Les terra's di nadie by Cesar Meneghetti

My first experience of urban intervention was in Rome in 2002 putting some Yanomami
Indians from Amazon in a 1600’s baroque facade of a church. Now in São Paulo the
situation is completely different, the VIDEOGUERRILLA experience of audiovisual invasion
of public spaces in São Paulo was very singular cause my work could reach two different
typologies of people, museumgoers and Augusta street people at same time. For a city
of 20 million inhabitants the number of people that goes to museums and art galleries are
minimum compared to the population and making this move, bringing a public art space to
the street were a brilliant initiative. The Augusta street is a metaphor of São Paulo, a 135
years old street that crosses the town linking the glamour side of Jardins to the underground
and alternative Bela Vista having inside several restaurants of all cuisines, sports center,
cinemas, shops, nightclubs, bookshops, universities, a red light district, a loads of bars. The
meeting point of playboys, hippies, emos, theatre actors and just people starving for fun. The
VIDEOGUERRILLA project this year was made possible by using a cutting edge equipment
from Visualfarm, a company that provided all the facilities for the 7 huge projections on the
façade of various buildings in the street.

Cesar Meneghetti. Photo by Beatriz Franco

To extend the access of contemporary art and street art to a large audience of passers of
all ages in my hometown was a very strong experience, especially for me that were living
in Europe the last 23 years. The video LTDN (http://ltdn.blogspot.com/) a half way political
and aesthetic work I made in 2007 was shown at the same time at MIS (Museum of Image
and Sound of São Paulo) and in the street buildings in Lower Augusta, acquire an important
meaning in producing and exhibiting. Just a few days before the presidential elections I am
projecting a video which is talking about the dictatorships in Brazil and in Chile. The most
stimulating thing for me was the attention that people had watching the video.
The whole VIDEOGUERRILLA event was definitely a further stage of the TIMEFRAME
project firstly released in Amsterdam, Durban, La Havana and now in São Paulo,
accumulating videos from diverse backgrounds and merging in one only street media and
video artists, professional or young VJs, hackers, producers and many other people that give
an enormous energy for the event. It means living contemporary history, media and art at the
same time, in the context of urban intervention and potential cultural bomb, and making art
take part of ordinary life reducing the gap between the artist and the rest of the citizens. I felt
something urgent nowadays that art does reach a huge crowd and not only a small niche,
and talk about contemporary needs, thoughts, feelings, as a bare nerve of our society. A
great merit of TIMEFRAME and VISUALFARM, mixing the context of art production, of some
commercial and professional artists and craftsmen of the video to the general public, be it
artistic content, experimental, technological, or simply an expression of underground culture.
It suits so much the “paulistano” style that when the event went over, everybody miss the
projections, because they have incorporated as part of the urban furniture.
My auspices for the future is that an event of such impact and synchronicity with the town
could be held every year, every month, every weekend, making it a platform for various
artists, monographs or monothematic group shows where they can feed the cultural debate
and exchange of thoughts. As it happen in São Paulo, making rua Augusta, a place that
was the symbol of degrade and decay rise again through art, using new technologies. The
city of São Paulo and its ambiguities unsolved becomes an important art space and though
imagination these projections can be taken as a symbol of change, a certain cultural shock
that incorporates the present Brazilian reality.

César Meneghetti | artist + filmmaker

http://www.cesarmeneghetti.blogspot.com

See Videos:

TV Globo

Folha de S. Paulo

MTV – Scrap

Video Documentary by Carol Thomé

Photo by Elena Pérez

I was very impressed by the work of the team that put it all together under Alexis calm but watchful eye. Walking down this street during 3 days of projections was unbelievable, everyone’s face’s were turned upwards instead of glaring or oogling. I sat at a small bar on the street and got talking to some local’s who told me that they’d seen projections on building before but that this time they could see the difference in quality never mind the sheer scale of the project. It took over 4 or 5 blocks and each building had a new form, from architectural mapping with motion graphics, video art, performance, still images and live drawing.

I projected images that for me represent human movement, using long exposure on a camera or video camera and recording the movement. I also spent some time using Alchemy to draw abstract shapes and audio reactive forms on a building. This was my favorite part especially after being there and soaking up the rhythm of the city and being so close to the street on the balcony of the hotel. A beautiful moment came when I offered the pen to those around me and let them doodle, one guy scratched his number up and wrote “call me.” Shortly he received a call to comic effect. I loved how this highlighted our human need to communicate and in the simple and often executed fashion more usually found in a public toilet.

