Experimental Films by Alexandre Alagôa

In 2020, in the middle of the worldwide pandemic, the team at Kulturfabrik was more determined than ever to support the local art scene and the result was the Squatfabrik: a programme of short artist residencies. Due to the project's great success, it has become a permanent fixture in Kufa's calendar and is back for a third time since the 6 June 2022. And so, between June and November 2022, four artist duos are in residency at Kufa. The fourth artist duo of the Squatfabrik 2022 is Alexandre Alagôa (LU-PT) and Ida Lissner (DK). Started at the end of October, their residency will end on November 26th. 

In the framework of Alexandre Alagôa’s residency, we propose four short movies that illustrate his work. The perfect opportunity to not only discover the work of the artist but also to discuss and exchange.

Vortex, 2017
9 minutes

A corridor of an apartment is transformed into a claustrophobic and vertiginous vortex that swallows and imprisons you in the infinite fall through the mise en abyme: it’s a pure enclosure inside the image world, it’s the Descent into the Maelstrom.

Framed, 2022
8 minutes

Taking the window of his room as the main subject of the film, Alagôa emphasizes the basic elements of cinema: the frame, the screen, light, and movement.

Canto, 2022
11 minutes

The corner of a street is matched and mixed with the chant of a bird recorded on that same street.

Grid, 2021
14 minutes

A ritual of grids, reflections and chasms; a complete state of entropy; a space that devours itself; a vertigo that destroys the gravity of the Earth; a trap that captures us inside the voids of the screen of light: «That blank arena wherein converge at once the hundred spaces» (Hollis Frampton).

Alexandre Alagôa (LU- PT)

Alagôa’s work explores the mechanical, plastic and durational specificities of the audiovisual medium, and its immediate physical, raw and kinetic impact on the viewer’s perceptual organism and nervous system, often resulting in a xamanic-like ritual where eye, body and brain are submitted into a space and time-bending experience: matter, perspective and compositional logic are constantly being challenged, on the verge of a breaking point. From an obvious presentation of reality, to its manipulation and deterioration, Alagôa’s films usually present us a familiar world only to slowly exhaust it: a complete destruction of the Earth’s gravity, now entering a void where light and movement merge and interact into a new formless world, shattering the senses of vision and hearing into new sensible and obscure realms. In 2020 he launched a new project entitled turva, an audiovisual label focused on the production and publishing of experimental art, along with portuguese musician and sound artist Luís Neto.