Associação Cultural Videobrasil

Marcia Vaitsman began to work as an artist when she was still at the university, in the beginning of the 90's, producing experimental videos. She is graduate in Radio and Television Production at the University of São Paulo, and finished her postgraduate studies at KHM, in Cologne, Germany, Vaitsman has been participating in important expositions, festivals and exhibitions in many countries.

After her first videos, which were assembled in the trilogy Partícula [Particle] (1992), Vaitsman began to produce multimedia works. The first work is the CD-ROM Biografias ñ autorizadas [Unauthorized Biographies] (1996), realized with Guilherme Caldas, from Candyland Comics, who produced the illustrations, and Mariana Rillo, who produced the photographs. The work shows the daily lives of three young men who live alone in São Paulo.

The issues related to the body appear for the first time in the interactive installation Topography (2000). A touch sensitive screen simulates a magic eye which enables the visitors to interact with the images of a body.

Already living in Cologne, Germany, and studying at KHM, Vaitsman produced with other artists the installation Das Genlaboratorium (2001), which uses the genetic algorithms to recombine music and sound fragments, and even relates the non-linear narrative techniques of the films to the genetic recombinations. The artists, together with the Fraunhofer Institut's scientists, created a laboratory for the manipulation of tobacco genes. A website (www.genlaboratorium.khm.de) was created in parallel with the exposition, which took place in the Galerie Projektraum.

In that same year, she produced the CD-ROM Psycotropic (2001), which approaches in a peculiar way the contradictions and differences in the tropics. Afterwards, she created the installation Solid happiness (2001). The installation was part of the exposition 3 x 3, at the Galeria Nanquim, in São Paulo. It is made of animated photographs in loop; the animation is very slow, so that the visitors cannot realize it. This work treats the idea of the sight being modified by chemical substances or psychological states of mind.

Between 1999 and 2001, Vaitsman worked as a tutor for the multimedia and performance laboratory of the artist Valie Export, and afterwards as a professor in the Media Design department, both at KHM.

In 2001, Marcia Vaitsman returned to the theme of the body and produced A common ancestral stranger, CD-ROM and installation that show images of a body through which we can move some tattoos that reveal hidden parts of this “metabody”, as memory and faith. According to Vaitsman, the work displays “a man's thoughts which synthesize the lives of 50 million people who live as foreigners in many parts of the world.” This work was exhibited in many festivals and exhibitions, as the EMMA Award - Electronic Multimedia Award (London, 2001), 13th Videobrasil - International Electronic Art Festival (São Paulo, 2001), Villete Numérique - 1st Digital Art Biennial (Paris, 2002), Medio@rte Latino, in the Transmediale context (Berlin, 2002), and others.

Also in 2001, she produced “Mpolis”, an interactive DVD which displays an imaginary city structured as a game, through which the users can interact. The space of the city, which begins showing images of São Paulo, is divided in four zones (Ilinx, Mimikry, Alea, and Agon), inspired by Roger Callois' work.

Afterwards, Vaitsman produced printed works through digital processes. “Amarelinha” [Hopscotch] (2002) is a vinyl print which reproduces the hopscotch game, but with eggs on the squares forming a strange carpet. This work, which has been exhibited in many artistic spaces, is also a “work in progress,” for it will be exhibited in a collection of hopscotch games from many places that the artist has or will visit for the first time (Argentina, Japan, Taiwan etc). Vaitsman also produced “Nó na garganta” [Lump in the throat] (2002), another printed work. This work consists of a long text (about 50 feet length) that reproduces a diary of a person who lives in a kind of social captivity. This work was exposed, together with other works by young artists, in an abandoned factory in the outskirts of São Paulo, as part of the exposition Cativeiro (Captivity).

MediaScan (2003) is also a large-sized printed work. To create it Vaitsman produced a digital anamorphosis from images of a TV report on the Iraq war. The images in motion, which last for about three minutes, are digitized by a scanner and condensed into a unique image that keeps the passing of time.

Selbstfortpflanzungszellenproteinstrukturanalysebericht (unstable CD) (2003) is a CD-ROM that articulates itself around the ideas of multimedia and interactivity in a critical way. Thus, it is impossible to control the navigation and repeat the access to any fragment, which may appear in different ways, giving no hint of what might be seen. In the same year Marcia Vaitsman produced the audioinstallation Wireframe. The installation, structured around the ideas of sight and blindness, led the visitors to a totally dark space, where they could listen to a poetic dialogue between a blind man and a blind woman. This work was a result of a seminar given by Golder and Vaitsman.

In 2004, Marcia began an artistic residency at IAMAS, in Ogaki, Japan, where she is developing her new work: The one made of light stuff.

This year, she has exposed her works at the Boquitas Pintadas - Buenos Aires pop hotel, an alternative space for expositions of plastic arts and electronic music events. The exposition Pisando em ovos em Buenos Aires (Treading on eggs in Buenos Aires) displayed for the first time the character of A Common Ancestral Stranger (2001) out of the context of the CD-ROM, in a printed work and large-sized photographs, together with other images and objects. Amarelinha (2002) was also part of this exposition. Vaitsman is part of the group Mídia Nômades (Media Nomads), formed by artists that work in the new media field. In January 2004, the group took part in the exposition Em trânsito (In transit) at the Goethe Institut, in Lisbon. Also in 2004, she took part in the exposition O corpo entre o público e o privado (The Body between the Public and the Private) at the Paço das Artes, São Paulo.