Varela in Serra Pelada

Video Brazil: Social and Experimental Tapes is a partial survey of the second generation of Brazilian video. This new generation of vidoezakers is defined by their use of videocassette technology and was preceded by artits working with reel-to-reel equipment. This earlier pioneering generation was in direct opposition to the rhythm and intensity of a process that became viable and consolidated itself in the 1970’s: commercial television in Brazil. That body of work was collectively christened VIDEO ARTE. Today, Brazil is a country in which the leading broadcast network garners 60% of viewing audience and the prime time soap opera unifies the country culturally. It is impossible to cast the work coming out of Brazil today in the in the same relationship with commercial television. Despite the fact that the works included in this exhibition were made in production centres that are not linked to the commercial television system, the language of these pieces incorporates many components of the phenomenon of television. The illegal entrance of the first U-Matic equipment to Brazil in the early 80’s gave rise to a second generation of video makers. To circumvent the 300% Brazilian state-imposed import tax, groups of producers and directors banded together to smuggle in cameras and recorders. Although these production cells grew closer to the television model and style, their efforts fed into a nonexistent exhibition circuit. In 1983, the first VIDEOBRAZIL Festival gathered these independent producers with the hope that exhibition rooms would increase, stimulating a movement throughout the country and an increase in independent production. After five years, these promises remain unfulfilled while hundreds of new independent centres have emerged in different cities. Why, then, has video production grown in Brazil? Because it is the most possible and practical medium in a country where the negligible file tradition makes movie production financially not viable and television retains the cultural hegemony that gathers social classes and regions. Video presents an answer to this process, one which brings with it new challenges such as new technologies from contemporaneity.