Associação Cultural Videobrasil

In his third appearance in the Southern Panoramas competitive show, the Minas Gerais-based artist discusses his career, interspersed with media and image technology work, and his piece Cordis, featured in the 18th Festival. He tells of how the piece was born out of a trip to the city of Cordisburgo, in the state of Minas Gerais, famed for being the birthplace of writer Guimarães Rosa. Out of 20-plus hours worth of raw material – originally collected for a theatrical play stage set – there emerged the video, which according to Bellini is an attempt to approximate the local people’s relationship with life and death cycles. This simple and straightforward way of dealing with natural transformations ultimately reveal a peace of mind typical of the mysticism of Minas Gerais, an area of the country he describes as a “hole filled with iron.” The artist associates the black and white sequences in his work with the night, a place of openness and flourishing of life in a plurality of forms; and the light-filled moments of the day, a place of concreteness and fixedness where death dwells. He also likens his style of filming with photography, due to the contemplative character of his creative process. On the other hand, he recounts how in Landscape Theory – a work shown at the 15th Festival – he became aware of the interference exerted by the filming apparatus on the objects filmed. He also addresses the evolution of video art through recent years, giving a positive assessment of a newly-gained maturity that took the place of the bedazzlement that this medium used to bring.