Associação Cultural Videobrasil

Why have you chosen the documentary film format to think about the relations between art and the audience, which lie at the core of your recent artistic reflections?

The documentary film is a format that can be discussed within the field of arts, since several artistic processes are ephemeral, hence they are strong candidates to documenting. A problem I perceive is that not everyone who needs some sort of documental recording is aware that they are also conceptually rebuilding their work, and not just changing their support. The documental format, to me, is more of a learnt strategy than it is an actual document. If we look at the history of documental filmmaking, we will notice that strategies change radically. What was regarded as documentary film, decades ago, is now perceived as a language filled with exaggerations. Fictional works can still be found that are based on a documental language, and which use it to achieve greater effectiveness regarding the audience. The Blair Witch Project was effective thanks to this procedure. The borders are diluted, or rather, they have never actually existed. That which has always changed is our perception regarding this format.

What is your relation with documentary film? Which filmmakers attracted your attention and contributed to your own process?

I think my main influences in the field of film (documentary or otherwise) were the work of the Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf and of the American Michael Moore. Generally speaking, Michael Moore is not fully understood. I always hear comments about the political content, and about how much he manipulates information. But this manipulation is the gateway into a more conceptually complex territory, which is precisely the field of arts. The discussion involving the documentary film format is not recent at all, it was born along with film itself. The Lumière brothers, for example, would ask passersby not to look at the camera, i.e., there was acting involved. And the entire history of documentary film is filled with similar examples: Flaherty, Grierson, Rouch... Makhmalbaf’s films, on the other hand, are extremely documental, although they are not categorized as documentary films. Films such as Salaam Cinema and A Moment of Innocence attest to the bluntness of that thinking about the experience of reality versus the representation of reality. The same applies to a large share of Iranian cinema. Jafar Panahi was another strong influence on me, as were the realistic movements in the first half of the 20th century.

How do you regard the recent convergence of art and documentary film? Do works dedicated to producing recordings of the world establish a more direct communication channel with audiences?

I am not certain whether it is more direct or not, but I have noticed that the procedure is effective. The documentary film was born along with cinema, and since the video started being used in the artistic field, there also arose a documental approach toward recording performances. To create “documents” has always been a concern in the arts. If not a document of the real world, then a document of a way of thinking.
A significant share of current artistic production seeks to promote channels for dialogue with the audience. Your career, though, has been dedicated to disclosing the embarrassment of the public inside museums. How do you regard the strategies in contemporary art that are aimed at bringing art and the public closer together?
They are all strategies for bringing art and the public together. To promote channels for dialogue, and to lay bare the problems in the relation between art and the public are part of a same desire for communication.

Do you see any connection between initiatives for art as social intervention, and documental art initiatives?

I believe that they pertain to the same line of thought, although the connection is not an obvious one. Art seems to want to incorporate life, despite being part of it. “Reality” has become a strategy for promoting nearness, it is no longer enough to represent it. “Reality” is no longer even raw material. It is the artwork in itself.
 

What are you aiming for with the provocations in your documentary films and actions: to contribute to the eradication of the public’s intimidation in such a special world as that of the “white cube,” or to pour salt in the wound and stir up these conflicts?

The passivity of the public and its non-reaction in their confrontation with artwork is frustrating to me. I try not to leave room for the viewer to be passive, if that is possible. In my work, somehow, I attempt a closer contact with the audience. To elicit a process of reflection is the least that an artist can hope for.

Interventions in museum windows and fronts are part of this series of works of yours about the relation between art and public. But here you seem to have opted for not recording videos. Why not document the reactions elicited by the work?

The recordings were planned to be included in the window works, they were not made due to technical issues. All of my other works, such as interventions in museums and galleries, have unfolded into other video works, even if they were projects, and were not concluded to the fullest. The video recording becomes a work in itself, which can no longer be called a recording. It is derived from the intervention, but it discusses and proposes other issues, pertaining to its own linguistic realm.
 

Ever since artists transformed artwork into actions, documenting became a vital part of the artistic work process. What is the importance of documental procedures to your actions?

When I think about a work, its unfoldings and derivations are already part of it. The documenting in text, photography, and video becomes a necessity, because that is how the work leaves a more closed-off circuit, and is able to expand and reverberate in other points. What would have been of Smithson’s Spiral Jetty without recordings in text, photo, and video?

Performance also plays an important role in your strategies. In Entre, there is the theatrical performance. In Não entendo, you seem to use the news report language to carry out a performance act. How do those elements—theatricality and performance—articulate in your work?

The theatricality in the Entre installation was unintentional. On the contrary: it was something that I tried to avoid, but couldn’t, when directing the actors. Later on, I ended up incorporating that information into the work. Not fully satisfied, I sought, instead of actors, artists who could give their statements with a little more knowledge of what they were talking about. I redid the same installation during an exhibition I had in the U.S., using local artists, and the tone of the work changed considerably. Both versions contain acting (by actors or by artists), but the same issue can be raised as in the discussion between documentary film and fiction. It is an imprecise interface, which depends upon the perception of those who relate to the work.
 

In some of the texts in your master’s course conclusion paper you claim that, by discussing art and the audience, you discuss your own self. Why has that issue become so important to your process?

Self-portrait. I think that is a keyword for relating to my work. All of the issues discussed by me are not simply theoretized. Firstly, they spring from my own experience as a viewer, and only then they are confronted with an audience. Generally speaking, most artists make self-referencing work, and the ones I make are, to me, objects of personal study. My relation with contemporary art is conveyed as an experience to other viewers.