Associação Cultural Videobrasil

The Public Programs elaborate on themes and concepts featured in Videobrasil’s actions, prompting experiences and debates that shed light on and expand upon those actions’ inquiries.

A conversation with Akram Zaatari about his poetics, hosted by researcher and curator Moacir dos Anjos, and focusing on the artworks shown in the Tomorrow Everything Will Be Alright exhibit.

Akram Zaatari is a visual artist, curator and one of the founders of the Arab Image Foundation. Working with photography, video, and film, he conducts landmark research into visual heritage in the context of Arab culture. Zaatari explores questions pertaining to identity and the social perception of the body and desire, as well as the connections between individual memory and collective narrative. With two major fronts, one openly political and historical, and the other more overtly tied with the conformations of sexuality— especially the male sexuality—, Akram Zaatari’s oeuvre is a wide-ranging reflection on visual memory and image-based representation modes. His work has been featured in group shows including the Turin Triennial (2008), the biennials of Istanbul (2011), Venice (2013) and São Paulo (2006), and the dOCUMENTA 13 (Kassel, 2012). Solo shows include Projects 100: Akram Zaatari, at the MoMA in New York City (2013), and UNFOLDING, at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm (2015). His works are in the collections of Tate Modern, in London, Centre Georges Pompidou, in Paris, and the MoMA. Akram Zaatari lives and works out of Beirut, Lebanon.

Moacir dos Anjos (Recife, Brazil, 1963) is a contemporary art researcher and curator with the Joaquim Nabuco Foundation in Recife. He is a former director of the Museum of Modern Art Aloísio Magalhães – MAMAM (2001–2006) and a visiting research fellow at TrAIN – Transnational Art, Identity and Nation, in London (2008–2009). Dos Anjos curated the São Paulo Art Biennial (2010) and the exhibits Cães sem Plumas (MAMAM, 2014) and A Queda do Céu (Paço das Artes, 2015). He is the author of the books Local/global – arte em trânsito (Zahar, 2005) and Arte Bra Crítica (WMF Martins Fontes, 2010), and the editor of Caderno Videobrasil 8: Pertença (2013).

Taught by Michel Sleiman, a professor at USP’s Department of Oriental Languages, the course Fictions and Truths in Post-War Lebanon Narratives focuses on current Lebanese literature, essays, and art. Poets, novelists, photographers, artists, and curators build a discourse of retrieval of recent national memory and history in a country ravaged by a bloody civil war (1975–1990) that was never detached from broader Middle East issues. Over four meetings, the course will cover topics such as “freedom and human rights,” religiosity and secularism,” “truth and fiction,” and “discourses and gender boundaries.”

PROGRAM:

Lesson 1 - Oct 6
Ancient and Contemporary Lebanon: the constitutive civilizations of the Phoenicians, the Chaldeans, the Persians, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Ottomans, and the French
Lesson 2 - Oct 13
The Lebanon–USA–Brazil connection of “Nahda” Literary Renaissance poets and the 1960s and 1970s Beirut of Tammuz Poets
Lesson 3 - Oct 20
War Movements: the arrival of the PLO in 1970; the arrival of the Syrian army in 1976; the 1982 Israeli invasion; the civil war of 1975-1990; exodus and permanence literature
Lesson 4 – Oct 27
Art and Post-War Discourse: memory and retrieval; testimonial, truth and fiction; experiments in discourse genres: novels; photography; video; installation; performance; curatorship

Target audience: researchers, curators, educators, artists, producers, students, and other interested parties
Number of seats: 15
Hour load: 4 meetings, 10 hours total.
Cost and payment methods: one-time payment of BRL 150.00 (deposit/wire transfer)*

Enrolment and information: cursos@videobrasil.org.br or (55 11) 3645-0516

*Dropping out midcourse or failing to attend will not exempt enrollees from payment, in consideration for the service that will be made available to them

