birthday, Appleton will be exceptionally open between 10 am and 1 pm, so that the public can attend a special intervention in the work.
That same day, the first episode of the third season of the Appleton Podcast will be released, which will be a conversation dedicated to Ernesto de Sousa and his centenary between David Maranha, Isabel Alves and Vera Appleton.
This celebration also includes solo performances by Rafael Toral and Pedro Sousa, on April 16 and 22 - (7 pm to 9 pm continuously) respectively. These two artists received the Ernesto Sousa Scholarship (BES) and best represent the spirit of this initiative, which for 20 years has continued the work of dissemination to which it has always dedicated itself. Rafael Toral was the second to receive this scholarship, in 1994, and Pedro Sousa was the last recipient of this initiative that inspired several generations of Portuguese experimentalism and avant-garde in carrying out intermedia projects in residence at the Experimental Intermedia Foundation, New York, with the support from FLAD and Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian 1992-2013.
Like Revolution My Body no. 2, these concerts have a very low limit of assistance in the room, in order to respect the health rules in force. With a continuous development, the two concerts were designed for an audience in permanent rotation.
Finally, the totality of Ernesto de Sousa's stamps will be presented to the public for the first time, a constant presence in his artistic, curatorial practice, as well as in the mail art he exchanged with artists around the world.
The organization of the Ernesto de Sousa Cycle is in charge of David Maranha (BES 1997) and Manuel Mota (BES 1995), in collaboration with Isabel Alves (CEMES), and is one of several tributes to the artist, which some Portuguese institutions will also pay throughout the year. This cycle has the support of DGARTES and MNAC, which kindly provided the work Revolution My Body Nr.2.
The work donated to MNAC in 2016, consists of digitized film (Super 8; color; no sound), projected on white sheets (screen), each with a serigraphic inscription "your body is my body" and a manifest which invites the public to intervene on the screen, when the projection is interrupted. Variable duration. 1976.
According to the author's instructions, the projection should be accompanied by the screens intervened in previous performances, namely those of Malpartida, 1976, with the intervention of Wolf Vostell and other artists present at SACOM 1.
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CEMES NEWSLETTER - 1 MARÇO 2021
ERNESTO DE SOUSA CENTENARY COLLOQUIUM
CALL FOR PAPERS, UNTIL 31 MAR.21
Launch date: January 19, 2021 · by Art History Institute
Colloquium on June 2, 2021, Art Library of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
Co-organized by BAA FCG and IHA / NOVA FCSH (PIM Project), in conjunction with the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum
The 18th of April 2021 marks the centenary of the birth of Ernesto de Sousa, who from the forties of the 20th century until his death, on the 6th of October 1988, played a fundamental role in the arts in Portugal and marked the generations of artists who came to work after April 25th. To mark its centenary, the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum will present Ernesto de Sousa Luiz Vaz 73's mixed-media work at the Grande Auditório, in collaboration with the Music Service. In parallel and in conjunction with this program, the Art Library organizes the Centenary Ernesto de Sousa Colloquium with the Institute of Art History of NOVA FCSH on the 2nd of June.
Call for papers
Unfolding himself for various activities and interests, anti-specialist by choice and vocation, Ernesto de Sousa stood out in the realization and criticism of cinema, in cinema, in photography, in the study of popular art, in art criticism, in theater, and then in experimental cinema, in happening, in performance, in the Fluxus movement and its introduction in Portugal, in multimedia art, and, at the same time, in promoting meetings between artists, and between artists and audiences (his session became famous swiper-swiper-slide projection from Documenta de Kassel that he visited in 1972). He collaborated in several publications, authored books, directed magazines, theorized a heterodox version of neo-realism, and later on experimental art. In the various creative paths he traveled, Ernesto de Sousa always defended the overturning of boundaries between art and life, and in Bertolt Brecht, Joseph Beuys, Wolf Vostell, Almada Negreiros or Rosa Ramalho and Franklin Vilas-Boas Neto chose his tutelary figures. He caressed a group of key artists from the post-25 April period, curated exhibitions and collective artistic events, held several individual exhibitions and curated “Alternativa Zero” in 1977, exhibition-event, which marked contemporary Portuguese art. He commissioned the Portuguese representation at the Venice Biennale three times, participating in a collective work with Ana Hatherly, João Vieira, Ernesto de Melo e Castro and António Sena (1980), and then choosing Helena Almeida (1982) and José Barrias (1984).
