Filipa César

CACHEU, 2012

16mm film transferred to HD video, colour, sound, 10’20’’

In Cacheu, a lecture, performed by Joana Barrios, brings together elements of César’s research on four colonial statues, which are stored today at one of the first establishment for slave trade in the West African country of Guinea Bissau – the Cacheu fortresses, constructed by the Portuguese in 1588. The lecture traces back through moments where these statues cast symbolic conflicts while inhabiting different contexts: on a pedestal during Portuguese colonialism, dethroned and broken in pieces on the ground after Independence in the film Sans Soleil by Chris Marker, as a background scene in Mortu Nega by Flora Gomes, and finally displayed at the Cacheu fortress. Once again, Filipa César applies the economic technique of using a single shot – letting a 16mm film roll to the end – without editing. Here, the montage is a process that takes place before shooting, so that the image produced is the result of a performative assemblage between text, acting, projected image and framing by the cameraman and director of photography, Matthias Biber. This film was shot as a performance in the context of the congress What Happened 2081 programmed by Georg Diez and Christopher Roth, on the 24th of March 2012 the Kunst-Werke, Berlin.