Complementary technical description
Presentation text 2005
Engrenagem - Eder Santos, Stephen Vitiello and Ana Gastelois
With two decades behind him in art and video, artist Eder Santos has constructed a body of work in which the electronic image is frequently used to cross and intensify the scenic and visual possibilities of performing acts – of music,singing,dance,poetry,and something similar to the theatre.In the performances that outline the course of his career,alongside an important cotribution in video,the artist uses images recorded live to create scenes and settings, thus marking a space in which hybrid spectacles, charged with simultaneity,music,forms and movement,can take place.With his own particular use of the image, he at once pokes fun at and celebrates the feverish multiplicity of angles and gazes to which TV has made us so accustomed.
The principle of making art live rules works such as “Passagem de Mariana” (1996),“Pincélulas” (1998) and “Concerto para Pirâmide,Orquestra e Sacrifício” (2001),that he has created with Paulo Santos and presented at earlier editions of Videobrasil Festival. In “Engrenagem” (the word means “gears”), the same principle applies,though now resulting in a performance-concert that rereads the artist’s most important work over the last 20 years and involves the live participation of guests Paulo Santos,Stephen Vitiello and Ana Gastelois. Fragments of Eder’s recent works emerge between the scenes, as the performance in which actors Monica Ribeiro and Rodolfo Vaz bark at the camera in an allusion to the security systems protecting houses and the signs that threaten us with warnings of “vicious guard dogs”.
The performance marks the re-encounter between Eder Santos and Vitiello, one of his most important part- ners. The electronic musician, “sonar artist” and curator has composed for experimental projects in video – including work by Eder himself – and for installations, having collaborated with such artists as the Korean Nam June Paik.With a special interest in the physical aspect of sound “and its potential to define the form and the atmosphere of an environment”,Vitiello creates the music for “Engrenagem”.
The performance culminates with the presentation of the homonimous piece,a creation by Ana Gastelois.The performing artist uses the repetitive and familiar movements of the revolving blades of a mixer to create some- thing that is at once design,handwriting,gesture and dance.“In the conceptual design of a cake mixer,the dance emerges and the body turns into a mixer.The design becomes the musical score and generates a kinetic perspec- tive”,she explains.“The performance materializes in the design as the creative process rendered visual”.
ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL VIDEOBRASIL. "15th Videobrasil International Electronic Art Festival - 'Performance.'": 6th to 25th September 2005, pp. 122 and 123, São Paulo, Brazil, 2005.