Two sisters, Claudia and Isabelle Barth, research the life story of their grandmother Marlise Barth (1921-2016). They inherited several of her carefully curated photo albums which contain two blank pages of the album “Brazil 1942-1947” prompting the sisters to question and interview many family members as to why, and under what circumstances their grandmother had lived in Brazil. The sometimes conflicting explanations exposed a colorful life of intrigue and adventure from childhood years on to the time she lived in Brazil and was married to the son of a successful German Industrialist. From the new stories that were never talked about in the family before, Claudia and Isabelle created their first performance in 2017 by the name of fantôma oder die gespaltene Frau*".

A year later in 2018 the stories of their grandmother’s life still left open many questions and mysteries. The two sisters decided to travel to Brazil with a camera to retrace her life and hopefully fill in the blanks of those two pages in the photo album where the pictures are missing. Claudia and Isabelle visited many familiar and unfamiliar members of the Brazilian family, sought out places where Marlise stayed, researched archives and ended up with many more stories, pictures and documentations of her life.

After their journey the sisters began to write a video script named Eu não falo português – I don’t speak Portuguese. The text grew into an imaginary road movie which followed along the traces of their journey in the style of a stream of consciousness or the flow of a poem.

The stories that were filling the blank pages of their grandmother’s photo album ended up blending with their own experiences and imagination which then became the stage of a new story.

After presenting the script as a performance reading at the Maxim Theater in Zurich, the Zeitraumexit in Mannheim and the Gallery D21 in Leipzig, other works emerged out of the research: eu-você (Me-You), 2019 premiered at the festival ‘Soy Loco Por Ti Juquery’ in São Paulo and was also showed at the ‘EinTanzhaus’ in Mannheim. Two videos that were presented during the performance of "eu-você" originated out of the images from Brazil. Where she speaks I smell, a three-channel video installation and the single-channel video my grandmother spoke:. The two videos were recently shown in a solo exhibition of Claudia Barth at ’Raum*station’ in Zurich.

For the MA graduation at Contemporary Arts Practice (CAP) in Bern University of the Arts (BUA), Claudia and Isabelle rewrote the text and adapted the choreography into a new version of Eu não falo português. Together with Brazilian artist Dandara they produced a two-channel video which is currently shown as a one-channel screening on this page.

Credits:
Concept & Text: Claudia & Isabelle Barth
Performance: Dandara, Claudia Barth
Camera: Arina Heussler
Editing: Claudia Barth
Audio Recording: Nora Ringgenberg
Soundmix: Markus Fehlmann

“Garota de Ipanema remix”
Song composition and Sound: Dandara
Soundmix: Maurício Caruso

“Andança”
Song by Dandara

Quotes appearing in the script by:
Quinn Latimer, Kathy Acker, Per Olov Enquist, Vinícius de Moraes, Oswald de Andrade and the influence of many many more.