“São Tomé Revisitado” (São Tomé Revisited)

São Tomé Revisitado is a work in progress articulated through an installation and a performance, in which the materials used in the process become visible.

Silvia Zayas proposes a collaborative work with her mother, Isabel Serra, based on intimate memory and forgetting, using 8mm film material retrieved from her family archives, recorded in the ex Portuguese colony of São Tomé, Africa, in the 60s and 70s. The piece begins with a visit by mother and daughter to São Tomé, where Isabel Serra lived in the 60s, on which they seek to retrace the work of the camera 40 years back. The camera is handed from mother to daughter as an act of choreography, in an attempt to situate the present or foresee the future beyond memories of the past.

During the performance, a live staging device allows different possible editing results of a potential documentary which will not be carried out. The aim of this is to share an editing space with the public in which the content of the reappropriated material itself can be continuously displaced. A sort of detective plot is put into action in which we search for the trace of the cameraman who filmed the 8mm sequences, bringing the imprints of the past into dialogue with current reality. Through this exercise we follow the traces of an unknown crime, a nameless murderer, and an unidentified victim.

São Tome Revisitado is made up of the video Elvis Presley Vs. Pêro Escobar, made by the artist, and an action which takes place in collaboration with the public. On the one hand, the film fits into a conventional format; it is watched in silence and cannot be modified. It thus functions as material which belongs to the past and will remain as it is, unchanged in the future. On the other hand, the action consists in what the artist calls a “documentary device” made up of several video sequences which are jumbled and created, and whose sound is modified, changing their meaning within what could become another film. The documentary can thus be considered to be open and moving. It is edited or has versions made of it via cinematographic fictions and clichés. The word “live” is part of the whole of the film it aims to construct. The staging aims to make visible the impossibility of coming to a closed end which will deal with the story in a truthful way, in a situation in which the public plays an active role in constructing the documentary. It allows their desires relating to colonial issues and the image to emerge and become visible.

Silvia Zayas attempts to explain autobiography and the idea of history with a dose of humour incorporated into her performance. Debate, reflection and the public’s comments can alter the reading of the video sequences proposed.

With this piece the artist proposes a reflection on the future through the traces of the past. It begins as a thriller enacted in reality through a game between mother and daughter, later to be transformed into a science fiction tale via a journey from the Cold War of the 80s to the future.

Created by: Silvia Zayas in collaboration with Isabel Serra.
This project has been realised thanks to a MUSAC Art Grant, 2011.

Silvia Zayas (León, 1987) is an artist, trained as a psychologist, who works on the borderline between performance, video and expanded choreography. Her most recent work searches for ways to carry the language of the documentary over into different staging devices. Some of her most relevant pieces include:  Tríptico 0 at Pushing the Medium, International Artistic Symposium. Nodar, Portugal, (2006). ART/HURT: heridas en venta produced by KREA Expresión Contemporánea, Vitoria-Gasteiz (2008) and first shown at Off Limits, Madrid, (2009). Devenir, devenir (on a grant from Danza Estrella Casero, Universidad de Alcalá de Henares, first shown at En Tránsito festival, La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2009). She has also worked with filmmaker Chus Domínguez on the piece Silent Karaoke, shown at Film Festival, Ponferrada, (2010), Festival Sismo, Madrid, (2010) and the 24th Festival Les Instants Vidéo. Camagüey, Cuba, (2011). More recently she has been working on a series of collaborative performances with her mother Isabel Serra, using material from 8mm film archives taken in the 60s and 70s in the ex Portuguese colony of São Tomé. These works are No se habla de política en la mesa (Teatro Albéitar, León (2011), where she worked exclusively with theatre lighting and sound; and the performance and documentary project São Tomé revisitado (MUSAC Art Grant 2011) first staged at Escena Contemporánea, Madrid (2012) and also shown at CA2M, Madrid; Ballets Roses (Teatro Pradillo and In-presentable Festival, La Casa Encendida, 2012). As part of a wider project investigating colonialism is the video-essay Elvis Presley vs Pêro Escobar ( http://vimeo.com/silviazayas/elvispero ). Another one of her videos, on Guinea Bissau, This is a lamp, was first screened at ALTERNATIVA 2012, the group exhibition Materialność/Materiality. Wyspa Institut of Art, Gdansk, Polonia (2012).