Wheels is a quintessential João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva film work, embodying their signature blend of experimental cinema, philosophical inquiry, and poetic observation. Shot in 2010 on the island of São Tomé, specifically in the vicinity of Rua Morta ("Dead Street")—a dusty alley teeming with workshops and mechanics—the film captures a kinetic survey of one of humanity’s oldest and most fundamental inventions: the wheel. In their typically unconventional approach, Gusmão and Paiva enlisted a street welder to modify their camera rig, mounting the tripod onto a skewer-like contraption reminiscent of a rotisserie spit. This whimsical setup allowed the camera to pivot and spin, transforming the film into a hypnotic study of movement, mechanics, and the relativity of motion. The resulting imagery traverses a lineage of wheeled inventions—from the Duchampian bicycle to the ever-practical pickup truck—before culminating in a moment of "anemic cinema": a painted, cubist-inspired tire advertisement spotted in one of the local workshops. Beyond its homage to experimental filmmaking and Duchamp, Wheels engages with natural sciences and Cartesian motion relativism, illustrating a paradox inherent to movement: when two objects travel at the same speed and in the same direction, they appear motionless in relation to each other - yet, in attempting to hold that illusion of stability, everything else in the frame shifts, warps, and turns chaotic. Perpetual motion is revealed not as a mere concept but as an observable phenomenon. A hat trick!
About João Maria Gusmão
João Maria Gusmão (*1979) is known for practices and meta-practices ranging from experimental film to photography, sculpture, drawing, literature and curating.
