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Cardoso Flea Circus

Maria Fernanda Cardoso

1997 00:08:00 United StatesEnglishColorStereo

Description

In a world of Internet and high technology, there still remains something so arcane, so simple and extraordinary, so absolutely incredible as a circus of educated fleas. Marvel at Maria Fernanda Cardoso's work as the powerful Brutus (The Strongest Flea on Earth) pulls a locomotive that weighs 160,000 times his own weight. See the flea ballerinas dressed in micro-tutus, dance to the rhythms of Tango! Hold your breath as the highwire artists defy gravity on the tightrope and swing precariously on a miniature trapeze.

Tremble as Fearless Alfredo risks his life at the Highdive! And much more!In a world of Internet and high technology, there still remains something so arcane, so simple and extraordinary, so absolutely incredible as a circus of educated fleas. Marvel as the powerful Brutus (The Strongest Flea on Earth) pulls a locomotive that weighs 160,000 times his own weight. See the flea ballerinas dressed in micro-tutus, dance to the rhythms of Tango! Hold your breath as the highwire artists defy gravity on the tightrope and swing precariously on a miniature trapeze. Tremble as Fearless Alfredo risks his life at the Highdive! And much more!

No-one believed it was possible to train fleas—but Maria Fernanda Cardoso has proven everyone wrong. After five years of intensive research, the Cardoso Flea Circus is presented here in this sensational video. Produced by Philadelphia's Fabric Workshop and Museum on the occasion of Cardoso's residency, this video will convince even the most hardened sceptics that it's all true! Thanks to sophisticated video equipment and high tech lenses, Ross Rudesch Harley has captured the feats of these prodigious insects in the world's smallest spectacle: The Cardoso Flea Circus!

This title is also available on American Psycho(drama): Sigmund Freud vs. Henry Ford.

About Maria Fernanda Cardoso

Maria Fernanda Cardoso is a Colombian artist who uses unconventional materials to produce her sculptures and installations. Striking enough to be the girl in the skimpy bikini flying high on a trapeze, she was also serious enough to graduate from Yale. Instead of running away to join the circus, she decided to make her own—The Cardoso Flea Circus. Now she's ringmaster, flea-trainer, prop-builder, set and costume designer, friend and lunch to a bunch of highly-educated fleas: the stars of her tiny Spectacular. In her former life as a sculptor and installation artist, Cardoso exhibited widely in major museums and galleries in Latin America, the U.S., and Europe. Her prior work also involved the natural world, including sculptures made from water, flies, starfish, seahorses, frogs, lizards—even human bones.

Recent solo exhibitions include Cardoso Flea Circus (Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia; Exploratorium, San Francisco), Woven Water and Other Sculptures (Ruth Bloom Gallery, Santa Monica), Submarine Landscapes (Capp Street Project, San Francisco), Sex Lives of Fleas (Bogota Biennale), and Maria Fernanda Cardoso: Recent Sculptures (List Visual Arts Center, MIT, Cambridge). Cardoso was a visiting professor at CalArts from 1991 to 1993, at the Universidad de Los Andes, Bogota, in 1995, and later, at the San Francisco Art Institute. She currently resides in Bogota and Sydney.