At its 30th-anniversary edition in 2013, the International Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil becomes established as a landmark space for the dissemination and reflection on art from the geopolitical South of the world. Due from November 5, 2013, to February 2, 2014, the event includes the Southern Panoramas show—which will be part of a historical segment that will retrace the three decades of the Festival’s history this year—and other public programs that make up a veritable arena for investigation on the themes and the directions taken by art produced in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Oceania, and Southeast Asia.
Open to all languages and formats, this edition of Southern Panoramas will feature pieces submitted during the call for entries (see shortlist below) and works from guest artists. The initiative further strengthens the propositions put forth by the board of curators, comprising Solange Farkas (Festival creator and Chief Curator), Eduardo de Jesus, Fernando Oliva, and Julia Rebouças.
Upon analyzing a universe of over two thousand projects submitted, and selecting roughly one hundred artists, the theme of otherness affirmed itself as a guiding concept—it is about investigating the power of the Other within the broad contemporary context, while suggesting at once distancing and approaching, and the curators have worked on both directions.
The concept unfolds into nuances such as new approaches to the nature-society clash; architecture and other spatialization experiences as regimes of representation; the geographical mobility that reinterprets territories and identities; the narrative disruptions that reveal the profound ambiguities of human conflicts; the memory in times of digital transit (and transitoriness); and two different aspects of image: the image that questions its own mediation as it rethinks the capturing mechanisms, and the radically media-oriented image of mass culture.
But this is just the first announcement from the 18th Festival. Details will be released soon about the board of curators and its project, the public programs that make up the Festival, the TV series that will air, guest artists, the trophy for the competitive show (traditionally an art object in and of itself), and much more. Subscribe to our newsletter and stay up to date.
The shortlist of artists selected from the call for entries (below) spans thirty-two countries (nine in Latin America, seven in Africa, five in the Middle East, five in Southeast Asia, four in Eastern Europe, and two in Oceania). Projects include installations, video installations, drawings, sculptures, paintings, artist books, and videos. www.videobrasil.org.br
