Associação Cultural Videobrasil

Interview with Solange Farkas

Editing by Renata Motta and Patrícia Canetti

Solange, in the publication Mídia-arte: Fomento e Desdobramentos (São Paulo: Instituto Sergio Motta, 2002), you talked about the trajectory of Festival Videobrasil. How is the Festival related to Associação Videobrasil?

The Festival was the event that gave rise to this institution as part of an almost natural, organic process since the event left behind a collection that had to be maintained and conserved. Which brings us back to the longstanding question of how to conserve artworks using new technology or an electronic support. It is a difficult but illuminating issue in that it facilitates several other aspects such as mobility, production, and experimentation. The industry is ever growing, developing, creating new gadgets; there is more miniaturization, and everything is becoming more accessible. When we began 22 years ago, you had to have a console. Nowadays, you can do incredible experiments with no more than a PowerBook and a few software programs.

However, the conservation-memory aspect is the great challenge facing all of us in this field. The scale of the apparatus required for conserving and showing work is larger and more complex, and so more expensive. In Brazil, we have to be even more careful because we have this accursed tradition and legacy of not being concerned with the past since this is a very young or new country. We feel that nothing will spoil and everything will remain fresh in our memory - but this media is almost ephemeral. If we do not update at least every five years, works will disappear, without trace. I realized this when I saw that I had already built up an important collection - a major section of the history of video in Brazil - and not even the State wanted to be left holding this heritage. It was a new media for me too. I realized that these works were disappearing; they had to be updated and conserved. There are operational and maintenance issues and it is expensive too.

This collection and this technology feed into the Festival, as well as the task of having works become more widely known, which is perhaps a more sensitive and difficult one, that does not produce much visibility, but meets a great need in relation to access to these works outside of major events. Part of the mission of Videobrasil as an institution is to create conditions for disseminating works and spaces for reflection. Strategically, Videobrasil organizes the Festival, the programs, curatorial designs and samples from the collection itself to show at schools and other institutions. This has been the case for many years in other countries. In Brazil, the work was largely unknown for some 15 years. People had no idea what "this video festival thing" was all about. "

In Brazil, we began to recognize video as a support and basis for artistic production almost ten years after video developed internationally. It was all a novelty. There was nobody there to show the importance of having an appropriate location, outside of the Festival period, for conserving and showing these works. What is the role of the Festival? It is not just having works become more widely known, or artists attain more visibility, but also that of building up an audience and critical work, as well as a market for these works - an informal market that the Festival encouraged in so far as it devised certain strategies, such as visits by curators from other festivals, museums and television programmers that absorbed videoart. People who are referents in the field of videoart built this kind of bridge between Brazil and the international circuit, for example Barbara London, curator of the Museum of Modern Art of New York, for whom video was no longer a novelty by that time. As these people became involved in some way in programs, acting as jury members or curators, they began to have access to works that were of course acquired and in some cases became part of the international circuit. That was the beginning.

Now the Biennials have spaces for video. Artists and galleries in Brazil have realized that video was not television or cinema and has much more affinity with the world of the visual or plastic arts. Only now, with the advent of digital technology, is the relationship with the cinema working more effectively, to the point that these media intervene in the latter's language and concept. Previously the relationship was problematic and totally conservative, because there was a huge barrier between new technologies and the cinema. Videobrasil's great contribution to this transition was its piecemeal labor of creating openings for these works and technologies, and showing that they can be used in the visual arts as yet another tool of contemporaneity for the exercise of artistic activity.

At that time, it was politically important to carve out a separate niche for videoart until it could develop sufficiently to show its importance. Video emerged to contradict the very language of audiovisual media, whose relationship with communication is much more difficult than with the plastic arts. The most fascinating side of this story is the media itself, which - despite the complex or even industrial-scale apparatus used - allows the artist to intervene in the nature of the support itself. Not only software resources produce results, it is not the utilitarian side that we prioritized. The "big buzz" with these tools of contemporaneity is the fact of their being hybrid, relating to everything else and feeding off all the other means of expression.

This language derives from the relationship of a number of artists with an important background in other means of expression, which went through several phases. After the initial dazzle of the media, the support and the technology, I think we are now seeing a return to a much more attractive simplicity. The support is no longer the great novelty. The most important point is the way of looking that is special to the artist, the concept, the content. Electronic supports increasingly benefit and favor this experience, as we are seeing in contemporary art. Simplicity goes against the stream of what is expected on the basis of the stereotyped view of art and technology. The great challenge is increasingly to dilute or disguise the technology, or make it less obtrusive.

Let us talk about the development of DVD. How do you see the possibility of artists producing DVDs in Brazil? DVDs have been produced on a large scale for the cinema, and are available in video rental stores, but not for art.

