Associação Cultural Videobrasil

MEMORY IS AN EDITING STATION

"Memory is an editing station—a nameless / passerby says, in a nonchalant manner, / and immediately hits delete and also / the meaning of what he wanted to say"—with these verses, Waly Salomão (1943–2003) opens his poem "Open Letter to John Ashbery," part of his book "Algaravias: Echo chamber," completed in 1995.

Waly Salomão is an unavoidable name in the history of culture in Brazil; extremely active since the 1960s, his name can be associated with many narratives related to literature, music, visual arts, audiovisual, performance, and theater. Known for his expansive, verbose and casual way of seeing and interacting with the world, Salomão experimented especially with the many forms of writing, proclaiming and spatializing the word, verse, and prose. Like other artists of his generation, he followed both the counterculture movements in Brazil during the period of the military dictatorship, as well as the new democratic breaths and the hope surrounding a new country project at the beginning of the 21st century.

This iconic phrase by Waly Salomão is in line with the celebratory tone of this 2023 edition of Videobrasil: this is the event's fortieth anniversary. It is, therefore, necessary not only to reflect on time and the many conceptions of memory, but also to revisit the importance of video in these four decades. In 1983, the video was primarily associated with the concentrated power of television; nowadays, following the poet's reasoning, we tend to edit our own memories quickly through the touch of our fingertips.

Let us read his sentence carefully: how does the equation between remembering and forgetting come about? What would we cut out and insert into our memories? Which harrowing events that have collectively affected us since the event's last edition in 2019 are worthy of a thorough analysis, like working in an editing room? What are the ethical boundaries of a cut? Who holds the power to do so? How can a sequence of images revisit narratives concerning a family, nation, or geographic region? How to forge the memory of what we didn't see or feel in our bodies? What are the limits of memory?

We invite, therefore, applications of artists whose trajectories and individual works can somehow echo and make the relationship between editing and memory even more complex. It is from the collective—and indeed non-linear—presence of their research that the 22nd Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil will take place. If a certain nostalgia and memory exercise is necessary for the occasion of the celebration of its four decades of existence, it is in the Biennial's interest that, as in its previous editions, our eyes are attentive to artists and propositions that teach us new ways of thinking the world.

Some artists favor an attachment to the raw material of memory and refuse any cut; by contrast, other people will prefer the flashes and the "less is more" approach. Regardless of their existential and artistic interests, we—alongside the audience—want to learn about their practices and ways of manipulating their editing stations.