The exhibition ANARCHIVAL FRAMES at DuplaCena 77 is the second instalment of VIDEOLOGIAS, a four-part series aimed at addressing the extensive film archive of the DuplaCena structure, (re)membering works and authors shown in past productions.

Tapping into the archive consistently manifests an unquenchable craving for return and a longing for the long gone. Time is passing while we are writing it and is changing before we can stop it. The feeling of loss is nothing more than “the sensation of time slipping through our fingers and eyes”. I’m quoting José Maçãs de Carvalho’s words in his visual essay Arquivo e Dispositivo, which, as part of a work series on the concept of the archive, will steer the interpretation of the other works featured in the exhibition. After all, the archive may be a cure for loss: we archive to remember the past in the future and we unarchive in the present to revisit the past.

But the archive is not just about the possibility of reminiscing. InANARCHIVAL FRAMES, the past emerges as a particular kind of present. More than a memory – an unchanging encapsulated time -, the past is called upon, it becomes a current image of factum in reality. From this perspective, the archive is nothing more than a mediation between the past and the present, a proof of this intertwining that never ceases to touch us.

This mediation mechanism lies at the heart of Ana Mendes’ My Father has a gun. This film, based on the artist’s family photo album, tells us the story of her father as a soldier in the Portuguese colonial war in Guinea-Bissau. Photo by photo, we enter this historical and political landscape and the reasons for its silence. The time-worn images are, nonetheless, as fresh as the effects they produce. The colonial war will never be a forgotten event – not as long as its after-effects are felt. In Teresa, a film by Tânia Dinis, the logic is similar. Juxtaposed with footage of lush tropical vegetation, we hear a narration about those who leave and the nostalgia that goes with it. The film tells us about Teresa, whose name has been etched into the narrator’s tongue (“My tongue still remembers your name”). Te – Re – Sa. Vladimir Nabokov wrote: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. It’s a three-step word: Te – Re – Sa. The gesture is emphasised by the muscles, ever so present, ever so undeniably physical. Teresa will never be past – not as long as her name is kept alive.

ANARCHIVAL FRAMES, consisting of nine works that have already been presented, is modelled on an anarchivist gesture which, for lack of any other explanation, could represent a melding of the words ‘anarchy’ and ‘archive’. By this I imply a subjection of the archive to an entropic process, a deliberate production involving some sort of disarray and randomness. The exhibition’s works do not follow a clear thematic or chronological pattern. Scattered throughout the different DuplaCena 77 rooms, they are instead a constellation of fragmented memories that collide, challenge and overlap. The films in this exhibition – which could be sorted by theme, author and time period – are given a new context so that they can make connections with each other within the current era.

If archiving means tidying up the chaos inherent in human experience, the cure for an innate wound, i.e., the impossibility of knowing, then disrupting the archive means avoiding the settling of meanings and stagnation in time. Ultimately, ANARCHIVAL FRAMES is a cartographic exercise, a (re)invention of the past maps that lead us, in the present of the present, into the future.

Curated by Ana Rito and Hugo Barata, the exhibition is open until May 25, 2024 at DuplaCena 77.