João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva
“Alien Theory”––an extraordinary mix of 16-mm and 35-mm films and two camera obscuras by João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva––has the shamanic ability to reveal new worlds using simple sleight of hand. In the opening film, Benguelino casting a spell on the camera, 2011, the camera crouches before Benguelino, a priestlike figure with a wooden rosary slung around his neck. Swigging from a bottle, Benguelino picks up a candle and spits a mouthful through its flame, sending a blaze toward the lens. His is a magic that comes from a bottle, a chemical reaction between liquid and fire. His methods are clear, but their effect inexplicable; the camera is now under his spell.
Gusmão and Paiva aim to have a similar effect on the viewer, trading on a suspension of disbelief. Much like Benguelino himself, the artists make no attempt to conceal any special effects. A sleeve of black paint leaves a hand free to wander un-wristed. A camera is turned upside down to reverse the ripple effect of stones skipping over a river. Wires are attached to floating cabbages, and ropes turn rocks into tumbleweeds. Film editing appears just as transparently, as in the case of the syncopated setting of 3 Suns, 2009, or the mesmerizing Fried Egg, 2008, which elides separate footage of three eggs frying. Overlapped, the yolks seem to slip over one another, sliding across the pan until at last they align with their alter eggs, settling into a single yolk in the middle while their combined whites bubble into a thick scab around them.
Yet in the end, the most compelling work is one that requires no trickery. In Solar, the blindman, eating a papaya, 2011, the camera closes tightly on the face of the titular figure as he brings the fruit to his lips. Light glows green in his clouded pupils and pools in the creases of his face as he starts to bite, creating an uncanny camouflage with the pattern on the papaya rind. He lets the pulp dribble down his chin, further confusing his face with fruit. It is a collision of man and nature, but with no illusions of control from either end.
