Readings and Re-readings Reaching its 14th edition and the mark

Readings and Re-readings
Reaching its 14th edition and the mark of two decades, the Festival elects as a parallel curatorial
axis its own history in a program that re-reads, in the light of contemporaneousness, emblematic
figures and key works in the history of Brazilian video. Three performances, in particular,
exemplify this updated gaze on the historical matter. In “Onde Estão os Heróis?”, Tadeu Jungle
makes the decoupage and enacts his video “Heróis da Decadên(s)ia”, which won the 5th
Videobrasil (1987). Luiz Duva uses the procedures of electronic manipulation to deconstruct and
reconstruct the work “Marca Registrada”, by pioneer Letícia Parente (1930-1991). And Marcelo
Tas revisits the disconcerting reporter Ernesto Varela, personage-symbol of the language
contamination of independent production companies in open TV, in “Quem é Ernesto Varela?”. A
show maps Tas’ incursions into TV, including “Fora do Ar”, a show he created to Globo but that
was never exhibited.
A member of the Consulting Board of Associação Cultural Videobrasil and creator of the
personage Waldez, a sort of local Ernesto Varela, Argentinean curator Jorge La Ferla signs the
essay “Contra o espetáculo do consenso”, in which he emphasizes the importance of Videobrasil
to Latin electronic art – and the need to preserve its existence in a panorama dominated by
decadence and entertainment. Gabriel Soucheyre, director of the video art festival of ClermontFerrand, in France, signs a selection of works by French artists who participated in Videobrasil,
from Robert Cahen to Jérôme Lefdup, and share with the video art from the southern circuit “a
renewed inclination for a bit of risk which guide them in a constant search, whether artistic,
aesthetic, philosophical or political”.
The course traversed by Brazilian electronic art in 30 years, counted from the first experiences of
plastic artists such as Antonio Dias with primitive forms of electronic support, is described and
exemplified in the show “Made in Brasil, Três Décadas do Vídeo Brasileiro”. With research and
curatorship by critic Arlindo Machado, it gathers 50 works by numerous essential artists, from
pioneers (such as Dias, Aguillar and Annabela Geiger) to the independent production companies
and the major exponents of the most contemporary forms of video art.
20 years
Videobrasil was created 20 years ago to map the production of artists who began to experiment
the electronic support, then recently emerged. In the first ten years, in annual and national
editions, it worked as a show window to the independent production which was having a boom –
and would come to contaminate the impermeable TV programming with new minds and new
languages –, as well to promising experiments in the field of video art, which faced resistance
and ignorance in the sacred spaces devoted to arts. Executed until that period by Fotoptica and
the State Department of Culture, it reacted to the relative stagnation that followed the initial
outbreak of growth in the scene expanding its focus to the production from the geopolitical south
of arts, with the conviction that artists from Brazil, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa, Middle
East, Asia and Australia would benefit from a permanent platform of contact and exchange.
Biennial and international since 1992, the Festival established a partnership with SESC São Paulo,
became definitely devoted to electronic art and got the support of Associação Cultural Videobrasil,
which produces it, maintains partnerships with the main media centres in the world and makes
documentaries on artists in the circuit, among other products, on the way. An international
reference to the production from the southern circuit, the Associação preserves and is in charge
of the circulation of the largest electronic art collection in the country, with 4 thousand works that
testify two decades of a rich and instigating production – which is more than expected by the
creators of Videobrasil 20 years ago.
© Associação Cultural Videobrasil