Ana Vaz, Vera Amaral and Paula Nascimento in Conversation with Uli Ziemons

Uli Ziemons: I want to speak with you about the film itself and also about the production, because it is very different from other films we show in many ways. Ana, could you introduce your team and then tell us a little about how the project first started, how you found the school you were collaborating with in the making of the film?

Ana Vaz: Thank you again for organizing this, Uli, and welcome Paula Nascimento, who helped organize the whole process of making and the becoming of 13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT A BLACKBIRD. Paula works at EGEAC, the commissioner of this project. It is important that we frame this film within the larger framework of a project called Descola, which would translate to something like “unschool”, a name and an attitude towards critical pedagogy that tries to think about the ways in which pedagogy can be rethought as more experimental and intersectional.

Paula Nascimento: I work at EGEAC, a company which is set up by the city council in order to manage the cultural spaces—museums, galleries, theatres, everything that belongs to the municipality. And they have this project Ana mentioned called Descola, a project which is developed over the course of one year with one school, one artist and in collaboration with one cultural space. The form of art and the mode of teaching is very open. So the artists present their idea: “I would like to work with this school in this format.”

In the case of the Galerias Municipais, Tobi Maier, the director and programmer of the galleries, invited Ana. And that is how I met Ana in a meeting where Tobi said “this is the artist that you will develop the project with”.

When we had one of the first meetings around the project, my only intention at that point was to work with an idea that is very dear to me in terms of filmmaking, which is the relationship between the body and the camera.

Ana: Exactly. A year and a half ago I was invited by EGEAC to develop a project for the Descola initiative in which I was asked to propose a project that established a relationship with one school in Lisbon. I only live partly in Lisbon, so in the beginning I was troubled by how I was going to go about actually finding a school to work with. When we had one of the first meetings around the project, my only intention at that point was to work with an idea that is very dear to me in terms of filmmaking, which is the relationship between the body and the camera. When I started speaking about this, we just started brainstorming and Paula had, I think, a great intuition, because she said something along the lines of: “What about a school that has a good physical education department?” And I thought, “Well, actually, great! Maybe that is a place to start, right?” And then Paula very kindly suggested the school where she had studied when she went to high school. I always tend to prefer to work, in projects like this, with connections and links that are affective-based, that are not only ideas that are very far or de-situated in relationship to the place that I will be working with. So, starting from this relationship of affect, I thought was a good place to start. And this is how Paola, not only kindly took me to the school where she has studied at, but also accompanied the weekly workshops which took place over the course of one school year.

I began by proposing workshops that were about filmmaking, in which for at least three months we wouldn’t be touching a camera. I knew this would be an effort, but I really didn’t want for us to be jumping straight into image-making, but rather to try to think collectively about what it means to make an image, how we produce images, and through what means. And mostly, I wanted to explore how our bodies can be a sensorial means towards building a collective knowledge.

I’m very happy that Vera Amaral could join us today. Unfortunately, Mário Neto couldn’t, but it was with them alongside a small group of students, that we began working together. Vera and Mário were the ones who were with us since the beginning and persisted, even despite the pandemic, which is when our group heavily reduced. You can imagine, after one year of spending so much time in the presence of bodies and thinking about embodiment, suddenly having to conceive of a film through Skype was a challenge. I am very thankful that Vera, Paula and Mário stayed until the end, building what I would call a kind of ephemeral community of sorts, really connected to the making of this film.

Uli: Let’s jump right into the film and talk about the Wallace Stevens poem which opens the film and lends the film its title. What, to you, is the relationship between that poem and your film in particular and between poetry and cinema in general?

Paula: We started working in September 2019. From March/April 2020, we had online sessions to try to keep going with the film. In these sessions Ana was always proposing some exercises for the next session. And these were very different exercises for the students. My position was handling part of the production and following all this work. I was just trying to listen as much as possible. And try to give input sometimes, which I believed was useful. At the end of each session Ana would ask me what I think and I would give a perspective.

For one session, Ana asked the students to bring a poem. A poem, that for them would be something that is connected with what we were doing. I remembered this poem I had read in another video art work several months before—I was just reading it but I was not in the video, just my voice. I had it quite fresh in my mind. I tried to look up something else, but nothing I found made as much sense. And so I thought, well, I take this one which was perfect. I don’t remember which poem Vera and Mário brought, but everyone brought poems or ideas. And then, at the end, it was nice to keep this one. So we had one extra perspective on all this material. This is how it came up.

