D-Fuse Report

After our performances in Rio in 2008 and São Paulo in 2009, we were very happy to be invited to Brazil again for this years Festival Multiplicidade www.multiplicidade.com and show our new performance Tektōn internationally for the first time at.

Tekton is a series of organic and technological works exploring the qualities of light and motion, produced by machinic assemblages. In the process of creating the work, the artists build multi-layered light emitting objects into machinic forms; moving wholes, which are then manipulated to produce emergent patterns of stability and disorder in a recursive intermingling between human and machine.

Inspired by the constructivist designs of Vladimir Tatlin, and László MoholyNagy’s Light Space Modulator, physical or mechanical rules are used as creative constraints in a moving architecture of light. Each set of constraints give way to the production of a different tool, resulting in emergent behaviours and forms. The traces of light organise themselves in the tension between noise and pattern.

Working together with Batman Zavareze again was great, he is a curator with quite a unique vision and approach. While in our experience most organisers are quite hands-off once they have put everything in place, Batman was there throughout most of the set-up, made suggestions and helped us work toward the best possible outcome. It goes to show how careful fine-tuning of things like projector and screen positioning, or sound levels, can transform a show from great to superb (without wanting to heave lots of praise on ourselves). So the set-up was a little like a collaborative process, which is something that we are very fond of having as part of our work.

All the production at the venue, the promotion, documentation and social networking work was also very conscientious, we even did a full warm-up show with lights on just for the photographers. There's now a great video of our performance on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaA7Cd3QL0E&list=UUepv9XLnMU33soFl6DR3ng&index=1 and we're looking forward to seeing next year's catalogue with our contribution. The feedback we had from the audience was also great. In some ways it seemed nobody quite knew what to expect, but was very enthralled by what they had just seen and heard.

Batman made use of almost every screen in the gallery to exhibit our works. We were also very happy to show additional works, namely Pathways: King's Cross https://vimeo.com/album/1883927/video/5489065 and Storylines: Rio de Janeiro http://vimeo.com/54037973 , and our taxi driver interview series Brief Encounters/By the Meter https://vimeo.com/album/2098990 Which leads to the other element of our visit to Rio, since we always like to engage on more levels with places that we visit if we get the chance to work on projects that have to do with everyday life, social and environmental themes,

memory and imagination, and the ways cities are represented on film. Rio is particularly interesting in this regard, because there are things happening on many different levels: On one Rio hand a famed tourist destination, known for its magnificent geographical setting, languid beach culture as well as the best parties in the world. On the other, the tensions boiling beneath the joyful surface are well known.

To begin with, while still in the UK we immersed ourselves in films that have been produced in and about Rio, in which recurring themes were social divides, poverty, violence, organised crime and corruption, but also a sense of community and an indefatigable appetite for enjoying vida boa whenever possible. We started work on our new project Storylines: Rio de Janeiro, and for the initial phase we created a multi screen edit of film scenes from Brazilain films shot in Rio de Janiero referencing classic films like City of God , City of Men, and Central Station . These scenes are split up into a grid of smaller canvases arranged within the cinematic frame. Each canvas shows the same sequence, but with a slight time-lag, creating a very dynamic ripple effect. The project is very connected with our Pathways: King's Cross, for which we found film scenes shot in London's colourful King's Cross area and refilmed the same shots in today's environment, combining this with a lingering soundtrack of processed film sound tracks, oral history recordings and environmental sounds.Pathways: King's Cross and its sibling Storylines: Rio de Janeiro are projects that we want to adapt for every major city that we work in.

Between editing and preparations, we did travel through the city, continuing our project Brief Encounters/By the Meter, which was started in summer 2012 during a residency series called Sound Development City. This is and evolving series of short films based on open-ended impromptu interviews with taxi drivers from different cities. Recorded en route, the drivers are invited to talk about their personal history, their home town, the memorable rides they have experienced, and the poignant tales that emerge from this range from the lighthearted to the profound. The stories that the drivers in Rio shared with us and our camera were particularly striking, stories including homelessness, domestic abuse, gang wars, robberies, assaults and more, all flowing like threads through the city streets that we were travelling in the company of a stranger who was paid to take us somewhere but agreed to give us much more than that. Batman's assistant Guto Martino was invaluable during these rides, after a little bit of preparations he pretty much held the conversations himself and summarised for us later what was said. Eventually he also spent hours with us going through the recordings, translating and helping to make edit decisions.

We also did more research for our ongoing project Endless Cities, an exploration of urban conditions globally, which is being developed into a feature-length artist documentary. Whenever we are invited to perform or exhibit in other cities,. use our spare moments to film and collect material for Endless Cities. We were fascinated by the ubiquity of gated communities, so one part of our research was to interview security guards manning the gates. We also made a short visit to a favela and did some filming, but eventually there was only so much we could do in the time we were there.

We also want to thank Cristina Becker from the British Council, Guto Martino from Festival Multiplicidade www.multiplicidade.com and Gracinio Soares for helping us with translating Pathways: King's Cross and Brief Encounters/By the Meter into Portugese for our subtitles, there was a lot to go through! and and Batman for helping make this project happen.

Our intention is to visit Rio again in the near future, hopefully collaborating with local artists so we can continuing our work on Storylines: Rio de Janeiro and also do more research for Endless Cities.