Associação Cultural Videobrasil

Sensitive Landscape

“All that we see, all within the reach of our eyes, is the landscape. It can be defined as the realm of the visible, that which the sight can grasp. It is made not only of volumes, but also of colors, motions, smells, sounds, etc.” - Milton Santos

Pieces of landscape born out of the confluence of a sensory and perceptive experience, defined by the investigation of the gaze into the space of nature, might be an entrance point for asking questions or reflecting upon Concerto para clorofila, a work that garnered Cao Guimarães the award for the State of the Art section of the 15th Videobrasil Festival.

To say of Cao Guimarães that he is a multimedia artist might sound cliché to those accustomed to the contemporary artistic vocabulary; for the uninitiated and those unfamiliar with the languages of video or visual arts, it might seem like an attempt to include his work into one of the categories most in tune with the new era of hybridizations, appropriations, displacements, or undoings. 

This attempt to find an entrance point to the artist's universe presents, from the start, one of the key features of his work, ever since his first incursions into the fields of photography, video, and cinema. In a scene linked to audiovisual production, reflection, and critic such as the Belo Horizonte scene, the artist's relationship with the Minas Gerais output can be felt in his connections to different generations of artists in those media-from Eder Santos to Marcellvs L.-, as well as in more wide-ranging features, which he manifests using other languages such as time, memory, and landscapes.

As in a dive, the idea of a motion that turns over its own axis and into the past, beginning with the work Concerto para clorofila, is aimed at widening the relationship with languages, techniques, media, supports, and materials. Is this a minor issue in art? Has this issue been overcome, or minimized, through theoretical and conceptual discussion? Is this issue inadequate for discussing contemporary artistic practices? Despite all this, it seems like, at the very least, a starting point for something a little Beckettian, as in the end of a game, a limit situation with no way out, such as the current state of discomfort and ill-being we seem to be in. As the question remains unanswered, the present discussion, more and more provocative and destabilizing, becomes one of the strong mechanisms that are sought after and approached by the discussions and curatorial proposals in the latest editions of the Videobrasil Festival.

Looking back along the line of thought of these questionings, some of the most significant and often present elements, such as music, image in motion, color, photography, lines, as well as time, memory, and intimism, among others, are part of Concerto para clorofila, making it more of an experience in the sensory realm than in the video, photograph, painting, or even cinema realms; a type of aesthetic experience, rather than just language research.

One of the first sensations one has upon relating to the work is that of the nature of time, which dilates itself, extends like a note hanging in the air, and is maintained by the soft touch of the musician on the instrument. The image, with its plans (re)created by Guimarães, deepens our relationship with the landscape, with nature, reminding us of its principles, when in fact this procedure could have had a distancing effect, by introducing monochromatic planes over and into the images. 

It does not seem like there is any concern over representation issues, but rather over affirming the meaning and the potentiality of perception. The monochromatic style, of course, proposes an approach that would seemingly lead to a distancing through image, but which, on the contrary, takes us down a path on a literal trip, not to the reality of the landscape, but rather to the sensory experience that is proposed, despite the former one.

Thus, Concerto para clorofila can be interpreted in a way which highlights, but does not define its formal features, or else as if the artist had chosen to allow us to see through those features, which can also be detected in his work from the late 1990s onwards: light, color, transparency, rhythm, and musicality are some of these constant, present, and active elements of his poetics. The work investigates notions of temporality and beauty, intertwined with a sense of ephemerality.

In works such as The Eye Land (1999), Between - Inventário de pequenas mortes (1999), Sopro (2000, with Rivane Neuenschwander), or Nanofania (2003), the focus on natural landscapes can be identified as a common element; just as one can interpret the choice of these images as being a discussion about the statute of image in the contemporary world, and therefore about contemporary aesthetics.

This singular way of seeing things unfolds into issues related to the documentary, biographical, and autobiographical aspects of works such as A alma do osso or Da janela do meu quarto, allowing us to understand another side of the artist's intentions.

