In the installation Untitled (Vulture in the Studio), consisting of a 10-minute audiovisual screening in colour, to full scale, in a dark room, the spectator witnesses the incursion of a vulture in the artist’s studio. The bird, which has seemingly lost its bearings, is of an impressive size and appears threatening. It is perched on the shelves located against the left wall of the room. It leaves chaos in its wake, throwing the books and papers hanging on the wall to the ground with its beak. Lying immobile for several moments, with its wings slightly spread, it suddenly hurtles to the other side of the studio, with a great flapping sound, before returning to its initial position. Its wings are now almost entirely deployed; their sheer size is frightening. Suddenly, the pile of books that the bird is perched on falls to the floor with a muted thud. The vulture slips on the wooden floor, then attempts to fly again. Finally, it returns to the shelf. Besides the sound of footsteps in the room adjacent to the studio in the first seconds of the video, announcing the liberation of the great bird of prey, no human presence is audible, or visible. The camera is fixed, positioned frontally within the rectangular room. The action develops in a linear manner, since the video contains no editing. These formal principles recur in Onofre’s videos. Whereas Believe (Levitation in the Studio) and Catriona Shaw Sings Baldessari Sings LeWitt Re-edit Like a Virgin Extended Version are reappropriations of videos produced by Bruce Nauman and John Baldessari respectively, Untitled (Vulture in the Studio) has no specific reference. However, as Pedro Lapa notes, the video refers as much to Hitchcock’s The Birds as it does Buñuel’s Exterminating Angel. But unlike these films, man as a protagonist is excluded from the scene shot by Onofre, and only the chance factors associated with the hostility and agressiveness of the bird of prey govern the development of this real action. No fiction is revealed to the spectator, only the certainty of the irrational presence of the vulture in the closed studio space, facing the camera.

F.B.