Three decades of history. Walid Raad, Chelpa Ferro, Peter Greenaway, Tunga, Waly Salomão, Rosangela Rennó, Cao Guimarães, Marcel Odenbach, Fernando Meirelles, Rafael França, Akram Zaatari, Tadeu Jungle, Eder Santos, Marina Abramovic, Kenneth Anger, Gianni Totti, Bill Viola, Nam June Paik, Derek Jarman, Ximena Cuevas, Olafur Eliasson... A vast constellation of names comprises this three decade-long history. In this historical edition, the 18th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil celebrates its thirtieth anniversary with a polyphony of sounds and images, shows, performances, meetings, and relevant moments from the seventeen past editions.
The show
Videobrasil traditionally holds a major exhibition parallel to the Southern Panoramas competitive show, bringing leading international names to Brazil. In this historical edition, the festival itself will be on the spotlight. The show 30 Years will feature a large video installation at Sesc Pompeia's Galpão, the centerpiece to the 18th Festival’s historical section, proposing an immersion in the changes Videobrasil and the art scene underwent in the past decades. At the same venue, historical performances will be restaged and audiences will gain access to a video library containing 1,300 works shown at the festival, including a precious selection of shows by artists from Nam June Paik to Marina Abramovic.
Public Programs
This 30-year history will also be covered in special focuses of Videobrasil’s Public Programs, featuring artists, curators, journalists, and participants in developmental activities – nearly half of whom are from other countries. The event will remain open to the public until February 2, featuring publication launches and the release of a digital platform, as well as audiovisual contents aired on SescTV (on the show Videobrasil on TV) and Channel VB, available at videobrasil.org.br.
VB Trajectory
Throughout its trajectory, Videobrasil has transformed itself in order to stay innovative in art and image in motion. In 1983, as video art was barely emerging on the Brazilian scene, Videobrasil created the first festival specializing in the genre, and thus partook in its consolidation and incorporation by the broader art scene. Later on, the Festival embraced other forms of electronic art, and then came to include performance and hybrid practices as well.
Following its partnership with Sesc SP, in 1992, and the consolidation of the Brazilian video scene, the Festival expanded and went international, proposing global artistic connections through a decentralized view of production hubs: North and South conversing, free from medium restrictions.
Upon reaching maturity, Videobrasil came to foster all artistic languages in the South through a series of actions that originated from the Festival in one way or another: collaboration and residency networks, publications, public programs, and commissioning.
Since 2011, the Festival has embraced all contemporary artistic languages, further emphasizing the scope of attention it pioneered in Brazil since the 1990s: the so-called geopolitical South (Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, South and Southeast Asia, and Oceania), mapped out in Southern Panoramas, featuring 106 art pieces by 94 artists from 32 countries this year.
The show 30 Years will be undertaken from 2013 November 6 to 2014 February 2 at Sesc Pompeia. Click here to learn the directions.