OPEN CALL 2023
It is with great pleasure that we announce the winners of Open Call 2023!

Ian Capillé, winner of the Fundação EDP/MAAT Acquisition Prize (choice of the jury) with the work “ensaio para sonho” (2023).

Maria Peixoto Martins, winner of the DUPLACENA Incentive Prize (public choice) with the work “Pi Pi Pi Pi Pi” (2022).

The EDP/MAAT Foundation Acquisition Award, granted to the work titled “ensaio para sonho” (2023), was based on the video’s conception, which unequivocally and coherently explores the theme of loss and absence through the author’s deliberate choices of visual and sound elements. Furthermore, the artist’s profound connection with the audience, inviting them to contemplate matters of perception and the intricate interplay of space and time, significantly contributed to the jury’s recognition of this creation.

Right from the outset of ‘ensaio para sonho,’ the significance of perception becomes evident as the narrative unfolds through a story heard in voice-off against a backdrop of complete darkness that fills the screen. With no visual references to guide them, within this realm of obscurity, the spectator is prompted to conjure an entire visual universe through the sheer act of imagination, in an almost instinctive urge to journey through various mental landscapes, tinged with thoughts of apocalypse, obscurity, and mortality. Gradually, the images emerge from within the depths of obscurity, while an off-screen voice unravels a tale of love that meanders through both temporal and spatial dimensions: spaces unveiled by the images and times that have already elapsed. The screen once again succumbs to darkness, while the words of Chico César’s song “Onde está o meu Amor” immortalized by Maria Bethânia, resonate. The dream culminates in moments of scribbles and experimentation, as the author himself says: “I searched for a kind of religion of the photographic image, delving lovingly into its mysterious luminous darkness.”

Noise is the keyword in the work Pi Pi Pi Pi Pi, by Maria Peixoto Martins (1996), winner of the DUPLACENA Incentive Prize. In a cinematographic tracking shot, the artist travels through a city of 20 million inhabitants where the car is the main means of transport and horns are used as a communication code. More than 580 sounds are reproduced, in a humorous sensory experience that pleased the audience present at the session.

The 15th edition of the Fuso Festival’s Open Call received an unprecedented 271 submissions, from which the festival’s artistic Diretor, Jean-François Chougnet, selected 12 works by both Portuguese and foreign artists residing in Portugal. They are: António Olaio, Beatriz Soares Dias and Francisca Manuel, Francisca Dores, Ian Capillé, João Saramago, Lula Pena, Maria Peixoto Martins, Miguel Leonardo, Rafael Raposo Pires, Ricardo Leandro, Sarah Legow and Sofia Santa-Rita.

The jury, constituted by Margarida Chantre, Susana Sousa Dias, Isabel Nogueira, Irit Batsry, and last year’s award recipient, Maxime Martinot, congratulates the finalists on their nominations, and praises the engagement of all participants that have contributed to the enthusiastic atmosphere of the competition.

Open Call 2022