Associação Cultural Videobrasil

Editor of worlds

By Eder Chiodetto From the unlikely crossing between knowledge acquired in a technical course on industrial chemistry and in classical guitar lessons, Eustáquio Neves lapidated his original talent for maneuvering images and metaphors, transfiguring meanings,juxtaposing realities, inventions, and memory.

Since1987, when he started doing research at his first laboratory in Belo Horizonte, a certain nonconformity and an attitude oftransgression permeated the representation with which he sought to express his personaland subjective realm.

Caos urbano (1992),his first series, already showed signs of the best tradition of artists who, throughouthistory, started to approach the photograph as it comes out of the camera as raw material that would require intervention toadjust to the intended representation. A way of transfiguring the photographic moment, expanding its symbolic potentialities.

The mode of thinking up the process of capturing, intervening with, and editing images, be it in photographic series or in his more recent production, which gave rise to an enticing selection of video works, reveals an editor of worlds. His eyes, heart, and mind are on an obsessive quest—even though his works are produced in the peace and quiet of those who have chosen to live outside the large centers—to find significance in the endless flow of information to which we are submitted in contemporary times.

The labyrinthic path through which he tackles issues so dear to Brazilian sociology, such as soccer and the descendents of slaves in the Futebol (1998–99) and Arturos (1993–97) series, respectively, shows a complex artist who is highly skilled when it comes to translating his critical and historical consciousness into atmospheres, textures, and fuzzy colors.

What is at play here, however, is not the tradition of denunciation of documentary photography. The images do not necessarily impel us to react to the facts depicted. By stretching the photographic filmto the limit of engraving and painting, Neves juxtaposes and arrives at the original state of things, permeating it with a nostalgic, quasi-melancholy reflection. The multilayered enigmas contained in his work do not dialogue with the voracious reason of those who consume the daily media images, but rather with a more accurate perception that is summoned as soon as we are faced with the thick,playful atmospheres that he invents.

Technically speaking, part of the magic contained in his work arises out of the artist’s ability to impregnate complex images with various symbols that juxtapose each other, creating layers of different depths. Such optical strategy forces the eyes of those looking to not simply “scan” the images laterally, but rather to carry out a prospecting of their insides. It is an effective way of betraying the lethargy of contemporary men’s eyes, chastised by the excess of images and, at the same time, exciting the iris and theperception to the possibilities of novel approaches.

In the beginning, however, there was music. And its presence in the artist’s lifecalled for rhythms, compositions, sound phrases, new combinations. Orchestrating the endless supply of sounds, images, and information that emerged abruptly with the Internetwas a natural need for someone who remained connected both with the historical references of his time and the innovations that would come up to radically alter the symbolic trades between people.

Thus came Abismo virtual, which earned Eustáquio Neves the Videobrasil WBK Vrije Academie Prize at the Videobrasil 2007. Starting from his authorial images, the artist started to establish connections with images sent by other people, captured on YouTube and mixed with elements extraneous to the new technologies, such as analog photographs, laboratory experiments, etc. His universe of collage took a step towards differentiation by incorporating other authorships, leading him, once and for all, to take on the persona of an editor, who, like a disc jockey, writes sentences using words from different people and sources.

Such is a strongly contemporary artisticattitude, which, countering the monotonyand the numbing trend of the generation of information without reflection that was madepossible through massive access to new technologies, goes against the grain by questioning and ascribing another logic to the empty,almost spontaneously generated images. Theartist subversively resignifies those images, granting them meanings that escape their own selves and the initial intentions of their authors/automatons.

The images, most of all those made by amateurs, arise out of theneed to certify the existence of one’s space-time, to rectify one’s memories, to leave a track. But the fact remains that a large portion of that production dies out without an audience, without ever getting to have areal meaning in society or even in the medium in which they were generated. Abandoned inside virtual memories that agonize while awaiting editing, those images are invariablyforgotten in computer folders that are destined to be infected by viruses, converted into corrupted bytes, erased.

Such iconography, on the opposite direction of the notion of being converted into perennial instancesof memory, the motive that led to its creation, is quickly turned into a certificate ofcollective amnesia. To photograph, to record,to forget. This is the paradoxical circuit that conflagrates the majority of contemporary image production.

