Newsletter  225
October 2022

We have harvested our pomegranates and organized an Open Studio: see below.
This newsletter tells about the most recent residencies. Earlier ones are on page 2022.

On 10 September we had a great Open Studio at OBRAS in Evoramonte
The participating artists were:

• Jane Flett (writer, poet; UK, living in Germany)
• Sophie Tassignon (jazz singer, composer; Belgium, living in Germany)
• Iuliia Bugalova (painter; Ukraine, living in Poland)
• Michael O`Boyle (painter; Ireland)
• Stella Whalley (multimedia; UK)
• James Bell (filmmaker, painter; UK)

Apart from studio visits, Jane recited some of her poems, James showed a movie of him submerged in the landscape (and later his movie that recently was rewarded) and Sophie sang some of her compositions. A highlight was also a performance of Iulia painting and Sophia singing. A video compilation will soon be presented in an update of this newsletter.  
Below are the statements of the participating artists.

Jane Flett

Jane Flett is a Scottish novelist and poet based in Berlin.
Her fiction has been commissioned for BBC Radio 4, Highly Commended in the Bridport Prize, and published in Electric Literature. She’s the author of the chapbooks "Quick, to the Hothouse" and "Mashnotes", and her poetry has been anthologised in the Best British Poetry.
Jane is also one half of the riot-grrrl band Razor Cunts, a creative writing tutor for The Reader Berlin, and a disturbingly accurate tarot reader. When she’s not writing, you’ll find her swimming naked in lakes, hosting queer events, and rollerskating down Tempelhof runway in hotpants.
At OBRAS, she’s working on:
1. A novel about a feminist goddess cult that arises during an environmental apocalypse. The book explores the difficulty of creating a non-hierarchical society and the repercussions of whole-hearted commitment to chaos.
2. An experimental novella about a woman lost in the wilderness, consisting of 100 chapters of 100 words, and inspired by classic fable forms. It’s rooted in Scottish mythology but undermines the patriarchal heritage of the original tales.
3. A weird short story about a quarantine facility for patients infected with “the Earworm”.

Over the past 20 years, Sophie Tassignon has been working on several musical collaborations in the jazz and avantgarde scene. She has also developed a unique style of voice layering to create tantalizing sound textures which she used in theatre pieces and her debut solo album (RareNoise Records, 2020).
She is currently crafting a new series of sounds during her residency at OBRAS foundation. With these new sonic tapestries, she will create a palette of textures she can use to improvise in a live setting, preparing for her solo performance in 2023 at the New York City Electroacoustic Improvisation Summit.

Iuliia Bugalova is a Ukrainian multimedia artist. During her stay at OBRAS she concentrated on working with a traditional artistic medium - oil painting on canvas.
She feels attracted to those non-verbal elements that can describe her experience of existence with all her senses. Her work can be seen as an attempt to transform it to the visual language of colors and form.
At OBRAS she was inspired by the red colors of the soil, the shapes of deformed trees, the sounds of a pig farm mixed with Symphony#7 by Beethoven and swimming with open eyes.

As part of the Open Studio, Iuliia did a action painting performance, in interaction with singing by Sophie. The slideshow gives an impression. A video compilation will soon be ready. 

ichael O'Boyle is a painter based in the west of Ireland. For his residency, he is creating three monumental geometric wall works in paper along with some smaller canvas works. These microscopic based works are diagrammatic in nature and work with the architecture of the studio to create giant portraits of the invisible.

Stella Whalley is a multi-disciplinary fine artist working in London, UK.
At Foundation OBRAS Stella created a mysterious character in the landscape using video, sound and performance, which has been shot in collaboration with fellow resident James Bell.
 Alongside this, Stella experimented with a series of drawings, prints and paintings that reveal figures semi-abstracted within the environment.
Stella also produced a series of playfully painted, bleeding blue-ink marble tiles based on historical erotic images found at Estremoz market; as well as local characters and creatures from the area.

James Bell is a British Artist specialising in painting, performance and film. His work responds to his environment, mental health and Queer identity.
 James is also a professional film producer. His film Birthday Boy won the 2021 audience award at BAFTA qualifying Iris Prize Film Festival. 
 At OBRAS he explored two directions.
 Firstly, abstract paintings responding to the landscape. Initial inspiration came from the red ‘no-hunting’ signs contrasting nature’s palette, and by the bleeding sap of the cork trees. 
 Secondly, James has utilised film, photography and blue-ink drawings to create self-portraits. Placed within various locations in and around the residency - he sits and stares into the distance, or lays peacefully.