This is a controversial issue because DVD is a recent media and supposedly the most appropriate for diffusion of artwork. Of course the cinema will always have greater facility in taking up something like this, since it is an industry. We are a long way away from that, especially because I intend to always remain in the field of experimentation. When everything is standardized, there will no longer be a need for my work, this is not my role.

DVD is still in its early stages and is still a problematic media. As a technological support, it is a victim of the market and the industry. The big corporations are playing the same game as when they invented VHS. They divided the world in regions and continue to cause the same problems with incompatible systems. I am producing DVDs for artists. As one of the parallel activities to the Festival, we are now releasing a box with the Videobrasil Authors Collection series. We have produced DVD documentaries on artists working with electronic supports. The first was on William Kentridge, the second revisited Rafael França's work (one of the first artists in Brazil to make use of electronic media), then we did Mauricio Dias and Walter Riedweg. Now I am thinking about narrative structures for documentaries on DVD, as a media accepted by the market and in demand from distributors, but we have had a lot of difficulties with this. You have to produce for a system that includes Brazil, Canada and the United States and then do it all again - since nothing can be reused - for the European system. Everything you place on top of the film for the DVD media - captions, subtitles, multi-region- has to be done all over again. Problems with systems in different regions make it so expensive that it's not feasible. Of course I am talking about DVDs being produced on a large scale. You have to make a DLT, which is the mask for producing copies. This is no use if you are just "burning" a DVD, as artists do to send work for the Festival or submit it to the Sergio Motta Award. It does not last long because the process of printing content does not reach all the layers, just the surface. There is natural wear and tear so a DVD starts to hang mysteriously.

But it is not just production issues we have to look at in relation to DVDs. We have to see the side of disseminating artwork. The compartments feature lends a DVD the functionality of a portfolio. Nowadays, you cannot show stuff outside Brazil in the developed countries unless you use a disk. They are cheaper, more practical and will run on any computer. In any case, there is still the problem of compatibility between regional systems, even if a DLT is used for the manufacturing process. So this media is still somewhat rudimentary. This is the problem we face in working with new technologies, because you can never get an ideal media. I have been through this at every Festival for the last 22 years. We were never able to design and maintain the same structure, the same technical apparatus, to read, show and see works.

Ten years ago I won a bursary award from the US government to do research for 40 days at any institution in the United States. I visited all the media-labs, museums and collections to study conservation issues and the diffusion of works on electronic supports. I found that this was a major challenge, because the technology industry evolves very quickly. Laboratories are continually inventing new media. If you asked the top companies - Apple, IBM, Sony, Philips - for the ideal media, they would say - off the record - that there isn't one as yet, they all have problems. Nevertheless they have to keep on "rolling them out"; that is what the market is demanding. So at this point we should see DVD as an alternative that it is important to invest in as a media capable of conveying artworks using electronic supports.

There is nothing in Brazil to encourage this dynamic we are talking about. We do not even have a media center to provide support for artists, as they do elsewhere. Nor do universities. At the moment, I am arranging partnerships on the basis of a program called Contemporary Investigations that attempts to mobilize institutions to fund resident artists and support laboratories for artists. I am attempting to persuade universities in São Paulo and Minas Gerais to fill this huge gap between these disciplines that can no longer work separately.

It was Lucas Bambozzi who said that we have to mobilize to potentiate action through this media. He made his DVD – O Tempo Não Recuperado – with a Sergio Motta incentive award. Why not produce artist DVDs on a large scale? Here we are into the broader issue of how you market art DVDs.

The issue is quite pertinent what always mobilizes us is the question of making work accessible while raising crucial issues. When the new technology media became part of the art circuit, they impacted and shook up established structures and standards for the diffusion, distribution, commercialization and conservation of works. In relation to diffusion, we have to re-examine the physical structure for receiving and working with this support. Art is no longer about nails, hammers and paints, but a whole apparatus of technology including machines and cabling. To distribute work, there have to be compatible systems; you have to know the game being played by the industry making the media. On conservation, as noted above, we have to update all the time, because these media are ephemeral by nature. For commercialization, we have a basis in the parameters established for other supports, since what we are talking about here is mainly mass production.

Video, as the flagship for all those new media, was finally absorbed into the space of the arts - galleries and museums - and this led to new issues emerging. Copyright, for instance, is a key issue, particularly in the age of the Internet, when it is no longer possible to restrict access to works. It is even more complicated with issues over authorship raised by interactivity. So how do you work with a gallery owner who is totally conditioned by the parameters of works he has always sold in the past? Sale of video could be based on the same parameters as an engraving, since the notion of multiples is involved. But the moment a video is sold, a thousand copies can be made; so, from this angle, it is different from an engraving.