Even though amnesia is a gift in the face of so much information, artists such as Neves know how to seek historical references in the past and examine them in the light of the new times. By putting the collective memory into perspective, the artist does a clever work in the recentvideo Post No Bill, made from footagerecorded in Lagos, Nigeria.

“Wealthy people in Nigeria in present days are descendents of former slaves in Brazil. Their predecessors, upon returning from the slave regime, dominated local trade. The fact of havingperceived themselves as goods during the slavery period provided them with the key to understand the game of trade,” says the artist.

Based on this frightful conclusion, he builds a sonata of sorts with collages of noise from the hellish traffic of Lagos, coupled with the irony of posters glued with the expression “Post no bill.” Images captured and/or transformed, in low resolution, fragmentthe screen with a plot of pixels that reverberates on the shape of the very posters which, stuck on a panel, contribute to therestoration of silence.

In this mosaic that agglutinates information from the past thatearns new connotations in the present, like the story of the slaves who somehow benefited in the future from the fact of having been reduced to goods, Neves makes a very pertinent crossing that brings together elements of dead languages, as he calls them; corrupting the cleanliness and perfection of new media with technologies that have already been surpassed.

Again, these are stories that call for deciphering not only in their illusory surface beauty, but also in the involving plots, in the dissonant fissures created by the pixels that burst on the screen, revealing the flesh that constitutes the image and expands beyond its historic, anthropological, aesthetical meanings.

Photography, film, painting, engraving, music, rhythm, reflection, collective history, and individual memory. Mix it all up in a chemical laboratoryand turn it into a score for classicalguitar. A recipe that cannot be copied, by Eustáquio Neves. 

Outros navios, which you created for the 1st Pan-African Contemporary Art Exhibition (MAM-BA, 2005), is your first work on video. How did the transition to the moving image take place, in your career?

It is true that I started working with video from then on, but my interest in the moving image goes back a long time. I take photographs with cinema in mind. At the Pan-African exhibition, I felt comfortable to make that, and the conditions that were offered to me made the choice easier. 

In Dead Horse, you propose a reflection about photograph and cinema, using Muybridge’s series as a starting point, and then transposing that proposal to contemporary blockbusters. How do you see the relation between photography and cinema in present days?

Dead Horse is a video made from a series of photos, which then gave origin to the moving image. Cinema renews itself, among other things, in the technologies, the narrative, and, of course, the photography, which brings along something totally new when everything seems depleted. That is, if you are talking about cinematography…Photography as an art that is parallel to cinema, in my opinion, is coming closer and closer to the cinema narrative—with regard to its editing style and the media that it uses. 

Your photographs are characterized, among other elements, by physical and chemical interventions. In what way has holding a degree in chemistry influenced your artistic creation?

I believe that my degree in chemistry doesn’t have much to do with it. My interest in experimentation, however, which led me to study chemistry in the first place, does. In everything that I produce there lies a restlessness that makes me want to break from the traditional model; I think that that holds true for all people who do creative work. 

Post No Bill was made in Nigeria, a country that has many ties to Brazil, particularly to the Brazilian black community. How did you come up with the idea for making the video, and which elements did Nigeria bring to the vast symbolic pool that comprises your work?

I have always worked with the concept of reorganizing chaos and information pileup. And in Nigeria, there is a sort of method amidst an apparent chaos, which turns the result of my work into a simple snapshot of the reality of that place. There is not much to be done, it is all done already. But most of all, the human element in its everyday life was what contributed the most to the result of my Post No Bill video. 

You have held several solo and group exhibitions in Africa. Has the fact of having been to the continent changed your view of the cultures, experiences, and realities of Brazilian black people, who you have always depicted in your works?

Not only in Africa, but also in the United States, for example, where I spent a season undertaking a residency in a black community, I found out that there is a very powerful link between Africa and the Diaspora, even in small gestures, anywhere in the world. I say this because on the birthday of the person who hosted me during my stay in that country, he received an early-morning phone call from his mother, who lives in Alabama. Before anything else, she sang him a song. My mother does that too on all of my birthdays.
Going back to your question, I believe that the Brazilian black community still has a lot of growing up to do in terms of their identity as blacks, as Brazilians, before it is able to put an end to inequalities that have persisted for I don’t know how long. 

The presence of your mother, both in the series of photographs in which she features and as a reference, stands out in your work. How have the family realm, your childhood in the state of Minas Gerais, and the reality of Brazilian blacks shaped the essence of your work?