Inspired by the human-like shapes of the oak trees, Stella Whalley and James Bell created a video showing a mysterious character that pops up in marble quarries, oak plantations and dirt roads. At the Open Studio, the video was projected on the outside wall of Stella´s studio.

Florian Leitner (Germany) teaches media science at Humbolt University in Berlin. During his residency he was working on a book about media theories, with specific attention to the concept of the scene. During his artist talk he gave an example of this subject: the box in a scene. He told about famous examples: The box of Pandora, the black box, the box as a metaphor for the unknown, fear or desire, and also a focal point for doubts on whether you want to know the truth. It triggered a lively and long discussion. 

On 14 September, after more than 100 days of drought, we got rain. Lots of rain, and fantastic rainbows, one of them just above our house. (Fotos by Florian Leitner).

A year go, in October 2021 Luc van der Velde (Belgium) made a series of land-art installations dedicated to combining natural with artificial materials (see residents 2021). One was a 2x4 meters jute tissue soaked in with local clay. He hung it in a small canyon. First it looked like a stiff banner, but with time the clay disappeared, sun bleached and wind damaged the tissue, in other words it merged into the landscape. It is now October 2022, a full year later. We decided to take the piece down accepting that not all art is immortal.  

Martine de Kok (Belgium) is a multi-media artist. She was drawing, composing music, singing and improvising on the piano. During an excursion to a marble area she was exploring the acoustics of the quarries and recording the sound of her voice. But her main activity was writing a children’s´ book. It tells about birds of all kinds and characters who try to understand the phenomenon of time, and specifically to accept that time goes by. During her artist talk Martine read a part. All were impressed both by the text and her theatrical performance.

OBRAS was closed in July. Already for several years Nico Huijbregts, Peter Bremer, Yvonne Halfens and Nora van Dam come to take care of the house, cats and garden, to enjoy the pool and to work on art. The first three have already a decade long history with OBRAS: as part of the artist’s collective “The Family” they had a group exhibition in 2012 in Évora.
Below is an impression of their artistic activities of this year.

Nico Huijbregts was composing a piece of music for voice and kalimba (finger harp), with a text that was partly drafted by Ludger and Carolien, the managers of OBRAS. The song will be brought to stage in November.

Yvonne Halfens made small constructions of twigs covered with woollen thread. But her main project was making moulds for figurines. They will be casted in an aluminium cement mix with in addition parts in ceramic: hands, hear or tears, for instance. These parts will be glazed in “gold”.

Peter Bremer made a series of drawings, paintings and drippings. For some he used plasticised paper with which he got effects that he was very happy with.

Nora van Dam, drama teacher by profession, was working on a story telling project for which she decided to do everything herself: text, direction, design of stage, costumes and attributes, acting, video shooting and editing. She largely finished it during her residency and enjoyed it a lot.

Abby McGuane (Canada) came to OBRAS to work in Portuguese marble. She explored two items: marble objects as carriers of autobiographical meaning and marble being a geological link between Nova Scotia (Canada) and Portugal.
Abby investigates the ways in which notions of power, vulnerability and desire are disclosed and mediated through sculpted shapes. That is why she wished to feel the marble, both in the quarries and during the process of sculpting.  
The marble holds meaning both for the planetary history and within Abby´s personal geography.
Hundreds millions years ago the Americas, Europe and Africa were one supercontinent: Pangaea. Portugal and Nova Scotia shared the same geological structures that later formed marble. 160 million years ago the super-continent into two and most species became extinct. We now live in the Anthropocene and may cause a similar mass extinction. After the end of human existence other life forms may come. What echoes will we leave for these new creatures? Abby contemplates on the possibility that her sculptures may act as a communication device for a world without humans. 
 
Abby spent her youth in Nova Scotia and will soon live there again. After her experience with Portuguese marble, she intends to work with Nova-Scotian marble in the awareness that she is delving into parallel geological histories.

Aurélie Ferrière (France, living in Sweden) has a classical violin education and applied her skills in classical orchestras, a punk and bands and more recently in sound scapes created with a modular synthesizer. But the talents and experiences of Aurélie are also in opera staging, scenography, graphics and video. One goal of her residency was to contemplate on whether she should focus on one discipline or approach her various creations as a whole. Another activity was “Boca” (Portuguese for voice). She made a collage on a canvas in the middle of which she burned an opening (suggesting fire is coming out of a mouth) that was partly stitched to close the opening.  In addition, she had impressive jam sessions, both solo and in combination with others, in a wide variety of spaces: in the middle of nature, the big hall, the circular square, the patio, the swimming pool and a marble quarry.   

