Terras em trânsito
Excursions in Contemporary Video From Brazil curated by Karyn Riegel
This program will repeat each Friday &
Saturday September 2 - 3, 9 - 10, 16 -17
Two seatings per night, 7:30pm & 10pm
PLEASE NOTE: There are 2 different programs,
Excursion 1 and Excursion 2
(see below), and each weekend will feature live
performances from artists exclusively on
that weekend. Plan accordingly, here's the schedule
overview.
Terras em trânsito embarks on an audiovisual journey
through Brazil's complex social fabric and visual culture.
Designed for adventurous travelers, two video excursions
explore the ongoing dialogue between contemporary art
and the rich history of Brazil's avant-gardes, and chart
a network of less-traveled roads throughout the country's
vast and varied landscape. Before each excursion, four
Connecting Flights offer live and multi-channel video
performances that take us from Rio de Janeiro and São
Paulo to Japan, Cuba, and New York. Terras em trânsito
means "land in transit or traffic" in Portuguese,
and suggests the dynamism of contemporary art in Brazil,
as well as the obstacle posed by the country's
extreme economic inequality. Diaristic and observational,
carnivalesque and lyrical, socially charged and structural,
the moving image works included in Terras em trânsito
offer an intimate jaunt through Brazil's singular
visual gastronomy, and unique perceptions of domestic
and international destinations.
Excursion 1: "Purity is Myth" September 2, 9, 17
Appropriations, body acts, organic geometry, and even
a bit of 101. The resonance of the sentence stenciled
on the wall of Helio Oiticica's 1967 installation
Tropicalia is echoed in contemporary performances, aesthetic
approaches, and reflections on the role of art in the
developing world. Works by Andrea Fraser, Angela
Detanico and Rafael Lain, assume vivid astro
focus, Brigida Baltar, Edson Barrus, Felipe Lacerda,
Marssares, Roberto Berliner, Simone
Michelin.
Excursion 2: A Useful Landscape (Paisagem
Util) September 3, 10, 18
From intimacy in São Paulo's urban jungle
to the cutting edge of technology in Brazil's
interior, the topography of communication is surveyed
in experimental documentaries, the poetics of movement
and sound, and displaced livestock. Works by Andre Amparo,
Colectivo
Bijari, Daniel Lima, Edson Barrus,
Nicolas Guagnini & Karin Schneider, Lucas Bambozzi,
Marepe, Marssares, Rachel Rosalen, and Tetine.
Live
Performance Schedule:
September 2 & 3 Serious, Serious, Serious
-- Marcos Chaves
"Until death stops you being serious." –-
Francis Picabia, Cannibal Dada Manifesto.
Marcos Chaves invites us for a live, multi-image romp
in a conceptual playground of his recent videos, photography,
and performance.
September 9 & 10 Kino I – Vida -- Felipe
Lacerda
Media artist and editor of acclaimed Brazilian films
such as Central Station and Bus 174
(which he also co-directed), Felipe Lacerda's
oberservational essays search for individual utopias
in the streets of Cuba and Brazil.
September 16 SAO – TKO -- Rachel
Rosalen
Literally. Media artist Rachel Rosalen joins us for
a live performance during a two-day layover from São
Paulo to Yokahama, with multi-channel works that meditate
on the fissures and intersections between East, West,
and South.
September 17 Pop Will Eat Itself -- Vanessa
Ramos-Velasquez
Born in Rio de Janeiro and transplanted to New York,
interdisciplinary artist Vanessa Ramos-Velasquez mines
diverse found materials in a live dissection of American
pop and visual imperialism, from Warhol to Walmart,
signs to insignificance, and fashion to fascism.
The premiere US exhibition of Terras em trânsito
was curated by Karyn Riegel and is
presented in association with Cinema
Tropical. Generous support and caipirinhas
have been provided by Beleza
Pura Premium Cachaça.
www.cinematropical.com
www.belezabrazil.com
Terras em trânsito is titled in homage to Glauber
Rocha's classic Terras em Transe/Land In Anguish
(1967). Delirious and politically charged, the film
ushered in the lush subversions of Tropicalia, an avant-garde
that permeated cinema, music, literature, and the visual
arts. In music, Os Mutantes riffed on class-based hypocrisy
and appropriated British psychedelic; Caetano Veloso
took Bossa Nova to meet the Beatles and Brigitte Bardot.
Conceptual artist Helio Oiticica invented communal spaces
at the border between high art and popular culture,
incorporating rituals, humble architecture, and rarefied
bacchanalia in performances and immersive installations.
Hybrid and encompassing of earlier avant-gardes such
as Anthropophagy and Neo-Concretism, Tropicalia's
re-inventive impulse set the stage for a range of contemporary
practices.
Terras em trânsito was originally presented as
two single-channel video programs for The Museo Tamayo
de Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City; segments have
been exhibited at The Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá
(Colombia), and the E-flux video rental program. The
exhibition is a personal culmination of a one-year Fulbright
research and curatorial grant in Rio de Janeiro. Themes
of travel and dislocation emphasize the subjectivity
of an outsider looking in, an attempt to discover rather
than define Brazilian media art.
A word from our sponsor: Enter to win a trip
for two to Rio de Janeiro. We have some inside info:
your odds of winning are pretty good...