Uli: What was the discussion around the poem? I imagine this as a group discussion. You were reading the poem. You were trying to figure out what it could mean to the film. Do you remember what made you, as a group, choose it? In what way was it perfect for the film?

Paula: The group chose it. Vera, Mário and Ana chose it. I brought it to the class, but then they would always decide everything regarding the creativity of the film. For me it is perfect, because we were talking a lot about animals, about perception, about human being having this idea that it is superior to other species, other animals, and about looking and being looked at. This is one of the big points for me in which this poem relates to the film. The film talks about this also: When you look at something you should be conscious that something is looking back at you. It doesn’t matter if it’s a flower, if it’s a bird, if it’s a dog or if it’s another person, or whatever. We were also talking about understanding each other based on this difference: How can we understand the dog? How does the dog understand us? Vera has this wonderful dog that we see at the end of the film—one of her dogs, she has two. Animal perception, looking, conscience—I think this is what the poem made me think of.

Uli: You were now alluding to artistic exercises that you did in class. They seem to have been a big part of the creation of the film – some of them are even mentioned in the credits. I am wondering about this idea of getting—so to speak—hints from other artists, using their methods as a way of coming up with your own methods. Maybe you can describe some of the other exercises you did.

It was during confinement, that we started making images for the first time. But since we were confined, the domestic space became a space for looking and listening to.

Ana: Maybe it would be good to hear Vera speak about the exercises. When we were suddenly forced to have our classes on Skype, I was very stunned by how Vera developed a very intimate relationship with filming. It was during confinement, that we started making images for the first time. So by then the exercises changed from being embodied exercises, which included silent walks, collective meditation, walking with one’s eyes closed led by another—a practice developed by artist Myriam Lefkowitz—to Pauline Oliveros’ exercises on tuning. And suddenly with the pandemic, we were far from each other and filming became our exercise. But since we were confined, the domestic space became a space for looking and listening to. Perhaps, Vera, it would be very good to hear from you, how your relationship to filming changed during this process. What did you feel? How was the experience of filming inside your house?

Vera Amaral: I know that it would be different, if we had done everything in school. So having to have ideas to film—because when we think about a movie, we think all of these universes outside, on other planets or on our planet—so it was, you know, kind of different to think about something interesting. To make up a story or to tell something to another person. The thing I remember the most, is, when we had these sessions, I was talking about how the movie would be. Ana would ask: How do you see the movie? And we were describing, we closed our eyes and stayed in silence. And I don’t know why, inside I always had this idea of animals looking at themselves or just trying to understand how they feel. I always tried to understand how their visions are different depending on the animal. And I tried to work with lights and colors being different. I think why we went to the bird poem was the topic of being seen and also seeing. Because what we know of things is more like what we get from other generations and what our parents told us. So our knowledge is basically a piece of everything that people experienced. I think we all brought something to the sessions to form this type of movie. The movie is basically a piece of all of us together. So that was different. And, also, I have never had an experience like this. When Ana came to our school me and my friends felt already interested from the beginning. Because it was something different. The thing we are studying is video, camera, photography, design, websites and all that. Ana came for the sports people! She thought we could do something with robotics, you know, but then it ended up being with us. So that was different, and it made me feel like I could express more of my vision and actually be taken seriously, you know? Because, I am not actually that old and I haven’t done much, so it was very cool to have someone teach me and her listening to me. They learn with you but you also learn with them.

Uli: I think it comes through in the film that it is a very collaborative project. Where it is not so much about, “Hey, I show you how it is done“, but rather „Let’s try and find out together how it could be done“. I was wondering about what interested you to choose Ana’s class—and you already talked about that—but also about the way that the class might have changed your ideas about cinema. Did you have a notion of what cinema is and then came Ana and she presents you with this other way of thinking about that?

Vera: I used to watch these very normal movies. I like old movies like THE GODFATHER and all those, and Robert De Niro, you know? I knew that movies could be a lot of things, but I didn’t have an idea of ... Ana showed us Maya Deren and I didn’t know it could be that experimental and artistic. So yes, it was a very nice experience to know more of those pieces.

