Catarina Simão. Traces vs. Outcomes: A New Meeting with the Mozambique Film Archive

Since 2009, Simão has been developing The Off-Screen Project–Mozambique Film Archive–an “in flux” initiative exploring the nature of perception and memory built up through archives. The project is centered on an ongoing dialog with a specific archive, the Frelimo film collection, kept in the State Archive in Maputo, Mozambique. For the seminar, Simão’s talk reflects on this research project tracing stories and reassembling images that contributes to shaping a different view of transitional processes in the context of Mozambique’s independence. Inspired by the dyad “training-untraining,” rather than “colonization-decolonization,” the artist’s approach focuses on exploring how the need for the realization of an outcome in bodies that have been trained to do so has imposed new forms of telling history, of collecting, and of archiving.

Catarina Simão was born in Portugal in 1972. She is an artist and independent researcher. Simão is known for her essay-like displays, using documentation, writing, video, and drawing. She also engages in radio shows and public talks, participatory workshops, curating film screenings, and publishing. Her practice is built on long-term research-based projects that entail collaborative partnerships and different forms of presentation to the public. Her work has been presented at Serralves Museum (2010), Manifesta 8 (2010), Africa.cont (2011), and other institutions across Europe and Mozambique, as well as Beirut, Zagreb, and New York.