We finish our review of the screenings cycle that took place during the “Art Madrid-Proyector'20” program with the BUT Film Festival (Netherlands) and the three Portuguese proposals of InShadow, Loop.Lisboa and FUSO - Lisbon Annual Festival of International Video Art.

While FUSO and Loop are exclusively dedicated to video creation and film proposals, InShadow and BUT host more cross-cutting initiatives where different disciplines are worked on or they give way to more experimental and underground works. For Art Madrid, Loop and FUSO came up with a joint proposal around the work of the artist João Cristóvão Leitão.

The InShadow festival presents the best of transdisciplinary artistic creation in the areas of video dance, documentary, performance, exhibitions and installations. Its 11th edition was held at a dozen venues in the city of Lisbon: Marioneta Museum, Teatro do Bairro, Portuguese Cinematheque, Junior Cinematheque, Santa Catarina Space, Mercês Cultural Center, Marvila Library, Appleton Square, FBAUL Cistern, Ler Devagar, Gallery Otoco and Fnac Chiado, with various proposals and unpredictable encounters between cinema, dance and technology.

The artworks selected by InShadow for Art Madrid were: "Complex of shadow", by João Afonso Vaz; "Mujer vacío", by Max Larruy y Berta Blanca T. Ivanow; "Excuse my dust", by Maria Stella Andreacchio, Stefano Croci & Agata Torelli; "Makyō", by Brian Imakura; "The act of breathing", by Hana Yamazaki; "Bubblegum", by Ryan Renshaw; "Walls of limerick", by Arturo Bandinelli; "Alta", by Antti Ahokoivu; "Sculpt the motion", by Devis Venturelli, and "Brute", by Cass Mortimer Eipper.

Frame from "Mujer vacío", by Max Larruy & Berta Blanca T. Ivanow

BUT Film Festival is one of the most alternative projects on the international scene and is exclusively dedicated to B series films, Underground and Trash Films. The organisers announce that during the five days of the festival, there will be an extra dose of films full of violence, absurdity, creativity and pettiness.

They warn that they are looking for visitors who... : • Aren't likely to scream at the sight of blood! • Will be able to admire creativity to absurd extremes! • Like to combine a cozy atmosphere with watching films!

BUT participated in Art Madrid with the following artworks: "Zure Zult" (2016), by Angella Lipskaya; "Birds of a Feather" (2019), by Dann Parry; "L'ours noir" (2016), by Méryl Fortunat-Rossi & Xavier Seron; "Fabulous friendly cooking" (2018), by Nicky Heijmen & Tobias Mathijsen; "Bravure" (2018), by Donato Sansone; "Ringo Rocket Star and his song for Yuri Gagarin" (2019), by Rene Nuijens; "The Scuzzies" (2019), by Jimmy Screamer Clauz.

Frame from "Birds of a Feather" (2019), by Dann Parry

Loops.Lisboa is an annual exhibition presented by Festival Temps d’Images Lisboa and the National Museum of Contemporary Art since 2014, it is a unique showcase exploring the loop as an essential form of the language of film and video art. Starting in 2020, it becomes part of and international network dedicated to the form the Loop. The network includes: Mario Gutiérrez Cru (Festival Proyector, Madrid - Spain); Sandra Lischi (Onda Video, Pisa - Italy); Tom Van Vliet (WWVF, Amsterdam - The Netherlands); Cine Esquema Novo collective (Porto Alegre - Brazil) and Irit Batsry and Alisson Avila Loops.Lisboa/Festival Temps D'Images (Lisbon - Portugal).

FUSO was created in 2009, as the only festival with an ongoing national and international video art program in Lisbon. FUSO showcases in free outdoor projections, at Lisbon’s museum cloisters, video programs that are selected and presented exclusively for the festival by national and international curators. In addition to the proposed programs, each year FUSO also honours one or more artists who are historically and fundamentally important in video art. One of the main aspects of FUSO is the promotion of new national creations through an annual Open Call contest open to Portuguese artists or foreign artists living in Portugal

Fotograma de "Ulysses' Portrait

“Ulysses’ Portrait” by João Cristóvão Leitão (Loops.Lisboa Award, 2015).

