João Penalva

2 October, 1 and 7p.m.
The Great Hall, Arts Centre of Christchurch
João Penalva - 336 Rivers

Art & Industry 2000 included two screenings of a film by London-based Portuguese artist, João Penalva.

Trained as a painter, Penalva has, since the beginning of the 1990s, incorporated numerous other approaches and mediums in his practice. Many of these would not usually be associated with visual art, namely music, dance, writing and the organization of various archives. From this background in performance, painting and writing, Penalva's practice naturally moves into film and video installation. He quotes or freely references from all media.

Penalva's film 336 Rivers resembles a painting in its near-stillness. It is a single shot of a park, where trees gently rustle and the sun glints on a lake in the middle distance; otherwise there is no motion except for the occasional person (or at one point, a dog) passing into then out of the frame. Consequently, 336 Rivers has a contemplative, even Impressionist quality. The image is accompanied by a spoken monologue, a story written by Penalva in English but translated into Russian by actor Yuri Stepanov .(The voice over has English subtitles.) The monologue alludes to a landscape different from the one depicted - namely Lake Baikal in Russia. It also has the quality of a memoir as it describes childhood reminiscence - its stream of consciousness effect makes it seem all the more authentic. However, it is a fiction but as the viewer listens to the story, s/he becomes spellbound by it and the question of whether it is real or imagined becomes confused. The parkland image becomes suffused with the spoken narrative, creating another landscape.

Penalva's work is concerned with ideas of translation - or perhaps more aptly, mistranslation. In 336 Rivers specifically the line between documentary and fiction is blurred as the film draws on aspects of documentary, cinéma vérité and memory. A real-time image is accompanied by a fake memoir; but this fiction is made so absorbing that it seems authentic. For Penalva, cinema allows us to image places not actually experienced - an idea he realises in 336 Rivers.

	João Penalva 336 Pek (336 Rivers), 1998 59 minute video. Still. Image courtesy of the artist

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