The Risk of the Present Tense
Solange Farkas
What are the trends and paths of contemporary audiovisual production? How does it unfold into different formats, supports, and genres? How does it convey the contemporary experience? These are some of the questions we have asked to elicit responses in the forms of artworks for the Videobrasil International Electronic Art Festival. During the 13th edition, in 2001, the concept of hybrid poetry paved the way for a profound discussion of different means of communication and their new branches, which are more closely linked to a digital environment. During the 14th edition, in 2003, we identified an important political branch among the works, characterized by hybrid formats and a contamination by post-9/11 social and political processes. Electronic art revives a branch that unveils the complex political and social agents in contemporary life and the new geopolitical disposition of the world.
In keeping with this direction, the Videobrasil International Electronic Art Festival, that will take place in September in São Paulo, is structured around the notions of risk, direct production, and raw image–which, if on the one hand lacks the refinement of post-production, on the other hand seems to powerfully reveal the subjectivities involved. In this edition, we will seek connections between performance and electronic art, based either on the success or failure of these actions in taking chances in order to meet with the Other, hence broadening the scope of visible subjectivities in transit. The performance theme and its connections to risk and subjectivity, surpassing a mere bodily approach, broadens the debate regarding the relationship between electronic image and contemporary culture.
In its beginnings, during the 60s, performance was one of the motors that actually set videoart in motion, first as a means for recording the performer`s action, and afterwards as a field of production in its own right. These beginnings have marked the history of videoart, and nowadays there is a sort of revival, a reconnection of electronic art and performance. This reapproximation does not happen by chance, but due to the growing importance of subjective processes within art, as they disclose narratives that describe contemporary life. In this regard, we view performance as a fold, comprised of its historical vocation as a controversial art form–essential for the development of video–and of the hybridization processes with various technologies, as well as the disclosure of subjectivity. We will approach performances within this "fold" space (Deleuze).
No one incorporates this approach better than Marina Abramovic. One of the world`s most prominent performers, she has built an entire method of teaching and formation around herself, one which updates performance and extends its reach. A historical figure who promoted the development of performances, Abramovic enables an intense formation process for students all over the world. The Festival will show Abramovic’s pieces, as well as those of young artists, her former students, who comprise what the artist refers to as her "STUDENT BODY," and who become the living update of her work.
We will approach performance from the perspective of this interval between history and its contemporary unfoldings, adopting as our horizon of expectation the basic notions of risk, of taking chances, of the shortcomings in meeting with the Other, and of the power with which these views can contribute to contemporary reflections about art.
Ever since its inception, electronic art has created a tension in the existing axis that ties together art and communication, narration and information. It does so by experimenting with different means, be they singular and local, mediatic or subjective, of incorporating signs of the narrator into the account, signs that speak of his identity, and of his private territory. Thus, electronic art focuses in on the individual who is in front of and behind the camera, who identifies and relates to his society in his own way.
Videoart appeared within the framework of the democratic opening in Brazil, in the beginning of the 1980s, and Videobrasil came to be in 1983 in order to organize, expose, and legitimize this independent and hectic area of production. Electronic and digital supports provided unprecedented expressive freedom, pushing the boundaries of all preceding audiovisual production. The Festival functioned as a gathering space for local artistic output, providing a link to international art, particularly from 1985 onwards. Amidst the dialectic of this internationalization process, the Festival was always concerned with seeking and establishing our own audiovisual identity as Southern Hemisphere producers.
In order to encourage the poetic specificity of this language, beginning in 1990, Videobrasil created a space for circulation and legitimation of work that deals with electronic image in a more artistic (and less communicational) way. The Festival highlights performances, installations, and experimental videos, as well as workshops, conferences, and retrospective exhibitions by the most prominent authors in national and international video, opening a door for the interdisciplinary realization that stems from plastic art, theater, and poetry.