The changes in state (images), the delicacy and softness in presenting a nature that is felt and perceived; for it is a nature over which memory is an active element, not in the sense of erasing or diluting its materiality, but rather potentializing it as a poetic element. As we think of landscapes as a way of perceiving a certain part of nature, we are working with the diversity of capturing and selecting fragments of nature, therefore making a choice that is necessarily diverse. These passages do not stray from other works by the artist, but rather point to ever-present issues in his body of work, such as “the inside and the outside,” “the idea of filmed diaries,” “the autobiographical,” “drawings, colors, lights,” and so, within his body of work, Concerto para clorofila seems to indicate a process of answering questions. His orchestration of values includes music notes, pauses, and all of the musical accidents that enable us to listen to this feeling of the landscape, as he proposes a sound landscape and, at the same time, erases the materiality of the object, denying the notion of a representation of nature.

With Concerto para clorofila, Cao Guimarães simply invites us to take a trip down the memory of his landscape, and even though we might know the limits of image construction, it is very hard not to stand in front of the images and let ourselves be taken away by them, which sound to our eyes with the density of a musical play that takes us away from our reality for a few moments, wrapping us up like a magic piper who has found the musical note everyone is looking for. 

Of all Brazilian artists who use audiovisual as a tool of poetic expression, you are among the most accepted and recognized in the film festival scene. This is true despite the fact that you don't ever work within the limits of any given genre such as, say, documentaries. To what do you ascribe such acceptance? Is it due to the increasing receptiveness of film-related institutions, or to a particular feature of your work? 

I think it happens because I don't believe in limits or film genres! I am against categorizations, and cinema as an art form is still in its cradle. As you put in your time and work in getting the child to walk, then you become 'accepted,' at least by those who believe in the power of cinema as an art form and a 'tool of poetic expression.'

Looking back over your work, do you think you strayed too far from what you used to call “kitchen cinema”? If your work is no longer the “daily exercise of looking out at the world by yourself,” then what has changed regarding your lack of pretension and your intimacy with the medium? 

I don't think I have strayed from what I call “kitchen cinema.” It's just that I equipped my kitchen with ovens, refrigerators, more modern and sophisticated devices. Technological advancement is always welcome, but the ingredients for cooking good food usually remain the same. You can't get carried away with the electronic gadgets in your oven. It's better to always keep an eye on the batter, so you don't burn or overcook it. My work has never been a “daily exercise of looking out at the world by myself.” Perhaps that has always been my starting point. In order to make a film about, say, another world, I can't help doing it based on my own worldview. On the other hand, I can't help getting a little bored sometimes, because our world seems to be repeating itself a lot. Fear is what concerns me the most in our time. People are scared of being themselves lately, so they choose to stick with their peers, but difference is what generates motion.

Your works have different features: the more visual ones are contemplative; the more documental ones take a dive into the subject matter; while the ones that record actions are provocative. Is there a line of evolution there, or are they all equally important? Which of those features are you working with right now? 

Of course, all of them are important. All have been important in the moments they were born. I've always sought to do something different from what I had done before, to confront my own self in order to improve my self-knowledge. I came to the conclusion that it's easier for me to be in a position of contemplating reality and depicting it through my gaze. But it's hard to have a good idea sometimes, and even harder to plan out a work of art in advance in full detail. That's why I have been thinking about taking a breather from my own life for a while in order to write a script. Not because I find it important to write scripts, but because I have never written one. Every time I tried to write a script, I would end up with a literary text. I want to know what it's like to imagine a film before making it. Note that this is also a proposition for me to change my daily habits as well. A proposition for me to live in another reality (that of the imagined film) within my own reality. It can't be easy, and maybe I'm not much of a focused, objective person, but it sure can't hurt to try.

Starting with the title, Concerto para clorofila is a music-oriented work. As a maker of audiovisuals, and (at least originally) a “man of image,” how do you approach sound in your work? 

Just as image can be sound, sound can also be image. There are many similarities and fusion points between those two elements. Image and audio are like flour and eggs for the cake batter that goes in the oven. Each work has a measure in which a mystery is fermented. I have a romantic-baroque relationship with sound. I had to bump into O Grivo (through whom I got to know John Cage) and João Cabral de Melo Neto for them to teach me about the other side of sonority. I have learned to respect and care for each and every sound particle that reaches our ears (including the ones we imagine). I learned how to identify a sound that is pregnant, and then I learned how to translate that into images. If, for Cage, “silence is pregnant with sound,” then what screen is pregnant with image, the white or the black one? I wonder whether silence is white or black. I wonder whether silence is pregnant with sound, or is it a cemetery, a bone yard of sounds?