At the same time, we are going through a complex and brilliant period of democratization, but this generosity also affects the concepts of appropriation and property. It is increasingly difficult to restrict or limit access to intellectual and artistic production based on these new supports. We are always thinking about how to broaden access to works, but when it comes to using a radically new media - when technology develops to the point that we do not even have not any control over the authorship of a work - we have no idea know what to do. It is no longer about being "hooked up", now we are talking about wireless. In certain locations in the major cities of the first world, you can be on-line anywhere you choose. This "being on-line" can mean sending or receiving information of any nature, including an art work. How do you retain control over who receives it?

What parameters are used in the international market in relation to the number of copies or fee charged to loan a work to an exhibition?

In relation to the number of copies, we work with several options. Circulating three copies is not a convention, galleries and artists are experimenting. This is the only thing we are not behind in: information. At least now, in the age of globalization, this is an advantage. We are part of the circuit located between the Southern and Northern Hemispheres, between developed and non-developed.

In relation to fees, this is very variable too. I worked with Bill Viola in the times when relations were more direct and the only person I had to go through was Kyra Perov, his wife. The role of intermediary here has different parameters to that of a gallery owner or a distributor. When a gallery owner acts as intermediary, there is no more direct contact with the artist. For many years the talk was of the struggle for video to become part of the art circuit, which had been previously restricted to conventional arts such as painting and sculpture. Galleries were not involved in selling this work, but this is not the case for the other arts. Why are there no festivals for the visual or conventional arts? Festivals provide a space that not only lends visibility to works, but turnover and access too, which is crucial for an environment conducive to business.

In a recent interview with artists Gisela Motta and Leandro Lima, one issue raised was the question of "falsified, pirated or appropriated."

This is the issue of the day and it is our "tools" that prompt this discussion. Now we have artists coming from other experiences who are tempted to experiment with these supports.

The concepts of public and private have changed too as works are made for viewing on a screen the size of a computer's without losing their scale. The time has gone when work had to be laid at the sacred altar of a museum in order to be classified as art. The power of an artwork is not diminished by its not being located in a museum. The new media break away from all that and are rebellious by their very nature, since they undermine the basis and the structure of all these centuries-old relationships in the art world. They affect the issue of the diffusion of property, of what is or what is not pirated, all concepts are being transformed. So one has to re-examine this new period and adapt to it. Now that diffusion is so easy today, the question is how artists are to make a living. There has been such a radical change that we have not had time for a transition. We were not ready for this, hence the conflict and absence of standards. I think it is always difficult to agree on conventions in an age of new technologies. Hence the disarray. This media is very open-minded and rebellious, very uneasy about being compartmentalized or framed. It is expansive in every sense of the word.

So perhaps this explains our political difficulties in relation to obtaining support and subsidies, or the distance in our relations with the public powers, and the Ministry of Culture.

It is not "prejudice" in the sense of pre-judging, it is an inability to decide. My own experience tells me that this is; I have seen some of the attempts that have been made. So I would point out that the solution is no longer a person but rather a group, because one person alone will not solve it. There is always a need to discuss things. Videobrasil's experience of keeping up with the way the technology evolves is a clear example of this. We have never managed to adjust to a standard, even for less important things such as regulations, which have never stayed the same from one festival to another. It is strange to see what the initial discussions were about when you see the older press clippings involving Videobrasil. People said the Festival was not serious, because the rules were changed every year. I too had my doubts at times, because I was experiencing this for the first time. But works came in and forced us to behave differently. If I had lacked the courage to discuss things and modify the rules, it would have been unfair and works would have been turned away because we did not know how to deal with them. We tended to classify and that this was impossible. First to go were genres, then we classified by format, but that proved to be a wrong solution too. When artists did not to know how to classify a work under the regulations, we realized that something was wrong ... and we had to think about what was going on. At last year's Festival, we had to enlarge the space reserved for diffusion of works in the competitive exhibition, because the auditorium was overcrowded. I had to expand and create a gallery space beside the auditorium, because there were works on the Internet, on CDs, or loop tapes on TV, or having narratives that needed a dark room for the beginning, middle and end. We had to adapt and all this meant constant transformation. Videoart benefits and advances in relation to these solutions. We are always prepared for innovations because this has been our everyday experience right from the beginning. Political and market issues have now become more complex and they need to be experienced and discussed openly with academic circles and those who produce, show and analyze these works.

Would you like to add anything that has not been raised?

Perhaps I would recall that this work went on in silence for a long time – it has been going on for 22 years -and somewhat isolated from other art activity. People working with video were left out. They were not visible. They had no options open to them.

