INSTALLATION – Camila Rhodi

LONG TIME NO SLEEP

In this work the artist talks about love relationships with women, starting with her mother. A bed set in the middle of the space, explores the qualities of it as a place of birth, love, sex, loneliness and death. Surrounded by 3 small TVs that shows stories of love, drama and porn & politics, the visitants are invited to lie down on the bed and choose the story they want to watch.

Videos made in collaboration with the filmmaker Nika Saravanja.

Each video has around 10 minutes.

Venues:

2019: Group Exhibition “Home Sweet Home” in the frame of BIENALSUR, Buenos Aires, Argentina curated by Fernando Farina & Florencia Battiti 2018: Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

Is there love in Berlin? Partcipatory Lecture Performance

After collecting stories in the neighborhood of Neukölln, Rhodi invites the audience to a multimedia participatory lecture-performance about stories of love in Berlin.

The artist met some residents of Neukölln in order to talk about their stories of love. At the same period, Rhodi researched about historical stories that happened in the same neighborhood. With the material, constituted by personal audios, pictures and videos, the artist made a collage of the collected stories in order to develop the multimedia and participatory lecture performance. The work has a structure of a lecture. It takes one hour and half with a pause of 20 minutes.

During the pause the audience can also take part sharing their own stories, answering by written the questions of a questionnaire Camila wrote, based on the collected themes during the research process.

Did you ever have a story of love in Berlin? If yes, did you suffer from the racism of your partner? Or had you ever been racist with your partner?
Do you have friends in Berlin that you love?
Is there love in Berlin?

Everything divided by themes and connected with excerpts of the American feminist author and social activist bell hooks’ book. The lecture-performance is compromised with personal and universal stories of love, touching on the compulsive drive to consume love as an expression of primal needs such as the need for care, nourishment, safety, belonging, emotional intimacy and validation.

The project touches on subjects such as oficial and unofficial history, gentrification, personal urban narratives, and cultural translation.

Few moments of the lecture performance:

Berlin, 2017

“A wonderful event, wholeheartedly thought and beautifully presented. You can feel the words coming out of Camila’s heart, and right into your own. Sehr zu empfehlen!!” M. Haten Hamdy

2017 for B-Tour Festival, Berlin, Germany

Free Kisses

Live Performance

What have to do an affective work with solidarity, social networks and forms of community? Are interpersonal contacts egalitarian, free, collaborative and non-hierarchical?

On this performance installation, Camila Rhodi stays between 30 minutes and one hour standing behind a showcase, waiting for ‘costumers’ who wants to have free kisses of her.

November 28, 2016 at MAIZ, Linz, Austria

Collaborative Works

2020: The Book of S of I : Creatures born from Hopelessness

Another world, post-apocalypse. Feverish nightmares turning into utopian dreams. Bodies aligned in pleasure, summoning the ghosts of the past and the future. Give yourself into the world of The Book of S of I – a queer feminist sci-fi Saga about the desire to belong, about the power of mutual care, of bodily pleasures, and the yearning for tenderness.

The Book of S of I. Chapter One: Creatures born from Hopelessness is the first part of the trilogy.

The premiere of the film on June 13th. 2020 on the homepage of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt as part of the New Alphabet School # 4 Caring symposium
hkw.de

The film was created with the support of the M.1 Arthur Boskamp Foundation and the sponsorship award.

A Film by Malu Blume

2019: Beyound Vision

What happens when our vision cedes and we cannot experience our surrounding the way we did before? Are the remaining senses sharpened? Does reality blur?
Beyond Vision is a binaural one-to-one performance on Tempelhofer Feld. Blindfolded and wearing headphones, let yourself be guided by the hands of an invisible companion. Together you embark on a journey into the unknown. You will find yourself in dreamlike situations and discover the invisible and the intangible. The experience leads you gently and safely through your inner images, different feelings and states of being. It is an invitation to let yourself fall into uncertainty, to trust, to give in, to be touched, and yet be entirely with yourself.

Commissioned by B_Tour
in the context of Tracks in a Box.

