EN / PT
Galeria Luciana Brito

LB/Online Video Festival

Every week, starting on April 28th, Luciana Brito Galeria published a new video, a new experience, which will be available on our website indefinitely. So you can watch as many times you wish, whenever you like. The idea was to propose a reflection on a significant set of works both by artists who are represented by us, and by others that we consider relevant to the proposal. This week we published below the video “Photokinetic" (2020), by Héctor Zamora (Mexico). Don’t miss!

 

Curator: Analivia Cordeiro
Curatorial text: read here

LB News

Héctor Zamora, Photokinetic, 2020

 

Vídeo 4K
Duration: 04'48"
Edition: 1/3
 
"Photokinetic,
A video produced during the exhibition Lattice Detour, by Héctor Zamora, in the Roof Garden, at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, USA. It involves a game concerning the effect of movements, a playful dance, of the bodies of the participants and their effects brought about by the empty spaces between the bricks, creating fragmented shadows. The movement is occasioned by the sunlight at sunset; an unexpected effect that happens at the end of the day." Héctor Zamora, 2020
 
Héctor Zamora

1974. Mexico City, Mexico. Lives and works in Mexico City, Mexico. 

 

Zamora's work transcends the conventional exhibition space to reinvent and redefine it, generating friction between the common roles of public and private, exterior and interior, organic and geometric, real and imaginary.  
 
 

"On this Friday, December 11, we have finalized the selection of works for the Online Video Festival. The idea for this festival arose before the pandemic, and it is being held at a fitting moment, when everyone is changing their habits and beginning new ways to appreciate art. This festival is an innovative initiative on the international scene, showing videos on a platform that is perfectly suited to the nature of this medium of communication – online.
 
Video art is an artistic movement that bears the name of a communication media – initially analog but now digital – which since its advent has gone on to become the main means for human relationships in current society. In its early years, video competed with the movie camera, offering advantages in terms of speed, mobility and cost. Its use was popularized and it gained the form as we know it today, with a language all its own. The image in movement acquired a social force greater than words. Precisely for this reason its artistic appropriation is legitimate.
 
Historically, the term “video art” encompasses everything from geometric and abstract contents to documentaries and social records – a vast spectrum of aesthetic and semantic approaches. For this reason, various subdesignations for video art have emerged, since video is a medium rather than an aesthetic movement: everything fits within video art. The criterion for choosing the 32 videos presented here prioritized the aspect of historical experimentalism, with a view to how historical artists from various parts of the world aesthetically approached the new medium called video. As you can see, they were very creative, and anticipated visual solutions that we use yet today with admirable freedom. These artists thus furnished the recipe for the creation of many of the current works of video art. Some used technological limitations of their respective time as creative elements, for example, the degree of image resolution. The social content of the videos was a second-order criterion, directly linked to the innovative use of the video in the period when each work was conceived.
 
These videos are spread throughout the current media platforms. Recovering them, putting them side-by-side, allows the viewer to understand the true artistic value of these works. And we must bear in mind that just as they exist today in the social media, tomorrow they can be deleted. The consideration of these videos as works of art, together with traditional artworks, ensures their survival in high-quality collections and museums.
 
The innovative format of this show, which has presented video works over a period of months, for the public to watch and rewatch, is a very clear positioning in relation to the excessive commercialization of current art. This initiative was constructed as a joint effort together with Luciana, a partner in the selection of this show, with whom I have worked on cultural projects for more than 20 years. Its presentation has been extended until the month of April. Welcome to the show! We would like very much to hear your freely expressed opinion. Thank you."
 
Analivia
December 2020
 
  • Thumb 014349b

    Héctor Zamora, Photokinetic, 2020

  • Thumb 014379b

    Re-Construtivo, 2020

    Analivia Cordeiro

  • Thumb 014358

    Forest Warrior – Xondaro Ka’aguy Reguá, 2020

    ANGRY duo (Bruno Silvia e Gabe Maruyama)

