Português
Satélite #3
Sexo, Mentiras e Videotape
“Um mentiroso é a segunda pior forma de um ser humano”, diz um personagem. Alguém pergunta: “Qual a primeira?” e rapidamente vem a resposta: “Advogados”.
É num misto entre lentidão e silêncio – com algumas pitadas precisas de diálogos ácido – que se move o filme “Sexo, mentiras e videotape”, do diretor estadunidense Steven Soderbergh, de 1989. A narrativa gira em torno da noção de desejo, confiança, verdade e virtualidade; não esqueçamos que a década de 1980 foi o momento da história onde, justamente, o acesso às câmeras portáteis de vídeo começa a se popularizar – assim como a ficção em torno de nossas próprias imagens filmadas.
Trazendo algumas questões do filme para o contexto contemporâneo, é interessante e assustador perceber a dimensão que o chamado “videotape” tem em nossas vidas. Seja nas câmeras de vigilância, seja nas nossas telas (black mirrors) de diferentes tamanhos, somos rondad_s por imagens em movimento de forma contínua. Especialmente no que diz respeito às redes sociais, as outras palavras que acompanham o título do filme também marcam a sua presença – o “sexo”, quando não surge de forma literal, pode ser visto na ansiedade pelo desejo. Dentro do restrito círculo d_s agentes das artes visuais, há uma constante pressão em produzir/postar imagens que gerem “engajamento”; eis a mania dos takeovers. Como tomar um espaço e chamar a atenção se algo não se apresentar de forma sedutora?
Enquanto isso, a noção de “verdade” cada vez mais escancara a sua falência – como fugirmos de um certo estado de miragem no qual parecemos estar continuamente? Como analisar _s personagens fictícios que construímos em torno de nós mesm_s por meio de textos, imagens, likes e causas que ejetamos diariamente em nossas bolhas virtuais? Em um contexto pandêmico – ou seja, em um presente onde o nosso contato é, como nunca foi, essencialmente virtual –, quais os limites da autoexposição para se preservar a saúde mental? Eles existem ou mais vale subvertermos o título do célebre festival brasileiro de documentários, admitir que “é tudo caô” e mergulhar fundo no espiral barroco do anseio pela iconofilia?
Levando em consideração que o Pivô Satélite é um projeto institucional/curatorial voltado para a internet, nesta terceira edição acreditei ser importante reunir artistas que já costumam refletir sobre esses tópicos pelo viés da virtualidade. Laura Fraiz, Eduardo Montelli, Ventura Profana e New Memeseum constantemente colocam em xeque os limites entre documento e ficção. A partir de vídeos, áudios, gifs, fotografias, instalações, pintura e memes, esse grupo explora constantemente a sua autoimagem e joga para o olhar do público questionamentos sobre fé, narcisismo, repetição, narrativas hegemônicas, melodrama e crítica institucional.
Da cultura milennial a cultura Z – sem medo de ser cringe e nunca cansad_s de ser sexy -, seus olhares embebidos de décadas de cultura pop são viciados em nos seduzir. Como atent_s espectadores que também são, esse grupo de artistas ocupará o Pivô Satélite a partir de episódios; sejam eles a cada dez dias, semanais ou diários, o importante é utilizar o espaço dado para experimentar e, de forma fragmentada, envolver o público.
Escutemos seus cantos de sereia e gozemos com os absurdos e prazeres que suas imagens digitais – mesmo perante o caos pandêmico – ainda nos proporcionam.
Satélite #3
Satélite #3
Ending this cycle of occupations at Pivô Satélite, we host the museum that has stirred up Brazilian (and foreign) social media since its inauguration – or, so to speak, its first post – on July 31, 2020. In about a year and a half, New Memeseum has grown in the virtual architectures of social media and currently has nearly one hundred and fifty thousand followers. This museum's collection is unusual in terms of the status of art, but extremely common when it comes to how Brazilians use social networks: memes are their objects of attention, safeguarding and dissemination. The perspective of the management team of this museum is very precise; the anonymous agents behind the page are interested in reflecting specifically on the relationship between humor and the absurdities of the visual arts systems in Brazil.