Guidance: Shelley Etkin, Camila Rhodi
Voices: Shelley Etkin, Charlotte Happe
Thanks to Klara Pfeiffer

Photos © Joana Dias
Tempelhofer Feld, Berlin, 2019

https://ilonamarti.com/Beyond-Vision

2018: Logistics of Loneliness in collaboration with Marja Christians. Rough Proposals, Mousonturm, Frankfurt

2016 : Walking with Ghosts in collaboration with Ghost Cinema

In the 1920’s, Filmstadt Weißensee, the now almost forgotten area in northern Berlin was once the city’s cultural hotspot. Stars like Marlene Dietrich and Fritz Lang were there, at Calagariplatz and on the Gustav-Adolf Straße, which at that time was lined with bright lights and 20 cinema houses. Among the finest and most popular of these was the former silent-movie theater Delphi. Direct on Caligariplatz, this relic rests like a hidden jewel, unrecognizable from the outside, and practically unknown to most Berliners. The theater miraculously survived WWII, and remained closed during GDR times. In fact, the theater has remained closed to the general public since the war, and remains so today. This building was one of the first cinemas of its size in the world, and the original interior of this former 870 seat theater remains intact. It is one of the best remaining examples of the glamour and flair of this important cultural era- the heyday of German silent film.

Directed by Paola Barreto
Videoperformance ( audiovisual editing + live projections/ mapping ) : Moana Mayall

Parangotela performance: Camila Rhodi

2015: “Fluids” – a 2015 reinvention of Allan Kaprow’s happening from 1967. Artist Alexandra Pirici

kaprowinberlin.smb.museum/en/

This version of Kaprow’s “Fluids” operates a change of material: from ice-blocks to the assemblage of the human body. The new work attempts to re-address and re-position itself in relation to some of the issues the original work tackled with – the medium of sculpture, the concept of monument, temporality, participation, production of collectivity – while also considering the human body as medium and the materiality of “immaterial” performative works and their economy at a time of a (second) “performative turn” in the visual arts. It also attempts a more abstract way of being in common – the participants building themselves into a 9 meters long, 3 meters wide structure instead of building an exterior object, thus reflecting on the effects of today’s immaterial labour (in affluent societies) as opposed to the former dynamics of the industrial age and the factory floor.
The living, sounding sculpture “melted” away from 12 to 8 p.m. in Potsdamer platz.

curated by Lisa Marei Schmidt and Udo Kittelmann production: Hannes Frey
participants: Ferre Naima, Valerie Renay, Zuzanna Ratajczyk, Paul Walker, Jozefiens Beckers, Reza Mirabi, Juan Gabriel Harcha, Julia Illmer, Josephine Findeisein, Marc Carrera, Annekatrin Kiesel, Amit Goldenberg, Miriam Kongstad, Maria Ferrara, Iam Campigotto, Helen Follert, Kathrin Knopfle, Jasmin Ihrac, Gregori Homa, Katarzyna Guzowska, Jolika Poulopoulou, Darcy Wallace, Julia Jadkowski, Ana Mrdjanov, Leonie Nadler, Jana Kruger, Carina Erdmann, Sura Hertzberg, Ralph Klein, Annette Zander, Alice Heyward, Yuca Meubrink, Viviana Druga, Rene Ricarda Vollhardt, Edith Buttingsrud Pedersen, Carlos Kong, Emily Ranford, Thomas Mielmann, Tobias Kluge, Corinne Schlichting, Lenine Guevara, Martha Hincapié Charry, Andrei Barza, Rachell Clark, Tatiana Heide, Laura von Raffay, David Loscher, Neele Ruckdeschel, Sven Hermans, Frida Yngvesson, Hanna Nordqvist, Giulia Heder, Sarah Bouars, Maddy White, Miha Jensterle, Rebekka Böhme, Pedro Vieira da Costa Filho, Juliane Dames, Jessica Kammerer, Paul Riemann, Eva Rozalia Tankó, Judica Albrecht, Lola Lustosa, Camila Rhodi, Dmitriy Povernov, Benjamin Egger, Uwe Zimmermann, Sarah Berger, Marie Zwinzscher, Sophie Camille Brunner, Anton Rose

commissioned by Nationalgalerie – Berlin in the frame of Stadt/Bild, Berlin Art Week

2015: ‘I am not a feminist but’ in collaboration with Makiko Yamamoto for Liquid Architecture . Melbourne . Austrália

This work was produced in collaboration with Japanese artist Makiko Yamamoto. Rhodi co-developed a performance piece to accompany Yamamoto’s 12 minute audio piece filled with the single sentence, ‘I’m not a feminist but…’. Yamamoto reads the sentence out loud with different distortions in speed, tone, and volume. Together both artists made the video performance.