You once made a strange remark, some five years ago. You said "I am not a curator", do you remember that?

That was because I could not be a curator - in the sense it was given at the time, in Brazil at least - because I was working totally outside academic parameters. But nowadays even academic circles in different places have been updated and have changed these parameters.

I was in Paris as a tourist in 1979 or 1980, and I saw a mega-exhibition at Beaubourg. It was the most powerful impact I had ever experienced in my life. I will never forget the two exhibitions that changed the way I look at an artwork. As well as this one in Paris, there was another big contemporary art exhibition in Chicago in the 1980s that featured some works on electronic supports, and among them was an important work by Bill Viola showing a felled tree. For the first time in my life I was in an exhibition space that smelled, there was this thing of affecting all the senses, that is very often part of contemporary art today.

When did you bring Bill Viola to Brazil for the first time?

That was in 1992, when we premiered The Passing here. Bill Viola very kindly suggested this because there was no way of staging a super-exhibition. He also gave a talk that lasted over four hours and explained the whole process of creation, specifically for installations. He covered them all in chronological order, until he reached his own most recent work at the time, which was The Passing.

And did Bill Viola's work in Chicago smell like a tree?

I can't remember what he used, a cedar maybe, but it was a tree that had been cut down. Of course he is politically correct and would not cut down a tree of that size; it fell down somewhere and was taken to the museum. I had only seen this work in a small photo in a book. So when I suddenly went into this dark place and saw it, charged with all the senses - the mixed smell of soil and foliage had a very powerful sensory appeal - I felt its impact, its dimension and its power. It was somewhat disconcerting to see a gigantic tree laid across the room, you couldn't exactly where to go through the room, and it produced a sensation of unease.

The immense tree was there in front of you, on the ground. This was in the 1980s, when the most people went to a museum for was to see the Impressionists. It produced a feeling of confusion for me. Nothing I had learned before made sense, I could not even understand what was going on. The point is work that mobilizes you, no matter what the support is, be it literature or film. I want video in Brazil to do that someday: to mobilize. Right after seeing that work by Bill Viola, I began to transform Videobrasil. It was difficult for me to comprehend it here, because we lacked referents. The production of electronic art, which began as an experiment in the early 1980s, has a very particular history in Brazil. José Roberto Aguilar, Anna Bella Geiger, Antonio Dias and Roberto Sandoval all used video, but it did not transform their work. This was not the case for Nam June Paik, Yoko Ono, or several other artists. This did not give rise to a school, or to other experiments based on theirs. Of course, today, if you were to speculate, they have their place, they were the pioneers. At that time, people starting to do video had no background as artists; they were all young people finishing university. It all began during a period of political transition, as censorship was coming to an end in Brazil, but it was still hard going here. So here in Brazil, video emerged much more as a political tool than an aesthetic one.

Your dialogue with artistic circles made you a referent in this field and led to your winning an Award. What is the message you would pose in this respect in this interview?

I have thought about it a lot and this Award has great significance. We can no longer go on saying there is still much to be done and transformed in Brazil. I think this is a period of recognition and this is part of a process. It is recognition for what is happening today after 20 years work. This Award is of huge significance and it moves me deeply, because I had never though that something like this would ever happen. It has institutional and cultural value and it means recognition because it is a prestigious award. Although relatively new, this is a very important award. And I see myself as part of this context. We have the Sergio Motta Award and Paço das Artes and I think my work has contributed in the sense of creating conditions for this to happen in Brazil - and being recognized for that is wonderful. An award is much more than "massage for the ego." The way it took place - without lobbying - means recognition for something that is now a fact, and no longer belongs only to me. And that is good; it is a sign of change. We are really moving a little closer to the way the arts are developing. Perhaps this will allow us to deal with these changes and understand that they are part of a process in which there are no quick fixes for issues raised by electronic supports. These issues are not problems, even if they are seen in this light, but just part of the work. That is the significance of the Sergio Motta Award for me. Giving an award to Videobrasil was a difficult and courageous step to take

While you were talking, I was thinking of the difficulties that we also experienced in the early days of the Award: the absence of parameters, the lack of resonance, not to mention the difficulty of surviving through a mixture of private sponsorship and public and institutional support. But these difficulties, which are repeated year after year, and the very complexity involved in producing new media help us to stay active and "devoted" to the cause.

Bearing in mind that Brazil does not have a cultural policy, we cannot stand still. Cultural policy has always been a weak point in Brazil; in fact there is no policy, and so wonderful projects lack continuity. Where does an institution like Videobrasil get the strength to keep going for so many years? It is derived from the very nature of the work itself. It is now a fact, a transition that is underway; it has to exist, and it is not a novelty that is going to fade away. We are experiencing an extremely important historical of acceleration of all processes, hence the feelings of shock and estrangement. But the main thing is to keep on working. Why is there no place for tedium in Brazil? Because there is always somebody looking for solutions and facing the obstacles.

