b. Porto, Portugal, lives and works in London.
Anita Marante works across video, photography, sound and text. Her current work centers around failure and the deconstruction of language/ meaning through the exploration of systems and collaborative practices.
I work across video, photography, sound and text. My practice has revolved around the memory of space, questioning and recurring to systems of measurement and architectural structures in relation to narratives resulting from how we inhabit and build. Using immaterial forms or the search for shape-shifting spaces, one point of inquiry was around failure as a way of disrupting and contradicting normative systems and power relationships.
My current research gathers some of these concerns while searching through the inadequacy for and of language and translation the potential to open gaps and renegotiate narrative, meaning, and truth. It considers the lack of transparency in processes of translation, what can be revealed when communication fails, or what remains of the fragmentation of meaning in a system both used and interrupted following how it operates. The failure exposed in language is an articulation of a general aspect that considers the failure of systems as material to question norms.
Part of my work this year has been intertwined with collaborative projects, facilitating structures and methodologies of working together and weaving interdisciplinary practices.
In 2020, I co-founded Waste Authority with Kevin Siwoff and Patrick O’Neill, a collective dedicated to re-imagine cultural waste.
I was part of the organising team of Everything Forever, the online festival run by Contemporary Art Practice artists. Together with Georgina Watson and Effy Harle, we opened a writing and publishing strand to the festival, and co-edited Mercurial Mist, an online and print-at-home publication featuring 35 contributions.
Within the Feminist Society, I programmed with Elena Lo Presti and Effy Harle Unruly Assembly, a 2-week programme of workshops and talks aimed at cultivating a layered approach to intersectional feminist practices. Through zine-making, writing, collage, and even singing, the unruly introduced personal and collective politics that represent diverse approaches to feminist instituting and art practices.
I contributed to developing CAP TV for RCA2021, a platform hosting live and pre-recorded broadcasts from across Contemporary Art Practice students. For a full listing of upcoming broadcasts visit mixcloud.com/cap_tv.
Pines is a collaboration with Pedro Tavares, and is one of the tracks featured on Tongue of blade ‡ Ears of mud, which will be released on cassette on 21 July 2021.
Tongue of blade ‡ Ears of mud is a compilation album of sound works by nine artists from the Contemporary Art Practice programme. Released as a limited run of 50 cassettes, available to pre-order via Shopify. The album will launch at Cromwell Place on 21 July in conjunction with the opening of the Contemporary Art Practice showcase.
Featuring music by Chloe Langlois, Anita Marante & Pedro Tavares, Amelie Mckee & Melle Nieling, Alessandro Moroni, Nexcyia, Louise Ørsted Jensen, Kevin Siwoff, Luis Tapia, Effy Harle & Finbar Prior.
Preorder now via the Shopify link below from a limited edition of 50 cassette tapes, featuring original design by Faye Rita Robinson. CAP Records was founded by Effy Harle and Alessandro Moroni in 2021.
Please, have a seat is a script exploring how the misuse of language can confront positions of power, revealing the absurdity and awkwardness of two speakers to represent the same phenomena in language, drawn from the situation. Iona Mitchell and Patrick O’Neill were invited to participate in an improvisation setting drafted from specific lines and logics of the script, without ever having access to the original text. The instructions were very intuitively adapted and improvised and become as performative, reacting to what the participants were feeding or ‘writing’ into the script. This mechanism worked as an echo of the text and will recirculate into the text.
Cows, chaos, a general feeling of abandonment. Say “cows” when you want to say “chaos”. Speechless. Do not know how to express it, this bubbling cows inside keeps getting entangled. Scream cows when you mean chaos. When you mean chaos, there will be cows. A diction problem. Repeat after me: cows, cows, cows. Chaos, chaos, chaos. The more people the more to explain. The same does not happen with cows. Or chaos.
I can barely understand what a cow is, how am I supposed to replace it with chaos, the word where everything could fit? How can everything fit in a word, including the mouth that projects it? How can you translate cows to chaos and keep the meaning of the sentence?
I have been looking for you to deliver a message, if you are ever able to try to translate it. Sometimes you just have to switch it, stretch it, make an effort, look beyond your poor cow-optic eyes asking for answers in your stomach. Transmute into another being. Language is a tool, but that is not enough. This will persist when cows and chaos merge, and when someone believes they never merged them. I think I could spend the rest of my life talking to cows if I learned the language. And that only means that if I looked into their ridiculous eyes, they would understand mine.
Mercurial Mist was created as the writing-strand of Everything Forever festival (everythingforever.net), March 2021, and was co-programmed and edited by Anita Marante, Effy Harle and Georgina Watson.
Across all iterations, Mercurial Mist has always remained a collaborative bringing together of text, images and language. The works were first piled into an online space (mercurialmist.tumblr.com) that keeps expanding, before unfolding into a print-at-home format. This iteration acted as a de-hierarchised collection, with each work occupying the same conceptual space. In this format the works sit next to each other ready to be folded, scratched, ripped, torn and rearranged. Mercurial Mist was thought of as a de-hierarchised publishing structure, reflecting on the collective authorship of the writing events, but also inviting a sense of usership that could take the act of reading further towards the act of manipulation of language. Mercurial Mist featured text and image work from 35 contributors.
Download the print-at-home publication via this link or below.