I guess what has always attracted me towards schools is its ambiguous role a place of knowledge transmission, also of knowledge imposition, but also of rebellion, of experimentation, of transformation.

Uli: Ana, I was wondering whether this was the first time you taught a class like this. And what it is that attracts you to this type of engagement?

Ana: It wasn’t the first time that I was teaching, but it was certainly the first time that I was teaching like this. And—according to what Vera just said—I’m not sure if I was a teacher in the case of what we did. And that’s what I really enjoyed about the experience. I wouldn’t say that it was about teaching and being taught, but rather a very improvised, experimental, and ephemeral way of knowledge exchange. Unfortunately, it seems that schools are so formatted around an idea that—as Vera said—you receive knowledge, you inherit knowledge, and you learn that knowledge that you will be passed on again and again in a cycle of inheritance that seems to me to replicate models of oppression and centralization of power through knowledge in the hands of few. And this is not how I believe a community can form, rise and develop.

I guess what has always attracted me towards schools is its ambiguous role a place of knowledge transmission, also of knowledge imposition, but also of rebellion, of experimentation, of transformation. I think there is something inherent to the idea of a school that is or should be wonderfully experimental, as a place in which you don’t know where you are going together, where sense making can make or break groups, friendships, communities. One does not go to school alone.

When I first arrived at the Escola D. Dinis, I initially made a small presentation of the films I had made and where I was coming from. I am not from here, either, so I also feel like an intruder, a migrant. So I was kind of “knocking in” and saying “Hello, I am here.” From there onwards, on the very first class we had, I proposed to share an exercise that I had learned from someone who taught me a great deal about life and perception, the wonderful French-American artist Myriam Lefkowitz. I first encountered her practice as a student of hers in the experimental school for art and politics (SPEAP) at SciencesPo, Paris. Her piece “Walk, Hands, Eyes” had a profound effect on me. During this walk, she leads you through a space whilst you have your eyes closed, barely touching you, she guides you and from time to time, she asks you to open your eyes and close them. It seems like the most simple exercise but I left this exercise transformed. I felt like what I was experiencing there was touching not only on my understanding of space, time, embodiment, but also of kinship, of being in the presence of someone who you have to trust. At the end of the exercise, I looked at her and said: This is cinema, for me. Because cinema is not just about what you see but it’s about what you can’t see, what you don’t see.

In the first class I had with Vera’s group, this was the first exercise we did. We were 25 people on that day, one leading the other. And for me that’s when I started to think that we could begin to work together. Of course, lots of people gave up and said “what is this, this is very strange”, but lots of people decided to stay and from that experience we started to exchange our impressions—sensorial and philosophical—about this very simple exercise. And I was very surprised to see how it generated so many wonderfully interesting responses: about trust, community making, seeing, not seeing, fear, belonging. This is how we started. And every session I would normally make propositions in regards to the previous one. So each class was a response to the previous class. I could never have drawn up a curriculum for that year.

Uli: But I mean, this is also about trust. The program trusting you, Ana, to go ahead and work with the students without being able to have a plan: This is where we are going to end up. And to organize it in a more fluid way that is more open to changing direction and heading wherever the group wants to head.

In this film you work with analog film. Is that something that is taught in school? Or do you mostly work with digital media? And how was it to work with analog film?

Vera: It was really cool. I really liked it. I think I like it better. I did not get the chance to actually record something, because Covid happened. It was more the part of editing. And what I got to do with Ana, actually recording stuff, I really liked it.

Uli: Some of the images that really stick in my mind are the ones that I am assuming were shot when you were apart from each other. There seems to be a close up of what I am guessing is an LED light, where the lights are changing, there are a lot of blurred images and it is really beautiful imagery. Did you shot these, Vera?

Vera: [laughs] I actually just used a lamp. It was just a lamp.

Uli: And you shot this on 16mm? Or did you transfer this later?

Ana: The film is mixed-format, because of Covid, basically. We had planned to have a collective analog workshop in March and then the plague arrived. So, from that moment onwards we filmed with what we had at home. I said: “Whatever we have—phones, small digital cameras, whatever you have to film easily, we’ll do it that way.” And then, what you see in analog was shot when we could finally meet again.

