Associação Cultural Videobrasil

Why do you claim that electronic art lies at the “outer part of art”? In your opinion, where do the productions involving technology fit into the overall contemporary art scene?

Electronic art, or better put, video art, was an underground movement created by what I call “the videasta generation” [TN: the term videasta is a combination of the words video and cineasta, which means filmmaker in Portuguese]. Digital technology and access to very accurate software and hardware have brought into the electronic art field creators from other areas, such as the visual arts, drawing, architecture, music, etc., and helped them expand their artistic outlooks and practices.

You believe that access to technology has led to the “democratization and the broadening of individual discourses.” What's the importance of such an effect in a peripheral country?

There are different peripheries and different Latin Americas. There are examples of artists who are not peripheral at all. Southern Cone artists come from different social classes, with the exception, for instance, of Paraguay. I ran a video art workshop in Asunción, and the students had been to all of the Biennials, all of the museums, they had wide-ranging, up-to-date information. Argentines and Uruguayans don't have such possibilities. We've got the Internet, our deep curiosity, a certain degree of erudition, and an intellectual capacity for reflection, not just for information. We have our critical sense. 

You're acquainted with the international art scene; what are the particularities of the art produced in the geopolitical south of the world?

I'm not sure we have a big enough corpus for us to detect particularities. I see a certain power of discourse, humour (in the cases of Uruguay and Argentina), parody, irony. Poetics that is not purely based on visuality. I have just carried out a screening of videos from the Americas, and the work I chose from Brazil is not what one would typically expect in terms of color and rhythm. I selected A coleta da neblina (2001), by Brígida Baltar.

What do you consider to be the features of electronic media, as used these days?

The technological artistic production is extremely fragile, and everything seems to indicate that it won't exceed the limits of this civilization. Technology seems global, nevertheless, only a small percentage of the world population has access to telephones. What appears to be a democracy is actually governed by market laws. An artwork that uses technology is no more contemporary than one that doesn't. Nevertheless, the use of technology is an increasingly frequent practice. Technology presents challenges and specificities that didn't exist before: new forms of interactivity, real-time, simultaneity, ubiquity, the development of hypertext, of nonlinear narratives, the unfinished work aesthetic, and unlimited possibility of creating artificial parallel worlds. 

You often joke about being an “old emerging artist.” Presently, what are the questionings that drive your personal work? 

In fact, my productive capacity in later years amazes me! My videos are the product of much planning, but they also have a random component. They are videos that I have found. I basically work with memory. I'm afraid to lose it. Currently, I'm working on a project along with two other artists, and it's about deep, dark secrets. I consider the electronic media as an honest media. But I'm not sure whether I have the time to experiment with all of the things I would like to do, such as breaking out of the screen and reaching out into space.

How did Lo Sublime/Banal come about? Did the success of the video, awarded at the Videobrasil, surprise you? 

The video arose out of a proposal made by the Zoom Buenos Aires TV show, of the Ciudad Abierta channel, which invited artists to create five-minute-long sequence shots. It was hard work, but in the end it all worked out. It's a real story, it happened with my friend Felicitas and myself. I found her to be a wonderful person to talk to, someone who helps me “see” the big picture. My idea was to be off-screen doing voice-over. I did another version in which only our hands appeared. When I won the Videobrasil award I almost had a heart attack. Afterwards, Carmen Garrido, from CaixaForum, told me it was the best video she had seen in the last three years, and she purchased it for their intranet. Jorge La Ferla considered it more banal than sublime, he likes Granada better; as does Rodrigo Alonso. Granada is usually more requested by festivals.

What's the nature of your contribution to the Ciudad Abierta public TV channel: is it the formatting, the subjects, or the language?

Television work is teamwork. But a good example of my concept is the El Cuerpo series: memory, dispersion, interviews, multiple simultaneous information channels. It's a more subjective take on television, one that is multifaceted, with different meanings.