Michel Sleiman was born in 1963 in Santa Rosa, in Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul state, and graduated in Languages in Santa Maria (UFSM) and Porto Alegre (UFRGS). He pursued Arabic studies in Beirut, Damascus, and Cairo. He completed his postgraduate studies at the University of São Paulo, where he now teaches Arabic Language and Literature in the Department of Oriental Languages and in the postgraduate programs in Arabic Studies and Translation Studies. He has written research on Andalusian poetry written in the local Arabic and Romanic dialects of Al-Andalus, on which he published A Poesia Árabe-Andaluza: Ibn Quzman de Córdova (The Arab-Andalusian Poetry: Ibn Quzman of Cordoba, Perspectiva, 2000) and A Arte do Zajal: ensaio de poética árabe (The Art of the Zajal: an essay on Arabic poetics, Ateliê, 2008). He has translated Quranic surahs and poems by Palestine’s Mahmoud Darwich, Syria’s Adonis, and Lebanon’s Unsi El-Hajj into Portuguese, as well as poems by Waly Salomão and Haroldo de Campos into Arabic. He is the creator and director of Revista Tiraz, a magazine focusing on Arab and Middle Eastern culture studies (USP Department of Oriental Languages). He coordinates the Contemporary Arabic Poetry Translation Group at USP. Former chair of the Institute of Arab Culture, in São Paulo, from 2009 to 2012, and curator of the annual show Diwan de Literatura e Arte, from 2005 to 2008. Michel Sleiman has published his poems in the magazines Coyote, Zunái, Poesia Sempre and Granta, and the book Ínula Niúla (Ateliê, 2009).

This workshop on investigative drawing proposes to explore the Vila Leopoldina area, with a special focus on the wholesale produce market CEAGESP—a territory that embodies the discussion regarding the neighborhood’s gentrification process, and the visible changes in the urban and human landscapes it entails. Based on questions raised by the work of Akram Zaatari, and aided by a map created by artist Carla Caffé, participants will be encouraged to document their route from Galpão VB to CEAGESP, accounting not only for the physical features of the urban space, but also for the interpersonal relationships taking place therein.

PROGRAM:

11am às 11:30am: Workshop introductory talk
11:30am às 11:45am: 1st stage – Galpão VB / CEAGESP Route
11:45am às 2pm: 2nd stage – Portraits
2pm às 2:30pm: Walk back and wrap-up conversation at Galpão VB

MEETING POINT: Galpão VB

Target audience: Artists, architects, illustrators, designers, illustrators, and students thereof (over 16).
Number of seats: 20 (first-come, first-serve)
Hour load: 03h30
Cost: Free of charge
How to attend: Enrolment will be on a first-come, first-serve basis for as long as there are seats available, from 10:30 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.

Carla Caffé hold a degree in Architecture, working with illustration, graphic design, art, theater, and film. Her work has been featured in major group shows, including the IV and X editions of the São Paulo International Architecture Biennial. For her recent work she has focused on the cartography of São Paulo. Her latest exhibit was at the Carbono gallery. She worked as art director in Central do Brasil (Walter Salles) and Narradores de Javé (Eliane Caffé), among other feature films. She is currently working on the full visual identity for the film Era o Hotel Cambridge, slated for release in 2017, which she also art-directed. She is the author of the artist’s book A(e)rea Paulista, published by Galeria Vermelho, Av. Paulista, out on Cosac Naify and SESC Edições, and São Paulo na linha, released by DBA. Carla Caffé currently teaches Drawing at the Escola da Cidade School of Architecture and Urban Design and in workshops at SESC Pompeia.

On occasion of the Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari’s Tomorrow Everything Will Be Alright exhibition book launch, a conversation revolving around Lebanese presence in art-making and the art scene in Brazil will approach the issue from a three-pronged artistic, curatorial-institutional, and academic perspective.

Carlos Nader - Experimenting and interweaving languages from video art to documentary, Nader is an author with a strong essayistic appeal. Concerned with the complexity of contemporary Brazilian culture and its media-based dimension, he looks into certain characters—anonymous people, celebrities, and artists—for myriad traces of urban identities. Documentary in nature, Beijoqueiro (1992) was one of the most widely recognized national videos of the 1990s, due to its production’s summing up of shared features of its generation. Next he made the films Trovoada (1995), winner of the 1998 Videokunstpreis, O Fim da Viagem (1996), and Carlos Nader (1998), winner of Grande Prêmio de Cinema Brasil in 2000. The latter deconstructs the concept of autobiography, interspersing his own image with transvestites, philosophers, poets, and criminals. Throughout the 2000s, Nader concentrated his activities abroad, where he directed documentaries and created video installations for local culture centers, and took part in several festivals and collective shows. He has made several other films including: Concepção (2001), Flor da Pele (2002), Cross (2003), RBS: 50 anos da televisão no Brasil (2007), Pan-Cinema Permanente (2008), Chelpa Ferro (2009), from the Videobrasil Authors Collection series, and Eduardo Coutinho – 7 de outubro (2013). He recently won Best Brazilian Feature Documentary back-to-back at the It’s All True Festival for Homem Comum (2014) and A Paixão de JL (2015), the latter of which also won a prize at the 37th Havana Film Festival in 2016. Early on in his career, he was the editor of magazines Caos, from 1987 to 1989, and Circuit, in 1990. Carlos Nader lives and works in São Paulo.