Sergio Motta Institut , "5º Prêmio Sergio Motta de Arte e Tecnologia": 2004, pp.145- 148, São Paulo, SP, 2004.

texto retirado do catálogo do evento

Mario Cravo Neto_ "Higher than the Tide Mark"

To be able to see and feel the work of the artist from Bahia Mario Cravo Neto, we need to take into consideration the extent of his involvement with his subject matter. Earlier in his career, a sculptor who worked with live matter – small plants – on transparent acrylic structures, he became famous especially due to the unique insight with which he invites the observer not only to see, but chiefly to get acquainted with the magic world of “candomblé”. This dedication that can be seen as characteristic of the artist is also evident in his new phase, as can be observed on the work specially created for the Mostra Pan-Africana de Arte Contemporânea (Pan-African Exhibition of Contemporary Art). On his first installation, directed towards a presentation in video format and entitled “Somewhere over the rainbow”, one can trace the ongoing need for expansion typical of his work.

That title is not an allusion to the film “The wizard of Oz”, or a reference to the ethnic multiplicity that describes the South Africa of the “rainbow nation” (an expression that became omnipresent subsequent to the end of the segregating Apartheid). In this case there is no magic land filled with imaginary characters or any analogy with a country’s new profile. The name of the work arises from a dream the artist had, where Exu, the messenger “orixá” (an African deity), looks at the world from above. Exu, as recalled in the books by the anthropologist and photographer Pierre Verger, who had a profound knowledge of African religious beliefs. Exu is an entity that, whilst proud, also protects those who seek its support and guidance and is also the spiritual guardian of city dwellers and responsible for bestowing the gift of foresight upon them.

On the video installation, Mario Cravo Neto brings us images of open spaces filled with natural light, the infinity of the horizon and the sea. The images were shot in Salvador and portray the sea, an apparently calm sea that keeps so many secrets in its breast and the very history of slavery. The sea that separates Brazil from Africa and served as the route for the slave trade in years gone by. The installation invites us to plunge into a virtual ocean that transcends its surface. At the entrance, there is a photograph of the rails, which in the 17th and 18th centuries were used to transport goods to, what is now, the historical building of the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia. Solar do Unhão was, at this time, an abode for elite that incorporated slave quarters and a whipping-pole. The image of the rails that reminds us of a circular shape causes one to think of an equally circular navigation where men were considered to be commodities. It is as if the origins and destinies met again by way of physical and virtual paths.

The intimacy with the sea also becomes noticeable during a conversation on the eve of the shootings. The concern with the changes in the weather, for example, was not even considered in the weeks that preceded the shootings in Salvador, then subject to tropical storms. “No problem. If the sun shines, fine. If it rains, it is fine too. It will be what will be”. The statement should not be construed as a sign of passivity, but of tranquility, in face of what can not be controlled.

In this new challenge, it is as if the artist would throw himself towards the vastness yet to be explored, to a new way of seeing the world based on accumulated knowledge. In the phase that indicates the transition, the spaces formerly closed now open up. The light is natural and invites one to look at the outside.

This is not the first time that Mario Cravo Neto uses video instead of paper (photographic). More recently, in exhibitions such as those at the Dahlen Ethnologisches Museum, in Berlin (2004), Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, in Rio de Janeiro, (2003) and Galeria Paulo Darzé, in Salvador, (2005) he was already beginning a new cycle in his work, incorporating an ongoing process of image editing and recreating, in an almost performatic manner, new meanings potentialized by the light and soundtrack, and by the relation with the architectural space selected to create his photographic installations.

By 2001, in an exhibition shown at the Museu da Imagem e do Som de São Paulo as a part of the Quinto Mês da Fotografia (Fifth Month of Photography), he showed “GW 41”, with images from the Gulf War (“GW”) recorded directly from a monitor. The soundtrack selected mixed extracts from music by the heavy metal group Judas Priest with the electronic music by the German musician Klaus Schulze, going through the audio from the film “Apocalypse now”, by Francis Ford Coppola.

This time – and once again – my longtime and esteemed friend, Mariozinho, as I call him, places himself not as a “voyeur artist”, but someone who continues to have an open mind and maintains a naïve fascination for what he sees. On the contrary, in his career, the artist is never just a foreign observer. It deals with an initiated being to whom the selected images – the sea, the sky, and the horizon – logically bear a meaning that is much more of a complex sight than the eyes can see. An expert on codes and language from Bahia, as well as nature, he shows them without boldly describing same, he unveils without announcing.