2013 No Parking

Solo site specific performance about home for the master project of Jasmin Assade at Freie Universität Berlin.

2012

U-bahn Antigone in collaboration with Yaell Sherill

Live Performance for steinum knitwear for Berlin Fashion Week, Berlin, Germany

V

Audio Installation . 2014

A polyphony of home-made female voice recordings. Seven women sing, exposing feelings, simplicity and beauty.

with Landa Anjos. Luna Martinelli . Alexandra Wiltshire. Bruna Nunes. Camilla Ribas. Fannie Faivre. Francisca Villela aka Panxi.

Berlin 2014 . Musterzimmer Gallery . Curated by Lola Lustosa

A possibility to love

Inspired by the work of french 1970s fashion photographer Guy Bourdin, I made the video installation ‘A possibility to love’ as a transcription of one of the his pictures. I used my own image as an alive doll projected inside a gift box to build a body sculpture waiting for someone to ‘pick her up’. This doll is static and alive. She has thoughts, takes breath and has desires. Through an audio, the audience may hears privately her wishes.

BERLIN. 24TH OF AUGUST 2013.

Do you wanna talk about it?

Live Performance

‘Do U Wanna Talk About It?’ is a performative installation. In a private room, one member of the audience enters the room alone, sits in front of the artist and looks into the deep abyss of former experiences. The performance is autobiographical, only for one spectator and it lasts 4 minutes. (English and Brazilian Portuguese)

vídeo em português

https://vimeo.com/105574661

VENUES

One Billion Rising – Tanz Quartier . Vienna . Austria . February 2016 (Vídeo)

Unruly Bodies – gender norms resistance

Sophia Conference -Brussels . Belgium . October 2015

Kunstahaus Rhenania – Cologn. Germany . May 2015.

100˚Grade Festival – Sophiensaelle and Hebbel am Uffer – Berlin. Germany. February 2014

Month of Performance Berlin . PIC_Pieces in Chain. Altes Finanzamt 2013.

Musterzimmer. Berlin. August 2013.

Do u wanna talk about it blog 100˚Berlin

Take me

As an autobiographical portrait, ‘Take Me’ delves into personal history, cultural influences, and loneliness. The table, along with the vivid colors of selected objects, focused lighting, mechanical voiceover, and deliberate movements, creates an aesthetic distance between the artist and the audience. The performance consists of both intentional and spontaneous writings, punctuated by silences and evocative, often poignant images of the body.

For this live performance, a table and chair are set up. During the act, I blindfold myself and proceed to peel and cut a grapefruit with a sharpened knife. Through this, I reveal my deepest fears, many of which are tied to experiences of physical and psychological violence. As a performance artist, I often position my own body, voice, and thoughts in a vulnerable state, willingly exposing myself to others. While I acknowledge that this establishes a distinct relationship between the artist and the spectator, it also serves as a representation of the biography of the female body. This includes aspects such as economic control, cultural implications of the female form, its representation, sexualization, and objectification.

Documentation of the performance at Sophiensaele for the 100˚Grad Festival, Berlin:

Take Me was performed in the following venues (selected):

Vienna Parallel 2019. Vienna . Austria

Sommerloch 2015. Wuppertal . Germany

Entretempo Kitchen Gallery 2015 . Berlin . Germany

Expat Markt 2014. English Theater in Berlin. Germany

100˚ Grad Festival 2013. Sophiensaele – Hebbel am Uffer. Berlin. Germany.

Month of Performance . 2013. Berlin. Germany .

Musterzimmer. 2013. Berlin.Germany.

HB Lab . 2012 Home Base Berlin . Berlin. Germany.

Since 2019, the artist has been performing ‘Take Me’ featuring this dress made in collaboration with artist Catherina Renaux Hering.

