DISTANCIO

Konstverk för Gnosjö
Titel: The Spirit of Gnosjö
Konstnär: Rui Mourão, Lissabon, Portugal
Media: tvåkanaligt videoverk, baserat på videoklipp insänt av Gnosjöbor 

Koncept
Rui Mourão gör en djupdykning i upplevelsen och betydelsen av Gnosjöandan, både som personligt och kollektivt fenomen.

Det är utmanande för en vidobaserad konstnär att släppa kontrollen insamlandet av bildmaterial. Särskilt för de som arbetar i gränslandet mellan konst, dokumentär och etnografisk metod. Det uppstår en dubbel verkande prövning av tillit. Det är få video konstnärer som gett sig på uppgiften att fånga Gnosjöandan men utan tvekan kan jag påstå att Rui Mourãos verk kommer att bli banbrytande. Han kommer att hantera det material som gnosjöborna lämnar in till Jönköpings länsmuseum med stor respekt.

Insamling av videoklipp
Vecka 27-32
Insamling av videomaterial sker i samverkan med Jönköpings länsmuseum. Komihåg att hålla stadigt om du använder din telefon och att du har den i horisontellt läge.

Vill du sända videoklipp till konstnären lyssna gärna på videon på denna sida och kontakta sedan konstnären via thespiritofgnosjo @ distancio.se

Tidslinje
Vecka 27-32
Insamling av videomaterial i samverkan med Jönköpingslänsmuseum.

Vecka 32-42
Konstnären Rui Mourão använder valda delar av det insamlade materialet till att göra ett tvåkanaligt videoverk.

Vecka 43
De ortsspecifika verken publiceras online på distancio.se/showroom

Videoarkivet tillfaller Jönköpingslänsmuseum.

"My artistic practice is being developed around the transformative power of art and reflects about the construction of identity and meaning in different cultural contexts. For this socially engaged art project, I'm interested in showing how the so-called "Spirit of Gnosjö" structures, and it's structured by, the people of Gnosjö.
Crossing conceptual perspectives and poetic video art with a participatory process involving the Gnosjö people (through visual anthropology and documented performative contributions), I want to reveal what is possible to find as a paradoxical link between what is particular and what is universal."

- Rui Mourãu

Ramverk The spirit of Gnosjö

I shall begin with asking people of Gnosjö to use their own cameras (in mobile phones, computers, i-pads or traditional cameras) to film short simple videos (mandatory horizontal framing, with a minimum of 10 seconds and a maximum of 3 minutes, without or with non important dialogues, monologues or voice-over). With those video clips, I challenge people to portray the so-called "Spirit of Gnosjö", in their own way. People can show how they live or feel this "spirit" by filming themselves or another people, the town or their environments (at home, in nature, at work, in leisure time, or as they like). I will specially ask the Gnosjö people to show how they are resisting in the actual covid-19 pandemic context and how the "Spirit of Gnosjö" is present in this difficult moment.
The multiple short videos will then be collected. On the one hand, a footage archive will be created with all the images, documenting different perspectives according to the workers and/or inhabitants of the town. On the other hand, I will edit a new artistic video using several of those short videos, reframing them in a way that new meanings could appear.
I am interested in linking the result of this participatory process involving the community with an intuitive sensibility that could reverberate unconscious collective archetypes. As an artist, I intend to be a kind of absent presence, that via online, in another place and time, works like a distant and close figure that crosses linear and non-linear perspectives. This result will depend, first of all, on the willingness of Gnosjö people to show the "spirit" of their own town, and also, in my particular video edition with a strategy, in terms of form, based on the split-screen (where image A + image B are not equal to meaning AB, but rather produces something new, AB + C).
With this art work, I aim to reflect in a poetic way on the harmonious relations, as well as on tensions, between the individual and the collective, the different and the equal, the ephemeral and the continuous. My idea is to make a symbolic and oneiric approach to how an immaterial thing, such as the so-called "Spirit of Gnosjö" — which is at the same time practical and utopian — embodies and is embodied in a local identity. /RM

Om du har frågor till konstnären använd formuläret nedan eller thespiritofgnosjo@distancio.se