The subject and the language of “Somewhere over the rainbow” disclose some sort of rupture or progress, which can be followed by way of publications that document his previous series. In 1976, he started his famous black-and-white studio photograph series, where he used elements from nature, daily objects, and people as a critical resource for his work. Publications that gather color photographs dating from 1974 through 2000 follow the series: “Salvador” (1999), with 180 images and texts by Jorge Amado, Padre Antônio Vieira, Wilson Rocha, Caetano Veloso, and “Laróyè” (2000), with 140 photographs. “The Eternal Now” (2002) is the most complete monograph of the artist’s black-and-white work, with 136 images.

On his subsequent book, “Na terra sob meus pés” (2003), the 55 digital color and black-and-white images direct the artist’s work to a perspective that is even more comprehensive. “Trance-Territories” (2004) comprises 88 photographs shot at the Axé Opó Aganju. His most recent book and exhibition, “O tigre do Dahomey - a serpente de Whydah” (The tiger from Dahomey - the serpent from Whydah) (2004), is a kind of synthesis of a cycle that began with the black-and-white images and progressed through his immersion into the cult of “candomblé”, a time when he portrayed the full process of initiation in the Axé Opó Aganju, in Salvador.

"O tigre do Dahomey - a serpente de Whydah" is dedicated to Pierre Verger, whom the artist from Bahia is frequently associated to, thanks to the profound interest by the two artists in “candomblé”. At the beginning of the 1970’s, Verger, born in France, abandoned the photographic camera, which he would only return to in 1996, just before he died, to portray his friend Mario Cravo Neto.

Mario Cravo Neto’s universe of images is hence deeply associated with the very geography of his life. For the artist, Bahia, the idiosyncrasies, the time and shapes of that state and its history are a part of both his daily life and the images he produces. There, the elements of the particular mixture of Bahia are present; ethnic, visual, a combination of textures and colors, odors and lights, beliefs and rituals.

The artist’s photography can never be thought of as an exercise of technical mastery, despite the full control of the media by the artist. Photography is the media used to materialize ideas, visions and arrangements of reality. One cannot be attached to formal principles to enjoy his work, despite the ability with which he creates images that seduce, either for the sensuality that makes them deliciously tactile, or for the unique solemnity of the object portrayed.

(Pan-AfricanExhibitionof Contemporary Art catalogue) ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL VIDEOBRASIL, "Mostra Pan-Africana de Arte Contemporânea"[Pan-AfricanExhibitionof Contemporary Art]: from March 8 to April 19, 2003, pp. 109-110, São Paulo, SP, 2005

VIDEOBRASIL AND VIDEO IN BRAZIL: A PARALLEL TRAJECTORY

Since its birth, electronic art places tension on the axle between art and communication, narration and information. This is operated by means of the experimentation with different forms, singular and regional, mediatic or subjective, by inscribing the narrating subject’s marks in the account, marks that speak of its identity and its private territory. The electronic image promotes, thus, a focus centred on the individual who is before and behind the camera, an individual singularly identified and in relation with its society.

The image brought by video art exploded within the context of the Brazilian democratic opening, in the beginning of the 1980s. In 1983 Videobrasil began to organise, exhibit and legitimate this field of independent and febrile production, spurred by the technical and creative versatility of the digital and electronic support. The electronic image, within the context of the democratic opening, has bore peerless expressive freedom, exploring the technical and narrative frontiers of all previous audio-visual production.

The Festival was born in 1983 to agglutinate this intellectual field that grew around the screening space, the award giving and the exchange between audio-visual production sectors – as video challenged this very division in sectors. It has worked as a spontaneous articulation space for local production, and has also sought to establish connections with international art, specially after 1985. But, in the dialectics of this internationalisation process, Videobrasil has always been concerned with the search for and the outlining of our audio-visual identity as Latin Americans, and, in a wider sense, as producers of the Southern Hemisphere.

The transit from the Festival to Associação Cultural Videobrasil marks the conscience of working with memory of the past for the construction of an audio-visual future, a future that necessarily begins with the critical reflection on the most daring and numerous independent production known to date in Brazil.

The array of works exhibited in the Festival suggests that video “thinks” other audio-visual media. These intermediations determine, in a fair and paradoxical manner, the poetic specificity of the electronic image. This specificity – brought about by the bias of a framework outside of naturalistic velocities – has promoted and provoked, within the Brazilian audio-visual world, fruitful and surprising contaminations throughout the history of national production, contaminations that we are able to witness in the most important renovations of the local televisual and cinematic languages.

