Associação Cultural Videobrasil

With memory as the central theme, the 22nd edition celebrates 40 years of Videobrasil

     

It would be difficult to imagine a more appropriate sentence to name the edition celebrating Videobrasil's 40th anniversary than “Memory is an editing station.” Firstly, because speaking of memory, for an event created four decades ago, and with such a vast and complex history, could not be anything other than a great editing process, a selection of stories, images, records and memories. Furthermore, it can be said that it was from the “editing stations” of artists and of the then called videomakers that emerged the many works that took part in a festival dedicated, for at least two decades, to video and electronic languages. To top it off, the title was taken from a famous poem by Waly Salomão (1943–2003), Open Letter to John Ashbery. Salomão was a notable character in the history of Videobrasil both for his participation as an artist and for his role in bringing the event closer to artists from the Middle East, starting in the turn of the millennium. No less important than these historical aspects, the title proved to be coherent with a contemporary context in which the traumas and tragedies of the past turned out as one of the most relevant aspects of artistic production. In the spirit of Waly's verse, Solange Oliveira Farkas, founder of the festival in 1983, wrote: “we re-edit our memories in the light of a new present.” 

 

 

With the Brazilian Raphael Fonseca and the Kenyan Renée Akitelek Mboya as general curators, the 22nd Sesc_Videobrasil Biennial | 40-Year Special* was held from October 2023 through February 2024, with a main exhibition dedicated to the contemporary production, a parallel exhibition on the history of Videobrasil (curated by Alessandra Bergamaschi and Eduardo de Jesus) and a series of Public Programs. Bringing together 60 artists and collectives from 38 countries, selected from an open call that received more than 2,500 submissions, the main exhibition presented different ways of dealing with memory—and oblivion—sometimes with more of an individual focus, at other times more of a collective one. The different perspectives from the global South, with the presence of artists from different generations, hailing from such distant regions of the world and with productions in such a variety of mediums and supports, constituted a complex and vibrant set of works that occupied several exhibition spaces at Sesc 24 de Maio.

“It’s interesting that we are faced with artists with a notion of macro-history to people who deal with an idea of micro-history,” said Raphael Fonseca. For him, “some, for example, work with archives, material from newspapers or images from TV, which have a more direct relationship with the masses, while others start from familiar and intimate materials, interested in a more subjective relationship.” There were also pieces that created fantasy and fictional worlds, others using Artificial Intelligence and, also, productions made in media considered more traditional, such as paintings, textiles and sculptures. Video, which refers back to the early days of Videobrasil, gained prominence. “There is really a type of broadening of what this relationship between memory and oblivion could mean, based on many different artistic interests. And so an interesting zigzag is created for the audience, with an exhibition set that does not just point in one direction,” concluded Fonseca.

After one of the most tragic moments in contemporary history, with the Covid-19 pandemic that left millions dead around the world—around 700,000 in Brazil alone, which was disastrously governed by the far-right, anti-vaccine president Jair Bolsonaro—the Biennial reflected a moment of both mourning and hope, given the possibility of resuming social gatherings after a long phase of fear and isolation. Furthermore, following a period of serious setbacks in the political and social arenas, an election held under great tension at the end of 2021—which is now known to have been threatened by coup plans on the part of the Bolsonaro administration—resulted in the narrow win of Luís Inácio Lula da Silva. Main leader of the Brazilian left, Lula took office for the third time after a remarkable trajectory, during which he was even jailed for a long period after a wrongful conviction with no evidence.

In this context, Solange wrote in the Biennial's introductory text: “In a renewed political environment that, after all, seeks to bridge the losses of human lives and rights over the last years, our willingness to keep alive, active and available to all the production of a region (the South) that, as we joyfully realized, at the height of our four decades of dedication, has only just begun to show its strength to the world.” In line with this idea, Mboya stated: “I think the central issue we all agree on, at this sociopolitical moment in Brazil and the world, is the need for a greater focus on solidarity. And one of the ways through which we can identify with each other and create positions of solidarity is to remember together, to remember collectively, and to find ways to articulate notions of memory. This, in some way, reestablishes our political positions and our commitment towards one another.”

