Visor esterescópico

Tabela:

Demarcation Commission of the border of the Tete district - Southern Zambezi, 1904-1906.
Led by Carlos Viegas Gago Coutinho

Commission for the demarcation of the southeastern border of Angola, 1st part of the works, 1912-1914.
Led by Carlos Viegas Gago Coutinho

Geodetic Mission to East Africa, 1907-1910.
Led by Carlos Viegas Gago Coutinho

Dilolo Luso-Belgian border delimitation commission, 1914-1915.
Led by César Augusto Moura Brás (1881-1954)

The border delimitation missions of the early 20th century resorted to various photographic formats for the visual documentation of their activities. One was the stereoscopic format, a technique that allows the visualisation of three dimensions from the fusion of two slightly different images, each corresponding to one of our eyes. Fusion is aided by a stereo viewer like the one we find here. It is a powerful and playful form of immersion and “virtual transport” to the represented contexts.

Stereoscopic Viewer. c. 1900.
Col. National Museum of Contemporary Art, Lisbon

Video

The feast
Soraya Vasconcelos, 2021
video, 9'10”

This animation results from an investigation into a border demarcation mission in 1914-15, mapping a section between Angola and the Belgian Congo (current Democratic Republic of Congo). The starting point is an image showing a commemorative lunch in the Portuguese camp on October 5, 1914. Sitting at the table are six white men – the chiefs of the mission of each colonial power, Portugal and Belgium. Behind is a black servant whose head has been rendered invisible against the dark background of the photographic print.

The image was reprinted, cut and transformed into a small paper theatre. This is the “stage” where the actions take place. From the original glass negative, it was possible to recover the features of the black face, and it is returned to the scene, which acquires colour and becomes fanciful and unreal, saturated with objects that intend to summon the questions that this image provoked about colonial and post-colonial history. It reflects on the dynamics of power, resistance and the ghosts that still haunt us today.