Tereza (1992), by Caco Souza & Kiko Goifman | video, 16'
Exhibit Videobrasil 30 Years in China - Canceled
Between October 31 to November 2, always at 7pm, a special video program of Associação Cultural Videobrasil will be displayed in the movie theater of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art - UCCA (Beijing, China). Videobrasil 30 Years presents a program that retrieves the path of the video in the context of the arts. The founder and director of Associação Cultural Videobrasil, Solange Farkas, will be at the opening (October 31). Solange takes the opportunity to publicize the Open Call for submissions of the 19th Festival of Contemporary Art Sesc_Videbrasil and to visit Nurit Sharett. The Israeli artist is in residence in Red Gate as a result of the China Art Foundation residency prize, that she received in the 18th edition of the Festival.
Organized into historical axes spanning the Festival’s three decades, the show Videobrasil 30 Years, curated by Solange Farkas, opens on October 31 with the program The 80s: Experimental Practices, comprising artwork from the Festival’s first editions. Throughout Brazil’s political opening process, local video production was closely connected with documentary and television language. At that time there emerged early experiments with electronic media and video art. The first video pieces by filmmaker Fernando Meirelles – famous for his feature films City of God and Blindness – date from that period, including Marly Normal, which he co-directed with Marcelo Machado. The program will also include videos by the Brazilian artists Rafael França, Reencontro; Lenora de Barros and Walter Silveira, Homenagem a George Segal; Eder Santos, Mentiras e Humilhações; Walter Silveira and Pedro Vieira, VT Preparado AC/JC; and Sandra Kogut, Juliette.
The second phase of the Festival is represented in The 90s: Between Cinema and the Visual Arts, exhibited on November the 1st, at 7pm, depicting a period when Brazilian artists gained prominence. Artworks from this period are hybrid in character, connecting cinema, visual arts, and the first telltale signs of a digital age. This program includes: Poesia é Uma ou Duas Linhas, e por Trás uma Imensa Paisagem, by João Moreira Salles; Janaúba, by Eder Santos; O Menino, a Favela e as Tampas de Panela, by Cao Hamburger; Tereza, by Kiko Goifman and Caco Souza; O Beijoqueiro, by Carlos Nader.
The show caps off with the program 21st Century: Consolidation of a Language, on November 2nd, at 7pm. During this phase, the Festival became established as an international platform for mapping and disseminating art production from countries in the geopolitical South, gradually coming to embrace all contemporary languages. This period saw an even stronger consolidation of video in the realm of arts, with works that flirt with other languages – such as painting, photography, performance -, both formally and conceptually. Artworks by Brazilian artists will be featured, such as Não há Ninguém Aqui # 1, by Wagner Morales; Nanofania, by Cao Guimarães; A MAN. A ROAD. A RIVER, by Marcellvs L; as well as Cows, by Argentina’s Gabriela Golder; Red Chewing Gum and Un Cercle Autour du Soleil, respectively by Lebanon’s Akram Zaatari and Ali Cherri; Vue Panoramique, by Morocco’s Bouchra Khalili; and Unforgettable Memory, by China’s Liu Wei. Check out the synopses at the bottom of this text.
Videobrasil 30 Years is the fourth video program held this year in a bid to publicize and circulate works from the Videobrasil Collection. Prior to China (Beijing), it was has featured in South Africa (Johannesburg and Cape Town), United States (Atlanta) and Poland (Warsaw).
Service:
VIDEOBRASIL 30 YEARS | CHINA
Oct 31, 7pm – Program 1 (opening with the presence of Solange Farkas)
Nov 1, 7pm – Program 2
Nov 2, 7pm – Program 3
Ullens Center for Contemporary Art – UCCA
4 Jiuxianqiao Rd, Chaoyang | Pequim, China
PROGRAM 1 | 1h11’ UCCA | October 31st - 7pm
THE 80’S: EXPERIMENTAL PRACTICES | FIRST PHASE: 1983 TO 1989
Marly Normal | 06’54’’
Fernando Meirelles, Marcelo Machado | Olhar Eletrônico | 1983
The routine of a clerk in the city of São Paulo is shown in detail. The solitude of the character is eased by the television set, which also works as a dream machine. The ticktack of the clock, stretching over the entire video, underlines the frenetic pace of big cities.
Reencontro | 7’50’’
Rafael França | 1984
The first part of a trilogy that investigates the narrative language of video. A lonely man is confronted with his own traumatic past and mortality. Confusing the narrative conventions, the video does not feature synchronised sound or linear plot. The experimental narrative language reflects the human post- modern condition and the complicated negotiations between emotion and modernity.
Homenagem a George Segal | 3’31”
Lenora de Barros e Walter Silveira | 1985
Performance by the artist Lenora de Barros. Facing the camera, she brushes her teeth vigorously and the foam overflows, covering her face and finally her entire head.
VT preparado AC/JC | 10’
Walter Silveira, Pedro Vieira | TVDO | 1986
Experimental video art piece inspired by the work of the poet Augusto de Campos and the multimedia artist John Cage, featuring scenes recorded during the 18th São Paulo Art Biennial. Featuring appearances by Waly Salomão, Décio Pignatari and Haroldo de Campos.