In line with these ideas, one can visualize that the main exhibition, put together under the direction of Fonseca, had less of a bewailing tone about the tragedies experienced in previous years and more of a stimulating, surprising atmosphere. If the adjective “joyful” would be inaccurate to describe an exhibition with such blunt pieces, several of them linked to the inequalities and violence taking place around the world, and even to recent traumas, we can say that a visuality based on colors, lights, screens and projections underscored a lively, pop aspect of the exhibition. 

 

 

 

Throughout the building 

This was already clear on Sesc 24 de Maio’s façade—located in the heart of the city—in the window that housed Froiid's work and caught the attention of thousands of passers-by during the months of the Biennial. In O pulo do gato, the Brazilian artist created an “infinite and random” rap, aided by Artificial Intelligence, which played on speakers while LED panels exposed the coding used in the work. The work, created in partnership with rapper Matéria Prima and beatmaker Barulhista, won the Sesc Art Prize and was integrated in the institution's collection.

Two other interactive works greeted visitors on the ground floor of the building. The installation O que desaparece, o que resiste, by the Brazilian Leila Danziger—also awarded the Sesc prize—addressed memory from a type of news outlet, the printed newspaper, which less and less present in contemporary life, conducted by the virtual environment. Bringing together newspaper pages with “peeled” texts and TVs that displayed these erasure processes, the artist built a newsstand in which the public could read phrases like “thinking of something that will be forgotten forever.” Nearby, the game created by the New Zealand collective Fafswag presented, in a context relating to the LGBTQIA+ and Maori scene in the city in Auckland, in which the participants chose dancers for a Vogue dance battle, in an environment celebrating racial, sexual and gender diversity.

Another work that had a great visual impact was Flat Circle, by the Estonians Karel Koplimets and Maido Juss, an installation comprising 16 LCD screens that incessantly displayed news, ads and documentaries, proposing a reflection on the distortions and excesses of information in the contemporary capitalist world and on the fear generated by the growth of fake news. Two other works occupied walls on different floors of the institution. The huge mural painting Guerrillera, montaña, compañera, by the Colombian Gabriela Pinilla—which won an Honorable Mention—featured a 9-meter-high, 6-meter-wide mural portraying a passage in the life of the guerrilla fighter Carmenza Cardona Londoño (1953–1981). The work also brought together books by Pinilla with texts and illustrations on the history of left-wing political groups and State repression in her country. In another space, the Zambian Nolan Oswald Dennis created, on a large-scale wallpaper, a complex diagram about geopolitical power relations, the history of the slave trade, the colonial past and the exploitation of goods around the globe—always from a non-Western, and at times spiritual, point of view. For the installation, titled A Recurse for three Oceans, the South African-based artist won the Jury Prize of the 22nd Biennial.

The atmosphere created in these areas intensified in Sesc 24 de Maio’s main exhibition space. The “zig-zag” proposed by Fonseca could be seen, from the outset, in the central area of the exhibition, where two large banners that read “FA-TAL-VIOLETO”—a 1971 work created by Luciano Figueiredo, Óscar Ramos and Waly Salomão for the stage design of Gal Costa’s milestone concert—contrasted with the eye-catching neon sign by the Australian (of Wiradjuri descent) Brook Andrew, which read: “In life, nothing forgets everything until death.” In the space between the two works was the installation Corrientes de retorno, by the Ecuadorian Pamela Cevallos, which, by bringing together replicas of pre-Hispanic archaeological objects produced by inhabitants of the village of La Pila, questions patrimonialism and the violence that represents the removal of pieces from their places of origin to be shown in Western museums and private collections. There were also works by two artists invited by the Biennial to finish their work in Brazil, before the exhibition, at the Kaissá residency (São Sebastião): the large-scale textiles by the Kenyan Agnes Waruguru, hanging from the ceiling and prominently integrated into the show’s layout; and Trouble Skirts, an installation by the Dutch-born Indonesian artist Mella Jaarsma addressing memory and identity through clothing and the acts of dressing and undressing.  