The video is part of a trilogy that includes Irineu’s Portrait and Mónica’s Portrait, Jury’s Award and Audience Award, FUSO: Anual de Vídeo Arte Internacional de Lisboa.

"Ulysses’ Portrait" is a giddy journey through time and through literature. A journey where Ulysses is entrapped by the mechanism that is the loop, which operates at a narrative level, at a spatio-temporal level (given the use of a single sequence shot) and at a visual level (by means of the constant reuse of the same imagery material). After all, "Ulysses’ Portrait" is nothing more than an act of questioning human identity when confronting it with the possibility of time’s circularity and with its objective and subjective durations. Ulysses is Ulysses. However, that doesn’t mean that he isn’t, simultaneously, Cervantes, Pierre Menard, Alexander the Great, Caesar, Homer, Tchekhov, Nietzsche, Borges and, undoubtedly, myself as well.

João Cristóvão Leitão earned a Bachelor’s degree in Theatre (Dramaturgy) at the Lisbon Theatre and Film School and a Master’s degree in Multimedia Art at the School of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon (FBAUL/CGD Academic Merit Award). Currently acquiring a PhD in Fine Arts by the same institution, researching subjects related to the practices of expanded cinema and to the literary and philosophical universes of Jorge Luis Borges. Also obtained training from Guillaume de Oliveira (2013) of the Oskar & Gaspar collective.

As a creator, he develops performance, video art and installation projects, which have been displayed around the world (Austria, Brazil, England, France, Ireland, Italy, Serbia, South Korea, Spain, Peru and Portugal) and have been awarded several times.

The work of Julian Manzelli (Chu) (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1974) is situated within a field of research in which art adopts methodologies close to scientific thinking without renouncing its poetic and speculative dimension. His practice is structured as an open process of experimentation, in which the studio functions as a laboratory: a space for trial, error, and verification, oriented less toward the attainment of certainties than toward the production of new forms of perception. In this sense, his work enters into dialogue with an epistemology of uncertainty, akin to philosophical traditions that understand knowledge as a process of becoming rather than closure.

Manzelli explores interstitial zones, understood as spaces of transit and transformation. These ambiguous areas are not presented as undefined but as potential—sites where categories dissolve, allowing the emergence of hybrid, almost alchemical configurations that reprogram the gaze. Geometry, far from operating as a normative system, appears tense and destabilized. His precarious constructions articulate a crossing between intuition and reason, play and engineering, evoking a universal grammar present in both nature and symbolic thought. Thus, Manzelli’s works do not represent the world but rather transfigure it, activating questions rather than offering closed answers.

Avícola. Escultura magnética. Madera, imanes, laca automotriz y acero. 45 x 25 cm. 2022.

Science and its methods inspire your process. What kinds of parallels do you find between scientific thinking and artistic creation?

Science and art are two disciplines that I believe share a great deal and are undoubtedly deeply interconnected. I am interested in that point of intersection, and although they are often placed in opposition, I think they share a common origin. Both involve a continuous search, a need for answers that stems from curiosity rather than certainty, and that often—or in many cases—leads both artists and scientists into uncomfortable, uncertain positions, pushing them out of their comfort zones. I believe this is a fundamental and very compelling aspect shared by these two disciplines, which in some way define us as human beings.

In this sense, both share experimentation as a core axis of their practice. Trial and error, testing, and the entire process of experimentation are what generate development. In my case, this applies directly to the studio: I experience it as a laboratory where different projects are developed and materials are tested. It is as if one formulates a hypothesis and then puts it to the test—materials, procedures, forms, colors—and outcomes emerge. These results are not meant to be verified, but rather, in art, I believe their function is to generate new modes of perception, new ways of seeing, and new experiences.

