Associação Cultural Videobrasil

The meeting Videobrasil + Expoprojeção + Zanini kicked off Focus 8 of the Festival’s Public Programs. The event, held last Tuesday evening (11.26) at Sesc Pompeia’s Warehouse, was attended by artists, critics, students and researchers, with mediation from Eduardo de Jesus, curator of the 18th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil’s Southern Panoramas and 30 Years shows. The panel featured the coordinator of the first-ever video department at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC/USP), Cacilda Teixeira da Costa; the critic and curator Aracy Amaral, who held the original Expoprojeção show in 1973; and the curator and cultural producer Roberto Moreira da Cruz, who reedited and updated Expoprojeção alongside Amaral; the show is now open at Sesc Pinheiros. Together, they recounted the beginnings of video in Brazil.

Cacilda Teixeira da Costa told of how Walter Zanini, the former MAC director, went about fostering video production in Brazil. In 1973, Fred Forest’s Registro do Passeio Sociológico pelo Brooklin was shown at MAC. It was the first video screening held in any Brazilian museum. High costs and scarce equipment led Zanini to offer a technical course, in 1977, so artists could gain access to the new technology. The likes of Jonier Marin and Roberto Sandoval, later to become well-known video artists, attended the classes. In that same year, Zanini offered then-rare pieces of equipment and five minutes’ worth of tape to artists who had video projects, resulting in works by Carmela Gross, Regina Silveira, José Roberto Aguilar, among others. “Zanini opened lots of doors,” she said.

Another pioneer who wagered on video was Aracy Amaral; she held the original Expoprojeção show in 1973, featuring 100 pieces by artists who were experimenting with the new medium. “I used to travel a lot then, and I realized there were a lot of people filming in Super 8,” she said. In order to set up the show, she corresponded with Hélio Oiticica and Antonio Dias, asking for referrals of other artists. Interest in the new art form was such that people waited in line to see the show, which featured in Buenos Aires afterwards. Part of the correspondence and half the pieces shown in 1973 can be seen at Sesc Pinheiros, in the show’s reissue Expoprojeção 1973-2013, co-curated by Roberto Moreira, responsible for updating the artwork into the contemporary context.

Roberto Moreira discussed the historical relevance of the pieces on show, and the challenges faced in retrieving some of them. A lost video by Cildo Meirelles, for instance, was remade for the new exhibit. Aside from news reports from that time, the original show’s catalogue, notes by Aracy Amaral, and cassette tapes containing statements from the artists have been used in order to rebuild the show as faithfully as possible.

At the end of the meeting, the attendees watched excerpts from the Videobrasil on TV show, featuring interviews with Fernando Meirelles, Marcelo Tas, Marcelo Machado, Gabriel Priolli, among others, summing up the 80s video scene. The material airs on Mondays on SescTV and on Tuesdays on Channel VB, online.