Patricia Portela
wpZimmer resident in 2019
Patrícia Portela is a writer and performance maker living between Belgium and Portugal. She studied set and costume design in Lisbon and in Utrecht, film in Ebeltoft, Denmark, and Philosophy in Leuven, Belgium. Since 2003 she has worked on her own performances and installations in collaboration with international artists. She has achieved national and international recognition for her unusual work and is considered one of the most daring artists and innovative writers of her generation.
She won the Revelation Prize in 1994 for her creative work in performance and cinema, the Prize Teatro na Década for T5 in 1999, the Gulbenkian Foundation Prize Madalena de Azeredo Perdigão for the performance Flatland I in 2004 and a special mention for Wasteband in 2003, and she was one of the 5 finalists of the Sonae Media Art Prize 2015 with her installation Parasomnia, amongst other prizes. She has been invited to participate in the prestigious International Writing Program (IWP) at the University of Iowa in 2013, and was the first literary resident in Berlin in 2016. She is the author of several novels (Banquet was a finalist of the Novel and Novella Big APE Prize 2012) and short stories. She is a founder member of the Prado cultural association since 2003 and a curator at the collective editions Prado since 2008.
projects
Flatland – part III
Flatland – part III In the last episode Flatman returns home… although having conquered a sort of immortality he has not conquered reality yet so the job is not yet finished. He still has to prove in Flatland that there are other worlds out there, spinning. And he still needs continuity. Loops are not enough. Knowing that the principle of reality and the principle of spectacle are the same he researches a formula to build the perfect machine of simultaneous dimensions, the “facts machine”…
Flatland III is the most flat performance of the 3, a zapping spectacle of noise, static and news…
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Flatland – part II
Flatland II (To be is to be seen) is the second of three episodes that tell the tragic story of a Flatman that one day discovers that he is missing one dimension. In this second part, Flatman invents the “perfect” strategy to obtain eternity in the 3Dworld. He organizes an excursion to the world of illusion and terrorism and invites us to participate in it.
Flatman discovers that the machine that produces reality and the machine that produces spectacle are the same, and through the repetition of images, cabaret and circus numbers, Flatman keeps his audience watching him, and in this way, he keeps himself “real” in a 3D world, surrounded by surveillance cameras, mirrors and real time projections of himself.
For a moment the world bends, once more, to a parallel construction of that same world.
The construction of the illusionist and of the terrorist:
Theatre is terrorism and terrorism becomes theatre:
They both produce fiction in real time!
Flatman conquers immortality through a loop.
Flatland II is a multimedia, multifunctional and multitasked performance, where image, action, and sound, constantly report us to different possible realities/performances, both being the same.
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Flatland – Part I
Flatland – Part I (Going up, not North) is the first of three episodes that tell the tragic story of a Flatman since he has discovered a third dimension is missing in his life.
On this first part we can follow Flatman and his reflection through worlds of bi dimensionality and perspective until he finds out that his existence in the 3D world is possible if there are spectators looking at him. Happy with the discovery but unhappy with the dependency, Flatman organizes a strategy to conquer his tri dimensional immortality.”
Flatman – Part I is a multimedia performance where letters, images and small notes are projected on a 3mx4m book that you can read, ear and watch transforming and moving as the story goes.
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