Even with the notable diversity of artistic supports and practices, some of the works that drew the greatest attention from the jury responsible for the award—formed by Adrienne Edwards (USA), Gabriela Golder (Argentina), Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons (Cuba), Patrick Flores (Philippines) and Vivian Ostrovsky (Brazil/USA)—were works in video. Among them was the impactful Mes Rêves / My Dreams, which gave the Haitian Maksaens Denis the Instituto Sacatar Residency Award (Itaparica, Brazil). Drawing on his “inner world” and his dreams, the artist blends scenes of beauty and sexuality with records of street conflicts in his country, showing that seemingly contrasting themes can dwell simultaneously in the human mind. Another highlight was The Revolution Will Not Be Air-conditioned, by the Chinese Bo Wang. Recipient of the O.F.F. Award, the two-channel video depicts the protests held in shopping malls in Hong Kong in 2019 to draw a subtle parallel with the North American black activism of the 1970s. In the work, which mixes new and old footage with video game-like animations, Wang demonstrates how organized and aseptic consumption environments can have their architectural space and original intended use subverted and given new meanings. 

 

 

 

The memories linked to a recent history that is still not fully “digested” in Brazil—the construction of the Transamazônica highway during the dictatorship period—appears, with a poetic and sometimes ghostly atmosphere, in the two-channel video installation Cinema caverna (Quebrante), by the Brazilian Janaína Wagner, winner of the residency award from the Centro Cultural Cariri (Ceará, Brazil). The articulation of the testimonies of Dona Erismar—a retired teacher in the small town of Rurópolis who discovered by herself several caves in the region—with sounds and images of rocks, the moon or dirt roads creates an atmosphere that refers to a time-space that is difficult to perceive. Finally, Vitória Cribb, winner of the residency award from the Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus, USA), presented another work that proposes new paths for the language of video, in this case using computer graphics and animation. In Bugs, Cribb investigates the tensions between human, nature and technologies by creating “monstrous” characters, insects and machines that inhabit a virtual space.

Works such as those by Bo Wang, Janaína and Vitória explained, in different ways, a kind of broadening of the languages associated to video in the contemporary world, raising in this 22nd Biennial issues that are relevant to the celebration of Videobrasil's four decades. By visiting the 40 years special exhibition and the main exhibition, the public was able to trace an historical arc, with an understanding of both the beginnings and the varied paths taken by a medium which—a pioneer in the global South in the 1980s—emerges as extremely widespread nowadays, not only in the arts, but within everyone’s reach on cell phone and computer screens. “In the aftermath of the pandemic, it is important to rethink how video has become the main medium of our lives, whether interacting online, watching YouTube, playing games and so on,” Fonseca underscored. To which Solange added: “We are interested in showing how video, if 40 years ago it was shown on a tube TV, today it can be seen on a tablet or on a video wall. And, in the exhibition, this overlapping of ways of showing the video shows, in a conversation with more traditional languages.”

Among the many videos and video installations presented, it is also worth pointing those that mostly spring from more personal and subjective realities. The Puerto Rican Natalia Lassalle-Morillo, for instance, in the three-channel video installation Retiro, creates a prose portrait and performance of her mother's reminiscences, perusing the lives of three generations of women in her family and reflecting on the decomposition of memory. The Brazilian Julia Baumfeld, in turn, uses videos and photographs recorded by her family in the 1980s to create the installation Era, in which the seemingly commonplace nature of the images causes strange reactions capable of re-signifying collective memories. The Chinese Youqine Lefèvre narrates, in The Land of Promises, the journey of Belgian families who traveled to China in 1994 to adopt children—one of them being the artist herself. Based on her personal story, Youqine discusses Chinese birth control policy, its nuances and complexities.

At a time of strong tension in the Middle East, where the war between Israel and Hamas and the massacre carried out against the Palestinian people were intensifying, the presence of artists from the Middle East—an established Videobrasil tradition—also gained weight. With a work that brings together five short films, the collective Sada [regroup]—awarded an Honorable Mention—presented staggering reports about life in Iraq, the impact of new media on society, the violence experienced in the country and the difficulty for artists to produce in this scenario. Also present at the Biennial were an old Videobrasil partner, the Lebanese Ali Cherri, who featured a series of clay sculptures; and the Lebanese Marie-Rose Osta, presenting the fictional video with a poetic and mysterious aura, Thouma Ya'ti Al Zalam / Then Came Dark.

