A nose—the lead character in Nikolai Gogol’s short story “The Nose” from 1836—fashions itself as a decorated civil servant, so esteemed one can hardly question its privileged stature, as such cachet ought to be unquestionably deserved. No two noses are the same, Gogol notes. Some straddle along Nevsky Prospect without raising an eyebrow, or hide inconspicuously inside freshly baked rolls, whereas some, like Pinocchio’s, increase in size with their forgeries. Regardless, all noses have one commonality: they extrude fluids at different cadences. These inflections are the focus of “Rotornariz,” by Von Calhau!, an artist duo from Portugal founded in 2006 by Marta Ângela and João Alves. Von Calhau, !Von Calhau!, or simply Calhau, adapt their name to the singularities of each project, fluctuating within the disciplinary spaces they traverse while reflecting their own interests. Known mostly for their idiosyncratic concerts and performances that combine music and silent 16mm film, presented either autonomously or alongside graphic design and writing, in “Rotornariz” Von Calhau! entangle this varied approach in one bizarre sniffer. Writing about Gogol’s own nose, Vladimir Nabokov describes how sharp and notoriously delicate it was. Gogol’s morbid attraction towards noses was apparent: vivid descriptions of smells, sneezes, and snorting appear repeatedly …

Recurrent in Alexandre Estrela’s practice is the use of images from nature, as well as a consideration of the way in which they are transformed and questioned through the employment of various technologies of recording and reproduction, sometimes explored to the limits of legibility and denaturation. This is often achieved by the short-circuiting of cognitive processes and several displacements of meaning, which induce in the viewer a somewhat indefinable sensation of uncanniness, as well as a feeling of anxiety that arises from an underlying tension between the way technology is used and our perception, experience, and understanding of the work. Alongside the significant body of work he has developed since the early 1990s, during the past eight years Estrela has been running a nonprofit initiative called Oporto, which presents a regular and original program of rarely seen experimental cinema and video. His new work, Vida y Costumbres de Alexander (2015) exemplifies the above-mentioned tension at play. A vertical glass screen leans against an outdoor wooden structure placed inside the ruins of a small, semi-derelict, roofless house on a patio behind the gallery. The surrounding space is mostly revealed by the light of this nocturnal piece, activated by a video projection in …