Over 18 only (video installation)

OVER 18 ONLY is a multimedia performance based on a parallel between the artist’s love affairs and her sexual abuse experience in childhood. In a confined space with one bed, each person from the audience lays down comfortably on the bed, sees the first video called Long Time No Sex projected on the ceiling and hears with headphones a mixed soundtrack based on Serge Gainsbourg‘s song Je T’aime. Next, another video called Over 18 Only begins in a small projection on the wall beside the pillow where the head of the spectator is supposed to be. This video describes the sexual abuse.
This random and ongoing video installation is a mixture of the funny, erotic and ironic stories of love affairs written in red on a toilette paper and a black and white serious story of violence.

Long time no sex (video)

Over 18 Only (video)

The installation Over 18 Only combines the use of an installation comprised of two videos constructing the illusion of a private space, in a exhibition frame. The one-to-one audience is invited to dive in an atmosphere of intimacy, lying on the bed to watch the stories of a woman who looks for love and sex as a survivor of sexual violence when a child.

Venues (the whole video installation)

2017: Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Vienna, Austria

2013: 100˚ Grade Festival. Sophiensaele. Berlin, Germany.

15th Art and Media Biennale. Wroclaw, Poland.

Month of Performance. Altes Finanzamt. Berlin, Germany.

Musterzimmer Gallery. Berlin. Germany

2012: HB Berlin. Berlin, Germany.

Agora. Berlin, Germany.

100˚ Grade. HAU/ Sophiensaele Festival. Berlin 2013.

WRO 15th Media Art Biennale 2013

Over 18 Only (video)

The video shows the past memories of the same non-fictional woman in her childhood. This time the viewer gets in contact with the details of sexual abuse experienced by a child at home. ‘Home for me has never really meant safeness’

A black and white serious story of violence.

Ice

‘In 2011, performance artist Camila Rhodi had an accident while driving her beetle Volkswagen in Santa Teresa, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Rhodi unexpectedly veered off the paved road to discover her breaks were malfunctioning. Despite her areligious background, Rhodi instinctively began to pray. This is the video documentation of Camilla Rhodi’s performance piece that recreates the near-death, automotive experience—only performed once in 2011 in Rio de Janeiro. The video shows Rhodi disrobing and slowly entering a bathtub filled with ice for the duration of 15 minutes and 47 seconds. Almost her entire body is submerged in the ice with the exception of her head, abdomen and feet—the exposed skin serves as a reminder to the viewer of her naked body’s subjection to the harsh temperatures of the ice. The extreme conditions of the tub are designed to emulate the feelings of peril and danger of the car, as well as a prolonged elapsing of time: in the ice cold bath every passing minute is perceived to be a passing hour. The second most noteworthy embellishment to the piece is the recording of traditional catholic prayers, recorded in Rhodi’s native tongue, Portuguese. Although Camila did not pray specifically to the traditional Catholic perception of God and the holy trinity, the piece draws sources from Catholics, the most dominant religion of Brazil. In addition to audible prayers, Rhodi positions candles at the head and foot of the tub, creating the sensation of being in the interior of a church, surrounded by votive candles.’

by Julia Jarrett

B.A. Columbia University ’15

The video installation was exhibited:

Altes Finanzamt taking part in Month of Performance. Berlin 2013

Musterzimmer at the solo exhibition. Berlin 2013.

Documentation of the exhibition :

The Owner of the Orange Beetle

The Owner of the Orange Beetle, a performance-installation inside an Orange Volkswagen Beetle.

“The Owner of the Orange Beetle” is an autofictional performance-installation based on the memories of the artist Camila Rhodi. Set in the streets of Rio de Janeiro, each day Rhodi takes visitors to different locations to share significant stories from her life alongside her “beloved” Orange Beetle. The theft of the Beetle served as a hook for the artist to address existential themes, such as the decisions we make in life, the values we assign to each moment, beauty, and death.

The performance occurs in three moments:

The first moment is only for the three passengers of the Beetle. It begins when the Beetle travels through the streets. Each day features a different route of streets, stories, events, and a soundtrack consisting of the same music from the cassette tapes Camila used to listen to in her daily life inside her Beetle.