As the great Daniel Santiago wrote in 1982, “Brazil is my abyss”. It is through this mountain range of constant falls that visual arts professionals in Brazil travel – especially those who inherited trauma and no material possessions. In this occupation of Pivô Satélite’s space, New Memeseum’s managers turned their attention to an asset that affects the Brazilian population at the moment: cooking gas cylinders. Based on an open call via Instagram and its usual surgical view, the museum presents a collection of images of cooking gas cylinders decorated by hand in a myriad of stiles. Mixed with these images, phrases and memes problematize the rising prices of this object that is so essential for the country’s domestic economy.
This occupation is based, therefore, on a mosaic of images, phrases and situations that dance according to the absurdities orchestrated by the Brazilian government in recent years. The cooking gas cylinder thus becomes an icon, a problem and ready-made. Those who laugh last laugh best? That’s what they say, but when it comes to the visual arts working class – which also suffers from the prices hikes in cooking gas cylinders, let’s not forget – crying and laughter seem to become one and the same. Let us cry, then.
Parables can be found in literature, in images, and in the ways we name objects and proper names. Ventura Profana is, since her provocative name, a researcher of parables. Her gaze turns to the biblical narratives, the tabernacles’ architectures to come, the many iconographies of the mass cultures in which Christianity is included, the biblical verses that rhyme with the choruses of her songs.
In her proposed occupation for Pivô Satellite, the artist continues her interest in the collage and juxtaposition of images that make the narratives surrounding protestantism in Brazil and the world more complex – what are the relationships between the soccer fields and the lambs of God?
On photographs of her body and close-ups of the destroyed miniature images of Christ the Redeemer, the artist writes: “come and you will still see abominations greater than these”, quoting Ezekiel 8:15. To be in communion is to be engaged in an act of love; the video “Tabernaculo da edificação” is about this collective journey, the grand finale of her occupation. The images begin with the voice of Ventura Profana’s grandmother saying “My Father, how nice it is to evangelize”. It is as nice to see, throughout the video, the artist’s joy building her own temple, in a movement contrary to cisnormativity and whiteness, alongside her friends Bianca Kalutor and Rainha F. To build it is essential to establish a communion of our hands, voices and routes – which, as Ventura and his grandmother talk at the end of the video, often should not be an easy path. The artist’s poetics, therefore, seems to be a poetics of buildings. May the audience learn from her gestures and her courage to build their own temples.
A bee, fireworks, print-screens of Instagram messages, a hole being dug, a wigged Pikachu and the sun – these images are only a small sample of the cascade of photos and gifs that constitute Eduardo Montelli’s occupation of Pivô Satellite.
In Só sei me transformar, apenas não sei em que [All I Know is to Transform Just Don’t Know What Into], the artist, working under the programming restrictions imposed by Pivô platform, introduces a vertical accumulation: one gif made from a collage of different images will be posted daily. Some images were photographed by the artist, sometimes depicting his own body, whilst others were appropriated from a myriad of sources.
Eduardo Montelli’s research plays with the notion of the absurd, using a great dose of acid humor and making us reflect on the hyper-stimulation of social media, keeping our anxieties in check. If Kurt Schwitters, in his famous Merzbau (1927-1937), was interested in the installation space and the waste produced by growing industrialization, Montelli is focused on creating provisional architectures in the internet and collages using what we often call electronic waste. What makes us look at some images as refuse and at others with affection?
“A goddess, a madwoman, a witch – she is amazing” goes a famous 1990s Brazilian pop song. When I look at Laura Fraiz’s work I immediately think about this song. Why?
Perhaps because of the way she imprints a positive message onto her videos, where she plays with different visual and musical cultures around her family history – between Brazil and Venezuela; or perhaps because of the way she films her body, presenting herself in a position of domination in contrast with potential expectations for her self-image as a woman; or, finally, perhaps because of the way she experiments with an audio-visual language that incorporates video-clips, trash cinema and documentary.
Her new work, commissioned for Sex, Lies, and Videotape, is called No es una novela [It’s not a Soap Opera]. Divided into three episodes, we follow the misadventures of the artist looking at an archive of images of herself. What happens when Snow White becomes Maleficent? What happens when the object of voyeurism is turned into the first person? This July, the public is in charge of reflecting on these issues and more.
