ANA BRAVO–PÉREZ

CROSSING THE ATLANTIC OCEAN TO CRY. A TACTILE DECOLONIAL MANIFESTO

Born in the city of Pasto, southwest Colombia, Ana Bravo-Pérez’ studies, publications and work in documentary film and the visual arts have taken her from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, to Caracas, Venezuela; and from the International Film School (EICTV) in San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba, to the National University of the Arts in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Ana has participated in numerous group exhibitions and film festivals internationally, but also uses non-traditional places of expression to raise questions about the need to decolonise knowledge, history, aesthetics and filmmaking. Her multimedia work revolves around decoloniality, migration and memory.

In 2016 I left Latin America and crossed the Atlantic Ocean with a suitcase filled with my personal archive of hard drives, film reels and a few objects, gathered over the 10 years of being a migrant. The process of de-archiving was the point of departure for my research, which revolves around the concepts of Migration, Memory and (De) Coloniality. I interrogate colonial history and neoliberalism through the exercise of memory and research into the origin of materials I work with: porcelain, celluloid and gold.

For me, these materials come from the same source: The Earth. They belong to a particular location, are taken to other places and made into products like celluloid, a derivative of oil, in a process that implies abuse of the environment and people and causes displacement and death. This produces colonial trauma and fragments both my personal memory and the collective memory. I materialise this fragmentation using these media to reconnect with my family history.

Migration enables me to hear the stories of others and realise that we share the colonial wound: the pain of wanting to learn our history but finding only fragments, because colonialism destroyed parts of the story, forced people to forget other parts and introduced the colonisers’ perspective which denies and makes invisible our own stories.

By working with my hands, I connected pieces of the history of the Andean region of Colombia where I was born with other fragmented histories. Through this re-signification of porcelain, celluloid and gold I remembered the teaching I inherited from my mother about “love and patience”, and the reciprocal and responsible relationship we should have with the Earth.

It was the death of my mother that triggered the connection between personal and collective memory. Ritual- performance enabled me to deal with the pain leading to transformation and healing. A JOURNEY OF MIGRATIONS: 4 CASE STUDIES My artistic journey emerged from my desire to move away from the ethnographic interest in explaining ‘the other’ through film and through travel narratives through ‘exotic’ landscapes.

The Woman with a Suitcase, shot in 16mm, is my first fiction film (produced collectively), focusing on migration. It explores the perception of time and the transition to an unknown space with unexpected events. The camera follows the woman, travelling across a green landscape without explanation.

My next work, A Cartography of the Body, migrated away from 16mm to super 8mm in a three-minute exploration of the unseen, in which the camera travels across the body as territory. With this work, I then moved away from the limits of the visual towards the tactile when I created the ritual-perfor mance of burying the film in the Botanical Garden Zuid, a space filled with plants taken from colonized locations.

Ceramics enabled me to work with my hands and reconnect my body with the earth and memory of Colombia. With the research and the tactile practice required to produce my next work, I learned that porcelain came from another colonized territory, and it is a fragile material that requires love and patience because it fractures easily. The Seduction of Brutality brings together two locations of the colonial wound as it unveils the numbers of displaced people in Colombia on fragments of porcelain.

In the last stage of my artistic research, I migrated from porcelain to gold. There is a river in a town called Barbacoas close to my homeland where people used to find small gold nuggets and make gifts for the family. Today it is a site of violence and displacement due to the exploitation of gold and other resources. In The Factory of Tears I started to create porcelain tears and ended up with three gold tears. Through this process I felt that re-signifying these materials was a move towards healing and transformation.

QUIPU In 1616, the Quechua writer Felipe Goman Poma de Ayala, wrote what is now the main historical reference for the Andean history, in which he introduced the system of quipu. Quipu is a tactile system of threads and knots, that required substantial time, patience and an alternative thought process for its creation and interpretation. It was use for tax and census-keeping as well as for conveying complex messages and for storytelling.

All my titles begin with the word quipu.

Quipu: how does one become a filmmaker while learning to be a migrant?

The Woman with a Suitcase 09´ 20 16mm / colour 2015—2017

Being in permanent movement In transit, semi-permanent Semi-nomad Sometimes with light luggage Sometimes with heavy belongings A Cartography of the Body S8mm / reversal film / b&w / silent / co-creation with nature 2017—2018

The 23rd of November 2017 in a ritual-performance that I called, My Second Burial. I buried the film A Cartography of The Body with some other elements. The film was disinterred in June 2018, completing 7 months of being subjected to the soil and weather conditions at Botanical Garden Zuid in Amsterdam.

Director Ana Bravo-Pérez Cast Magali Fugini and Guadalupe Alessandro Producers Paulo Pecora and Natalia Bianchi First AD Valeria Curcio Production Designer Lorena Morris Costume Designer Gabriela Grajales Editors Natalia Bianchi / Ana Bravo Pérez Cinematography Martin Patlis Focus Puller Camila Suarez Folch Stills Photography Mayra Gomez Colourist Lujan Montes Backstage s8mm Paulo Pecora Associate Producers Tania Giuliani and Mayra Gomez With the support of Itekoa and Filmwerkplaats WORM Rotterdam

Special Thanks to Juan Pablo Mendez, Bernardo Zanota, Vesna Petresin, Kristina Daurova, Timon Hagen, Mikko Keskiivari, Sergio Gonzáles Cuervo, Nick Carbone and Eyal Sivan.

Quipu: A Thousand Broken Pieces Porcelain Dimensions variable

Quipu: The Factory of Tears The White Gold Screen How to decolonise film? Historically, film has been used as a tool for colonisation; in its form lies a legacy of colonial content and practice. It is this inheritance that encouraged me to imagine and propose different artistic gestures in an attempt to decolonise film. The White Gold Screen is a film installation composed of three works: — A Thousand Broken Pieces (porcelain screen) — A Cartography of the Body (S8mm b&w film), a co-creation with nature. — The Migrating Film (16mm colour film), a co-creation with airports X-ray systems. I took a can of 16mm film with me on my journeys migrating from country to country. Doing so the film was exposed to airport x-ray systems more than 12 times. Porcelain and gold leaf 24k Dimensions variable

Quipu: The Seduction of Brutality Porcelain

Analogue Film Installation

Dimensions variable These three works are on display inside an octagonal projection room that adapts the form of Chakana, a geometric form present in different constructions in The Andes before colonisation.

The film installation tries to interrogate the cinematographic ‘dispositif’ in its primordial dimensions: architectural (the conditions for image projection), technological (production and distribution) and discursive (a film that traditionally tells a story). In the process of making each piece, the original research question about film became increasingly connected to the broader question about how to heal the colonial wound?

Created by Ana Bravo Pérez Sound design and electronic sound objects by Juan Orozco With the support of Botanical Garden Zuid, Mincultura (Col) and Filmwerkplaats WORM.