Another region widely represented in the exhibition was East Asia, in one of Videobrasil’s editions with more artists from this part of the world. In addition to the aforementioned Bo Wang and Youqine Lefèvre, also present at the show were the Taiwanese artist Hsu Che-Yu, with the animation Lacuna; Isaac Chong Wai, from Hong Kong, with Crying People, an installation about the commotion generated around the death of dictatorial leaders on his continent; the South Korean collective Moojin Brothers, with the video The Trace of the Box – Technicalized Good People, inspired by the work of Nan June Paik; and the Chinese Peng Zuqiang and TANG Han. The latter caught the eyes of visitors with Pink Mao, a video in which she discusses her country's past and present by analyzing the 100-yuan bill, discovering that, despite the official denomination, the banknote bears the image of the communist leader in pink, not red.

In addition to residencies or money prizes, all award-winning artists received an original trophy produced by the Brazilian Denilson Baniwa. In connection with the theme of the edition, the artist created the piece Matapi, a bronze sculpture inspired by a type of indigenous trap used for catching fish. Just like memory, the matapi captures and filters, separating what is released from what remains, “like actual editing,” explained the artist. In a way, Baniwa's work crowned an edition with a strong presence of artists from indigenous peoples coming from different corners of the world, among them the Brazilian Ailton Krenak, the Guatemalan Antonio Pichilla, the Argentinean La Chola Poblete, the Chilean Seba Calfuqueo and the Australian collective Iwantja Arts. 

 

Four decades of history

Created in 1983, in the waning years of Brazil’s civil-military dictatorship (1964–1985), Videobrasil was the first festival in the country focused on video production—still in its infancy, but gaining strength with the growing democratization of electronic equipment. Created by Solange with the encouragement of photographer and filmmaker Thomaz Farkas (1924–2011), the event clashed with censors, drew attention from the press and was one of the major drivers for the production of young artists and the so-called videomakers, eager to experiment with languages and break the monopoly of broadcast TV. Over the decades, the festival went international, established the production from the South as its geopolitical focus, struck a long-lasting partnership with Sesc-SP, opened up to the most varied artistic practices and adopted the format of a contemporary art biennial, no longer of video festival. These and many other stories from Videobrasil's four decades were told, at the 22nd Biennial, in the parallel exhibition 40-Year Special.

Based on the idea of a “collection in performance,” the curators Alessandra Bergamaschi and Eduardo de Jesus selected a series of works and testimonies that marked previous editions amongst the more than 3,000 items in the Videobrasil Historical Collection, set up a detailed timeline with texts and videos (available online here) and created a library with reference books selected by artists and curators and another one with Waly's personal books (with highlights made by the poet), thus proposing ways for the public to delve deeper into the history of Videobrasil. The exhibition therefore presented an overview not only of the artistic production in countries from the South, guided both by the development of media and the growing hybridity between languages and practices, but also a picture of the geopolitical issues that have marked contemporaneity. In a world that is at once unequal and violent, but also culturally rich and diverse, discussions about colonialism, indigenous issues, systemic racism, conflicts and wars, among others, emerged in a pioneering way at Videobrasil—before making the agendas of so many cultural institutions around the globe.

The geopolitical focus—even though it has always been a concern at VB—emerged again as a preferred topic in the vast press coverage of the 22nd Biennial. “Environment and memory in the global South,” headlined the newspaper Valor Econômico; “Global South as fiction,” was the title of the article in seLecT ceLesTe magazine; “Videobrasil turns 40 and targets art produced off-center,” stated Folha de S.Paulo; and “The global South at the center” was the highlight in Revista Continente. Other articles, in turn, gave greater prominence to the issue of memory, such as the text in the Bravo! magazine entitled “Memory in continuous movement” or another article in Folha de S.Paulo with the headline “Memory game.”

