The artistic career of Clarissa Sacchelli (São Paulo, 1983), choreographer and artist selected for the 1st Videobrasil Dance Season, reveals a broad understanding of the body and its relationship with the different artistic languages that are part of the current lexicon of contemporary dance. In her career, Clarissa Sacchelli has been examining how modes of production directly affect the work created.
Starting from the mix of dance and written language, Sacchelli’s pieces suggest, from their titles, a sharp synthetic capability, raising issues from imperatives such as Este trabalho chamava coreografia (This Work Was Called Choreography, 2016), Isso não é um espetáculo (This Is Not A Show, 2013–2014), or Isso é uma habitação (This Is A Dwelling, 2013). In today’s world, where the concept of truth is in permanent transit, research in the field of art intended at imperatively defining a concept seem outdated, but this isn’t Sacchelli’s case. What “was called choreography,” what “is a show” or a “dwelling” are merely McGuffins that, in Sacchelli’s hands, implode the contact between action and observer.
In this pilot edition of the Videobrasil Dance Season, we ask how Sacchelli—a dancer, choreographer, and writer—will relate to the diversity of Videobrasil’s collection. More than the final result that will make up the program of VERBO 2017 at Galpão VB, and in Sacchelli’s case may materialize as an action, a text, or simply a talk, we are interested in learning how the artist’s immersion will take place in a collection of over 4,500 works, what will be her choices, deadlocks—and mainly—the issues the artist will establish with the observers from this contact.
Carolina Mendonça and Marcos Gallon, curators of the 1st Videobrasil Dance Season
March 2017
(It’s not necessary to read this before watching.)
From my immersion in the Videobrasil Historical Collection, I have selected—chiefly by means of magnetism, I could say—a set of videos that was the starting point to create a new piece. Boas Garotas [Good Girls] emerges from this selection and unfolds with it: these selected videos worked not only as a conceptual reference for this new creation, but also as raw material made up of images, sounds, and texts that were remixed, reinterpreted, and/or reenacted.
Alice Miceli’s Jerk Off 02 - Projeto Dízima Periódica, one of the works that are part of the playlist, offers relationships with limit, eroticism, and pornography, while proposing notes or new readings of another artwork. Lenora de Barros’s and Walter Silveira’s Homenagem a George Segal also points to a new reading and to the execution of an intimate action, while also exposing a relationship between video and performance. Maya Watanabe’s Escenarios II also tackles the notion of a performance/happening that unfolds in a cyclical time that is recorded and framed by the camera’s gaze. Angelica Mesiti’s Rapture (Silent Anthem), yet another of the videos from the collection, explores the collective ecstasy and catharsis making use of close-ups and extremely slow movements. Lynda Benglis’ Female Sensibility, also by means of close-ups, resorts to eroticism to question constructions of the gaze.
The camera movements, framings, and editing in the selected videos directly informed the ways through which this raw material was labored, emerging, from this place, a close relation between the actions of editing and choreographing. Many of the videos from this selection also point to relationships with the gaze of who is watching, which, in turn, suggested a reflection on how a video or a performance is received.
If, on the one hand, the investigations of the relationships between video and performance, and between artwork and public, has pointed to some paths, on the other the exploitation of eroticism and pornography, very present in some of the videos, has deepened the desire to question and stimulate the connection between seeing and being seen, experimenting transitions between a logic of the gaze and a logic of the touch.
Boas Garotas points to some interests that run through my career and that involve the relationship between work and audience and the interest in choreography, which I see not only as the writing of movement, but also as an artistic and social creation understood as a continuous rehearsal, always generating archive and legacy. I am also interested in the relationship between body and word—my tongue is, and continues to be, a muscle. Boas Garotas, however, also turns myself around and directs my gaze to the world. And the world around me collapses. Brazil sunk in the slush. Mariana has been forgotten. No wonder, we couldn’t even remember that we’ve been through a dictatorship that was so efficient it even managed to make us forget about it. How we could imagine, in 1983, that in May 2017 we would once again take to the streets to claim for Diretas Já [direct elections now]? How we could imagine the day in which we would hear a secretary of culture say to a member of a cultural movement that he would punch him in the face? The public policies for culture in São Paulo, already scarce, are now disappearing. The time is for privatization. Sense is barren. Our dreams cannot hear us. Our cells can suddenly multiply chaotically and kill us. The limit is set. We will not make it. On top, power and discipline. And, below, maybe some amount of apathy. I feel today, however, an immense need for life. And this sounds somewhat romantic to me. Diving into the Videobrasil Historical Collection, among many videos, I have met with some. The relation lies in the meeting. I think videos can also see us. Or touch. What now seems very naïve to write. Maybe touching has fallen into disuse. But it is a good thing that the present has archives and generates legacy. Dragging the archives into the present reinforces in me the idea of detour, makes me question temporalities and normalcies. This text is no explanation. It is a reflection on the trajectory of my eye. Rereading the choreographer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer, I wrap it up: “My body remains a continuous reality”, and “the more impossible a utopia seems, [perhaps] the more necessary it becomes.”
I am not alone, and I am deeply grateful to my partners on this search: Cacá, Renan, Luisa and Artur, and also the entire team at Videobrasil and the curators of the 1st Videobrasil Dance Season.
Clarissa Sacchelli
June 2017