We were treated to some very good vdo footage of brazilian avante-garde performance art.
two works of daniel saraiva...in the tradition of 'latin american and chinese perfomance art' saravira's works are heavy textual. in the first vdo the artist played out the role of a catalyst. he kick-started a question, frame a point of consideration,he used the raw untreated cow hide both as a camaflouge and as a metaphor. in the spirit of relational art the artist dramatically crawled....dragged himself into a cowshed and waited........waited for responses from 'random stranger'. his strangers were cows....they crowded around his crouched/lying figure...confuse beteen familiarity and a stranger...
saraiva's second vdo was a take on the violence of branding in which the again uses the raw untreated cow hide both as a camaflouge and as a metaphor. situated in an rainforest river bed the artist swims ashore...... we encounter a bonfire....and see a pile of metaphor and camoflouge collapsing in front of it....still in anticipation....the audience is stireed as the romantic imagary of a romantic river side bonfire is tranformed in to potential scene of torture as the camera zooms in a branding iron.....the sizzling sound of the iron brandin the raw hide...threw up for the the brutal side non-vegitarianism and animal husbandary......that many of us are party to .as if to ensure there is no complacence...or to mock or relief about the artist not getting hurt......the next act of branding was on the artist's body itself.......even through the relative distance of a vdo...daniel saraiva managed to hit us hard on our stomacs....
daniel saraiva makes his comments specifically from the context of brazilian modernity and its impact on the value for animal life .....and ecology. focusing on the body of the cow.....the artist comments on how the animal is increasinly turning into a staple diet.....and how duing the dry season...families are forced to kill the animal who are otherwise their friend...
Comapered to saraiva work.....Carolina Cordeiro's vdo on focussing on the body....failed to pack a punch.....the context was ambiguous...one wonders why a stereotypical 'perfect' body was chosen as the site of work...even the formal value of the vdo was not captivating.
the our resident artist paulo nazareth showed vdos of his works.....like saravira paulo works in the realm....of contextual art. in the first vdo we witnessed paulo walking into a crowded resturant blind folded ( i use the word for the lack of a better word....blinded would be misleading....though blind folded contains within it the metaphoric value of 'blinded'). he wears two slabs of meat over his eyes....at a time when only the very rich could afford to have more than one helpin of meat in a resurant.....eveen that was prohibitively expensive.....'a meat is gold' slogan was coined in brazil to to able to capture the distance of the commn man from the commodity...blinded by money....na na that is a way to simplistic metaphor.
in the discussion that followed paulo commented that subsequently the prizes of beef have fallen to a huge extent....and now beef is strruggling it out with soya to emerge as the staple food of the brazilians...........and this developemen has largely changed to naurescape of brazil...with vast stretches of the rain forest transfrmed to grazing grounds
paulo next vdo showed him in near ragged clothes wwakkin down the streets melo.....one soon noticed that red was a ddominant colour in his dress and was left wonderin if it stood as a motif for something diffrent........his feet were also coloured red abd apart from walking his other 'act' was that of constantly fixing his rubber slippers.......
paulo told us this story about the people from the rural areas comming into the city for work did not have access to transport....hence had to walk really long distances.....they were known as 'red footed' people as their feet woluld inevitably swell up and become red......
both the was a dark critiqu of the developement model of brazil.....done with a playfuluse of context....yet heavily loaded with the textual...a treat for the mind.....butstuff to shake up some slumber.... :-)
rahul bhattacharya
Joint Secretary
Performers Independent
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let the river flow
Joint Secretary
Performers Independent
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let the river flow
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