Associação Cultural Videobrasil

Eleven times Videobrasil

The videographic universe as its own reason of existence In its eleventh edition, Videobrasil already has its roots firmly planted as a national institution. By extending its horizons and overcoming limitations it has become a cultural reference and symbolizes the consecration of a new tendency in artistic expression, communication and a mean for imaginative exploration of technical resources. Not content, Videobrasil renews and updates itself every year to the tune of current tendencies and with a rhythm imposed by electronic, technical, aesthetical and formal evolution. In its thirteen years of existence, with eleven editions, Videobrasil has been conquering territory and offering means for a wide spectrum of professional and artistic manifestations. Through its years of existence it has been committed to fundamental videographic propositions and to the effort to keeping its main goal alive and vigorous: to aid and support this novel form of expression on its journey. Since its beginning in 1983, it has sought to offer a place, for the then new born, video manifestations in Brazil, revealing talents and systematizing the knowledge in its various forms — institutional, commercial, artistic and broadcasted. Through the years, more than 5 thousand video productions have entered the Competitive Exhibit, from which 425 were chosen — the authors of which today constitute a substantial part of the artists and producers which represent the national video graphic scene. Videobrasil has also been a stage for discussions which have led to a better understanding of the limits and resources available in video graphic expression. Debates were promoted which covered the most exciting themes and aspects of video — techniques, language, the role of independent producers and television, broadcasting freedom, alternative and conventional markets, creative processes and technological innovation. The acceptance and recognition of video graphic productions in various markets, through publicity, institutional exposure and television, is another of Videobrasil's causes and undertakings, attempting to unite producers with an undefined and hesitant market, to whom it revealed the immense prospects of video resources. For the past thirteen years, Videobrasil has promoted workshops, speeches and courses that have put, side by side, young independent producers with representatives of important television companies who are able to clear way for video graphic language — Channel Four, England, RTBF, Belgium, Canal Plus, France and Telemadri, Spain. At the same time, Videobrasil has contributed to open to the market and producers the scope of technological innovations which have helped to define the limits and specifications of the different formats of equipment. It established an access to technical information necessary for the development of video graphic production, in a period noted for its lack of resources and information. Videobrasil's natural course of evolution was through the conquest of international unity and to officially establish itself as the voice of Brazilian production. Videobrasil has currently ratified permanent communication with distinguished festivals in the international circuit — as World Wide Video Festival, Holland; Imagina, France; Ondavideo, Italy; and European Media Art Festival, Germany. It has cultivated recognition — an intercourse with some of the most important cultural and artistic institutions of the world — such as London Electronic Arts, Center Georges Pompidou, Center International Video Montbeliard, Institut National de L'Audiovisuel de France, Video Data Bank of Chicago, Electronic Arts Intermix, Contemporary Art Television Fund, and The Kitchen. Videobrasil also promoted an intense exchange program between Brazilians and foreigners, bringing to Brazil for the first time notable exponents of the video artistic universe — Bill Viola, Breda Beban, Hrvoje Horvatic, Bruce Yomemoto, Dominik Barbier, John Wyver, Julian Temple, Jean-Marie Duhard, Yoichiro Kawaguchi, Gianni Totti, Peter Callas, Breda Beban, Jrvojehorvalic, George Snow, Dieter Kiessling, Jaap de Jonge and Dieter Myers. In all, 250 important personalities from videoart and production have been present in these eleven years — to transmit experience, offer opportunities, face controversy and help mold a universal identity. This year Videobrasil pays homage to the three decades of videoart existence through the exhibition of an important collection of works and artists and through an ample and profound presentation of the creator and principle exponent of videoart: Nam June Paik. Thirteen years later, Videobrasil, through its institutional commitment, is its own reason for existence.

ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL VIDEOBRASIL, "11th Videobrasil": 12th to 17th November 1996, pp.10, São Paulo, Brazil, 1996.

11th Videobrasil International Festival

The Videobrasil International Festival, is a bienal event, open to the public, and has as its objective to offer a scenario for the wide spectrum of artistic expression and communication using electronic supports and props. It also fulfills its mission of promoting technological, artistic, and marketing updating of the electronic and tv transmission universe. To this effect it brings foreign authors and their productions, stimulates debates on current themes, creates exchange between Brazilian and foreign producers and acts, through its credibility and international feedback, as a link between international and domestic artistic production. Videobrasil’s program includes many events, prominent among them being the Competitive Exhibition- a unique showplace of vigorous artistic production by authors as of yet unknown in the international circuit. It also offers an exhibition of video-installations which includes new productions and manifestations of well known international artists. The launching of new projects: a video newspaper which will be produced and introduced during the event; a cyberspace which connects Videobrazil and Internet on-line and will exhibit works on CD-Rom; coverage by local tv; speeches and debates with prominent international and national personalities from the electronic and tv universe. For consultation there will be a bibliographic anthology all united in an effervescent social and artistic atmosphere, stimulated by the creative environment of Sesc Pompeia, São Paulo, where the event will be held.

ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL VIDEOBRASIL, "11th Videobrasil": 12th to 17th November 1996, p. 4, São Paulo, Brazil, 1996.

