São Paulo, Brazil

The 18th edition of the Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil celebrates its three-decade anniversary featuring exhibitions and public activities.

The Southern Panoramas competitive show features 106 works by 94 artists from 32 different countries (nine from Latin America, seven from Africa, five from the Middle East, five from Southeast Asia, four from Eastern Europe and two from Oceania). Shortlisted works include installations, photographs, video installations, drawings, sculptures, paintings, artist books, and videos on show on the 2nd floor of the Sesc Pompeia sports complex, designed by the Italian-Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi, and also celebrating its 30th anniversary. This year, however, the Festival will also branch out into Cinesesc, where eight competitive show video programs will be screened.

The show intends to be a platform articulating artistic practices, themes, discourses, procedures and strategies. A universe of over 2,000 projects submitted during the open call were reviewed by the curatorial board, comprised of Solange Farkas, director and curator of Associação Cultural Videobrasil, Eduardo de Jesus, artist and professor at PUC-MG, Fernando Oliva, curator and professor at FAAP, Julia Rebouças, curator at the Inhotim Institute and co-curator of the 9th Mercosur Biennial, and Diego Mattos, assistant curator.

Similar to past editions, a comprehensive show will converse with art from the Southern geopolitical scene, which is the main focus of the competitive show. In this 18th edition of the Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil, however, the highlight is the Festival’s three decades of experimentation and risk-taking, since 1983, covered in the show 30 Years. The focal points of this history are presented in different sections. The show is capped off by restagings of performances by Chelpa Ferro and Alexandre da Cunha.

Housed in Sesc Pompeia’s Warehouse, the show includes a video installation comprising 234 monitors, showing 16 hours of footage hand-picked from over 5,000 hours worth of videos. The Public Programs activities will take place in the same venue, featuring approximately 60 national and international guests and 25 cross-sectional activities with unique formats, focusing on issues addressed in the competitive show, and throughout the history of the Festival. A Video Library has also been set up in the Warehouse, offering the public nearly 1,300 works from the collection of Associação Cultural Videobrasil, which is co-producing the Festival withSesc São Paulo.

• Open:
  Wednesday, 06 November 2013
• Close:
  Sunday, 02 February 2014
• Address:
  Various venues
• Mail:
   info@videobrasil.org.br
• Phone:
  +55 11 3871 7700
• Web:
  International Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil
• Photo credits:
  1. Ali Cherri, Pipe Dreams [2012, videoinstalação], Divulgação/Associação Cultural Videobrasil; 2. Enrique Ramírez, Brisas [2008, vídeo, 13”], Divulgação/Associação Cultural Videobrasil; 3. TaoHui, Mongolism [2010, vídeo, 31’1”], Divulgação/Associação Cultural Videobrasil; 4. Akram Zaatari, The End of Time [2013, vídeo, 14’14”], Divulgação/Associação Cultural Videobrasil.