On the other hand, by encouraging the poetic specificity of such language, Videobrasil consolidated, from 1990 on, a space for the circulation and legitimisation of work more strictly linked to the electronic image’s artistic (and less communicational) production. The accent that the festival has placed in performances, installations and experimental videos, as well as in the organisation of workshops, conferences and retrospective screenings of the great authors of national and international video art, has opened a key portal for the interdisciplinary production emerging from the areas of the visual arts, theatre and poetry within our context.

TIMELINE

Videobrasil’s first edition took place in August 1983 at MIS (Image and Sound Museum), fruit of a partnership between Fotoptica and Culture Secretariat of São Paulo State. This first Festival aimed at presenting pioneering video experiments in Brazil, whose authors at that time strongly wished to enter the context of commercial television. This was translated in a moment of intense criticism regarding the monopolistic status of the few broadcasting networks. Besides single-channel videos, the festival undertook installations and performances. Video was still looking for exhibiting venues in order to present its language, but already presented itself as an alternative of independence and experimentation, which seduced young authors and visual artists in tune with artistic avant-garde. A theatre director, José Celso Martinez Correa, was the first winner, showing that video was worked by artist from other areas, such as theatre and visual arts.

In the following year, video-utopia on tape: the democratic control of television was top in the agenda at the end of the military dictatorship. The political and economical perspective that outlined a “video market” promised to bring closer together the video and television markets. Independent video continued to desire a closer contact with the apparently closed and inaccessible world of the networks. Once more, besides the competitive screenings, the festival presented a wide variety of activities. In the national scene, a range of independent production houses had consolidated: Olhar Eletrônico, TVDO, Telecine Maruin, Videoverso. The international screenings presented single-channel videos by international artists such as Nam June Paik and others.

The third edition of the Festival took place at Sérgio Cardoso theatre, featuring three thematic groupings: the entrance of independent production in television, video theatre and the actions of diffusion and publicising – taking local production compilations inland and abroad. Production house Olhar Eletrônico was already selling programmes to Globo network, for the Fantástico programme, the cream of prime time television in Brazil, indicating the first signs of stability and of the gaining of independent video production territory within Brazil. Likewise, other nation-wide networks, featured in their grids videos made by this generation, in a jump that few people had anticipated. The monopoly of the big networks was still part of the discussions, and new possibilities were tried out, such as UHF and cable television. The screenings and shows sought to explore the language specific to video, such as in “Sound Odyssey” and holography exhibitions.

A fundamental video exhibition space was consolidated from the 4th edition on: the Festival lets its categories separated by kind go, distinguishing only between the U-matic and VHS formats. There was a fall in fictional production, and an increase in experimental production and documentaries. In this edition, despite the large number of submissions, a more careful and demanding selection was carried out. A big international screening was undertaken in partnership with the Chicago Video Data Bank, large scale performances such as Roberto Aguilar’s unwrapping of the venue MIS, experiments with video photographs combined with computer generated graphics, experiments with computer graphics alone, a screening of music videos and parallel screenings of videos from several countries.

In November 1987, in its 5th edition, Videobrasil screened the first television programmes influenced by and/or created by the video artist generation, such as Fabrica do Som, by Tadeu Jungle. This insertion was enhanced by the work of state network TV Cultura, which underlined its support by means of a wide coverage of the event, with a special programme about Videobrasil. The Festival’s production sector undergoes a process of professionalisation and specialisation that leaves out the more amateur video production. Celebrated authors matured their production as the technical quality of the work submitted improved. In narrative terms, the renovation of televisual language, the documentary and the experimental then became the main production nuclei: the video image potentialises its technical qualities, visual texture, the musicality of editing and the interactivity of the camera. A paradigmatic example is “UAKTI” by Eder Santos.

In the 6th edition, a partnership with TV Gazeta network was established, and the first issue of the Videonews was directed by Hugo Prata and presented by Astrid Fontenelli. This was the first time that a television broadcasting network undertook a live coverage and exhibited the awarded work in their grid. The selection of the competitive screenings is increasingly demanding and the number of submissions falls as the quality increases. The festival hosts for the first time international guests (American artists Aysha Quinn , Ira Schneider and Daniel Minahan from The Kitchen in New York) and establishes partnerships with media centres to award with scholarships prize-winning artist in the competitive screenings

International relations consolidated from the 7th edition on, as the festival attracts important foreign guests, such as Pierre Bongiovanni, from Centre International de Creátion Vídeo de Montbeliard (France), in order to promote exchanges involving artists such as Sandra Kogut, Eder Santos, Roberto Berliner and Lucila Meirelles. It has also hosted festival directors such as Tom Van Vliet from the World Wide Video Festival in the Netherlands, Sandra Lischi from ONDAVIDEO in Italy, of representatives from television networks such Canal Plus in France, Belgium’s RTBF and United Kingdom’s Channel Four, among others. In this edition, Videobrasil promoted a large number of contacts between distributors, broadcasters and television networks. In this way, the focus and expressive possibilities of the electronic image were expanded: in the horizon, television and video art were already present.

