FUSO. Open Call 2022 

In 2022 193 applications were submitted to the FUSO Open Call, a sign of the vitality of the Portuguese contemporary scene. The selection presented here is the responsibility of Jean-François Chougnet, FUSO's artistic director, and iS presented on the 24/08/2022, at the maat gardens.

These works will be awarded two prizes: the EDP Foundation/MAAT Aquisition Prize for the best work elected by the jury presided by Margarida Chantre (EDP/MAAT Foundation) and the Ar.Co - Centre for Art and Visual Communication Incentive Prize, awarded by the public, which consists of a scholarship to attend a one-year "Individual Project" course at the Cinema/Image and Movement department of this school.

Selected works

Hoji Fortuna
Sea Routes, 2022
5'9'’
A reflection on colonization, dehumanization, romanticizing and historic erasure.
Written, produced and directed by Hoji Fortuna
Performance: Izilda Mussuela
Music: Pedro Abreu
Editing: Ivor Šonje
Sound: Jorge Cabanelas, Vešeslav Laboš and Tihomir Vrbanec
Director of Photography: Jaime Adão.

Sara Carneiro
Chapter One: The Arrival
5’50’’
This film reimagines the sea voyages made during the Portuguese expansion. The burnt engine oil creates abstract images, and symbolic elements such as stars, candles and sand tell a story of ocean crossing and land usurpation.
The sea, the somber landscapes of the night sky, the subtle movements of clouds and waves convey the passage of time and the anticipation of arrival. Chapter One: The Arrival is a reflection on history. An attempt to grasp the turn of events that created momentum for history to unravel. The importance of revisiting the past, as if we could change it, and rewrite the narrative of the “heroes” and “conquests” that defined an era. The use of black burnt engine oil connects the voyage to the present day. This liquid embodies the capitalist system, the greed and exploitation of natural resources, reminding us that the colonial project still prevails.

Marcelo Mosqueta
Pau-Brasil, 2020
4’30’’
In the video, a hand gradually removes, one by one, the aculeus (superficial spikes) that inhabit the trunk of the Pau-Brasil tree. When the tree is young, the spikes are very effective in warding off predators, serving as a natural defense while it grows, when they naturally drop and the Pau-Brasil turns into a leafy tree.
The tree is identified with the constitution of our nation, having been a resource exploited to exhaustion. In a way, it was this tree that gave the name to our country. Pau-brasil is a little-known tree, barely seen in the Brazilian landscapes.The sound of the forest that fills the atmosphere of the video in the first few minutes gives way to an artificial, mechanical noise, as the natural characteristics of the plant and of the forest change. A simple but extremely violent action, reflecting the “civilizational process” during which everything that defined the identity of these lands and our ancestral culture were suppressed. Like the making of wood planks, without grooves or any imperfections, we continue in an eternal dispute between keeping the roots that identify us as a nation or surrendering to dominant influences, global and foreign, that slowly erase what we have of most valuable.

Maxime Martinot
The Antelopes, 2020
8’20’’
“One day, on the Moroccan shores, one hundred and fifty years ago, thousands of antelopes together threw themselves into the sea.” Marguerite Duras

Léna Lewis-King
De Luz/Of Light, 2020
6’55’’
Filmed during the 2020 lockdown, De Luz/Of Light explores fleeting perceptions and cyclical rituals of Portuguese coastal landscapes, specifically the ones surrounding the Cabo Sardão Lighthouse in Beja, forging, from collages of various natural rhythms (such as the sun and the motion of the sea), a complex audiovisual narrative.
Soundtrack: Michelle Lewis-King

Tiago Bastos (Adversa / Caspae)
UNTITLED (Active Citizens), 2021
3’00’’
Produced in the context of the Active Citizens program, the 3C's Transformation Agents Project, the video UNTITLED gives a surreal insight into the social behavior of the children of imprisoned parents (stripped of names and numbers).
Directed by Tiago Bastos Nunes
Production: ADVERSA — Bernardo Neto Parra, Tiago Bastos Nunes
Sound design: António Sá
Participation: André Bernardo Medina, Daniel Anjo, David Anjo, Gabriel Gomes, Guilherme Santos, Júlia Pratas, Laura Pratas, Miguel  ngelo Henrique, Miguel Oliveira, Rúben Henriques, Vitória Tomaz
An Active Citizens program managed by CASPAE
Funding: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Bissaya Barreto Foundation

Júlio F. R. Costa
Where have all the hearts gone?, 2022
6’00’’
A dialogue about hearts and emptiness.

