Frictions between the archive and artistic practice in Still Life/ Stilleben

Abstract

This essay discusses the process of creation of the filmic installation Still Life/Stilleben (2010), by Portuguese director Susana de Sousa Dias. Our approach is to make explicit the artistic procedures adopted in relation to documents, photographs, and propaganda films of the Estado Novo, produced during the 48 years of dictatorship in Portugal, and deposited in the archives of the Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado/Direção-Geral de Segurança (PIDE/DGS), the Portuguese political police. Through the analysis of the compositional procedures of the work, we point to the place of the archive as an activator of an authoritarian present, which occurs in the midst of heterogeneous times.

Keywords Natureza Morta/Stilleben; archives; creation process; filmic forms; Susana de Sousa Dias