Associação Cultural Videobrasil

For three days, visitors to the 18th Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil have found something new at the exhibitions that have been taking place at SESC Pompeia since November last year. New texts by guest artists about the works are available in small blocks on the walls, in subtitle format; booklets discreetly positioned on benches with reflections by a curator; performers mixed into the audience, following their visitation; and a short fiction movie were among the ideas developed alongside the actions for activation of Foco 7 - Superimposed Readings, part of the Public Programs of the 18th edition of the Festival. Curators Galciani Neves, Julio Martins and Paulo Myiada and scenic arts director Carolina Mendonça, responsible for these provocations in relations with the public and for the possibilities of new forms of writing based on the exhibition, debated with the public their actions, in the Galpão at Sesc Pompeia.

On Saturday, 18.01, it was the turn of artist and performer Carolina Mendonça to present the second day of her proposal for activation and rereading of the exhibits in Southern Panoramas and 30 Years, with performance Público. The activities began on the 16^th, with a presentation by curator Galciani Neves with her proposal for activation, Superimposed Readings, and they proceeded with the presentation by curator and art historian Júlio Martins, on the 17th (Friday), and by architect and urbanist Paulo Miyada, on Saturday, the 18^th, about her respective proposals.

While Júlio Martins bet, like Galciani Neves, on possible reading of the Southern Panoramas and 30 Years exhibitions, with the use of written word in 4 Livros à Margem, Miyada created a short movie, Mixtape: Videobrasil, to provide a new outlook on the exhibition: critical reflection on the art based on these perspectives of the works themselves, and also on the public’s relations, becomes part of this atmosphere.

Público, by Carolina Mendonça, proposes an outlook on exhibition spectators

To create her project for the Foco 7 - Superimposed Readings, Carolina Mendonça, an artist in the dance and theatre areas - in which she also manages spectacles -, thought about possible and private relations by each spectator during a visit to the exhibition. “I wanted to analyse the relations of the public to the exhibition space and to the works,” explained Carolina.   

Inspired by the Publics Fear texts, by Yugoslavian dance historian Bojana Cevik, Carolina studied subtle ways for four performers to interfere in viewer visitation, respecting their rhythm, to understand the reflections induced by the artist in her project. The actors, according to her, were instructed to follow specific rules according to the attitudes, gestures and looks of each visitor observed. At the end of the visit, or when the spectator noticed the intervention and said something, the actor revealed the game, and cited the following stretch of a text by Bojana Cevik:

“It is currently a common vision that when we find ourselves in public – if not before that, as we are social beings right from the start – we find ourselves performing ourselves in front of others.”

The interventions took place on the 17th, Friday, and on the 18^th, Saturday, in the exhibition space of competitive exhibition Southern Panoramas, on the second floor of the sports area at Sesc Pompeia.

Project 4 livros à Margem, brings experimental reflections by the curator about themes inspired by fair Southern Panoramas

Curator and art historian Julio Martins started the chat on 4 Livros à Margem, his curation for Foco 7 - Superimposed Readings, explaining that he tried to bring up an aspect of the entire curatorial proposal: “to preserve what art activates in our thought”.

Martins showed on the screen some words from Iluminuras, a series of seven books of his authorship that, according to him, served as inspiration for the project. He and Marco Antonio Mota kept notebooks in parallel to the curatorial process and produced intersections between their drawings, photographs, reading, writings, talks and games. Each booklet was hand bound. The first chapter teaches how to print and bind your own book, identical to the one in hand.

Regarding his idea – elaboration of four booklets made available on benches in the exhibition space, awaiting visitor consultation --, he explained that he maintained his fruition on reflections regarding the fair, even writing one of them in first person, a practice he avoids in his production as a curator. “I did not edit it, so as not to lose the intensity,” said Martins.

Entitled Inframinces (a term coined by artist Marcel Duchamp), one of the five booklets included in the project, includes a metalinguistic discourse on the expography based on relations of the works in the spaces at Sesc Pompeia. Martins plotted an analogy between the multi-sport courts, under a base built for exhibition Southern Panoramas, and the works exposed, as if they were competing, like the players in the field. “I saw videos of the fair with electronic scoreboards,” he added.

He also said that he tried, during his visits to the exhibition for creation of the project, to preserve the “energy of the moment”, keeping in mind that it is experimental work. Martins pointed out that he decided, however, to maintain the subtlety and discretion with regard to the public, even when he “caught” himself observing the images of a video through the eyes of spectators, in an attitude he referred to as “clandestinely obscene”.

Mixtape, by Paulo Miyada, suggests critical reflection on art through the public eye and that of the work itself

After the exhibition of Mixtape: Videobrasil in the Galpão at Sesc Pompeia, where exhibition 30 Years is set up, architect, urbaist and curator Paulo Miyada, the director of the movie, met with architect Jihanna Nassif and with designer Felipe Kaizer, who played the part of a couple in his last movie, and with the cameraman of the short movie, Ricardo Miyada, to comment the conception of the project within Foco 7 of the Public Programs, Superimposed Readings.

Miyada explained that the public, like one of the devices in the space of the exhibition, is a place for production of feelings, which can be studied, and which can produce feeling. Motivated by this idea, he decided that the visit of a couple to the exhibition would be contaminated by what was around them, so that the video, half fiction, half documentary, would take into account the current day topics in the characters.

Regarding the filming technique, the architect opted for improvisation, originating in theater plays, giving the actors just a few words and some programmed passages. “I also chose two people that are not actors, but are a recurring audience in the world of art,” said Miyada, regarding the protagonists of the video.

One of the activators of the debate in the movie is the conversation between the couple with two mediators at the fair. According to Miyada, it was interesting to listen to them, as it is curious to think that these professionals are the only ones that could “return” to the artist what happened with their work during the exhibition, that is, what was the reaction of the public to their creations.

He also stated that although the artist is deprived of certainties – he will never know for sure what his work will cause to the audience -, he is simultaneously arbitrary, as “he gives what he wants to the world, through the work, and the person has to deal with that,” he explained.

When asked whether he played a character or himself in the movie, Felipe Kaizer answered that, although the intention was to be himself, he would have to follow a script, be a character in a film, with a girlfriend that was not his real life girlfriend. “We have no control over anything when we are on scene. At no moment do we see what the viewers see.” Jihanna points out that the fact of a couple being a couple only on scene, and not in real life, already determines the impossibility of playing oneself. Ricardo Miyada, who shot the short movie, said that he decided to shoot details of the couple’s relationship that would stimulate the spectator’s imagination, which Paulo Miyada finished off, citing Truffaut: “every film tells the story of a beautiful woman”.

The 18th Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil will continue up to February 2^nd, at Sesc Pompeia. The Public Programs of the Festival will continue with activities Foco 8 – À Luz dos 30 Anos. On January 30, at 8:00 pm, at the Galpão, meeting Exposições em Contexto will take place, with Ana Maria Maia and Daniela Labra, and mediation by Ana Pato, relating the exhibitions of the Festival and art exhibitions over the last three decades. On February 1, at 4:00 pm, the Public Programs of the 18^th Festival will be closed with the 30 Anos: Memória e Atualizações meeting, bringing together Solange Farkas, Moacir dos Anjos, Arlindo Machado, Eduardo de Jesus and Gabriel Priolli Netto, with mediation by Teté Martinho.

Log on to our page on Flickr to view photos of the events which comprised Focus 7 - Superimposed Readings