A Personalized Language

Stemming from a double root, video was built upon technological inventiveness and the screens broadcasted imagery. It germinated in indifferent territory to project itself in rapid ascent to autonomy. In record breaking time it assumed and donned its own apparel, staked out a territory and created a personalized idiom with its own peculiar syntax and articulations. In other words it established itself as a new way to focalize, reveal and interpret the world. Above all, it expanded the universe of artistic representation, giving it an especially concise resource - the same badge under which we find poetry. At times in tune with the vertiginous ideals of post-modern art, where we find the shattering of fixed conventions and the celebration of that which is not permanent, video brings with it the benefit of being a field little explored, ready for aesthetic experimentation, investigation of form and the brave search for what is original and new. With this in mind, SESC happily unites once more with the Associaçào Cultural Videobrasil for the re-edition of this event. The International Videobrasil Festival is today, in terms of video, the most important event in South America. In all truth, no other festival offers such an extensive and selective international panorama of video productions. Furthermore, its focus on alternative forms of expression makes it a privileged forum for research and experimentation of audiovisual arts. In this, its 11th edition, Videobrasil continues with its policy of amplifying and multiplying its proposed activities. Along with exhibitions, video-installations, performances, debate forums and the video-newspaper, Videobrasil this year presents - through installations, conferences and retrospectives - a homage to Nam June Paik, the first artist to unite, in the 60’s, art and television. For SESC, an institution dedicated to divulging culture, the event , besides its other merits, gains significance as well because of its fundamental possibility: that of establishing contact between the public and artistic creation.

ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL VIDEOBRASIL, "11th Videobrasil": 12th to 17th November 1996, p.13, São Paulo, Brazil, 1996.

The Roquette-Pinto Foundation has and controls a television (TVE) and a radio station (MEC), as well as broadcasting TVEscola and, in the near future, TVTrabalho. Being a public foundation with intentions of disseminating culture and information for the education of its audience, we necessarily transmit and divulge relevant cultural events, more so when dealing with an event which is centered on audiovisual language. Not only because we are a TV station, but above all, because we are a public institution interested in the development of new products and job possibilities in this field.

We feel we have an immense obligation to try to better the quality of Brazilian TV. Not that we would compete with commercial television, but that we should try to come up with alternatives for the viewing public; build a base for programs that can be used as critical parameters to the conventional formats and structures used by commercial TV. In other words, to open the way for programs that can be used as models for new TV productions.

Videobrasil, besides exhibiting and divulging video art works from all over the world, signifies, above all the exploration of new forms and methods of audiovisual language. All of this justifies Fundação Roquette-Pinto’s investment in Videobrasil 96: we will be transmitting live videos selected by the festival - and also offering an award for the best projects in a series entitled Retratos do Brasil.(Brazilian Portraits). The prize will be the financing for a sequence or series of works with guaranteed exhibition on TVE.

The title choice has its origins in the new policy of TVE to valorize popular culture and the debate of important aspects of Brazil, today. Fundação Roquette-Pinto’s objective is not the mere administration of its radio and TV, more than this, the Foundation embodies the responsibility of contributing to the creation and implementation of a clear and well defined cultural policy.

ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL VIDEOBRASIL, "11º Videobrasil": de 12 de novembro de 1996 a 17 de novembro de 1996, p. 15, São Paulo, SP, 1996.

Aliança Francesa - INA Prize

Created in 1992, for the IX VideoBrasil Festival, this prize will honor, for the third time, a young artist whose video has come to enhance the portfolio of images produced for, and by, the computer. Since 1992 the Aliança Francesa de Sào Paulo and INA (Institut National de L‘Audiovisuel) have lent their prestige to VideoBrasil’s initiative, striving to promote originality and innovation in the field of virtual reality.

Directors of INA, Pierre Henon and Yves Louchez, were part of the jury for the IXth and Xth edition of VideoBrasil, and have been exhibiting important productions from the IMAGINA FESTIVAL, organized by them for the last 15 years. Every year IMAGINA offers a panorama of technological evolution related to virtual reality and special effects for professionals, researchers, and students of image making and communication.

When we talk about virtual and live "synthesizing", we are talking about a field in which the techniques are constantly changing and improving, at times fulfilling the demands of the creators, at others, opening new horizons. International exchange in the arts has revealed itself essential primarily for the creators of new images. The French Allegiance prize therefore rewards the most deserving with a trip to France, and a traineeship in Paris.

Since the creation of the French Allegiance - INA prize, the Ex - Machina Association has assumed the responsibility of receiving the winner and organizing his/her traineeship. Ex - Machina, in conjunction with Thompson, is one of the most prestigious and influential associations of the world in the field of special effects and graphic computation and creation.

Pascal Bap, executive director, will be representing Ex - Machina this year and will adequate, and customize the traineeship to the winners needs. The French Allegiance prize - INA represents an opportunity for the French Allegiance to divulge international and French contemporary creation as well as the enhancement of cultural exchange between France and Brazil.

Jean-Claude Reth Pierre Clémense, French Allegiance São Paulo

ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL VIDEOBRASIL, "11º Videobrasil": de 12 de novembro de 1996 a 17 de novembro de 1996, p. 23, São Paulo, SP, 1996.

A communications company must stay aware in order to capture the changes in its time. In a world like ours, complex and rapidly changing, the most valuable currency is called information. Capturing information and circulating it has become the premier tool for knowledge production.

Throughout its eleven years in activity, the International Festival Videobrasil gradually has become the channel into which experimentations in the electronic arts converge. This privileged space, which hosts local and international artists, is becoming established as the best market at which to exchange knowledge about image.

The newspaper O Estado de São Paulo understands culture as an attitude towards the world, and the borders of this world are proving ever more mobile. We live in a place that has become a dot within a very wide network of connections. For us, the network is the template of contemporary culture.

The format of the International Festival Videobrasil reproduces that same organic plasticity of transits we call network. Our supporting of this project stems from this alignment.

Programa 11º Videobrasil