Comment biography 2011
The built optical apparatus
Detrás de un muro un jardín efímero
Un mar que no es mar
Un cielo de agua, paredes de hojas
Mirar por una rendija un jardín escondido*
(Jardín del Cronópios, 2008)
With each investigative step taken amidst the set of the latest works by artist Letícia Ramos, one can find a new city with a remote past, as a result of this exploration of visual meaning.
Since 2005, her moving image output has taken a winding direction, with regard to the solutions she finds, considering the recurrence of postproduction resources accessible. Based on the knowledge gathered through her excellence in the fields from which she has come, firstly architecture and then cinema, and throughout the paths that she proposes and on which she remains for as long as she finds necessary, Letícia Ramos makes use of precise notions with which she has experimented as the space irrupts, a widely recognizable feature in her video works.
Obelisks
ERBF – Estação radiobase fotográfica (Base transceiver photographic station – video, object, and photography, 2005–2009) brings together, in one single snapshot taken at twenty-four frames per second, different perspectives of the skyline of the city of São Paulo.
Comprising the series Instantâneos sequenciais #1, #2, #3, and #4(Sequential snapshots) and Panorâmica 01 (Panoramic 01 – 35mm/video, 1 min, looped projection, 2005), frantic animations pop up spontaneously like outlines of the city itself, surrounded by base transceiver stations and broadcasting antennae. Belonging in a new category of outlines, these aerial monuments induce an attempt at fixing one’s gaze amidst a landscape that has an admittedly metropolitan horizon. Thus, one watches as the silhouette of a forest created as an image of moving illusion emerges.
Following the sequence of identical holes, placed side by side at equal focal distances from one another, we have the camera built specifically, without lenses, by the artist. What seems to really matter in the relations between the pieces of work by Letícia Ramos is not the image of the object that is moving, but the ways in which the camera sees a given perspective of the object. Such singularity catapults her work to beyond the realm of conventional recordings of time.
In other words, perhaps it means displacing the very constructo of choosing the pinhole over a piece of equipment as established as the film camera. Likelihood aside, it would be like stopping the giant natural landscapes of Marc Ferrez’, unthinkable feats at a time in which photographic missions required chests of provisions and equipment carried by men and on the backs of mules.
From this point of technical inflection on, the artist began chasing the perfect woodworking fit, in a constant quest that is still ongoing in weekly testing sessions of new camera prototypes. She also takes care of negative development herself. Her constant observation of the city imprints deep visual changes—which do not by any means remain limited to getting the best framing or angle—, as was confirmed by the exhibit of ERBF at the São Paulo Cultural Center in 2009. Letícia Ramos’ expedition aims to establish a different temporality with the photographed object—as if it were a target in the air atop a tall building.
Hanging gardens
From inside the wall, through a gap in the façade painted white, a soft, disquieting sound from a music box is overheard on the sidewalk. Passersby are compelled to peep through the gap, where visual narratives of dreams are seen in Jardim fantástico (Fantastic garden, 35mm/video, 3 min, 2008).
With a push of the side door, the fiction garden, structured out as a passage, opens itself up to unrestrained enjoyment. Coming through the glass of the window panes in its path of guyed reflections, Jardim efêmero (Ephemeral garden) is comprised of two different projections: a narrow corridor filled with leaves that reveal themselves in a ghostly manner under the beam of light from the projector in the video Hojas takes the eyes almost all the way down to the back wall of the warehouse, where a projection of the Mar (Sea) video evokes, in an enlarged scale, the contemplation of the sea.
Using recordings made with an eight-lens Lomo Oktomatic camera, like sceneries, the multichannel projections that comprise Jardín del Cronópio(Garden of Cronópio, video installation + looped videos, 2008) open up a free territory for wandering in the outdoor gardens, as in the exhibition held at the ThisIsNotAGallery, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
A stroll around the square
The video installation Cronópios (35mm/looped video, 2008–2009) plays back an entire day at the Largo da Batata square, in São Paulo, from dawn until dusk. Located in the Pinheiros neighborhood, this strangling of heavy traffic is the passage between the expanded center and the outskirts of the city. Heavy converging traffic causes jams in the area, coupled with a slow and ambitious reurbanization project.
Developed especially for that end, the image-capturing system (a set of three Lomo Oktographic cameras with eight lenses each) helped create this piece of work. From different places, seen during a period of 2.5 seconds each, many simultaneous portraits of one single scene are shown, with a powerful motion-like effect in combinations of angle and superimpositions.
The multiple assembly of this video installation takes place through saturated light refraction obtained by projecting through a transparent sheet onto one single acrylic screen. However, the use of this material causes two other ghost projections, at specific angles, that respond with oscillating lighting.
In 2008 and 2009, in four Brazilian capitals (São Paulo, Curitiba, Salvador, and Rio de Janeiro), people were able to walk around this acrylic screen, set so it could be seen from all different refractory angles, and feel the pulse of the city close to their eyes, under the Rumos Artes Visuais national program of the Itaú Cultural Institute.