José Taborda
Two Thousand and Twenty, 2021
0’48’’
Two Thousand and Twenty consists of two people playing a modified Four in a Row online game, although, in this case, the game’s chips were especially manufactured in crystal acrylic, making it impossible to keep track of the player’s position, becoming impossible to reach a verdict of winners or losers. It emerges as a quest to encapsulate the constant sensation in present times, where interactivity and communication have been highly altered.
However, it also provokes a sense of hope or adaptability, as both players, even in adverse conditions, continue to play as if it were a regular game.
When the game restarts (loop) a new opportunity arises for a different outcome (but quickly comes to the same end). Not only associated with the pandemic issue, it can also be experienced as an exercise in perception and purpose. If you remove something's fundamental characteristic, what does it become?

Inês Norton
Aseptic Synesthesia, 2022
10’00’’
Aseptic synesthesia is a video with three parallel narratives immersed in the sound of a feminine voice telling a compelling story. Using different sequences, the video proposes a game of perception between the direct access to nature and the one mediated through technology, a cellphone's screen. This dialogue, between nature/organic vs artificial/synthetic, presents the paradigm of a society relaying more and more on the technological advances. There is an urge to return to the basics, to the things that define us as humans, on this fragile equilibrium that we tend to challenge. We perceive reality through screens which, despite their high resolution and hyperrealism, do not replace haptic perception and sensory abilities. Aseptic synesthesia, evokes the critical thought about how we play, more than ever, a role of partial receivers, relegating our innate interaction capacity to the background. The soundtrack follows the video, step by step. Travelling back from the future, a female creature tells us her first experience of a reality outside the window that frames her world (screens). In a glimpse, this being accesses reality without filters and reveals her synesthesia. The touch, the smell, the light, the colors, acquire a new dimension, so far unseen, due to an evolution from Homo Sapiens to Homo Ecranis. (…) The identity of things is unreachable, due to the fact that the audience cannot move beyond the two-dimensional constraints of the image. (Failla, 2002:47)

Gui Athayde
A essência de ser uma bicha (The Essence of Being Queer), 2020
2’29’’
“Fado Bicha” is a project that involves music and activism, confronting fado music with issues like gender expression and representation of the LGBTI community. In this visual essay, the project's creators, Lila Tiago and João Caçador, talk about growing up queer, Portugal, gender, and queer awareness.

Gabriela Vaz-Pinheiro
Vanishing Act, 2022
4’10’’
When disappearing is existing. To be an image in the eyes of others. Vanishing acts turn existing in public an impossibility. A body. A body that is being looked at. An image that belongs to others. Fleeting and centrifuge.
First-person statements collected anonymously over time. Like the words, the performance, executed by Rebecca Moradalizadeh, is relocated to another body, where the transversal experience is no longer anonymous but is nevertheless nameless.

Leonor Sousa
Vermelho - Vídeo Ensaístico (Red – Video Essay), 2022
6’32’’
Location: Marvila, Lisbon, Portugal.
Shapes move across the screen. Four dots move on the checkered pavement. From one side to the other. What are they? They trace paths, they search for places. From one side to the other. An incessant search for the path to be traced, the movement to be executed.
From one side to the other. Project developed in the context of artistic residency LisbonWeek'22, in Marvila, Lisbon, Portugal.
Starting from the premise 'work' as the theme to explore while in residence, the video seeks, through several experiments, to explore the movements created by a set of bodies in space. There is a visual materialization, in stop-motion, of the effort placed in performing a task.

Ricardo Leandro
Purpose sound, 2022
1’12’’
One by one, several soap bubbles enter a public space where there is a microphone. This is where they are allowed to shine, where they can be admired and "heard", but the only thing we will hear is their ending. Their durability is brief and fleeting, and the space becomes empty again, without messages. Those who come to these spaces, and who have some kind of exposure, may use them for a purpose, but in most cases, in the mid or short term, their message will be ephemeral and irrelevant to their actions. This uncontrollable performance of varying durations is meant to make you realize that, just like these bubbles, everyone moves in different ways in a public space. In the eyes of the spectator all these interventions will have a guaranteed end. More important than their trajectory up to that point, is knowing when they will end, and how the next bubbles will behave when they reach this public space, always assuming that they all share the same purpose: to burst.