Celia Eid
“Punto Agitato unfolds in a moving world where there is no definite space nor precise time. A continual energy pervades Punto Agitato throughout with a flutter of hesitant ambiguous and feverish gestures. The music is improvised and recorded directly on the video.”
Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
CE: I was born in São Paulo, Brazil. At the moment, I live part of the time in France and for the other part in Brazil. I have always had a very strong relationship with the visual arts and music. I studied music at University in Brazil. That is where I discovered contemporary European music and the great 20th century composers like Boulez, Berio, Stockausen, and the American John Cage. After my studies I moved to Europe to continue studying music. I spent 2 years in France and 4 years in Germany. In Germany, I went back to visual art. There I had several exhibitions. After 6 years in Europe I returned to São Paulo where I had a career as an illustrator working with many newspapers and publishing houses. In the mid-90s I worked at a video production house where I learned digital animation techniques. In 1997, I moved back to France where I started to create animations with the music of composers, friends, which I had met when I was young in France. I also worked teaching children and teenagers how to make animations. Today beside the animations I also paint and practice lithography.
Punto Agitato is a collaboration with musician Pierre-Stéphane Meugé. How do your collaborations work? Specifically this collaboration?
CE: I met Pierre-Stéphane Meugé when I returned to France in 1997. In addition to being a composer, he is a great saxophonist. He's someone very involved in teaching. He often played with my old musician friends. I created the animation thinking about him, but he didn’t know. When I finished the video I sent it to him. We made an appointment to talk. He said that many parts of the film inspired him a lot but some parts didn't inspire him at all. I asked more details to understand what exactly inspired him and why. After that conversation, I deleted all the parts that he didn't like and I worked developing the rest. Removing the parts he didn't like was not a problem for me because I also had some doubts about them. Developing the new parts was very easy because what he said inspired me. The music is improvised, he didn't have any score, he had only a little draw as guide.
Your work is often a collaboration with a sound artist. What is your relationship to music and sound?
CE: As I said, I started making videos animation in 1997 when I moved to France and found my old good musician friends and the contemporary European music environment. Music and cinema are two arts similar because they run together in time. Doing this kind of video I’m able to fuse my visual art with music. Most of the videos have structures inspired by music. I’m very happy to have found a way to create one kind of art that encompasses both my passions.
I can't help but look at Punto Agitato through the lens of our current culture of coronavirus and protests. The animated characters mirror group dynamics: order, avoidance, hesitancy, meetings, gathering, rebellion, reinstating order. Do you see this piece differently now than when it was first created?
CE: It is very interesting your comment about Punto Agitato. Usually, when I start a new work I don’t have a plan. I have a few ideas, but they concern, in general, more the structure than the sense or the message. To do an animation takes a lot of time. One year or more. Many things happen during this time. I noticed, and this is quite new, that during this process I absorb unconsciously all the stress, the anguish, the violence of the current events of the world. And all this becomes transparent in the work.
I started to do Punto Agitato in 2018 a very difficult year in France and Brazil. In France for more than a year every Saturday there were amazing demonstrations against the government. They were very violent. In Brazil in the middle of a big governmental and an economic crisis we had elections where one of the craziest and irresponsible person in the world was elected. We were afraid to have a new dictatorship, with the Covid-19 we now have a genocide.
I agree with you when you say that today, in 2020, Punto Agitato has a lot of relation with what we are living but for me what is very important in my work is that people feel free to have their own interpretation. My website opens with the phrase: It is through other’s eyes that my gestures are revealed.
How has your practice, if at all, changed during this time of quarantine?
CE: In January 2019 I started a new animation. Until March 2020 I had done some parts but I didn’t have any idea how to put them altogether. It was difficult. I had had a blockage. But suddenly, when the Covid-19 came the blockage went away and in a very little time I got the video’s name and finished it: The Shudder flies away with open arms, Farewell. The music was composed by Sébastien Béranger, someone with whom I have done many video animations.
I finished my new video in mid-April 2020. I was in Brazil since January 2020. I wanted to fly to France but with Covid-19 it was impossible. I could fly only on June 15th. From mid-April until my departure I took out my old clarinet and I passed my days playing it. Something that I haven’t done for a very long time.
My best thanks for Francis van der Riet who kindly did the correction of this interview.
Casserole Recipe of the Week:
French Onion Soup
Ok, once again not a casserole. But it is my all-time favorite soup. I’ll eat anything that is covered in cheese and topped with bread.
From Vintage Recipes