Receptor Lunar #01. Ensamble de Madera Reciclada torneada. 102 x 26 x 26 cm. De la serie Fuerza orgánica. 2023.

You work within the interstices between the natural and the artificial, the figurative and the abstract. What interests you about these ambiguous zones, and what kinds of knowledge emerge from them?

I have always been quite restless, and that has led me to immerse myself in different fields and disciplines. I believe there is a special richness in interstitial spaces—in movement back and forth, in circulation between media. These spaces have always drawn my attention: ambiguous places, hybrid zones. There is something of an amphibious logic here—amphibians as entities that carry and transmit information, that share, that cross boundaries and membranes. In my case, this is closely linked to what I understand as freedom, especially at a time marked by categorization, labeling, and a profound distortion of the very concept of freedom.

On another level, more metaphysical in nature, it is within the mixture—within that blending—that the living energy of creating something new appears, which is undoubtedly a fundamental aspect of what it means to be human. It is as if “one thing becomes something else outside the mold.” This interaction is necessary to break structures, to build new ones, to transmute—to undergo something almost alchemical. I believe fixation is the enemy. In a way, ambiguity is what allows us to reprogram our gaze and generate new points of view.

De la serie Naturaleza orgánica. Madera torneada recuperada de podas de sequía y rezagos de construcción. 2025.

Movement, repetition, and sequence appear as visual strategies in your work. What role does seriality play in the generation of meaning?

Movement, repetition, and sequence are very present in my work. I have a long background in animation, and in some way that interest begins to filter into the other disciplines in which I work. Thus, movement also appears in my visual art practice.

Seriality is a way of thinking about time and of introducing a certain narrative and sense of action into the work, while at the same time conditioning the viewer’s experience. It invites the viewer to try to decipher repetition as a kind of progression. I am particularly interested in more abstract forms of narrative. In this type of narrative, where there is no clear figuration, repetition begins to establish a pulse, a “beat” that marks the passage of time. What is interesting, I think, is the realization that repetition is not exactly duplication, and that what seems identical begins to mutate over time, through rhythm, or through its own unfolding history.

De la serie Naturaleza orgánica. Madera torneada recuperada de podas de sequía y rezagos de construcción. 2025.

You work with geometric and constructive systems. What role does geometry play as a symbolic language within your practice?

Geometry is present in my work in multiple forms and dimensions, generating different dynamics. Generally, I tend to put it into crisis, into tension. When one engages closely with my works, it becomes clear that constructions based on imprecise and unstable balance predominate. I am not interested in symmetry or exactness, but rather in a dynamic construction that proposes a situation. I do not conceive of geometry as a rigid system.

I believe this is where a bridge is established between the intuitive and the rational, between playfulness and engineering—those unexpected crossings. At the same time, geometry functions as a code, a language that connects us to a universal grammar present in nature, in fractals, and that undoubtedly refers to symbolism. It is there that an interesting portal opens, where the work begins to re-signify itself and becomes a process of meaning-making external to itself, entirely uncertain. The results of my works are not pieces that represent; rather, I believe they are pieces that transfigure and, in doing so, generate questions.

WIP. Madera torneada recuperada de podas de sequía y rezagos de contrucción. 2022.

To what extent do you plan your works, and how much space do you leave for the unexpected—or even for error?

In terms of planning, it depends greatly on the project and even on the day. Some projects, due to their scale or complexity, require careful planning, especially when they involve the participation of other people. In many cases, planning is undoubtedly essential.

That said, in the projects I do plan, I am always interested in leaving space for improvisation, where chance or the unfolding of the process itself can come into play. I believe this is where interesting things begin to emerge, and it is important not to let them pass by. Personally, I would find it very boring to work on pieces whose outcome I already know in advance. For me, the realization of each work is an uncertain journey; I do not know where it will lead, and I believe that is where its potential lies—not only for me, but also for the work itself and for the viewer’s experience.