Associação Cultural Videobrasil

Videobrasil Collection at the Cambridge is a partnership of Associação Cultural Videobrasil and Residência Artística Cambridge whose resident artists create a map on Platform VB—Videobrasil’s education and research tool—relating to the work they are conducting in their residencies. Based on the mapping, which will get published on Platform:VB, a handful of Videobrasil Collection pieces were selected for a showing at Ocupação Hotel Cambridge, the squatter settlement in São Paulo.

Video art pieces picked by resident artist duo Jaime Lauriano and Raphael Escobar for their mapping will be shown on September 23, 7:30pm. The selection features artworks by Clara Ianni, Chulayarnnon Siriphol, Patrícia Moran, Regina Aguilar, and Regina Parra. After the screening, there will be a conversation with the residents and the audience. The artists will show the audience their mappings, which will be available on http://plataforma.videobrasil.org.br/en/#mapeamentos that same day.
 

Jaime Lauriano (São Paulo, 1985)
Visual artist. In his trademark exercises in synthesis between the contents of his research and formalization strategies, he urges us to examine the power structures contained in the production of History. Through audiovisual work, objects, and critiques, he evinces how society’s subjectivation processes are shaped by the violent ties that connect powerful institutions, State control, and citizens. As such, his productions attempt to foreground historical traumas that have been relegated to the past and to confined archives, and in doing so they set out to revise and collectively rewrite History.
He completed a degree in arts from Centro Universitário Belas Artes in São Paulo (2010). His works are in the collections of the São Paulo State Art Gallery (Pinacoteca) and of Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR). Major solo exhibitions include Nessa terra, em se plantando, tudo dá, at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2015); Autorretrato em Branco sobre Preto, at Galeria leme in São Paulo, Brazil (2015); Impedimento, at Centro Cultural São Paulo in São Paulo, Brazil (2014); Em Exposição at Sesc in São Paulo, Brazil (2013); major group exhibitions include Totemonumento, at Galeria Leme in São Paulo, Brazil (2016); 10th Bamako Encouters, at the National Museum in Bamako, Mali (2015); Empresa Colonial, at Caixa Cultural in São Paulo, Brazil (2015); Frente à Euforia, at Oficina Cultural Oswald de Andrade in São Paulo, Brazil (2015). Jaime Lauriano lives and works in São Paulo.

Raphael Escobar (São Paulo, 1987)
An artist holding a degree in visual arts from Centro Universitário Belas Artes in São Paulo and currently pursuing a postgraduate degree in Brazilian Studies: Society, Education and Culture at the Foundation School of Sociology and Politics in São Paulo. Since 2009, he has conducted non-formal education work in socially vulnerable or politically conflicted contexts such as juvenile correctional facility Fundação CASA, open-air crack market Cracolândia, and homeless shelters. This work feeds into and activates much of his art. His work has been featured in exhibitions including Totemonumento, at Galeria Leme, São Paulo (2016); X São Paulo Architecture Biennale, at Centro Cultural São Paulo (2013); A Alma é o Segredo do Negócio, at Funarte, São Paulo (2013); Múltiplos 397, at Ateliê397, São Paulo (2012). He has undertaken artist residencies including Muros: Territórios Compartilhados, in Salvador (2013); and Obras em construção, at Casa das Caldeiras, São Paulo (2011). Raphael Escobar lives and works in São Paulo.

Cambridge Artist Residency Program

A project focusing on the development of art and culture proposals at Ocupação Hotel Cambridge, a squatter settlement in downtown São Paulo, spanning from March 2016 to January 2017.

A residency program geared towards collaborative practices, it works in tandem with the local community and with partners whose research work relates to aspects of the day-to-day at the settlement, its story, and the modes of inscription and ways in which it influences the city’s dynamics.

The project arose as curators Juliana Caffé and Yudi Rafael joined forces to articulate research and activities in the context of the squatted hotel. To that end, the curator duo invited four artists and a writer to complete four residencies lasting three months each—Ícaro Lira, Jaime Lauriano and Raphael Escobar, Virgínia de Medeiros, and Julián Fuks. As of artist Ícaro Lira’s residency, anthropologist Alex Flynn also joined the project as a guest curator.

The program includes several public activities in the building’s public areas during each resident’s stint, plus a publishing project developed alongside the curators and guests, whose outcome gets distributed free onsite. 

Selected artworks

As pérolas, como te escrevi
2011, video installation
Regina Parra

This Videobrasil-commissioned piece was created during a residency at São Paulo’s Casa Tomada from April to July, 2011. Illegal immigrants to São Paulo from Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Congo, and Guinea are invited to read excerpts from Amerigo Vespucci’s Mundus Novus letter. Written between 1503 and 1504, it is regarded as having ushered in the then-unheard of New World in Europe. Each of the immigrants’ peculiar accents and intonations conflate in a polyphony that questions the condition of the foreigner, and discusses the meaning of living in between two borders, as well as the contradictions, the power relationships, and the cultural violence that a foreign language can entail.

Regina Parra
Artist. Her photography, painting, video, and installation work addresses hierarchic power structures and displacement amid cultural boundaries. She holds a master’s in Art Theory and Criticism from Faculdade Santa Marcelina (FASM) and a fine arts degree from Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado (FAAP).  She has exhibited solo in Recife’s Fundação Joaquim Nabuco and in São Paulo’s Paço das Artes and Galeria Leme. Group shows include This Is Not a Gateway, at the Hanbury Hall in London, UK (2010); Paralela, at Liceu de Artes e Ofícios in São Paulo (2010); and 2000 e Oito at SESC Pinheiros in São Paulo (2008). In 2012, she won the Fundação Joaquim Nabuco Video Art Prize and was nominated for the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation’s Emerging Artists award. She also won an outstanding achievement prize from Bolsa Iberê Camargo in 2009. Regina Parra lives and works in São Paulo.