Finally, still about memory, more specifically that of VB itself, Solange wrote in her introductory text for the edition: “Looking to Videobrasil's past reveals, paradoxically, a constant movement of auscultation of futures.” In this sense, she underscored the association's Collection as the great vector for the continuity of this history. “A source of revealing and revealing curatorial, poetic and historical articulations, which stretch out in many directions in time and space, it takes on an increasingly central role in our actions. (...) If what motivated its initial creation was the urgency for preserving works produced in fragile electronic media, today we see this effort as something that goes far beyond the technical aspects. Preserving this history for future generations means looking at the Collection as a memory project in the process of editing, and seeking its relevance in the present,” she concluded.  

Many issues related to VB’s 40 years were also highlighted in the Public Programs, a major axis of the event that sought to expand the discussions raised in the exhibitions. “The concept of the programs is the Echo Chamber (title of Waly's poem), which reproduces the idea that we are always giving feedback to each other. Talking, but also listening to one another,” Renée Mboya pointed out. “There is always room for ongoing collaboration, there is room for ideas to circulate, reverberate and expand—or contract if necessary.” In the meetings entitled Acervo Comentado [Commented Collection], for instance, artists, curators and researchers who have collaborated with Videobrasil over the decades spoke about works shown in previous editions of the festival/biennial or about periods in the event's history. Among the participants were the artists Ayrson Heráclito, Carlos Nader, Eder Santos, Lucas Bambozzi, Rivane Neuenschwander and Vincent Carelli, the journalist and critic Fabio Cypriano and the journalist and professor Gabriel Priolli.

More closely related to the main exhibition, three performances marked the opening week of the Biennial: Solar Orders, by Kent Chan (Singapore), a work that refers to the climate crisis and warming in the tropics through the creation of fictional “solar societies;” the action by the Swiss of Vietnamese origin Thi My Lien Nguyen, a kind of participatory ritual carried out at the Ocupação 9 de Julho in partnership with members of the homeless movement in central São Paulo; and the lecture-performance Fragments Untitled #5, by the Serbian duo Doplgenger, a project that examines the role of the media in the construction of historical narratives in the former Yugoslavia. 

 

 

 

For the activities called Vivências [Experiences], in turn, four artists from different areas were invited to present to the audience the results of their immersions in the Biennial. The visual artist and educator Moisés Patrício held a “ritual conversation” entitled Memory, incarnation and culture; the educator, artist and activist for indigenous causes Naine Terena reflected on the interactions between archive, colonialism, memory and the idea of historical revision; the duo Marcela Vieira and Lívia Benedetti, of the curatorial platform aarea, proposed a sort of virtual intervention based on the work of the Congolese collective Cercle d'Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC); and the singer, songwriter and filmmaker Ava Rocha presented an interactive scenic and sonic performance based on Waly's writings and ideas.   

Finally, several meetings were held with artists who took part in the exhibition. A great highlight was the table with the Cameroonian Samuel Fosso, a renowned photographer and visual artist who, from a young age, gave self-fiction and self-portrait a dimension that was simultaneously political and historical. At the Biennial, Fosso put into dialogue records produced in two distant periods of his career, works from the 70's Lifestyle Series (1974–1978) and Fosso Fashion (2021). Another meeting that drew attention featured the artist Anna Bella Geiger, who spoke with Vivian Ostrovsky about her historic audiovisual production and the launch, in a partnership between the Ostrovsky Fund Family and VB, of the Brazilian Film and Video Preservation Project - BFVPP (learn more here). 

 

The end of a cycle

In a biennial that traced a major historical arc, reflecting on the memory of the past, showing an attentive gaze at the present and explaining the need to propose new paths for the future, Danilo Santos de Miranda's text presenting the edition seems a good summary to what was seen over four months at Sesc 24 de Maio: “'Memory is an editing station,' an expression borrowed from Waly Salomão to name the 22nd Biennial, invites us to reflect on the processes of selection and exclusion of elements to form statements about cultures and identities situated at the margins of the centers of power and privilege. In this biennial, which commemorates Videobrasil's 40 years of activity, the video represents a metaphor for the passage of time and the production of memory, given the importance of movement, montage and the chaining of audiovisual facts in the syntax of this technical language.”