The second moment takes place in the foyer of the venue. It starts shortly after the passengers are dropped off at Oi Futuro when Rhodi departs again and remains inside the vehicle with the cameras on, transmitting everything that happens in real-time to the foyer of the venue. There, where the audience is, a video jam session takes place projected on a triptych of screens, showing a collage of Beetle images along with the recorded images from inside the Beetle during that day’s ride and the live transmission of the artist inside the vehicle somewhere in the city. Meanwhile, Siri composes experimental music live as well.

In the third moment, the audience is greeted by the actress Flávia Espírito Santo, who delivers a nonsense text as if she were a supposed guide of the supposed “Beetle Museum”, where replicas of stolen objects are displayed. At some point, Camila arrives at the venue to continue recounting her memories from the theft of the Beetle. This time, with the use of mapping on her body, her friends projected on the triptych of screens, and the reading of the also biographical letter that Jô Bilac wrote to Camila to discuss loss, the artist concludes the performance.

resume:

1˚ act (50 min): the audience was invited to get inside the car to go around the streets of Rio de Janeiro.

2˚ act (1 hour): jam session conducted by Ricardo Siri and Ricky Seabra, at the same broadcasting Camila live performing inside the car in some parts of the city.

3˚ act (40 min): video installations, video mappings, live music, and Camila performing. Directed by Fabio Ferreira. Playwright: Jô Bilac and Camila Rhodi.

It was integrated with other medias, but still with a director. On this piece I was talking about losses. Based on the jacking of my orange beetle, on this performance I took people on different points of the city to tell them about existential facts of a life, the pain and the beauty of it.

It premiered on April 8, 2011, at Oi Futuro Flamengo and had a two-month run from Friday to Sunday.

A Dona do Fusca Laranja é uma performance-instalação autoficcional baseada nas memórias da artista Camila Rhodi. Ambientada nas ruas da cidade do Rio de Janeiro, a cada dia Rhodi conduz os visitantes por diferentes pontos, compartilhando histórias marcantes de sua vida ao lado de seu “amado” Fusca Laranja. O roubo do Fusca serviu de gancho para a artista abordar temas existenciais, tais como as decisões que tomamos na vida, os valores que atribuímos a cada momento, a beleza e a morte.

A performance ocorre em três momentos:

O primeiro momento destina-se apenas aos três passageiros do Fusca. Ele se inicia quando o veículo circula pelas ruas. A cada dia, um roteiro diferente de ruas, histórias, eventos e trilha sonora é apresentado. Esta última consiste no uso das próprias músicas contidas nas fitas cassetes que Camila costumava ouvir no seu dia a dia dentro do seu Fusquinha.

O segundo momento ocorre no foyer do espaço. Ele se inicia logo após os passageiros serem deixados no Oi Futuro, quando Rhodi parte novamente e permanece dentro do veículo, com as câmeras ligadas, transmitindo em tempo real tudo o que acontece para o foyer do espaço. Lá, onde o público se encontra, ocorre uma jam session de vídeo projetada em um tríptico de telas, exibindo uma colagem de imagens de fuscas juntamente com as imagens gravadas no interior do Fusca durante o passeio daquele mesmo dia e a transmissão ao vivo da artista dentro do veículo em algum lugar da cidade. Paralelamente, Siri compõe suas músicas experimentais também ao vivo.

No terceiro momento, o público é recebido pela atriz Flávia Espírito Santo, que apresenta um texto nonsense como se fosse uma suposta guia do suposto “Museu do Fusca”, onde réplicas de objetos roubados são expostas. Em algum momento, Camila chega ao espaço para continuar a contar suas lembranças a partir do roubo do Fusca. Desta vez, com o uso de mapping em seu corpo, seus amigos são projetados no tríptico de telas e a leitura da carta também biográfica que Jô Bilac escreveu para Camila para discutir sobre perda, a artista finaliza a performance.

foto-fusca-de-ricardo-beliel

A estréia ocorreu em 8 de abril de 2011 no Oi Futuro Flamengo e teve uma temporada de dois meses, de sexta a domingo.

Rio de Janeiro 2010.

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