What I noticed after the event was the change in atmosphere of the Rua Augusta – it was business as usual I presume, and we saw bouncers or pimps beating a guy up and kids trying to steal from and damage the hotel we were staying in.  This really brought home to me how the event changed the mind set of the locals, even if only for 3 days, their sights were literally lifted upwards rather than looking for trouble.  I truly understood the mission of Video Guerrilha after witness those events.

Photo by Rosa Menkman

Thanks to initiatives like Video Guerrilla, Rua Augusta, one of the most famous streets in São Paulo, became a gallery in open air during three nights, from 11 to 13 of November, from 8 pm to 4 am.

Video guerrilla is a mega collective intervention where a variety of artists from Brazil and other countries like the Netherlands work on different projection sites pointing over 8 different building facades, and therefore directly intervening in the public space.

This is not the first time that urban intervention with video take place in the city of São Paulo, in fact Visualfarm, the creative collective organizing this event, has already made many projections in the last 8 years, but any of them of this scale, we could say this is their most ambitious project. This first edition of Video Guerrilla has taken place in one of the most attractive and vibrant night live scenes of the city, between bares and prostitute clubs.

This neighborhood, before only devoted to prostitution, is becoming one of the most important spots for entertainment in the city of São Paulo. And for 3 nights it turned into a node for urban art and culture.

During this event more than 80 national and international VJs, graffiti and artists, plus 4 local creative collectives has contributed to the programme with their visual creations.

During 24 hours of images split over 3 days, different projections techniques were explored. People could see live digital graffiti, mapping, augmented reality and large format reflections like the ones at R. Augusta 541, where the installation ‘Agingantador de pessoas’ allowed people to interact with the camera and see themselves reflected on the facade at large scale. This last installation was especially successful, had great acceptance and served as a temporary platform for spontaneous public creativity.

The main goal of Video Guerrilla is to make a number of loud interventions in urban space that have an impact on the way people think or experience the city and where different visual languages meet. The festival also fostered debates and lectures relates to street art, urban culture and social ecology in different Universities of São Paulo during the previous months to the start of the night events at Rua Augusta.

Video Guerrilha is an opportunity for people to know the work by artists from Brazil and other countries. An event to experience the city differently and perceive places that otherwise will not draw your attention at all.

In this festival the street is understood as a public and collective space that demands more cultural content. This format presents art and culture as an inherent element of the city, standing as an accessible alternative to exclusive and formal art galleries and museums.

It responds to the need of getting out of the white box in all senses, which also implies getting out of the canvas. Needless to say that thanks to initiatives like this the VJ and visual culture in brazil is starting to receive larger financial support.

“Culture needs to be accessible to people and closer to people”, emphasized Alexis Anastasiou, founder of the festival.

“There is no better place for expression than the streets…free and open to the general public”, added Bruno Caramori, one of the artists involved.

This kind of urban intervention, also interactive, are important because they invite passers-by to break with their routines in their day a day, dream with other realities and connect to the urban space in many different ways, these new emotions will forever change their memories and perceptions about the urban space.

Following up the conceptual line of TIME_ FRAME 2010 and ‘the Media City’ Workshop held in Amsterdam in March 2010, the VJ and director of Visualfram Alexis Anastasiou (participant of the Media City) invited TIME_FRAME to participate in the Video Guerrilha project in São Paulo 11-13 November 2010.

TIME_FRAME  contributed to the festival with a visual art program delivered by     3 international who showcased new artistic concepts on the facades arranged by Visualfarm in Rua Augusta, one of the main streets of the city of São Paulo.

+ Participating artists are:

Eavan Aiken (IE/NL), visual artist, VJ and teacher

Rosa Menkman (NL), visual artist and researcher

with the special collaboration of César Meneghetti (BR/IT),  visual artist and filmmaker.

+ TIME_FRAME  staff:

Miguel Petchovsky (AN/NL), TIME_FRAME – curator.

Elena Pérez Hernández (ES/NL), TIME_FRAME – coordination and documentation.