Episode 12: Filipa Ramos
Filipa Ramos is a writer, curator, and educator, who has been working on the relationships between contemporary art and cinema, and the way environmental and ecological matters of concern are tackled or manifested in and through art.
"Like when you watch a good film, you may be attentive to the edits, to the montage, to the sound; and then all of a sudden, you are crying. And you know, you are willingly suspending your disbelief. But that's why you go to the cinema as well. And I think the zoo offers exactly that same kind of back and forth experience and in a really important way.”
Filipa Ramos is one of the founding curators of Vdrome, a self-proclaimed online cinema. She is also the Curator of Art Basel Film. and a Lecturer in the MRes Art: Moving Image of Central Saint Martins, London and the Master’s Program of the Arts Institute in Basel. She is co-curating the symposia series, or the “interdisciplinary festival” The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish with Lucia Pietroiusti for the Serpentine Galleries, London. Ramos is currently the Head of Research and Publications for the 13th Shanghai Biennale.
Episode Notes & Links
Filipa's writing and research on art, film, and nature have been published in magazines and catalogs worldwide. She authored "Lost and Found" (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2009) https://en.silvanaeditoriale.it/libro/9788836613397 and edited "Animals" (London: Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press, 2016). https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/events/documents-contemporary-art-animals/
She curated "Animalesque", a group exhibition on becoming other at the Bildmuseet Umeå (Summer 2019) http://www.bildmuseet.umu.se/en/exhibition/animalisk/35302
Filipa is also the curator of Art Basel's film sector. https://www.artbasel.com/stories/online-viewing-rooms-filipa-ramos
V-drome is a perennial online program that presents films by visual artists and filmmakers. http://www.vdrome.org
Lucia Pietrouisti is the head of the general ecology department of the Serpentine Galleries where she also curated the interdisciplinary festival titled "The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish" along with Filipa. https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/general-ecology/
The 13th Shanghai Biennale aims to advocate for processes of planetary re-alliance relying on transspecies collectivity. https://www.powerstationofart.com/whats-on/programs/shanghai-bienniale/home
Beatriz Colomina is an architecture historian, theorist, and curator. Her text titled “Diary of a Disease” is published online as part of the "Sick Architecture", https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/sick-architecture/364166/diary-of-a-disease/
Inspired by ‘Cyborg Manifesto’ by Donna Haraway, Milanese Fashion House Gucci’s AW 2018 collection titled "Paradoxical Creatures" was designed by Alessandro Michele. https://www.gucci.com/uk/en_gb/st/stories/runway/article/fall-winter-2018-details
Hannah Marriott’s detailed account of the story features how other houses such as Prada and D&G were embracing similar concepts for the 2018 fashion week. https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2018/feb/27/miquela-cyborg-handbag-drones-milan-fashion-week-weird-vision-future
Director Gus Van Sant and Gucci's creative director Alessandro Michele's film "At Home" features a television lecture performed by writer and philosopher Paul B Preciado. https://www.gucci.com/tr/en_gb/st/stories/article/guccifest-episode-1
Published in 1998, “The Power of Display: a history of exhibition installations at the Museum of Modern Art" is a seminal study of installation design as an aesthetic medium and cultural practice by Mary Anne Staniszewski.
"Plant Sex" is a mind-boggling public program that took place at the Serpentine galleries. Co-curated as a prelude to "The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish with Plants" by Filipa, it sought to reflect on the long and deep relationship between botany and eroticism. https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/plantsex/
Carl Linnaeus was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, and physician who formalized binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Linnaeus
Acclaimed curator Chus Martinez was our guest at the previous episode. Make sure to dive into her ocean-like mind to make discoveries about nature, the ocean, and the sciences' potential relations with art through her dazzling array of thoughts.https://www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-10-chusmartinez
Octavia Butler was a groundbreaking afro-futurist science-fiction writer. Her short essay, “The Lost Races of Science Fiction" tackled the issue of racial presentation within the field of science fiction was first published in Transmission Magazine's summer issue in 1980. https://garage.vice.com/en_us/article/d3ekbm/octavia-butler
"Sex, Botany, and Empire" explores the entwined destinies of Carl Linnaeus and Joseph Banks’ influence served both science and imperialism by Patricia Fara. http://cup.columbia.edu/book/sex-botany-and-empire/9780231134262
“The Company One Keeps: Laptops, Lap Dances, Lapdogs” was published at e-flux journal #93 in 2018 https://www.e-flux.com/journal/93/215746/the-company-one-keeps-laptops-lap-dances-lapdogs/
Episode recorded on Zoom on December 7th 2020.
Interview by Can Altay. Produced by Aslı Altay & Sarp Renk Özer. Music by Grup Ses.