My work is always permeated with memories, good and bad. I have learned a lot from my mother, I have learned to resist and to believe. Reality is something that you cannot escape. My work is a means of facing it. 

What projects are you working on right now?

The Dead Horse video has been awarded at the 2008-2009 Filme em Minas Audiovisual Incentive Program. It is a work in process and will be available to be viewed in its entirety by the end of the year. Right now, I am still working on the footage that I shot in Nigeria, in order to edit a second video. I have no name for it yet, and don’t know where I am going to screen it. 

Associação Cultural Videobrasil. "FF>>DOSSIER 045 Eustaquio Neves". Disponível em: >http://www.sescsp.org.br/sesc/videobrasil/site/dossier045/ensaio.asp>. São Paulo, julho de 2009.

Cultural Heritage of Humanity, the land of Juscelino Kubitschek and Chica da Silva, the municipality of Diamantina, where Eustáquio Neves lives and works, is a fountain ofhistory surrounding the headquarters of the artist from the state of Minas Gerais. The mountains, the architecture of city streets, and its past studded with jewels, but alsoconflicts and changes, provide a perfect picture frame for the photographer and video artist’s trade: to probe the human landscape that reinvents itself each day, looking forthe ties that keep the cohesion of the identity, values, and memory of a population. 

Born in Juatuba, forty-five kilometers away from the capital Belo Horizonte, Neves graduated in chemistry in 1980, but his interest in experimenting only flew over the pipettes and then settled down for good in the artistic territory. “In everything that I produce there lies a restlessness that makes me want to break from the traditional model; Ithink that that holds true for all people who do creative work,” he says. 

Outof the passion for experimentation there emerged photographic essays marked by physicaland chemical interventions that move between past and present, such as Boa aparência, about the veiled form of racism found in job advertisements, or Encomendador de almas, in which the photographer transcends palpable aspects to capture the atmosphere impregnated with reminiscences, precepts, and knowledge of the occult that surrounds Seu Crispim, an inhabitant of quilombo do Baú [quilombo is a community established by escaped slaves] whose mission is to commend the souls of the deceased. 

Day-to-day traditions inspired by Africa that remain in use outside of Brazil have alsocaught the artist’s eye. In 1999, Neves was awarded a scholarship at Gasworks Studios, where he undertook a residency with support from Autograph, a London-based association of black photographers.

Developed during that period, the project Navio negreiro was nurtured, among other experiences, by the idiosyncrasies and routine activitiesof the inhabitants of Brixton, an impoverished London neighborhood where the artistclaims to have experienced feelings of familiarity, “a sense of belonging.”  IntheUnited States, new identifications came up. Neves’ attention was caught by the fact that, even in small gestures, he noticed similarities between customs of black communitiesin Brazil and in the United States. 

In Africa, the artist has held solo exhibitions in countries such as Mali, as part of the 5th Rencontres de la Photographie Africaine, in Bamako (2003), and in Mozambique, last year. This year, he developed the video Post No Bill, set in Lagos and inspiredby the recurring “Post no bill” warnings thatplague the Nigerian city. There, he also ministered the video workshop Linha imaginária.  From the onset of his career, Neves states that cinema has always been present in the elaboration of his projects, even when they were in the field of photography. “I take photographs with cinema in mind,” he says. Going from thought to action, he decided to become involved with the moving image in 2005, when he presented Outrosnavios, his first video installation, built from images of his own mother, at the 1st Pan-African Contemporary Art Exhibition, in Salvador. 

In 2007, it was a video, nota photograph, that earned him the Videobrasil WBK Vrije Academie Prize, which consists of a residency at the Dutch organization, and was granted at the 16th International Electronic Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil (2007). The awarded work was Abismovirtual, a reflection on intimacy and digital media. 

In The Hague, where he spenthis studyseason, he developed the Dead Horseproject,which is another video—thistime directly linked to his source of inspiration, cinema. The new work, which is now being concluded, approaches the series of images The Horse in Motion, made by Eadweard Muybridge in the late 19th century, and contemporary box-office hits. 

Video debut
Web site of the 1st Pan-African Contemporary Art Exhibition, in Salvador, where Eustáquio Neves presented his first video installation, Outros navios, in 2005.