Centroamerica Now
2004, video, 6'
Regina Aguilar

Mutilated bodies, TV news excerpts, short statements, and fragments from political speeches mix in a video protesting the murder of over 2,000 youths over the past few years in Honduras.

Regina Aguilar
Artist. Formally trained as a sculptor, she lived in the United States for several years before returning to her home country in 1994, where she works on her own art and on cultural endeavors focusing on human development and improvement of living conditions for Hondurans. With that in mind, she created the San Juancito Foundation, in the eponymous mining village, to provide cultural, artistic and professional training to children and youths. The idea came up after Hurricane Mitch, widely believed to be the worst to hit Central America in 200 years, blew down some 60 houses in the small township. At that point, Aguilar decided to welcome the children in her home-cum-studio for myriad cultural activities, as a way of sheltering them from the horror of the catastrophe. She eventually opened In Vitro, a Tegucigalpa shop that sells the Foundation’s products, and thereby making it self-sustainable. Now, almost twenty years later, the Foundation also saw several young artists come up through its ranks to launch careers and studios of their own. Regina Aguilar lives and works out of Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Clandestinos
2001, video, 11'34"
Patrícia Moran

In the late 60s, young Brazilians who fought for social equality had their rights to freedom denied. Clandestinos is a documentary about the dreams, the ideals, the errors, and the fears from a period in history. Are they over yet?

Patrícia Moran
Coming up as a videomaker in the 1980s with a generation of her peers in Belo Horizonte, she stood from the pack for her anarchic style, inventiveness, and social concerns. Holder of a master’s in Communication from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and of a doctorate in Communication and Semiotics from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, she is a professor in the Audiovisual Degree Course of the School of Communication and Arts and in the Design Course of the School of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of São Paulo. Her many prize-winning works include Ócio (1989), which won Best Director, Best Script, and Best Actor for Paulo Moska and André Barros at the Rio Cine Festival; Maldito Popular Brasileiro: Arnaldo Baptista (1990), winner of Concorrência Fiat 1990; Adeus, América (1996), which placed 3rd in the 11th Videobrasil; Perdemos de 1 a 1 (2001), which won the audience choice for Best Film from Minas Gerais in the 3rd Belo Horizonte International Short Film Festival, and an Honorable Mention at Jornada de Cinema da Bahia; Clandestinos (2002), which won prizes at the international festivals of Bilbao and Caracas, and in festivals in Brazil; and the feature film Ponto Org (2010), winner of Best Soundtrack at the Gramado Film Festival. Patricia Moran lives and works in São Paulo.

Forma Livre
2013, video, 7'14"
Clara Ianni

Forma Livre features sketches of Brasília and audio interviews where architects Oscar Niemeyer and Lucio Costa are inquired about the massacre of local candango construction workers during the building of the capital. The artist hones in on discrepancies between discourse and action, plan and reality, monument and ruin, revealing two mythical figures that refuse to admit the tragedy.

Clara Ianni
A visual artist holding a baccalaureate degree in visual arts from the University of São Paulo (2010) and a master’s in Visual and Media Anthropology from Freie Universität in Berlin, Germany (2013). Her work explores the connections between art, politics and ideology, and their historical implications, often pondering the contradictions of the Brazilian modernization process. Straddling video, installation, object, and site-specific work, she challenges mainstream historical discourse, exploring its zones of invisibility. Her work has been featured in shows including the 31st São Paulo Art Biennial (2014); the 33rd Panorama da Arte Brasileira, at the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art (2013); the Exhibitions Program of Centro Cultural São Paulo (2012); the 12th Istanbul Biennial, in Turkey (2011); and others. She served as assistant curator for the 7th Berlin Biennale, in Germany (2012), curated by Artur Zmijewski and Joanna Warsza, and for Régis Michel at the Musée du Louvre (2008 and 2009). Clara Ianni lives and works out of São Paulo.

Myth of Modernity
2014, video, 16'
Chulayarnnon Siriphol

Toeing the line between documentary and fiction, the film looks into the impact of modernism on Thai culture, particularly its architecture, before shifting to science fiction as the country’s population gets hypnotized by a pyramid-shaped figure of light. Siriphol delivers an analysis of the power structures that perpetuate themselves through history by relying, among other things, on an architecture of power— whether divine or earthly in character.

Chulayarnnon Siriphol
A visual artist with a baccalaureate degree in arts and a major in film and video from the King Mongkut Institute of Technology Ladkrabang in Bangkok, Thailand (2008). He works with film, documentary, and experimental video, tapping into personal memories and events from the Thai political crisis. In his visual experimentations, he resorts to image superimposition and karaoke-style lettering to question elements of Thai culture, such as the political uses of Buddhism, combining satire and reflection on transiency. His videos have been shown in festivals and exhibitions including the 5th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, in Japan (2014); the Gwangju Museum of Art, in South Korea (2014); the Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, in Russia (2014); the Sharjah Biennial 11, in the United Arab Emirates (2013); the Inhotim Institute, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil (2013); the International Short Film Festival in Hamburg, Germany (2010); the International Film Festival in Hannover, Germany (2009); the International Film Festival in Rotterdam, Netherlands (2005 and 2007). Chulayarnnon Siriphol lives and works in Bangkok.