In the 8th edition, the Festival gains a definitive international character, with several international screenings presented by their curators, workshops with specially invited artists, such as Britisher Tim Morrison, Yoichiro Kawaguchi from Japan, Frenchman Dominik Barbier and Marcelo Tas from Brazil. The space for video installation grows, with works by Marcel Odenbach, Sandra Kogut and Tadeu Jungle. Brazilian artists find recognition ever more widely and consolidate their presence in the scene, as was the case with Eder Santos, Sandra Kogut, Marcelo Machado , Roberto Berliner and Renato Barbieri. We were then before the first expressively mature generation, incorporated into video art international circuits. In the same manner, the competitive screenings were truly international, as well as the jury. Television ceases to be the main target, and an independent international circuit is perceived to exist, more linked to the art scene, by means of performances, installations, experimental television and computer graphics. The Southern Hemisphere emerges in the competitive show, whilst the First World production took part in the informative shows.

But it was in Videobrasil’s 9th edition that a big step towards the international circuit of electronic art was taken. The big transformation started with the move from MIS to SESC Pompéia. The festival took up a biennial character, ceasing to be a competition between video makers to become the great open space for the Southern Hemisphere’s electronic art. With a record budget, the competitive show increases considerably and reaches the mark of 200 pieces of artwork exhibited. With these changes, the festival underwent a great reformulation that made it international, taking advantage of the growing demand for Brazilian video productions on that level. Such production represented only 60% of the 300 videos submitted. Big names of international video theory and practice such as Bill Viola, Peter Callas, Gianni Toti , Jean Paul Fargier, Tina Keane, Jorge La Ferla and Julien Temple were present in this edition, giving lectures, workshops, making installations and performances, showing the wide spectrum of electronic-digital intervention.

The change in title to International Electronic Art Festival was realised for the 10th edition, and it featured a definite bias for work produced by artists in the Southern Hemisphere. The competitive categories were: video art, documentary and animations, whilst fiction and televisual language were abandoned. Once more, documentary again became one of the main experimental interests, alongside audio-visual poetry, which sensibilities are satiated by many international panoramas, which had been part of the Festival’s tradition. The main highlights were the 13 installations and 3 performances commissioned by the festival, which brought in a record audience during the duration of the Festival, which henceforward extended its closing dates to span a full month.

Little more than 10 year after its foundation, Videobrasil is has matured into a particular profile and is internationally recognised for bringing together work, in its competitive shows, from outside the USA-Western Europe axle, changing forever the character of the Festival: its mainstay was now artistic production, produced by artists of the developing countries and produced within the specialised art circuit. Cross-media contaminations, before predominant between video and its relationship with cinema and television, today takes place between video, poetry, installation and painting. In order to celebrate the 30 years of international video art, Videobrasil promotes the most complete retrospective exhibition in Brazil of Nam June Paik’s work, who made a special new edition of TV Moon for the Festival. The vocation of performance fostering is also consolidated with those carried out by Eder Santos and Paulo Santos, Stephen Vitiello and Steina Vasulka, Isabelle Choinniere and Marcondes Dourado for the Festival.

Increasingly, the Festival’s aim is to raise the level of the competitive show, as well as of the retrospective and international informative shows. If in its pioneering spirit the aim was once to bring together the class of local producers, fulfilling its role as articulator and generator of space and projects, on the threshold of the 21rst Century the Festival has been reinforcing its role of diffusing and fomenting a public specialised in electronic-digital art, both Brazilian and international, focussing perception on the continent’s regional production. In its 13th edition, in 2001, the Festival undertook a retrospective of Gary Hill’s installations, and , for the first time, digital art and Web art entered as a central foci, where the more experimental tendencies of the electronic image today converge.

From the 14th edition on, work produced in video and in new media compete side by side in a single category. Agglutinating and catalysing, a critical entity and a body generator of the most daring experiments of our audio-visual, the Festival maintains as its priorities the quality in selection and in curatorship, as well as the role of articulating the international-national connections. The work developed by Associação Cultural Videobrasil reinforces the desire of helping to build, with the preservation of the Festival’s memory, the future of Brazilian audio-visual.

FARKAS, Solange. "Videobrasil and Video in Brazil: A Pararllel Trajectory". In: Festival @rt Outsiders 2005, "://brasil": 2005, pp 298 to 310, Paris, France, 2005.