Page 111 - ARTE!Brasileiros #57

With regard to the inclusion of artists in Brazilian underground cinema, the subject of at this moment, it is what is connecting us”, she
representing art brut or art outsider in the “official her graduation work at ufBa, Solange let herself told arte!brasileiros still in 2020.
market circuit”, which has been growing since be carried away by Thomas’ stimuli, added to the Another long battle waged by vB over the
the Palazzo Enciclopedico exhibition, at the 2013 clear perception that video was establishing itself decades, perhaps tougher and more permanent,
Venice Biennale, and inserting itself in museums as a new language in the country and in the world. refers to the association’s decision to dedicate
such as the Met and the Moma, the Christian Berst “In the early 1980s, video was emerging as itself to the artistic production of the so-called
Art Brut, from New York, introduced Czech artist a piece of equipment. There were cinema and Global South, defined in one of its publications
Luboš Plný, whose potent work is the product television, but not what we call video”, she says as “the term referring to cultural condition,
of his fascination with medical iconography. He in an interview with arte!brasileiros. The Brazilian economic and political aspects of countries
even provokes and studies situations in his own production prior to this period, still in the 1970s, and territories on the margins of hegemonic
body, almost like performances, testing his limits. was basically limited to the core of professor modernization and central capitalism”. After the
His work has already been presented at the 17th Walter Zanini, who after acquiring equipment festival’s internationalization in the 1980s to 1990s
Venice Biennale and at the Musée National d’ Art abroad for mac-usp ceded its use to artists such and the inclusion of the term “electronic art” in
Moderne in Paris, in 2013. as Regina Silveira, Wesley Duke Lee, Carmela the event’s name in 1994, Videobrasil established
In the contemporary art sector, Brazilian Gross, Julio Plaza and José Roberto Aguilar. “But itself in fact as a platform dedicated to productions
gallery Jaqueline Martins, who recently opened the most affordable video equipment only arrived “outside the traditional axis formed by Europe
a branch in Brussels, presented a landscape built in the early 1980s and Thomas realized there was and the United States”.
with wooden sculptures, each part of a fictional something big there. And he asked me if I didn’t The concept of the Global South, however, has
composition. want to do an exhibition, or something like that, always been changing and also includes territories
As always, fiac took over the city in association that would encourage artists to use the video and that are internal to the central countries: “It is a
with the Louvre Museum, presenting Hors show this production.” political South, not exactly a geographical one.
les Murs, around 20 works and installations And so the first edition of the festival was held, It’s not cutting the globe in half”. The approach
distributed along the Jardin des Tuileries and in at the Museum of Image and Sound in August to different regions in Africa, Latin America,
the center of Paris. 1983, on a still small scale compared to the the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Asia,
Visiting fiac, for shoppers or for those who are current biennial, but with a competitive exhibition, among others, has placed vB at the forefront,
aware of the international movements of modern performance presentations, installations and even but it has also created a series of difficulties in
and contemporary art, is always an immense a fair of new technologies such as computers, a geopolitically unequal world. “Even among
pleasure, even more so because it allows you teletext and video games. It was the context of the artists, some told me: I don’t want to go to
to visit French museums and institutions whose the last years of dictatorship - works had to be Africa, I want to go to Paris. Because everyone,
curatorships and exhibitions are always a new subjected to censorship - and the general tone was in order to exist, wanted to go either to Europe or
discovery. one of criticism of the open television monopoly, the usa”, she says. “It was our activism to try to
which was appeased in the following years with create bridges, networks, which would allow the
institutions vidEoBrasil [paGEs 28 to 36] the approach of video producers and directors to transit between us in the Global South, so that
tv channels . Since then, history is long, full of it could exist without artists always having to be
FOUR DECADES WITH changes and upheavals, and always linked not only stamped by the north.”
If the issue is far from being resolved, Farkas
LENSES POINTING to political and cultural contexts, but also to the sees a huge change these days, with the
path of audiovisual technological development.