  • Thumb 014359

    Ouragualamalma, 2020

    Éder Santos

  • Thumb 014348

    Encruzidança, 2018

    Kelly Santos e Naná Prudêncio

  • Thumb vidbits

    Vidbits, 1974

    Alvy Ray Smith

  • Thumb peitoprumoquadro004

    Do Peito ao Prumo, 2020

    Tothi dos Santos

  • Thumb frame

    The Trip, 1976

    José Roberto Aguilar

  • Thumb sunstone

    Sunstone, 1979

    Alvy Ray Smith

  • Thumb frame

    Tudo Está Dito, 1974

    Augusto de Campos

  • Thumb hommage a  mondrian a

    Hommage a Mondrian, 1972

    Jean Otth

  • Thumb frame

    Flesh I and Flesh II, 2004

    Analivia Cordeiro

  • Thumb 011463

    Limiar, 2015

    Regina Silveira

  • Thumb homenagem gs 4

    Homenagem a George Segal, 1985

    Lenora de Barros

  • Thumb bronze revirado pablo lobato instagram 03

    Bronze Revirado, 2011

    Pablo Lobato

  • Thumb frame landscape for white squares

    Landscape for White Squares, 1972

    Anhtony McCall

  • Thumb screen shot 2020 08 21 at 09.09.32

    VT Preparado AC/JC, 1985

    Walter Silveira e Pedro Vieira

  • Thumb screen shot 2020 05 15 at 09.18.39 2

    Places of Power, Waterfall, 2013

    Marina Abramovic

  • Thumb 3

    Una Milla de Cruces Sobre el Pavimento, 1979

    Lotty Rosenfeld

  • Thumb frame alvos

    Alvos, 2017

    Lenora de Barros

  • Thumb frame ituporanga

    Ituporanga, 2010

    Caio Reisewitz

  • Thumb frame nas coxas

    Nas Coxas, 2018

    Héctor Zamora

  • Thumb frame non plus ultra

    Non Plus Ultra, 1985

    Tadeu Jungle

  • Thumb frame hacasas

    Há Casas, 2018

    Rochelle Costi

  • Thumb opcao 1 frame 0 45

    0=45, 1974

    Analivia Cordeiro

  • Thumb frame dormindo acordada

    Dormindo Acordada, 2011

    Fabiana de Barros & Michel Favre

  • Thumb frame earthwork 10.23.58

    Earthwork, 1972

    Anhtony McCall

  • Thumb frame pulsar

    O Pulsar, 1975

    Augusto de Campos

  • Thumb framelp

    Actualidades / Breaking News, 2016

    Liliana Porter

  • Thumb screen shot 2020 05 07 at 09.30.43

    Campo, 1976

    Regina Silveira

  • Thumb tumitinhas 1

    Tumitinhas, 1998

    Eder Santos

  • Thumb frame corda

    Corda, 2014

    Pablo Lobato

  • Anthony McCall "Landscape for White Squares" 1972
    1/10

Here you will see historical videos. While some are being shown practically for the first time, others are well-known in the history of art. In its more than 50 years of existence, video art has been a media characterized by its enormous flexibility. The formats of these videos have gone through more than ten variations: since the beginning, with the boxy U-Matic or Betacam cassettes, up to the small, modern-day pen drives with their mammoth capacities. It is interesting to learn about the transformations these artworks have undergone, as the current accessibility to technology, coupled with the possibility of knowing the original sources, allows us to understand that it was precisely these tools that led to the current format of our world and our perception. This exhibition is aimed providing the spectator with knowledge about these now outmoded devices and formats, while pointing out how this awareness can help us to better understand the artistic results.

 

The means of showing these works has also varied a lot: today there are countless platforms ranging from cell phones, with their small dimensions, up to 4K Ultra HD projectors, of great size and exceptional quality. In this moment of social isolation, the video camera has become the main medium of visual communication, the only channel between us and the people with whom we want to communicate. With this in mind, we can evaluate the meaning of expressing oneself through a camera.

 

The use of the camera is now so generalized that we no longer perceive how much it modifies and conditions what we want to say. Now that it has substituted real physical contact, we can evaluate the meaning of how a person expresses him- or herself through a camera. We can understand, like never before, the way that artists have chosen to use the resources of video in these historical works, which, as pointed out above, are resignified today. In their own time, these were cutting-edge resources in the hands of only a few people, while today video technology is part of our everyday life.

 

 

Video imposes many rules on us. The main one is that everything we wish to express needs to be inside of a rectangle, present on all the video display devices, ranging from cell phone devices to large-format video projectors. Even so, besides the basic challenge of conveying a message, the filmmaker should somehow spur the spectator to imagine what is taking place outside the rectangle. It is a game within a dictatorship: the dictatorship of the rectangle. When we are forced to frame the world within a bidimensional rectangular space we condition our brain to think in this way and our perception is altered according to these standards. We see reality as something to be adapted to our main current instrument of expression: video.

 

The consequences of this rule go beyond the formal aspect: video art restored the frame to the artwork, which had formerly existed in painting, but since the early 20th century was being gradually eliminated by contemporary trends – for example, by art installations and conceptual art. The historical video art used the rules of classical art and had the same framed format as painting. In what sense was it innovative? This is a question for you to answer while watching the videos.

 

 

Video consists of visual content plus sound, while the real world offers us a wider range of sensory stimuli: smells, sensations on the skin, types of touching, and more. The big challenge for the artists, therefore, is to convey the richness and complexity of reality with the more constrained resources of this technology. It is intriguing to observe how the genius and talent of a given artist can arouse sensations in us that range outside the restrictive technical solutions and even human experience. Through this rectangle and these audiovisual resources, each artist creates a poetics and can compose a unique artwork. In each video featured in the show it is possible to catch sight of underlying historical and artistic aspects that reveal the prevailing mindset of each era in regard to the perception of art and the values that went into its making. For this reason, each of these artworks can be watched more than once, and at each opportunity a new perception will arise, just as it does in the case of paintings. While a painting presents a still image on canvas (a sort of screen), video presents the image in movement: the basic principle of video art.

 

Showing video art online is a legitimate medium for its exhibition, transmitting the work in its full artistic significance, since it was originally conceived to be shown in video format. Watching online can therefore provide a genuine and authentic exhibition experience, filling us with ideas and thoughts while wholly conveying the work’s high-quality poetics.

 

While watching the videos, you can allow yourself to be transported to the period in question: the 1970s, ’80s, ’90s or the 2000’s, while simultaneously observing their universal and timeless qualities.

 

 

Analivia Cordeiro, March 2020

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Analivia CordeiroPhD, Dancer, Choreographer, Video Artist, Architect and Body Language Researcher. Considered to be the first Brazilian Videoartist (1973), as well as a Computer-dance pioneer, she is also responsible for the creation of many multimedia works, the human movement notation software Nota-Anna and a system for literacy in Portuguese language. www.analivia.com.br

Soon you can follow the full program of the exhibition in this page