What are Gambiarras? What is it that keeps luring you into photography? 

Gambiarra is the synthesis of what we call “Human Being.” Unfinished beings, thank God! Each of us finding our own way to survive. Gambiarra is philosophy, religion, and art. Gambiarra also means finding that tiny little branch when you're falling into the abyss. Gambiarra means constant reinvention, it means redesigning the laws of nature. Gambiarra is God when He made the world. What always attracted me the most in photography is the ability to make drawings with light.

How did your collaboration with Marcelo Gomes begin? What does he bring to your work? 

I met Gomes two years ago in Belo Horizonte, when he was editing his film Cinema, aspirinas e urubus with Karem Harley. We became friends (maybe because I rescued him from a dirty, cold apartment hotel in the city). And we, as friends do, did a lot of daydreaming and thinking over glasses of beer and/or cachaça-we thought about the 'off-axis' revolution in Brazilian cinema; we devised off-the-wall films that never will be made; we talked about our heroes and villains, shared and otherwise, etc. In other words, we discovered similarities and common desires that are the embryo of every partnership. We then decided to try out that partnership in the editing of Concerto para clorofila, which was wonderful. His past experiences and his way of making cinema were different from mine, but didn't get in the way of my own methods. On the contrary, it was a combination of different points of view, coincidental or not, that came together in our desire to work and to exchange. Each partnership brings new elements to my work. In the specific case of Gomes, I think it was mostly his notion of cinematographic timing and his obstinacy/perseverance in making a type of cinema that had poetic expression and was free from the constraints and codes usually imposed by the industry (it took him seven years to make his first feature film, and I find that impressive).

What projects are you presently involved in? Will the trilogy of solitude, inaugurated with A alma do osso, go on? 

I'm finishing editing a film that is the second part of the solitude trilogy. It's a film about wanderers with the working title Com os pés um tanto fora do chão. Together with Marcelo Gomes, I'm beginning to write the script for the third part of the trilogy, based on the Edgar Allan Poe tale The Man of the Crowd. Together with O Grivo, I'm going to Mexico to make several short films for a DVD, and we're also having an exhibition at Museu Carrillo Gil, Mexico City. Together with Rivane Neuenschwander, I'm almost done editing a short film about carnivalesque ants. And finally, an extremely necessary work: this year, or maybe early next year, I plan to release two or three films in the cinema circuit. If all goes well, the films A alma do osso, Acidente, and Com os pés um tanto fora do chão will be seen by a wider audience than that of art galleries, museums, and film festivals. For such a thing to happen, a superhuman effort is required in trying out an alternative to this tired and worn-out system of cinema screening in Brazil.

When will your residency at Gasworks happen? Do you have a project in mind for you to do in your residency? 

The residency will happen in October, November, and December. I haven't defined a project yet, but I suspect it will have something to do with the thrill of returning to a city I used to live in (London).

