10 - Other Landscapes: On the Expanded Cinema of João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata

Summary

INTERMEDIAL BODIES

Identidade Nacional (Príncipe Real) [National Identity (Príncipe Real)] is the title of the most recent installation by João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata. The work was created at the invitation of BoCA—Biennial of Contemporary Arts, a Portuguese project focused on visual and performing arts and music that took place in Lisbon, Oporto, and Braga in 2019. The installation was exhibited in the building of the former Reservatório da Patriarcal de Lisboa (Lisbon Patriarchal Reservoir), which was established by the Catholic Diocese of Lisbon and which had been one of the first of its kind in the water distribution network that was established in 1864 to enable the provision of water to the inhabitants of the Portuguese capital. The reservoir ceased operations in the 1940s, and today the building is a site of public interest. Regardless of the processes of gentrification and touristification that Príncipe Real has suffered over recent years, the neighborhood has long since been the center of LGBTQ+ nightlife in Lisbon.

The body is key to any reading of National Identity (Príncipe Real), as it is key to all of the work of Rodrigues and Guerra da Mata, since it is the body that defines the directors’ worldview. Equally, the relationship of the body with the surrounding environment leads to the development of the journeys of their heroes, who tend to be socially marginalized and awkward queer characters condemned to a tragic end, which coincides with the unfolding of the plot. National Identity (Príncipe Real) operates in the same way: through the mythical figure of D. Afonso Henriques, the first king of Portugal, the installation draws on the theme of the segregation of a non-heteronormative community in relation to the official Portuguese narrative of the formation of the nation. The installation anchors the notion of national identity to a concrete territory, both through its title and through the combined effects of the specificity of the location in which it is exhibited, the elements of which it is composed, and the arrangement of those elements in the exhibition space.

National Identity (Príncipe Real) is composed of the short film by Rodrigues, O Corpo de Afonso (The King's Body, 2012), which is projected on a loop and juxtaposed with photographs of the transgender woman, Maria Bakker, and the transsexual Jenny Larrue.