João Maria Gusmão & Pedro Paiva have worked together since 2001, producing films, sculptures, photographs, installations, and anthologies of what they describe as “poetico-philosophical fiction.”
Conceived for the stage of Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, “Avantesma Fantasma” is an exhibition-labyrinth of images in movement: a Noh performance in which the ghost of a demon attempts to explain things that cannot be performed; sleeping passengers filmed in slow motion in a Skinkansen; a projector filmed at 2000 images per second; and the machinery of cinema where images appear and disappear.