Sometimes based on a watchful gaze, sometimes based on carefully designed provocations, the work of Cao Guimarães (Belo Horizonte, 1965) is a very particular brand of cinema, one which preserves the silence and the relative precariousness of solitary creation-based on gestures and ideas, never on gadgets-, and floats freely above genres and formats. The conceptual power of visual arts and the cinematographic exercise of “the action, the time, the gaze” converge in his work, giving rise to a unique body of work that has equal impact in the fields of cinema and art. Since always, image has been the common denominator to all of the artist's actions. Holder of a degree in philosophy from UFMG, Guimarães works primarily with photography and throughout the 1990s he has produced work that often deals with the language of cinema using scene construction and character creation. His images evolve into an exploration of their own physicality-examples of what art critic Tadeu Chiarelli has called “a photography that does not accept its own limits”-and flirt with installations in Decalques, from Projeto Arte Cidade III (1997): on the ruined walls of Moinho Central, São Paulo, Guimarães projected enlarged vinyl photos of traces and remainders left on anonymous walls by demolished houses. OTTO, eu sou um outro, a 35mm domestic road movie made in partnership with Lucas Bambozzi and selected for the 12th Videobrasil International Electronic Art Festival (1998), foretells the discovery of image in motion. Over the following years, during a period he spent in London pursuing a master's degree in photography from the Westminster University and deepening his knowledge of contemporary art, Guimarães experimented with a Super-8 camera he had inherited from his grandfather, whose habit of making and screening homemade movies was a family tradition. Using what he found out to be a tool at once visual and agile, the artist created a filmed diary of sorts, made out of “small everyday impressions.” The films, sent by mail for processing and returned a week later, gave the artist the feeling of exchanging letters with himself. The finished images were then projected and recorded on video, in a process he dubbed “kitchen cinema,” which requires “self-sufficiency in every step” of film creation. This was the framework for the delicate The Eye Land, the result of a long-standing partnership with visual artist Rivane Neuenschwander. Created within the same context, Histórias do não-ver was born out of a less contemplative approach: the artist would ask people to fetch him at home and take him down unknown paths with his eyes blindfolded. The experience was recorded using blind photos and described in texts, which were then presented in an object-book. Back in Brazil, the Super-8 format-now converted into digital video-was combined with music by the duo O Grivo, from Belo Horizonte, with whom Guimarães established a fruitful collaboration. The visual, installative ideas he continued to share with Neuenschwander reached their peak with Sopro (2000), a “small drama of form” in which a soap bubble floats across the landscape. The work, a poetic reflection on life and death, inside and outside, absence and presence, was acquired by the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and featured in the competitive exhibition of the 13th Videobrasil International Electronic Art Festival (2001), as well as Word/World, in which the two artists created an intervention using the title words and an ant colony, harvesting the suggestive images that arise out of the interaction between insects and ideas. During the same period, Guimarães codirected, with Lucas Bambozzi and Beto Magalhães, the first in a series of five feature films: O fim do sem fim, which travels through ten Brazilian states searching for characters whose jobs are headed for extinction. Although impregnated with a silence unusual in the documentary genre, within the artist's body of work this is the most representative of his style. In the following year, Volta ao mundo em algumas páginas recorded an action carried out with Rivane Neuenschwander at the Stockholm Public Library. The performance consisted of cutting up a world map into small fragments and then inserting them into randomly chosen library books. The work featured in the 14th Videobrasil International Electronic Art Festival competitive exhibition (2003). Rua de mão dupla, which was born out of an installation project for the 25th Bienal de São Paulo, and then turned into a feature film, records actions organized around a game: pairs of people who don't know each other simultaneously exchange homes for twenty-four hours and use cameras to report, based on what they encounter, their idea of the other. “Using a video camera, participants insert their personality (through sight) into the personality of an absent other. Solitudes get (con)fused at some point in this flow of seeing and being seen,” claims the artist. More than just incorrect assumptions, the work shows what people reveal of themselves upon handling the camera, in the rhythm of their search, in the choice of what they look at. If, on the one hand, Nanofania (2003), which participated at the 14th Videobrasil, revisits the bubble in Sopro, now multiplied and repeatedly undone in a rhythmic, visual alternation, on the other hand, the feature film A alma do osso, made in the following year, once again reaches for the realm of the other. With no questions and no hurries, the film dives into the universe of a seventy-some-year-old hermit who lives in a cave in the Minas Gerais countryside. The best example of what the director's approach and his relationship with his characters-marked by ethics and by “mystery”-are capable of creating, the film was a beacon of light in the documentary scene, garnering grand prizes in both the national and international categories at the 9th It's All True International Documentary Film Festival (2004). In the following year, the event awarded the artist once again, this time for his short film Da janela do meu quarto (2004), a random sequence shot from a bedroom, and an example of his belief in art that is not made, but rather makes itself. For Concerto para clorofila (2004), a poetic and formal exercise based around elements of nature, Guimarães received two awards at the 15th Videobrasil: the State of the Art Award, granted by the jury, and the Videobrasil Residency Award Hosted by Gasworks, which will take him back to London towards the end of 2006 to carry out a project at the complex of studios and galleries. This year, together with filmmaker Marcelo Gomes (Cinema, aspirina e urubus), who coedited Clorofila, Guimarães will finish the second film of the trilogy that began with A alma do osso, in which he promotes a meeting, in Minas Gerais, of two vagrants, one from the Brazilian Northeast and the other from the state of Rio Grande do Sul. The two films are scheduled for commercial release still in 2006, along with Acidente, a poem codirected with Pablo Lobato and comprised of twenty names of cities in the state of Minas Gerais.