Video and performance emerged virtually at the same time, in the mid-70s, broadening the possibilities of artistic expression. Performance – a hybrid, fleeting art form that combines different manifestations –, when coupled with video, records the passing of time and is underpinned by a symbiosis between body and technology. The merging of these elements can be observed in the performances featured in the 10th Videobrasil.
Otávio Donasci and his unique beings are an expected presence at the festivals; rooted in theater, Donasci’s performative creatures surprise and interact with visitors. Donasci created Projeto Videoteatro (the Videotheater Project), spawning myriad forms of multimedia expression that involve audience interaction. At the 10th Videobrasil, the artist presented Videocóptero, which saw a ‘videocreature’ fly over the São Paulo Culture Center and SESC Pompeia before returning to the Campo de Marte airstrip. For Videomoita, one of his video creatures, a video-balloon was built atop the SESC Pompeia sports complex. Videomensageiros are videocreatures that break news about the Festival and top off the peculiar fauna devised by Donasci for the event.
artists
Works
Curator's text 1994
Videomáscaras e Videocriaturas
Otávio Donasci – scenarist, performer and multimedia artist – was the creator of the Projeto Videoteatro that generated several alternate multimedia expressions as: Videocriatura, electronic masks made by video tubes; Videovivo, which makes the video projected images get volume and perform with actors; and Videomanequins, face sculptures – video which talks to people. Reducing video to the necessary, Donasci got to the tube (kinescope) and discovered that its dimensions were equal to a face; He sewed the tube “standing-up” with an actor, as if it was an orthopaedic head – the first videocreature was ready in 1983. It happened then a new possibility of expression, hybrid of the video support and the theatre language, trading the face expression by the videoface, with its own characteristics, which did not exist in the video nor in the theatre. His work, quite original is worldwide known and appreciated.
In the last Videobrasil, Donasci presented sails-video, inflated linens transformed into immense faces through tridimensional projections. These videomasks were almost ethereal sculptures and there was no actor to lend the body to the image. Recently Donasci created the Videocopterus, from the same family of the Videossauro, a being originated from a digging machine that, as he says: “it is an archeological animalvideo lost in the current media. . . It disguises and tries to talk interactively, but in reality what it likes the best is singing and whistling while it flies over the city of São Paulo. It is very cordial, but do not get it wrong, is from a time that does not exist anymore. . . it is a rarity.”
He will present also the Videomoita, which hides in the Centro Esportivo do Sesc Pompéia and is “the first Ballonvideo I construct. It is another scared being, curious, which says nothing, which sees everything and shadows everybody…” The Videomensageiros, videocreatures that advise the festival, complete the peculiar fauna that Donasci prepared to the 10º Videobrasil.
ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL VIDEOBRASIL. "10º Videobrasil: Festival Internacional de Arte Eletrônica": de 20 a 25 de novembro de 1994, São Paulo-SP, 1994.