Uli: That’s the black and white footage.

Ana: That’s the black and white and color footage. In these images, you can see that there is nobody at school. That’s for me one of the eerie things about these images. We were coming back to the school to film but in a time in which there were no in-presence classes. They opened an exception for us because I thought it was so important for us to have a moment together.

Uli: It seems poignant that a project that is so much about collaboration and coming together ultimately speaks so much about looking inside and being interior. And you end up all being separated and being thrown back to what’s around you and what’s at hand. This is one of the things that I appreciate a lot about the film: The amazing things that come out of this confined situation. How did your thinking about the film change with this separation? Did it change what you wanted to do with the film? Did the theme of interiority become more relevant for you as a group?

Ana: It is a shame that Mário is not here, because he said something very poignant about our collaboration—I said, “Oh it’s a shame that we couldn’t be together from March onwards”. And Mário said: “Yeah, but don’t you think that in a way this situation brought us closer?” I’ll let Vera comment a bit about that.

At some point we were just filming something and then the other one would respond. Everything would just come together, even if we were not together.

Vera: I think, like I said, it would have been very different if we didn’t do all those exercises every week to record at home. And it definitely changed whatever I thought it could be. When we were still at school, Ana was also asking what we thought the film was going to be—and then it changed. I don’t think we were filming before March and then we were filming at home. So we had to change the ideas, had to come up with something to film at home. It was hard to come up with ideas, to come up with something that made sense. At some point we were just filming something and then the other one would respond. I would record—I don’t know... what did I record?—feathers. And then Ana would record images of indigenous artefacts. Everything would just come together, even if we were not together. The videos would always respond to each other. And we didn’t talk about it. We just recorded and it made sense. It was funny.

Uli: You had already spent so much time together, you were starting to finish each other’s sentences.

Ana: We worked a little bit on that technique of Cadavre Exquis. In writing—if we go back to the beginning and your question about poetry—I would write a verse and I would send my verse to Vera and Vera sends her verse to Paula and Paula sends her verse to you. But you don’t see the full thing, only the last verse, because that’s the rule of Cadavre Exquis. We played that for a month but instead of verses, we played with images, and it was really fun. Really fun to see how each of us would respond to the last image or idea that was in the previous video. And strangely enough the film ended up being a kaleidoscope of perspectives, because the more you tried to put the film into one cohesive thing it just didn’t make sense, because it was not about that. So that’s why I think the poem came in so perfectly. When I looked at Vera and Mário and said, “Well, I think that poem really activates what we were doing.” In Wallace Stevens’s poem, there are thirteen ways of looking at the bird, but also thirteen ways of the bird interacting with a larger environment of peoples and places.

Vera: True...

Paula: One thing I think is important to add, which for me is a key point of all this. The pandemic was announced on March 11, 2020. We worked from September to December 2019, then had a break for the holidays, then Ana had to travel and came back at the end of January 2020, and on March 11 we had the news that everything changed. The 11th was a class day, which I did not attend, but Ana did and the students and then we realized, ok, this is over. And one week later, on the 18th, Ana was already on Skype with Vera and Mário. There was no real break. The break of the presence, of course, but it was immediate. So one thing I think about a lot, is that, if it were another person, another artist, who didn’t make this immediate move, maybe we would have lost everything.

Ana: To add on that, because what Paula brings to the table is something that is significant to the project, which we discussed with Mário and Vera quite a few times. It’s that we could have stopped at that point, but that was the point in which we are finally building a community, which is always fragile. And I was afraid of the isolation and wondering how to think about the future. And suddenly I felt: No, we need to be together. If this pandemic is going to completely isolate us we need to have some kind of a link that will help us to think through this together. Because even me, alone, I couldn’t. So on the 18th, when we met—I don’t know if Vera remembers—we looked at each other and said, ok, so what do we do? We don’t want to make a Covid-film. But what can we do from this?

Vera: I don’t really remember. But yes, a lot of people did go away. So just seeing me and my friend—and in the beginning we were so many—I think … I don’t know … maybe if we had had a lot of people it would have turned out something else. So I think, in a happy way, it turned into something kind of more personal.