*Behind a wall an ephemeral garden
A sea that is no sea
A sky made of water, stone walls
Looking through a gap into a hidden garden
Detrás de un muro un jardín efímero
Un mar que no es mar
Un cielo de agua, paredes de hojas
Mirar por una rendija un jardín escondido*
(Jardín del Cronópios, 2008)
With each investigative step taken amidst the set of the latest works by artist Letícia Ramos, one can find a new city with a remote past, as a result of this exploration of visual meaning.
Since 2005, her moving image output has taken a winding direction, with regard to the solutions she finds, considering the recurrence of postproduction resources accessible. Based on the knowledge gathered through her excellence in the fields from which she has come, firstly architecture and then cinema, and throughout the paths that she proposes and on which she remains for as long as she finds necessary, Letícia Ramos makes use of precise notions with which she has experimented as the space irrupts, a widely recognizable feature in her video works.
Obelisks
ERBF – Estação radiobase fotográfica (Base transceiver photographic station – video, object, and photography, 2005–2009) brings together, in one single snapshot taken at twenty-four frames per second, different perspectives of the skyline of the city of São Paulo.
Comprising the series Instantâneos sequenciais #1, #2, #3, and #4(Sequential snapshots) and Panorâmica 01 (Panoramic 01 – 35mm/video, 1 min, looped projection, 2005), frantic animations pop up spontaneously like outlines of the city itself, surrounded by base transceiver stations and broadcasting antennae. Belonging in a new category of outlines, these aerial monuments induce an attempt at fixing one’s gaze amidst a landscape that has an admittedly metropolitan horizon. Thus, one watches as the silhouette of a forest created as an image of moving illusion emerges.
Following the sequence of identical holes, placed side by side at equal focal distances from one another, we have the camera built specifically, without lenses, by the artist. What seems to really matter in the relations between the pieces of work by Letícia Ramos is not the image of the object that is moving, but the ways in which the camera sees a given perspective of the object. Such singularity catapults her work to beyond the realm of conventional recordings of time.
In other words, perhaps it means displacing the very constructo of choosing the pinhole over a piece of equipment as established as the film camera. Likelihood aside, it would be like stopping the giant natural landscapes of Marc Ferrez’, unthinkable feats at a time in which photographic missions required chests of provisions and equipment carried by men and on the backs of mules.
From this point of technical inflection on, the artist began chasing the perfect woodworking fit, in a constant quest that is still ongoing in weekly testing sessions of new camera prototypes. She also takes care of negative development herself. Her constant observation of the city imprints deep visual changes—which do not by any means remain limited to getting the best framing or angle—, as was confirmed by the exhibit of ERBF at the São Paulo Cultural Center in 2009. Letícia Ramos’ expedition aims to establish a different temporality with the photographed object—as if it were a target in the air atop a tall building.
Hanging gardens
From inside the wall, through a gap in the façade painted white, a soft, disquieting sound from a music box is overheard on the sidewalk. Passersby are compelled to peep through the gap, where visual narratives of dreams are seen in Jardim fantástico (Fantastic garden, 35mm/video, 3 min, 2008).
With a push of the side door, the fiction garden, structured out as a passage, opens itself up to unrestrained enjoyment. Coming through the glass of the window panes in its path of guyed reflections, Jardim efêmero (Ephemeral garden) is comprised of two different projections: a narrow corridor filled with leaves that reveal themselves in a ghostly manner under the beam of light from the projector in the video Hojas takes the eyes almost all the way down to the back wall of the warehouse, where a projection of the Mar (Sea) video evokes, in an enlarged scale, the contemplation of the sea.
Using recordings made with an eight-lens Lomo Oktomatic camera, like sceneries, the multichannel projections that comprise Jardín del Cronópio(Garden of Cronópio, video installation + looped videos, 2008) open up a free territory for wandering in the outdoor gardens, as in the exhibition held at the ThisIsNotAGallery, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
A stroll around the square
The video installation Cronópios (35mm/looped video, 2008–2009) plays back an entire day at the Largo da Batata square, in São Paulo, from dawn until dusk. Located in the Pinheiros neighborhood, this strangling of heavy traffic is the passage between the expanded center and the outskirts of the city. Heavy converging traffic causes jams in the area, coupled with a slow and ambitious reurbanization project.
Developed especially for that end, the image-capturing system (a set of three Lomo Oktographic cameras with eight lenses each) helped create this piece of work. From different places, seen during a period of 2.5 seconds each, many simultaneous portraits of one single scene are shown, with a powerful motion-like effect in combinations of angle and superimpositions.
The multiple assembly of this video installation takes place through saturated light refraction obtained by projecting through a transparent sheet onto one single acrylic screen. However, the use of this material causes two other ghost projections, at specific angles, that respond with oscillating lighting.
In 2008 and 2009, in four Brazilian capitals (São Paulo, Curitiba, Salvador, and Rio de Janeiro), people were able to walk around this acrylic screen, set so it could be seen from all different refractory angles, and feel the pulse of the city close to their eyes, under the Rumos Artes Visuais national program of the Itaú Cultural Institute.
*Behind a wall an ephemeral garden
A sea that is no sea
A sky made of water, stone walls
Looking through a gap into a hidden garden