Associação Cultural Videobrasil

How did you become interested in working with images?

We don't know exactly, but maybe because our personalities were formed by a visual culture, and we realized that by creating images, we could instigate discussions. And maybe because we found it difficult to create artistically valuable written works.

You have produced performances, installations and photographs. How is the process of producing the works in relation to the choice of supports? What is the role of video in this process?

We believe that we choose the support while we are in the process of developing an idea. Maybe we use video so frequently because it is a potent means of communication that includes time, moving image and sound. We are also interested in the quality of verisimilitude produced by the video camera, for we record real situations that we alter afterwards. In Sem título #4 (Untitled $4), we united a real image of a person playing on a swing with an animation of a synthetically constructed landscape. 

The body appears reconfigured in many of your works. How do you see the relations between body, technology and image? Is there a possible reconstruction through the use of image processing?

We are interested in the relation between the individual and the environment; we try to create a symbiosis between the body and its surroundings. We use the body as an instrument, but always trying to deprive the image of the representation of the artist himself, depriving the body of our personal characteristics. But, of course, any work can be autobiographical in a way, for even in Interlúdio (Interlude), the beetle can represent its creator. We often use processes of digital manipulation, or even a “make-up” to suggest a body altered and adapted to its environment.

In 2003, you participated in the exposition A subversão dos meios (The subversion of the means), at Itaú Cultural, in São Paulo. In the opening text, the curator states that “(…) it's impossible to deny that the non-conventional use of technological means made by the artists is itself a critical comment on the dominant systems of communication (museums and galleries, the press, TV, cinema etc), for art creates poetical devices that are able to alter the perception of images and facts”. How do you see the relations with technological means? Is there a desire to subvert, to alter and make experiments using video and digital image in the process of artistic creation?

Indeed, we try not to passively accept the established patterns of video language created and used by TV or cinema, for instance, but we don't want to limit our work to the subversion of each means. The support must be moulded according to our plan, and the way we use each means also must be considered.

The first work that I got acquainted with was Sem título #4 (Untitled #4), at the Competitive Exhibition of the 13th Videobrasil International Electronic Art Festival. The image seems to alter the horizon, revealing an unusual point of view; the loop technique also called my attention, being a format of exhibition and a creative possibility. How did you begin to use the loop technique? Is there any reference to time in these works?

We first thought about this technique because we were looking for a photographic picture that could represent more than an instant, as if the moment could breathe. In the first works, we used the same point of view; the camera was often static, avoiding clear-cut narrative structure; we didn't want to create a linear narrative; thus, something different was presented. There is no beginning or end; it could be a loop but that's not a cycle, that's just the suspension of an instant, producing a doubt: in exactly what place and time does the narrative take place? We are also interested in the amount of time the viewer may spend “reading” the work; the viewer is not obliged to stay for an indeterminate amount of time in order not to lose part of the presentation. The time one spends reading a video can be the same time one spends reading a painting. 

Is there a “contamination” or a connection between the works you produced in the field of graphic design and the artistic ones?

Of course there is a connection; art and design feed each other, but we are mainly interested in bringing some art to graphic design rather than the opposite.