THE SOUTH After holding eight festivals, Solange created proliferation, for example, of cultural spaces and
the Associação Cultural Videobrasil in 1991, with artistic residencies in places previously excluded
After an unstable period, Associação a statute that provided for the maintenance and from the global map of the arts. In an interview
Cultural Videobrasil announces the 22nd activation of the growing collection of works and given in 2020, at the first peak of the pandemic,
Bienal Sesc_Videobrasil for 2023, 40 years publications gathered at the events. The following she said: “There is an interesting thing - if it is
after its first festival, and will schedule a year, Sesc-sp joins as the festival’s main partner, possible to talk about something interesting at
large exhibition of the collection in Vitória which has enabled it to be held with great structure this time when there is so much suffering, so
(ES) starting in March since then, in units such as Pompeia, Belenzinho many people suffering - which is that all the great
and 24 de Maio. certainties, the guidelines always placed from
By marcos Grinspum fErraz there to here, from North to South, are being put
first battles into question. (…) In this sense, we are a little alike.
after a perioD of great unCertainties Not only were the filming equipment changing, but facing some alternatives and solutions; we who
anD instabilities - which obviously have not the storage technologies and care of the collection live in permanent crisis and who have always had
completely dissipated in Brazil today - the next few themselves. “Keeping the video physically alive is to deal with precariousness and find alternatives,
years promise to be a prolific and even celebratory very expensive,” explains Solange. “It’s extremely especially in the field of art and culture”.
period for Associação Cultural Videobrasil (vB). fragile media for conservation and extremely
First, for the 40th anniversary of the 1st Videobrasil fickle, because every few years the preservation fall anD Come baCk up
Festival, held in 1983, still in the last years of the media of the moment changes and you have to Long before the pandemic, other milestones
country’s civil-military dictatorship. Second, for convert everything again. I’ve been doing this for in Videobrasil’s history were the inclusion, as
the confirmation of the holding of the 22nd Bienal 40 years and it never stops, it’s even possible to of 2011, of a wide range of artistic supports
Sesc_Videobrasil in 2023, postponed for two years do a media archeology based on this vB story.” beyond video and electronic art in festivals and
due to the pandemic and which will already have Due to the enormous costs of this work, Farkas is exhibitions; and the move of its headquarters,
activities scheduled for next year. There is also a already negotiating the transfer of the vB collection in 2015, to a great warehouse in Vila Leopoldina
major exhibition of vB’s vast collection in Vitória to the technical reserves of institutions with (São Paulo). In 2019, the event also assumed
(Espírito Santo), starting in March, the continuity greater structure, in a process that should have the name of Biennial, renamed Bienal de Arte
of virtual exhibitions on Videobrasil Online and a conclusion in the near future. Contemporânea Sesc_Videobrasil (Contemporary
participation in other projects such as an exhibition Connected to this technological history is also Art Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil). But the vB, like so
on display at the Museu da Língua Portuguesa. the institution’s long battle for the recognition of many cultural institutions, was not immune to the
Established curator with extensive experience video as a relevant artistic support, as important uninterrupted crises experienced by the country in
in Brazil and abroad, former director of the mam- as any other. “Prejudice against video, within recent years, especially under the Jair Bolsonaro
Ba (Modern Art Museum of Bahia) and in charge the arts scene itself, was very heavy”, she says, government. With the difficulty in raising funds,
of Associação vB since the beginning, Solange who was both an observer and an agent of the the association returned the shed (where it held
Farkas was just a recent graduate - in journalism transformation of this perspective over the important exhibitions) in 2019 and faced a kind
and art history from the Federal University of decades. Interestingly, with the current Covid-19 of institutional paralysis. “It is impossible to
Bahia - when she decided to hold the Videobrasil pandemic and the long confinement of people to plan any project in front of a government that
Festival. Already based in São Paulo, her father- their homes, the curator notes a greater return disrespects culture, attacks culture, eliminates
in-law, Thomas Farkas (1924-2011) was the main to this media: “It is interesting to think about culture. In fact, this concerns culture, the press
motivator, one of the most important names in how video, at this moment, occupies a central and democratic institutions, in this clear flirtation
modern photography and cinema in Brazil and, at place in all fields of culture. Video is the mode with totalitarianism”, said Farkas in 2020.
the time, owner of Fotoptica. Already interested of communication, it is the possible expression The director also says that in a deep period
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