Collective artistic creation, openness to new collaborations, and encouraging young artists: these are characteristics of the feitoamãos/F.A.Q., a group of artists from different fields who all have a history of dealing with image, design, music, investigation, and, above all, relentless experimentation in their art.

Their debut video was 5 (1999), a group effort on the five human senses by Francisco de Paula, André Amparo, Rodrigo Minelli, Marcelo Braga, Claudio Santos, and Marília Rocha. Each of the five senses was drawn between the artists, and the only limitation was that the videos should last two minutes at most. The video was widely acclaimed, receiving awards in various festivals and exhibitions in Brazil and abroad (Cinema Brazil Grand Prize – Year Two, from the Ministry of Culture, for Best Video; Lisbon International Video Festival, Portugal, 2000, among others). The videos intermingle with each other in an organic fashion, with no explicit division between them. This first collective production, in addition to several others, led to the ‘feitoamãos’ project, which in turn led members to create ‘F.A.Q.’, which aims specifically at research and live manipulation of image and music, featuring André Amparo, André Melo, Claudio Santos, Lucas Bambozzi, Marcelo Braga, Rodrigo Minelli, Ronaldo Gino, and Vítor Garcia as a fixed multimedia team which most of the times incorporates guest artists into its presentations. 

feitoamãos also produced the webart piece 7 maravilhas [Seven Wonders] (2000), and the video Os 4 pontos cardeais [The Four Cardinal Points] (2001). With Matéria dos sonhos [Dream Matter], the group created the Emilio Belleti Award (named after a key supporter of video production in Belo Horizonte, murdered in 1998), designed to aid young artists. Matéria dos sonhos is a sensitive, delicate video that links the four elements (fire, water, earth, air) with everyday feelings. 

In addition to collective single-channel productions aimed at encouraging video production, the group started doing live-image manipulations which gave birth to the F.A.Q. collective. F.A.Q. performs in theaters, auditoriums, art galleries, festivals, and electronic music spaces. Therefore, the group is in keeping with contemporary hybrid poetry, standing between established, renowned art circuits, and more entertainment-oriented ones. Their performances are visceral narratives of video and music that deal with issues as diverse as politics, violence (of any sort), everyday life, urban surroundings, presence, games, etc. F.A.Q.’s presentations explore polysemic images and the diversity of sounds in settings that somehow immerse the senses into imagetic spaces. They made their debut with Dziga Vertov reenquadrado [Dziga Vertov Reframed] (2001), opening the Belo Horizonte Short Film Festival with this reworking of Vertov’s classic film The Man with a Movie Camera. 

From then on, many other presentations in different premises and contexts have established F.A.Q.’s work in both the national and international scene, and we are proud to present their work in this edition of FF>>Dossier. So welcome to the universe of image and sound of F.A.Q., a joint effort aimed at finding new opportunities for creation, presentation, and participation.

Further info on this artist available at the collection