The Centenary Colloquium of Ernesto de Sousa intends to evoke the critic, film and theatre director, theorist, aesthetic operator, to promote the discussion and sharing of the most recent studies about his work and its importance in the context of contemporary art. Call for proposals for 20-minute communications on Ernesto de Sousa that address one or more of the following topics associated with him:
- Art criticism, film criticism
- Ethnography and folk art
- History of sculpture in Portugal
- Photography
- Neo-realism
- Experimental art, Fluxus art
- Neo-realistic cinema, experimental cinema
- Theater, happening, performance, installation
- Film Club
- Curatorship
- Vanguard and neo-vanguard
- Mail-art
- Mixed-media
- Artistic networks
- Art and revolution
The abstracts of the communication proposals must have a maximum of 300 words and must be accompanied by the identification of the proposers including:
- Name;
- Institutional affiliation;
- Email and telephone contact (if possible);
- Small biographic note of a maximum of 4/5 lines.
Proposals can be sent to [ernestodesousa2021@gmail.com] until March 8, 2021. Until April 15, 2021 the selected proposals will be announced. The colloquium will be filmed and the recordings will be partially available online. There will be a selection (through peer review) of the communications presented to be published in a special issue of the magazine of the Institute of Art History (series W), to be launched in late 2021.
Organizing committee
Ana Barata, BA FCG
Mariana Pinto dos Santos, IHA / NOVA FCSH, co-IR PIM Project
Scientific commission
Afonso Ramos, IHA / NOVA FCSH
Ana Barata, Art Library of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
Isabel Alves, CEMES
Mariana Pinto dos Santos, IHA / NOVA FCSH
Ricardo Nicolau, Serralves Museum
Rita Fabiana, Calouste Gulbenkian Museum
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CEMES NEWSLETTER - 2 JUNE 2021
PRESENTATION OF LUIZ VAZ 73
ON THE GRAND AUDITORIUM STAGE OF GULBENKIAN FOUNDATION, JUNE 2nd 2021
The team involving several people is working for the presentation of Luiz Vaz 73 in 2021, in the Grand Auditorium, the scheduled date is June 2nd. Since last year they have been surveying all the information compiled for the 2009 presentation. They are cleaning / restoring Ernesto de Sousa's swiper-slides, which will then be digitalized. Similar work will be carried out with Jorge Peixinho's magnetic tapes. For the presentation, now as a work of the CAM-Collection, they have been assembling a multidisciplinary team in which collaborates Jaime Reis. The Music Service and the Central Services are working with the Art Library to articulate this show with the conferences and round tables that are being organized.
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CEMES NEWSLETTER
The launch of a book about the photograhy of Ernesto de Sousa with an essay by Emília Tavares, by the Ph collection of INCM, directed by Cláudio Garrudo, is foreseen for the coming weeks. Design by Paulo Condez.
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CEMES NEWSLETTER October 2021
ERNESTO DE SOUSA, EXERCISES OF POETIC COMMUNICATION
WITH OTHER OPERATORS
Exhibition curated by Lilou Vidal
The centenary exhibition of the artist is taking place in two venues of Galerias Municipais, Galeria Quadrum and Galeria da Índia, from 13 de November 2021 to 27 February 2022.
This exhibition based on Ernesto de Sousa’s legacy, artist, poet, curator filmmaker, will explore his work and his archive through an intergenerational and transhistorical dialogic approach.
Reflecting to the complexity to frame or encapsulate the multifaceted practices of Ernesto de Sousa’s work (and his kaleidoscopical definition of art through otherness and life) this show, will attempt to present the different aspects of his oeuvre and transform and turn the power of the Archive, in a way that it no longer categorizes, but un-fixes, re-reads, alliterates, displaces or activates.
A current generation of Portuguese and international artists are invited to dialog with the idiosyncratic work and practice of this major figure from the Portuguese avant-garde with punctual interventions.
Rather than a group exhibition, or a pure retrospective solo show, the format of this exhibition aims to question the mechanism of the monographic exhibition through the liminality and the inclusiveness of the Insert of works, documents, sound pieces, but also readings, performances, screenings, conferences in collaboration with the invited artists.