Associação Cultural Videobrasil

On the first day of the official program of the 18th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil, the curators of the Southern Panoramas competitive show, of the 30 Years show, and of the Public Programs convened for a debate with the audience. Together, they addressed topics such as the selecting of artwork and the work that went into devising a program that would cover both the Festival’s three-decade retrospective, and the criteria and axes that drive Southern Panoramas.    

Solange Farkas, Eduardo de Jesus, Fernando Oliva and Júlia Rebouças curated the Southern Panoramas competitive show, with backing from the assistant curator Diego Matos. For the 30 Years show, Solange Farkas, the founder and curator of Videobrasil, had support from Eduardo de Jesus for the research and the project leading up to a video installation that features the highlights and characters from the festival’s history. Alongside the Public Programs curator for the 18th Festival Sesc_Videobrasil, Sabrina Moura, they welcomed artists, journalists, researchers, and the general public for a chat at the Sesc Pompeia Warehouse, during the official opening of the Festival, on 11.06 at 11:00 am. The meeting is a part of the Focus 2 of the Festival’s Public Programs, “Vectors and Inflections,” which addresses issues pertaining to the shows and themes of the 2013 edition’s curated program.

At the meeting, Solange Farkas explained that the artwork selection process for the Southern Panoramas competitive show started with an open call, just like in past editions. “We do not curate the show beforehand. We have perused nearly 2,000 projects, and based on that we devised the project for the show, always based on the Festival’s focus on highlighting productions by artists from countries in the so-called Geopolitical South – i.e., outside the hegemonic axis of Western Europe and North America,” Solange said. In this edition, 106 works by 94 artists were shortlisted for the competitive show, representing 32 different countries (Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Asia and Oceania).

Júlia Rebouças corroborated the discourse, reaffirming the focus on the South and outlining a common thread to the works of artists featured in this edition: “Many of the works selected share a common issue, which is the relationship with the other. The show is very much focused on the theme of proximity.”

History and evolution of the festival

Eduardo de Jesus, who curated the competitive show and assisted Solange with the research and curating for the 30 Years show, says an “archaeological excavation-of-sorts was carried out in order to locate important moments and characters from the three decades of the festival.” Both the VB Channel, available at the website videobrasil.org.br – and for which special programs are being produced and festival highlights are being retrieved – and part of the Public Programs activities will cover this trajectory, which has been divided into four different phases.

The first phase ranges from 1983 to 1988, when the festival was held annually and video productions were more documentary-oriented, bearing a close connection with TV. “There was this desire for video productions to invade TV,” he says. “On the one hand, television needed to open itself up. On the other hand, a group of young people were pushing for TV to open itself up to more experimental productions.”

The second phase, which begins in 1992, is marked by the start of the festival’s internationalization process and its focus on the Geopolitical South. It was also then that videos started being made in Brazil that experimented with language to a greater extent, and when mediums such as CD-ROM were adopted for creating interactive works.

From 2001 on, when the third phase began, the festival moved closer to the visual arts. One of the high points of this phase was the emphasis placed on performance, with the 15th edition, in 2005, having been entirely dedicated to this form of expression.

In 2011, the fourth and final phase began and, according to Eduardo, it is marked by the “festival’s embracing of all contemporary art languages, rather than focusing solely on video,” like drawing and painting. In this phase, the festival started placing greater emphasis on residency programs.

Approximately 1,300 pieces illustrating all of these moments can be accessed directly at the Videobrasil Video Library, set up at the Sesc Warehouse.  

Public Programs and Platform VB

Sabrina Moura said one of the main goals of the festival’s Public Programs is to promote reflection on issues brought up by both the Southern Panoramas and the 30 Years show, with a multidisciplinary approach and based on different mediums and formats. Divided into eight focuses, the programs will feature approximately 60 guests in meetings and activities, in line with the Festival’s educational actions, which are primarily based on mediation at the shows. “The public programs extend a bit beyond that, eliciting experiences and debates which at once deepen and expand the questionings arising from Videobrasil’s curatorial research,” says Sabrina.

The highlights of the Public Programs this year include the creation of Platform VB, an online collective research tool in which the voices of artists, curators, educators and the audience come together. Designed to operate in permanent character, alongside the actions of Associação Cultural Videobrasil, the Platform is arising together with the 18th Festival, and the former’s content matrix is based on the latter. The Public Programs and the artworks featured in the Southern Panoramas and 30 Years shows point out the initial coordinates of the maps and cartographic vectors that comprise Platform VB, as it “sets out to explore and expand the connections between the set of works in Videobrasil’s Collection and the organization’s other actions and lines of research, including collaborations from artists, curators, and guest researchers, as well as interaction with the audience, which may also make its comments and create mappings,” Sabrina finishes off. Click here to find out more about the Platform.