LOOPS EXPANDED 2024-2025
INTERNATIONAL DECENTRALIZED EXHIBITION
10.07-07.09.2025
Loops.Expanded 2024-25 in PORTUGAL
The MNAC and Duplacena are proud to present for the 10th year an exhibition dedicated to the loop as a seminal form of the moving image.
This edition opens with an immersive video/sound installation Untitled for C, Rising series by Rui Soares Costa and André Gonçalves.
Tide is a perfect loop.
Twice daily the surface of the water rises and falls.
Rui Soares Costa, working in his studio, on the Tejo’s river bank, has been a witness to this looping movement for years.
A frequent sight from the studio’s windows is a boat, suspended by the fishermen over the quay.
In his first video work, we find a transposition of these two sights. An abstraction of a boat, resembling a hammock, is suspended from a metal structure over the surface of the water, letting us witness the tide and ebb to the immersive soundscape of André Gonçalves, that vibrates in a perpetual tidal loop.
A selection from an international open call will follow – 3 videos that are formally and conceptually experimental and poetic – List of burned books in Germany in 1933 by Miquel García Membrado, Ouroboros by Antonio Arango and Scores For Mother & Daughter by Natalia Sardi. The edition ends with a historical video: Eugenio Ampudia’s La Verdad Es Una Excusa.
Loops.Expanded is an international curatorial network for research, curatorship and exhibition. Based on experimenting with a decentralized model, it carries out activities through partnerships developed by Duplacena (Lisbon), PROYECTOR (Madrid), OndaVideo (Pisa) and WWVF (Amsterdam).
Alisson Avila and Irit Batsry
PROGRAM
MNAC
10 JUL – 03 AGO 2025: Rui Soares Costa & André Gonçalves (PT) – Untitled for C, Rising series (2024)
05 – 10 AGO 2025: Miquel García Membrado (ESP) – List of burned books in Germany in 1933 (2018)
12 – 17 AGO 2025: Antonio Arango (MEX) – Ouroboros (2018)
19 – 24 AGO 2025: Natalia Sardi (BRA/BEL) – Scores For Mother & Daughter (2024)
24 AGO – 07 SEP 2025: Eugenio Ampudia (ESP) – La Verdad Es Una Excusa (2027)
10-21.09.2025
Loops.Expanded 2024-25 in SPAIN
We received 110 of 40 countries submitted works is a testimony of the loop strengths and vitality. That’s the reason why we had a fascinating, but no easy (and slightly delayed) task. Fortunately enough, the submitted works enabled us having a real, beautiful and convincing discussion about purposes and meanings.
So in this list, we are sharing the works for which we have a commitment to show. Each curatorial partner will select one or more works and, depending on local conditions, the form of the exhibition could include shows or screenings in museums, galleries, theatres or outdoors screenings, symposiums and/or masterclasses. Hopefully, we will have a second list of more confirmed exhibitions.
This network aims to not to function as a traditional jury that just selects or rejects, but rather as a curatorial group whose goal is to unite and exhibit a ‘treasure trove’ around the loop. The present list is the autonomous but convergent work of programmers representing moving image projects in five countries: António da Câmara (Duplacena / Festival Temps d’Images, Lisbon – Portugal). Mario Gutiérrez Cru (PROYECTOR, Madrid – Spain); Sandra Lischi (Ondavideo, Pisa – Italy); Tom Van Vliet (WWVF, Amsterdam – Netherlands); Alisson Avila (Cine Esquema Novo collective (Porto Alegre – Brazil) and Irit Batsry and Alisson Avila (Loops.Lisboa / Festival Temps d’Images, Lisbon – Portugal).
We selected:
SALA EQUIS
10-21 SEP 2025. Michael Fleming – Night Trawler (2024)
10 – 20 SEP 2025: Paul Destieu (FRA) – Fade-out (2011)
LOOPS-EXPANDED IN PISA
July 29, 9:30 PM – Parco delle Concette, Pisa – Free admission
Video Art in Motion
Selection from the international screenings of “Duplacena,” Lisbon
Curated and presented by: Irit Batsry
Shamisen_oise
Shamisen and electronics improvisation by Cristian Maddalena
The Concert
Cristian Maddalena, electroacoustic composer and Japanese aedo, plays and studies the nagauta shamisen. Creator of still-developing worlds, he has produced several radio dramas for Rai 3 theater, and his works have been performed worldwide. He has collaborated with Lamberto Pignotti, Marco Colonna, Fabrizio Spera, Elio Martusciello, and Barbara de Dominicis.
