The artist from Rio de Janeiro Diambe da Silva is showing two new videos in Pivô Satellite’s second edition, Einstein Remix and joão VI, pça XV (da série Devolta), as part of the project O Assombro dos Trópicos [The Haunting of the Tropics], curated by Victor Gorgulho.

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The visual poem Einstein Remix (2018), by Brazilian artist Ricardo Aleixo, is the departure point for Diambe da Silva’s eponymous project. The poem follows the shape of a chessboard and its title carries the combination of two apparently incompatible elements: a scientist and a type of contemporary music that implies the deconstruction and reorganization of existing songs. In the artist’s words: “I asked several people to read the poem and each one of them vocalized it in their own way, creating a type of choreography”. Taking choreography and collective construction as possible strategies to move freely across different environments, Diambe opens possibilities for experiences through the repetition of intentional gestures, accepting errors and accidents,  while creating new situations for the interaction of bodies in space. Einstein Remix is ​​  shaped in the participants’ homes, which the artist refers to as “comparsas”, roughly translated as close partners. The poem’s modular composition is replicated on video call screens unfolding into a cacophonic overlap of their voices.

joão VI, pça XV (da série Devolta), in turn, belongs to a series of performative actions known as “ambushes”, in which the artist creates a circle of fire around sculptures and monuments that enhance the Brazilian colonial past. The second version of the action – held firstly in 2020 in the center of Rio de Janeiro -, brings together six  “comparsas” to intervene on the statue of former king D. João VI,  which has been occupying its public plinth since 1965. The group sets fire on a circle of gasoline soaked clothes, enacting a  kind of war ritual. “The ever present slave heritage  in this city and the amount of public sculptures that relate to this tragic past would justify extending this series endlessly”, says the artist.

In addition to Diambe da Silva, Anarca Filmes, Rafael Bqueer and the duo Davi Pontes & Wallace Ferreira are part of the project O Assombro dos Trópicos. Each artist occupies the platform with individual proposals for a month. Created in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, the digital platform Pivô Satellite is a kind of project room e housed in the Pivô website and contributes to the creation of a support network for the local artistic community. Its program is  created by artists and curators invited by the institution and comprises artistic proposals in different formats, conceived especially for digital media.