Paulo and Ricardo Miyada present their third video of the series Mixtape: Videobrasil and talk to the audience as the outcome of the activation actions of the 18th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil in Campinas’ On Tour program.
The brothers created the series to ponder the crucial role played by the audience: that of completing the meaning of the artworks with its own personal repertoires and histories. Paulo and Ricardo propose to impart greater emphasis to audience participation, positioning the audience member no longer as an extra, but “at least as a co-star” in the artworks and exhibitions. The Mixtape: Videobrasil project considers that often, the audience is not approached in this way, but rather in a “census-” or “population-like” way.
Paying attention to the diverse set that operates in tandem with the artwork, the Miyadas opted to approach different audiences in each of the videos: the first video tackles what they call “specialized” audience; the second one addresses the “spontaneous” audience, and the third is about the “potential” audience. All three types appear in the final video of the series Mixtape: Videobrasil Campinas – the first and second through characters and scenes introduced previously and this time reinserted into this volume of the trilogy.
The videos are increasingly less specific and scripted, and become progressively broader. In the first one, a fictitious couple already familiar with the environment and aesthetic values of art (a male designer and a female architect) were given keywords that oriented the video, although there was no script to follow. In the second video, with children, the authors did not expect the subjects to be able to sustain a long discourse on certain issues without a stimulus – after all, this was an audience in the midst of its formative process. Thus, the debate was not guided, but fed into by interlocutors.
In the third video, the abstract question “what is life going to be like 30 years from now?” was posed by a young pregnant interviewer to audience members arriving at Sesc Campinas or visiting the show in its opening night. The 30 years, which could just as easily have been another timeframe, were intended to make a connection with the Festival’s 30th anniversary, celebrated in 2013, during the 18th edition. Paulo and Ricardo believe the question may have been asked prematurely. The audience was not duly immersed in the exhibition’s contents, and the subtlety of the interviewer’s pregnancy – to whom the answers or projections would be greatly relevant – did not reverberate in the intended way. Paulo Miyada claimed that precisely because we are experiencing such a surprising present moment, numerous exercises in future projection could have been easily created.
Paulo Miyada (São Paulo, Brazil, 1985) An architect and urban planner, he develops practical and theoretical work on the audio-visual representations of cities. In 2008 he shot the documentary film Tododia-feira (2008).
Ricardo Miyada (São Paulo, Brazil,1989) is holder of a degree in Audiovisual Communication at the School of Communication and Arts at Universidade de São Paulo. He is a director, photographer, screenwrtiter and writer.