Heróis da Decadên(s)ia | 35’27’’
Tadeu Jungle, Walter Silveira | TVDO | 1987
Experimental video featuring the poets Waly Salomão, Roberto Piva and Walter Silveira and a statement from Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns. Includes footage of the singer Supla and actors Marcelo Mansfield and Giovanna Gold. Excerpts from Caetano Veloso’s famous speech at the São Paulo finals of the 1968 International Song Festival (Festival Internacional da Canção).
Juliette | 03’55’’
Sandra Kogut | ANTEVÊ | 1988
Music video for the song Juliette, by the songwriter Fausto Fawcett, featuring singer Fernanda Abreu, footage of Copacabana Beach, in Rio de Janeiro, and animated collages.
Mentiras e humilhações | 4’
Eder Santos | 1988
Video art piece based on Carlos Drummond de Andrade’s poem Liquidação. An elderly lady recites the poem as the camera travels through the rooms showing the furniture, the pictures on the walls, details of an uninhabited house. Awarded at the 6th Videobrasil.
PROGRAM 2 | 1h17’ UCCA | November 1st - 7pm
THE 90’S: INTO THE ART (VIDEO PRODUCTION BETWEEN MOVIES AND VISUAL ART) | SECOND PHASE: 1990 TO 1998
Poesia é uma ou duas linhas, e por trás uma imensa paisagem | 9’28’’
João Moreira Salles | 1990
A tribute to poet Ana Cristina Cesar, from Rio de Janeiro, featuring quotes by Charles Baudelaire, Sylvia Plath, Czeslaw Milosz, T. S. Eliot, Armando Freitas Filho, Cacaso, Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Manuel Bandeira, and music by Billie Holiday.
Janaúba | 17’45”
Eder Santos | 1993
A recreation of a scene from Mário Peixoto’s film Limite - in which a boat slowly crosses a river with a couple on board - serves as point of departure for this poetical narrative about life in the Brazilian countryside. Janaúba is the name of a city in the state of Minas Gerais, near the border with Bahia. Award-winning video at the 10th Festival Videobrasil.
O Menino, a favela e as tampas de panela | 5’
Cao Hamburger | 1995
A boy who steals cooking pot lids from his home and from a neighbor’s flees through alleys, staircases and dead-ends in São Paulo’s Paraisópolis favela. Brazilian episode of the Abra a porta (Open the Door) series.
Tereza | 16’
Kiko Goifman, Caco Souza | 1992
Tereza, a word that has multiple meanings in jail life, guides this documentary on inmates and their stories. The video includes texts by Jean Genet, Percival de Souza and S. Paezzo, and statements from the prisoners; the video was shot at Penitentiary 1 and Campinas’ Police Precinct 5.
O Beijoqueiro | 29’15’’
Carlos Nader | 1992
Documentary about a “serial kisser” whose “victims” number over a thousand people, including Frank Sinatra, Pope John Paul II and Pelé. The kisser is seen as the unconscious heir to a Brazilian anthropophagic tradition. In the impossibility of eating the people he admires, he kisses them.
PROGRAM 3 | 1h13’ UCCA | November 2nd - 7pm
21ST CENTURY: THE CONSOLIDATION OF A LANGUAGE | THIRD PHASE: 2001 UNTIL TODAY
Não há ninguém aqui # 1 | 04’09’’
Wagner Morales | 2000
A fictitious male character places an ad in the lonely hearts section of the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper. The responses to this ad were taped on an answering machine and later were used for the script to the video. The images of women randomly picked talk both of surveillance cameras as well as of an amorous search.
Cows | 4’10”
Gabriela Golder | 2002
Rosario, Argentina, March 25th, 2002. About 400 people slaughtered cows that minutes before had spread on the asphalt when the truck they were being transported in fell down.
Red Chewing Gun | 10’47’’
Akram Zaatari | 2000
In the form of a letter, the video reflects on the consumption and production of images, but also on the end of the relationship between two men. The story of their separation is located in the context of the urban landscape under alteration in Hamra, a Lebanese neighbourhood that was once an effervescent commercial center.
Nanofania | 3’27”
Cao Guimarães | 2003
Soap bubbles that explode. Flies jumping. The throb of microphenomenons cadenced by a piano toy.
A MAN. A ROAD. A RIVER | 09’54’’
Marcellvs L. | 2004
The swelling of a river, which floods part of a road and interrupts the normal flow of people and cars, is the subject of this visual poem, a portrait of a crossing of paths and lives and of the force of nature over artificiality.
Un Cercle autour du soleil | 15’33’’
Ali Cherri | 2005
As the camera slowly reveals the ruins of Beirut, the author’s voice describes the intimate presence of the Lebanese civil war throughout his childhood and speaks of the discovery of subjectivity during nighttime bombardments. Winner of the FAAP Digital Arts Prize.
Vue Panoramique | 14’48”
Bouchra Khalili | 2005
Vue Panoramique draws a circular path between two shores. We see the comings and goings of a boat, the languid rolling of anchored craft, the activity of the passengers, and the wait. At the same time, a female voice describes a wander through a village surrounded by the sea.
Unforgettable memory | 10’15”
Liu Wei | 2009
The artist tries to recover his memory of 1989, when the Chinese took to the streets to protest against the Deng Xiaoping government. Wei heads out in search of witnesses, carrying with him a camera and a photo of the protests, during which he was almost killed. Using direct language, the work questions the power of memory in the face of indifference.