Friday 23 March 2007, 19.00

Programme duration 75 min

Focusing mainly on the work of the 1980s 'independents', this programme includes key videos by groups such as TVDO and TV Viva alongside more personal works and Vincent Carelli's project with native tribes. These pieces reflect the post-military democratic conjuncture in Brazil and the vibrant cultural scene it spawned.

Introduced by the curator with a presentation by Simone Michelin, artist, researcher and teacher at the Fine Arts department UFRJ (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro).

Programme:

VT Preparado AC/JC, Pedro Vieira & Walter Silveira for TVDO, 1986, 10 min

The work of the poet Augusto de Campos meets the music of John Cage. The words ‘silence’ and ‘violence’ flash on the black and white screen. Featuring Arrigo Bernabé (a key figure of the Brazilian experimental music scene of the 1980s), Waly Salomão, Décio Pignatari and Haroldo de Campos.  

Quimanguinada, Ruth Slinger, 1982, 3 min

The simple act of eating a mango becomes an existential gesture of irony and pleasure acted out by the artist herself.

Heróis 2, TVDO, 1987, 32 min

A compilation of TVDO’s seminal series Heróis da Decadência. A meditative, funny, irreverent ‘variety programme’ which makes references to just about everything, presented in a format that looks like a combination of the cinema of Gláuber Rocha, the formalism of Dziga Vertov and the anarchic buffoonery of the late Brazilian TV icon and electronic clown, Chacrinha.

Amigo Urso (Bear Friend), TV Viva, 1985, 11 min 45 sec

Reporter Brivaldo, from the programme Bom Dia Déo, asks people in the periphery of Recife if they have ever been cheated on ('horned') by their partners. Cornélia Chinfrim, a female reporter played by the same actor, asks people the same question in the bourgeois beach setting of Boa Viagem. Unabashedly populist and echoing Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1965 survey of Italian sexual habits, Comizi D'Amore, the video manages to speak the language of the subjects shown while subtly and sometimes poignantly illustrating issues related to masculinity, marriage, women's rights and social class.

Morfas, Regina Silveira, 1980, 6 min 50 sec

Part of Silveira’s multi-media series of works in which the artist deforms images of everyday objects.

The Spirit of TV, Vincent Carelli for Video in the Villages, 1990, 18 min

Beginning with the arrival by canoe of a TV and a VCR in their village, this tape documents the emotions and reflections of the Waiápi of Mariry as they encounter their own image and that of others for the first time. It shows their reactions and remarks during and after screenings of tape from their chief's first trip to Brasília to speak to the government, news broadcasts, and videos on various other Brazilian native people. It records the taping session directed by Wai-Wai for the various villages in his territory.

Tate Modern  Starr Auditorium
£5, booking recommended