The Video Program
Irit Batsry is an internationally recognized and awarded artist and video artist based in Lisbon, where she is involved in various artistic, cultural, and audiovisual projects. For “Il Giardino del Video”, she selected works from festivals produced and organized by Duplacena, Lisbon, founded by Antonio Camara Manuel in 2003 and directed by him. Duplacena is a dynamic presence in cultural production and innovative artistic projects. Irit Batsry also co-founded “Temps d’images,” “Loops.Expanded,” and “VEM – Videoarte em Movimento.”
Zbigniew Rybczyński, Tango, Poland 1981, 8’
An undisputed masterpiece of animation cinema (originally produced on film), this work anticipates the author’s later video and digital creations, featuring surprising and pioneering effects for its time. Through a painstaking process of assembly and “cutting,” a room becomes increasingly crowded in a surreal way.
Enrique Ramírez, Cruzar un muro, Chile 2012, 5’42’’
A film inspired by Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including their own, and to return to their country.” A waiting room, a public immigration office located “somewhere,” becomes a stage where contemporary human aspirations converge… waiting, hope, nostalgia, the right to dream, travel, meet, and aspire to freedom of movement and residence within one’s country—or the right to return home… All this is metaphorically represented in this blend of fiction and reality.
Eugenio Ampudia, La verdad es una excusa, Spain 2007, 4’42’’
Through the simple mechanism of reversing the film projection, the video returns Spanish Civil War exiles to their side of the border, bringing them home before our eyes, highlighting the cruelty of their historical fate and the parallel brotherhood with today’s exiles.
Mané Pacheco, Período Azul, Portugal 2018, 11’45’’, SILENT
A non-chronological reinterpretation of iconic works by “great masters of art” (20th century to today), centered on the color blue as the starting point for a story that literally unfolds on a paper roll. Filmed/drawn/filmed again in a mise en abîme movement, it physically reproduces the immaterial “loop” of the image. The construction of iconic (and ironic) images begins with traditional drawing and painting techniques, later replaced by domestic/intimate objects. The mirrored effect between the loop and its reflection emphasizes the repetition of trends at significant moments in Western art.
Maxime Martinot, Les Antelopes, found footage, France-Portugal, 2020, 8’
Les Antelopes begins with a line by Marguerite Duras: “One day, on the coasts of Morocco, one hundred and fifty years ago, thousands of antelopes threw themselves into the sea together.” The work intertwines drone footage of deserted landscapes hunting antelopes; created in Paris during lockdown, it also shows empty urban spaces monitored from above. Animals and people appear hunted, in an enigmatic and evocative composition of found online footage.
The Festival Programs
VEM – Videoarte in Movimento
A traveling experience curated by Duplacena (Lisbon) and Projector (Madrid), dedicated to Iberian and international audiovisual creation, renewing both the locations and modes of viewing: screenings take place in transient venues, transported by van across Spain and Portugal, featuring a mix of classics and new works. In summer, in public and open spaces, the program (curated by Alisson Avila, Mario Gutiérrez, and Irit Batsry) travels to various locations, from Madrid and Lisbon to smaller and “special” sites.
Loops.Expanded, now in its 10th edition, is a network of curators who annually select international videos through an open call, inspired by the idea of repetition, or the “loop” in a broad sense. In Italy, the program is hosted in Pisa at Ondavideo. Selected videos are shown at the National Museum of Contemporary Art of Chiado in Lisbon, in various art spaces in Madrid, at the Arsenale cineclub in Pisa, and elsewhere.
FUSO, an annual video art festival now in its 17th edition, is a major video art event in Portugal, taking place in late August in open and evocative spaces across Lisbon (cloisters and gardens of museums and historical sites). Spectators relax on deck chairs while attending themed evenings. In the first, a competition dedicated to Portuguese production awards a prize in addition to the jury’s choice. Programs are presented by curators from around the world. FUSO has also had a recent island edition in autumn in the Azores.
Il Giardino del Video is an Ondavideo project supported by Fondazione Pisa and Comune di Pisa, with the support of cineclub Arsenale. The evening of July 29 is held in collaboration with Associazione Duplacena, Lisbon.