In OBRAS Holland, Marike van Dijk worked on a 65 minutes concert for a nine-persons ensemble (two saxophones, trumpet, two drums, bass guitar, contrabass, piano and cello), that will have its grand premiere on the North Sea Jazz Festival in The Hague, Holland. The concert is already sold out. We joined the pre-premiere in the BIM huis, in Amsterdam and it was amazing.   
Marike first came to OBRAS Portugal and started working on a very personal project: she was composing a piece (including historical videos), based on the career of her father as an Olympic long-distance ice skater. 

Michele Caniato (USA) is composer with a musical base in jazz. He was working on a piece for two voices, marimba and saxophone. He let us listen to the rough computer version: it sounded fascinating and promising.
In addition, he was working on Lincoln's Shoes, a comic opera for five characters (soprano, mezzo-soprano, bass-baritone, tenor and baritone). It is a long-term project that is now near to finalisation. The scene for Lincoln's Shoes is in the Abraham Lincoln Home Museum, where a screening for a docu-drama takes place. The problem is that Lincoln’s double doesn’t show up, resulting in lots of confusion. The opera is sung by five characters: soprano, mezzo-soprano, bass-baritone, tenor and baritone.  To get a better idea of the story, Michele let us play (read, not sing) part of the libretto.

Peter van Huffel (Canada, living in Berlin) is saxophone player with a specialty in jazz improvisation. At OBRAS he was mixing his music with sounds of birds, crickets, sheep bells and a poem of Gerry van der Linden. In the Castle of Evoramonte and in an abandoned marble quarry he played with the extreme acoustics. With composer and violinist Aurélie Ferrière he did a wonderful improvisation for his fellow residents.

At OBRAS Holland, Eva Layla Akiska (actress), Elly Scheele (Writer) and Stephanie van Batum (director), all from Holland, were working on ‘Britney one more time’, an interdisciplinary theatre performance on feminism and misogyny, with Britney Spears as central case.
Britney Spears has been a pop icon since 1998, but hasn't grown into an inspirational role model. She is portrayed by tabloids as superficial, drugs-addicted and weird. She is now 39, but still presents herself on Instagram as a 20-year-old girl.
After some research, Eva, Elly and Stephanie concluded that for the community Britney Spears never became a fully-fledged human being and that she is not seen as a human being that we can have compassion for. They do not want Britney to develop into an independent person with a goal or opinion; they want her to be a girl for as long as possible.
With this in mind Eva, Elly and Stephanie are creating a polyphonic performance (video, music, movement/dance, (partly improvised) texts) about how the world still looks at women and judges them on appearance, likeability and fuckability. The audience will be confronted with how we still do not see women as very human, no matter how "woke" we are.  
The performance will have its premiere next year in Schauspielhaus Bochum (Germany; on 16 July this year the actresses will give an artist talk) and is planned to be presented also in theaters in Holland and Austria.

also good to know:

Mónica de Miranda´s latest movie: The Island was premiered on 24 June in London, "A Ilha" (The Island) has been selected to participate in doclisboa ´22 and nominated for Portuguese Competition for Short Films. A special screening will be at Cinema São Jorge, on October 7 (booking needed).  
Most of the scenes were shot in 2021 at OBRAS and we hosted the entire crew for some time.
Fusing fact and fiction, The Island contemplates the experiences of Afrodiasporic lives and Europe’s colonial past. Monica deploys the metaphor of the island as a utopian place of isolation, refuge, and escape: a space for collective imaginings that speak to new and old freedoms. Anchored in cultural affinities and ecofeminism, she considers soil as an organic repository of time and memory, where ancestral and ecological trauma linked to colonial excavations continue to unfold.

Some news about OBRAS

In November 2021, Foundation OBRAS made a kind of a new start. It got two new board members, it updated its statutes and the House Governance Rules, and adopted the newest regulations and codes on Governance Culture, on Fair Practice and on Diversity & Inclusion.

We decided that in specific cases emerging artists may be eligible for a discount on the weekly rate of 100€. 

We are contemplating on initiating art related activities that could contribute to stopping the crisis in Ukraine.