Paula Albuquerque
Research
SURVEILLANCE CINEMA AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY: Filming the Algorithmic Self
How does the continuous presence of cameras in public and private spaces affect notions of filmed autobiography?
Paula Albuqeurque is aiming to write a PhD thesis and create film-based artworks to experiment with the concept of Autobiography in the age of Webcams. Her written research theoretical mainframe will comprise surveillance-related key texts from Philosophy, Media Theory and Film Studies. Departing from these she intends to analyse the scope of the growing audiovisual archive generated by publicly accessible Webcams and how it affects notions of Autobiography. Besides the controlling nature of surveillance cameras, she intends to analyse their aesthetic qualities as emerging cinematic media and how these may play a role in the ontological redefinition of Cinema.
As artistic practice Albuquerque aims to produce a body of work consisting of circa nine films experimenting with the fictional construct of a cinematic autobiography of “anyone”. She would like to conceive an Autobiography by looking through the Webcams outwards into the world, at other people instead of at herself. If public spaces look similar because of the presence of these cameras, is documenting another person’s life close to documenting her own? Can her appropriate Webcams’ footage to create an autobiographical poetic object and still call it Cinema? By further developing her career along the parallel paths of Theory production and Art creation, her aim to contribute to Artistic Research by creating useful knowledge for artists and scholars alike in the field of New Media.
Biography
Paula Albuquerque holds a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Arts from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and a Master of Fine Arts from the Sandberg Institute, both located in Amsterdam. Born in the UK, she lives and works in the Netherlands and is at present a PhD Candidate in Artistic Research at the University of Amsterdam in collaboration with the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, sponsored by a Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation grant. Furthermore, she is a member of the Research Group “Philosophy, Politics and Arts” at the Philosophy Institute of the Oporto University in Portugal and tutor of the Art and Research Honors Program of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy / University of Amsterdam. Her experimental film-based artwork has been presented at the Netherlands Media Art Institute, Museum Boymans van Beuningen, Berardo Collection Museum, Venice Biennale, São Paulo Art Museum, Beijing Today Art Museum, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and within the context of group shows in galleries, live-editing performances in digital arts festivals and film festivals worldwide.