- Associação Cultural Videobrasil
- SESC São Paulo
The 2013 edition of the Contemporary Art Festival celebrates an important moment for the biennial show. The main Brazilian event dedicated to the artistic production from the geopolitical South (Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Middle East, Eastern Europe, South and Southeast Asia and Oceania) goes thirty. It is the only Brazilian international festival for contemporary art, with exhibitions, public activities, awards. As in previous editions, a major exhibition establishes a dialogue with the Southern circuit: besides the Southern Panoramas competitive show, this year the highlight is the three decades of experimentation and risk assumed by Videobrasil since 1983, brought together in the exhibition 30 Years.
Throughout its history, Videobrasil has carried out groundbreaking work in art and image in motion. Since its early editions, as video art was barely emerging on the Brazilian scene, the Festival was one of the first events dedicated to electronic image, and thus a driving force in activating the video production and experimentation scene during the post-military period. Over time, video became established as an artistic expression in Brazil, and the festival focused on the geopolitical South as its area of interest, becoming the premier showcase and interface with the global scene, embracing all art languages and supports since its 17th edition.
Visual identity and graphic design | Daniel Trench and Celso Longo
Photographic record | Everton Ballardin
Video record | Marco del Fiol / Mão Direita
Programme
competitive show
Southern Panoramas | 18th Festival
94 artists from 32 countries. Comprised of works submitted during an open call, the exhibition aims to map out the themes, poetics, discourses, procedures, and strategies that characterize contemporary art from the Southern circuit.
film and/or video screenings
Deserto Azul, filme de Eder Santos, sessões especiais
The 18th Festival will include special sessions of Eder Santos’ second feature film, Blue Desert. The film is a sci-fi piece shot in Brasília and the Atacama Desert, containing references to modernism and contemporary art.
exhibition
30 years
The show 30 Years proposes an immersion in the changes Videobrasil and the art scene underwent in the past decades. A large video installation features highlights from the Festival's trajectory, presented under distinct views.
performance
30 Anos | Re-edition of "Coverman", Alexandre da Cunha
Originally performed in 2001 at the 13th Videobrasil International Electronic Art Festival.
30 Anos | Restaging of "Reboot", Chelpa Ferro
Originally performed in 1998 at the 12th Videobrasil International Electronic Art Festival
Southern Panoramas | "O Samba do crioulo doido", Luiz de Abreu
Drawing on elements intrinsically associated with the African-Brazilian, mixed with references to the white patria, the artist creates images that speak of racism, transgression as a form of resistance, and the importance of the body in identity formation.
Southern Panoramas | "Untitled", Cão
In an action lasting roughly forty minutes, the group creates a heavy, somber atmosphere, and a landscape of black upon black, with distorted sounds suggestive of industrial rock, electronic music, and noise.
public programs
Foco 1 | Invading the grid
The founders of independent production company Olhar Eletrônico and the journalist Goulart de Andrade discuss important works that contributed to the renewal of TV in the 1980s.
Foco 8 | Shows in context
The trajectory of Videobrasil has followed video’s absorption by the realm of visual arts. The panel associates the Festival shows and art shows of the past three decades.
Focus 1 | Everything can be a TV show
A pioneer in the activist use of video, the creator of theater group Oficina discusses the medium's subversive character with the directors of Frau, a video portraying the former's run-in with the Gramado Festival.
Focus 2 | Around the world: processes and directions of the internationalization of art
Driven by globalization, internationalization picked up steam in Brazil in the 1990s, period in which the contemporary art scenario embraced other narratives. The panel will discuss new developments brought about by internationalization and its interference with art narratives.
Focus 2 | Curators introduce shows and actions
Curators of the Festival, of the Southern Panoramas show, and of the Public Programs outline the 18th Videobrasil's contents, including exhibits, curated programs, historical contexts, and proposals for activation and reflection.
Focus 2 | Design, concept and space
Creators of Videobrasil's visual identities discuss how design converses with the narratives outlined by the shows, contributing to renovate video screening strategies in relation to other artistic languages.
Focus 2 | Magic nature
In many of the Southern Panoramas works, nature appears as a fictional field. The panel will discuss this operation as an alternative for establishing new worldviews.
Focus 2 | Territories of the south: experiences, cities and borders
The South is currently defined by moving boundaries, which give rise to new territorial experiences. Artists featured in the Southern Panoramas show discuss the power and the complexity of these rearrangements.
Focus 3 | Hospitality and the politics of mobility
What values permeate hospitality? How does artistic research in displacement interfere with the spaces and agents that deal with the permeability of current borders?
Focus 3 | “Transnationality” as horizon
Is the “transnational” perspective translated into networks and open transit policies, or is it a purely discoursive model that has to face the traditional forms of cultural exchange?
Focus 4 | Performance: act, re-editing and recording
Coverman (2001), by Alexandre da Cunha, was the first performance presented in Videobrasil's own exhibition space. In this meeting, the artist will address issues pertaining to the different temporalities of performance.
Focus 5 | Geographies in motion
Inspired in Rosi Braidotti, to whom “the identity of the nomadic subject is a map of where he has been," Caderno Sesc_Videobrasil 09: Geographies in motion resumes artist Marie Ange Bordas' Displacements project. At the meeting, the editor and three of the publication’s collaborators discuss concepts such as territorialization and affective cartography.
Focus 6 | Zero estrangement: video between film and visual art
Departing from the idea of an exclusive field for video, Videobrasil dilates its territories, crossbreeding it with performance and film. The debate focuses on the fields of action of the Pivô venue, focusing on the transversality of art practices.
Focus 7 | 4 Livros à Margem, by Júlio Martins
Reading-activation proposed by the curator for the 18th Festival shows.
Focus 7 | Escrituras sobrepostas, by Galciani Neves
Reading-activation proposed by the curator for the 18th Festival shows.
Focus 7 | Mixtape: Videobrasil, by Paulo Miyada
Reading-activation proposed by the curator for the 18th Festival shows.
Focus 7 | Público, by Carolina Mendonça
The director proposes interventions at the Festival venues, inviting the audience to participate in an action in-between the visual and performing arts.
Focus 8 | 30 years: memories and updates
The panel reviews Videobrasil's major cycles of change, relating them to the changes undergone by the Southern contemporary art scene over the past three decades.
Focus 8 | Videobrasil + Expoprojeção + Zanini
Aracy Amaral resumes the project EXPOPROJEÇÃO (1973), the first compiled list of audiovisual productions in Brazil; and São Paulo's MAC (Museum of Contemporary Art) pays homage to its former director, curator Walter Zanini (1925-2013).