Eduardo de Jesus - Holds a degree in social communication from PUC Minas, a master’s in communication from UFMG, and a doctorate degree in arts from ECA-USP. He is a professor at the postgraduate program in Communications at PUC Minas. He has been involved in several editions of the Videobrasil Festival and Associação Cultural Videobrasil projects. His curating history includes FIF – Festival Internacional de Fotografia (Belo Horizonte, 2013 and 2015), esses espaços (Belo Horizonte, 2010), Densidade Local, co-curated with Gunalan Nadarajan for the Festival Transitio-MX (Mexico City, 2008) and Mostra Fiat Brasil (2006). He presently publishes texts, essays, and reviews on contemporary art production.

Solange Farkas is curator and director of Associação Cultural Videobrasil. In 1983, she created the Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil, of which she is chief curator, and which has grown into a landmark for art production from the Global South. She was responsible for bringing exhibits such as Sophie Calle’s (Take Care of Yourself, 2009), Joseph Beuys’ (We Are the Revolution, 2010) and Isaac Julien’s (Geopoetics, 2012), which she also curated, to Brazil. She was featured as a guest curator in the 10th Sharjah Biennial (United Arab Emirates, 2011), the 16th Cerveira Art Biennial (Portugal, 2011), the 5th Videozone: International Video Art Biennial (Israel, 2010), and the 6th Jakarta International Video Festival (Indonesia, 2013), among other events.

Highlights of her 25-year curating career include exhibits such as Contemporary Southern Hemisphere Videoart, at the 9th Ayoul Festival (Beirut, Lebanon, 1999); the Pan-African Contemporary Art Exhibition (Salvador, Brazil, 2005); La Mirada Discreta: Marcel Odenbach & Robert Cahen (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2006); Suspensão e Fluidez (ARCO, Madri, 2007); and the Contemporary African Art Exhibition (São Paulo, Brazil, 2000), co-curated with Clive Kellner.

In 2003, she invited Akram Zaatari and Christine Tohme to organize the Lebanese art event Narrativas Possíveis (Possible Narratives) as a part of the 14th Festival. Encompassing video showings, an exhibition, and lectures, the event paved the way for Lebanese artists to be represented in the Festival in a major way.

In 2015, Solange Farkas was invited to join the content committee of the UN Live Museum, the Museum for Humanity of the United Nations.

Just like Akram Zaatari’s oeuvre, the work of Gui Mohallem builds on personal experiences to take on contours of alterity. Through analyzing artworks, participants will be questioned: what scenarios, experiences, and developments can issue from a personal story? They will be invited to tap into their own innermost questions, and prodded to share them via hands-on exercises.

PROGRAM:

day 1: November 19, Saturday — 4pm, exhibition visit; from 5pm to 9pm, solo and group activities, and discussion of the creative process
day 2: November 26, Saturday — from 5pm to 9pm, hands-on activity, evaluation of students’ output, and discussion of references

Target audience: ​artists, researchers, educators and students thereof.

Number of seats: 15*
Hour load: 9 hours
Cost: free of charge
How to participate: by 6:00 p.m. BRT on November 16, 2016, send an email with the subject “Vulnerability and Alterity” to cursos@videobrasil.org.br with the subject “Vulnerability and Alterity”, attatching the following filled form: (click to download)

Confirmations will be made by email and/or phone.

* The workshop will be subject to a minimum number of seats being filled.

Gui Mohallem (Itajubá, MG, 1979) - Questions of belonging and identity have permeated Gui Mohallem’s work for some time. After a six-week residency in Lebanon, awarded to him by the Brazilian Ministry of Culture’s Cultural Exchange and Diffusion Program in 2012, the artist came into direct contact with aspects of exile, upon which he grew to understand his own origins and some of the identity traits of family members. A Film and Video degree holder from ECA-USP, he had his first solo show in New York City in 2008. In the years that followed, he had showings at MuBE, Sesc Pompeia and the Olido, Babel, Baró Cruz, Luciana Caravello, and Emma Thomas galleries. He has also exhibited in the USA, Iceland, and Estonia, was involved in Photoespaña’s Descubrimientos program, and in the 18th Sesc_Videobrasil Festival. In 2011, he won second place in the Conrado Wessel prize. He has partaken in art residency programs in São Paulo and Beirut, Lebanon. He has two books out, Welcome Home (2012) and Tcharafna (2014). He was a speaker at Brazil’s leading photography festivals, and his works are in major collections including Itaú Cultural, Videobrasil, Centro Cultural São Paulo, Luiz Chrysostomo, Nilo Cecco, Fernando Abdalla, Alfredo Setúbal, etc.