Anna Trzpis

I am proposing a discourse on the limits and potentials of the depiction of the ‘real’ in moving images. The topic itself will evolve around a short film entitled The Uprising (2012), produced by the Brazilian Artist Jonathas de Andrade.

The Uprising is a short film about a fictitious horse race set in the city of Recife, Brazil and includes both horses and carriages that were previously, and in reality, banned from the city by law. Andrade edits the film not merely as a horserace depicted in a film but as a documentary about the uprising of the local inhabitants against the actual law. Subsequently, the fictional staging of a horserace in the film leads to a real life uprising in the city of Recife, which is documented before its existence in reality.

By negating the sovereignty of authenticity in the depiction of reality through an image, or more specifically the conscious choice to intertwine and join documentary and fictional modesin an aesthetic construction, a moment of uncertainty about fact or fiction is created.In this, a possibility space of self-reflexivity and engagement of the spectator is opened up and the empowerment of the imagination toward a different reality is enhanced instead of limited by the paternalistic reproduction of images and the prescribed realities held within.

Through the example provided by Jonathas De Andrade, with considerationgiven to authors such as Maria Muhle, Hito Steyerl, Jacques Rancière, Peter Osborne and Giorgio Agamben, I am pursuing to widen the breadth of research on aestheticconstruction and ultimately, the potential of the ‘real’ in art and film.

Biographical Note