Sociologist and philosopher who served as director of Sesc-SP for approximately three decades, and was one of the most important cultural managers in the country, Danilo passed away just over a week after the opening of the Biennial. “Thirty years ago, when we were still a very experimental festival, dedicated mainly to video, Professor Danilo—this visionary person—was the one who believed in our project and became a key partner in transforming Videobrasil into a larger platform for the visual arts in the global South,” Solange wrote in her tribute.    

From the 1983 festival to the 2023 biennial, with such different structures and characteristics, and carried out in such distant historical settings, Videobrasil seems to have never ceased preserving what has always been its essence. Between ruptures and permanences, it remained an event that challenged the established power structures and proposed alternative pathways. A collaborator of the association for more than two decades, Eduardo de Jesus stressed, when asked about what he perceived as the “spirit” that kept up in this trajectory: “What maintains Videobrasil and puts it in this place is something that resembles the very matter that constitutes it, which is the electronic image, the video and the moving image: it is always restless, it never sits idle, it is never an event in the same format, it is never in the same way. It always keeps its antennas up.” 

 

By Marcos Grinspum Ferraz

*the title used to name the main exhibition organized by Videobrasil, now called Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil, has undergone adjustments over the years. The changes were based on the organizers' perception of the features of each edition, especially in regards to its format; duration; frequency; partnerships with other companies and institutions; and the expansion of the artistic languages showcased. The main adjustments to the titles of the exhibitions were: inserting the name of the partner company Fotoptica between the 2nd (1984) and 8th (1990) editions; including the word “international” between the 8th and 17th (2011) editions, from the moment the event starts to receive foreign artists and works intensively; using the term “electronic art” between the 10th (1994) and 16th (2007) editions, when the organizers realize that referring only to video did not account for all the works presented; including the name of Sesc, the show's main partner in the last three decades, from the 16th edition onwards; and replacing “electronic art” with “contemporary art” between the 17th and 21st (2019) editions, as the focus expands to varied artistic languages. The most recent change took place in 2019, in the 21st edition, when the name “festival” was replaced with “biennial,” a term more appropriate to an event that was already being held biannually and with an exhibition duration of months, not weeks.

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Images:
Everton Ballardin, Pedro N. Prata and Denise Andrade / Videobrasil Historical Collection 
Videobrasil Historical Collection

1. Visual identity of the 22nd Videobrasil, by Luciana Facchini and Flávia Castanheira.

Gallery 1
1. General view of the exhibition, with an installation by Josué Mejía in front and banners by Luciano Figueiredo, Óscar Ramos and Waly Salomão in the background.
2. General view of the exhibition, with Brook Andrew's luminous work in the background.
3. Renée Akitelek Mboya, Solange Oliveira Farkas and Raphael Fonseca.
4. Artists taking part in the Biennial.
5. Froiid's work on the façade of Sesc 24 de Maio.
6. View of the exhibition, with "Corrientes de retorno", by Pamela Cevallos, in front.
7. Works by Peng Zuqiang, on the left, and La Chola Poblete, in the background.
8. Installation (game) by the New Zealand collective Fafswag.



Gallery 2
1. "O pulo do gato", by Froiid.
2. "O que desaparece, o que resiste", by Leila Danziger.
3. "Bugs", by Vitória Cribb.
4. "Cinema caverna (Quebrante)", by Janaina Wagner.
5. "Mes rêves", by Maksaens Denis.
6. "The revolution will not be air-conditioned", by Bo Wang.
7. "A recurse for three oceans", by Nolan Oswald Dennis.
8. "Guerrillera, montaña, compañera", by Gabriela Pinilla.
9. "Sada [Regroup]", by Sada [Regroup].

Gallery 3
1. Performance by Thi My Lien Nguyen, held at Ocupação 9 de Julho.
2. Artists and jury at the awards ceremony at Sesc 24 de Maio.
3. "Flat Circle", by Karel Koplimets and Maido Juss, on the Sesc catwalk.
4. Samuel Fosso's photographic series.
5. Members of the 22nd Bienal jury.
6. Sculpture by Anna Hulacová.
7. View of the exhibition.
8. Textiles by Antonio Pichilla Quiacain.
9. Installation by Indonesian collective Tromarama.