Kultuurileht, December 9, 1994
Festival guest Patrick Prado claims to dream of the day when Africans
have enough money to be active in video. Perhaps they will turn the
experience of the rest of the world upside down like they have done
in contemporary music.
Prado also refers to the sacral dimension of video art: "Ten years
ago in Nancy I said that television is similar to a stained glass
window, and thus it is related to catholic art. The similarity is in
that the light comes from behind the picture, from the picture
itself. It is not merely a reflection. This picture is not earthly,
but rather divine and revelational."
Prado's installation "The Third Millennium: The Girlfriend's Room" at
the Vaal Gallery, which seems even too narrative and clear, speaks of
a different kind of experience. "To Devouring Love" - is this not too
concrete in this environment accustomed to displaying artistic
messages through a shroud of mist? In respect to problems touching
Prado - "cannibalism, sects, the immorality of recent times, the
world as a zoo", which naturally are not the only ones - we can
merely nod politely. Here, however, we are far from sympathizing. All
"that" is somewhere else for us.
It is possible to obtain a brief insight into the history of the
Lucerne video festivals. Works awarded over the years reveal the
broad, practically limitless scope of what is referred to as video
art. Compare Godard's narrative video/film, only occasionally veering
into the purely visual universe which does not express itself in
words and compares earthly reality, with Distel/Guyer's scratch, in
other words, a work based on picture material "collected" from
television, which is an excellent example of narration using only
ingenious editing of picture and sound!
Unfortunately, only a narrow selection of Montbeliard Belfort's video
center productions can be seen, in which David Larcher's "Videovoid"
is like a lexicon for the use of electronic media. It is as if
reality is totally broken down into its imaginary elementary parts
using concepts of reality and text to form a "universe devoid of
video", an electronic opposite reality, filling it with floating
fragmentary relics of form. To visualize that which cannot be
visualized or to die from the fear of nonexistence and the void, this
seems to be the question posed by this figurative animated work using
text, where remnants of electronic apparent reality clog the
screen-outlet pipe.
Lucas Bambozzi's text "Video Art in Brazil, One Story Similar to
Others" tells of truly long known things: the struggle with insipid
television intended for the average taste, the use of video for the
documentation of performance and body art, sore points of society,
beggars and outcasts which TV will not touch. This has also led to
the emergence of solitary groupings of producers who are more
interested in anarchistic and underground programs.
Bambozzi calls Tadeu Jungle's "Rithm(o)z" harsh, a rather mild
definition. This video tests the limits of many a viewer and may very
well knock people off their chairs. This is one of the extremes of
the selection of video art themes where muses fall silent in dismay
or stinking gags are stuffed into their mouths.
Beyond this year's main topic of discussion regarding the question of
the limits of art, the question of art as a whole arises here. How
much must an artist "make" or "process" reality for it to become
sufficiently "artistic"? Jungle seems to radically abandon this in
places and to even emphasize and relish "not making",
"nonintervention" and also the possible bewilderment of the viewer.
The final conclusion is that reality is in essence pornographic.
Sandra Kogut, whose "Parabolic People" refreshed the gaze of the
public here at the first video festival, can again be found in the
selection of Brazilian videos. The author, a maker of commercials,
poses almost the same kinds of questions that Peeter Linnap poses
about Estonia with his exhibition "Le Top 50". "Do you know anything
about Brazil?", "What nationality of people live here?", and so on.
Again, the result is sad because few know, or if they do know, then
what they know is something else. Nobody wants to know anything about
anybody, at least not that which they themselves consider important
regarding themselves.
"De Outro Lado da Sua Casa" is a documentary video about Sao Paulo's
outcasts living under bridges. "Brazil does not belong to us," they
claim, which is natural. They see themselves as secondary, miserable
vagabonds who do not own even that which could be called their home.
The interest level of the video is raised by the placement of a
homeless person in the role of the interviewer.
We in our dim Nordic existence with our rainy season lasting almost
nine months would crave more sunshine and light through which to
escape melancholy. "De Outro..." diminishes our craving by showing
dejected, soiled people in a temperate land, who live in their own
city without identification documents and must settle for
fingerprints as their only means of identification. Melancholy in
temperate lands is even more oppressive!
The problems of transsexuals is a theme repeatedly harped on even in
European documentary videos, but when it is combined with the status
of beggars, the result is truly depressing. People cannot be
themselves! Poverty, stupidity or inborn psychological deviations
prevent them from doing so.
The most "cultural" and video art-specific of Brazilian videos is
Ardunes's "Nome", consisting of calligraphy, collage, video,
photography and metamorphoses of children's drawings. It is like
teaching material illustrating the scope and conception of video art.
The same goes for "Marly Normal", a document of a day in the life of
a Sao Paulo female bureaucrat which in the end is absorbed into the
monitor.
The word "identity" is frequently found in annotations and perhaps
also in the range of problems of Brazilian videos. Indeed, what kind
of country is this Brazil after all, where moreover Portuguese, not
Brazilian, is spoken and where many Indians live? Who do they
consider themselves to be in this melting pot of nationalities? Even
we on our supposedly 5000 year old patch of land could arrogantly ask
that question as Estonian speaking, Estonian minded Estonians.
Portuguese speaking, Indian blooded Brazilian mindedness, however,
barely has an inkling of the existence of other mentalities,
countries or languages.
"Desobtruindo os Canal Tudo", an example of pirate television or
scratch video, leads by way of its rebelliousness directly to
vulgarities and the pornographic and excremental nature of realism.
All this, naturally, while alluding to television and this also in
reference to it. Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, as the same kind of
people fed up with TV, have presented the concept of "excremental
television" to characterize the omnivorous and all-excreting essence
of TV. "Desobstruindo..." appears to be the complete manifestation of
this idea, illustrating the above mentioned with the authentic
presentation of the appropriate process, which appears to inversely
correspond to the attitude of the average citizen dependent on
television. All of this is naturally claimed to be prophylactic shock
therapy.
We can perhaps say after watching the Brazilian videos that the
screen is no longer what we are accustomed to seeing it as.
Estonian video art, or the more or less independent production of
Estonian figurative artists and television directors, appears
hopefully to be finding not only humanitarian support and the
opportunity for presentation at these festivals.
Although intellectual and moral maturity has been achieved long ago,
things appear to be far from meeting elementary needs technically and
economically. A so called video creativity center furnished with even
the most minimal equipment, a subsidiary or independent studio where
practice in this sphere can be engaged in, is so far lacking. It
should hardly be a place merely for the satisfaction of the curiosity
and passion for playing of artists. It is also certain that the
combination of technical means with imagination is as much an
economic as an intellectual problem.
One point of emphasis regarding Estonian authors is the production of
television professionals represented by A. Ellmann and J.
Nõgisto. The other point of emphasis is the production of
artists. J. Toomik's "The Road to Sao Paulo" is a video that
functioned as a part of an installation at the Sao Paulo biennial.
The effect produced by the dialogue between this work and the
Brazilian videos remains to be decided by the viewers.
The videos of E.-L. Semper and R. Kurvitz are also, among other
things, promising examples of thus desirable and exceptional
cooperation between Estonian Television and artists.
Raivo Kelomees
Translated by Peeter Tammisto