Talking about impactful issues is not enough to generate any shock to the public right now, especially when this topic is already worn out. Despite having several possibilities to explore this issue, the audiovisual sometimes can not portray disasters without trivializing them. The projects chosen by curator Lucas Bambozzi and produced by Laura Maringone and Demetrio Portugal escapes the routine of what has already been done.
Through expanded audiovisual techniques, works by artists from Greece, Brazil, Canada, and Uruguay immerse the audience in an experience that explores their senses, making them understand the relentless events.
AVXLab is an artist-run initiative that employs theoretical and practical methodologies developed in the disciplines of fine art, media art, science, architecture, and the humanities. The project was initiated by members of ALTav.org (Expanded Audiovisual Network) to serve as a laboratory for ideas, methodologies, and experimentation, exploring the boundaries of the art scene and absorbing new kinematic forms. This includes questions of representation and presentation in space, as well as dialogue with manifestations that go beyond the limits of cinema and television.
Demetrio Portugal and Lucas Bambozzi are the founding organizers of this project.
In September 2016, a group of 70 artists, curated by Barbara Goy, Tikka, Mauro, Tinho, Binho Ribeiro, Chivitz, and Rui Amaral, transformed the Noite Ilustrada Tunnel (that connects Rebouças Av to Dr. Arnaldo Av.) into a massive urban art panel spanning over 6,000 square meters. The mural was painted during four overnight sessions and is one of the largest in Latin America. It serves as a tribute to Noite Ilustrada, a samba musician and composer, who gives his name to the tunnel.
Curators: Barbara Goy, Tikka Meszaros, Mauro Neri da Silva, Tinho, Chivitz Cor Ação Vândalo, Binho Ribeiro e Rui Amaral
Artists: Ac Stencil, Ana K Brizzi, Apolo Torres, Boleta, Box, Cadumen, Carioca, Chambs Cong, Ciro, Cranio, D.Ninja, Fadio Does, Enivo, Esbomgaroto, EVOL Graffiti, Falge, Fat, Feik, Feikehara, Marcio Ficko, Grazie Gra, Grego, Rafael Highraff, Igor, Image Er Crew, Inea André Coletto, Ise Vlok, Kubano, Karen Kueia, Leiga, Lelê Paes, Leonardo, Lobot, Locones, Luís Prieto, Mag Magrela, Markone Tattoograff, Mazu Prozak, Milo Tchais Paz , Minhau Fabrica de Gatos, Mlock, Moby, Andre Mogle, Mudo, Mundano, Niu Niu, Nove, Onesto, Paulo Ito, Presto, Quinho, Ricardinho, Ricardo Akn, Ronah Carraro, Sapiens, Sliks, Snek, Suzue, Thais Ueda, Tito Ferrara, Toes e Yan
Forest Zone (known as ‘Zona da Mata’ in Portuguese) is an environmental intervention project in the 780m2 green urban area of the Goethe Institut backyard. The goal of the project is to use this space as a testing ground for artistic and cultural expressions that rely on permacultural, environmentally conscious, maker, activist, and nature-connected practices, which explore urban transformation through new practices and the preservation, occupation, and cultivation of green common areas.
The program is based on several meetings, workshops, and seminars, both within and beyond the São Paulo Center Test Tube, bringing together a unique diversity of artists, philosophers, and audience.
This project is a partnership among Lanchonete.org, Ateliê Mata Adentro, and Goethe Institut, and is supported by a team consisting of Demétrio Portugal, Rodrigo Bueno, Todd Lester, Joel Borges, Carol Ramos, Tatjana Lorenz, Raphael Daibert, and Gian Spina.
Mission to Loop Festival Barcelona :: Exhibition, Booklounch and Debate
LOOP Exhibition itineracy in São Paulo no CCSP
Palco VJ – 3 stages, 25 VJs, 24 non stop hours at Virada Cultural SP
Demetrio has been a part of the network activation core since its creation, with the goal of fostering creativity in art experiments and exploring new integrated art forms and business models as a way to strengthen Brazilian cultural presence worldwide.
ALTav is a network created to promote discussion on public policies and foster the development of the Expanded Audiovisual scene in its collectivity. In this way, we also operate as a representation group for this segment by the government and institutions if necessary. Today, we have over 120 Brazilian members, including artists, curators, and cultural managers, who are active in São Paulo and around the world.
One of ALTav’s guidelines is the structuring of a platform for experimental audiovisual art dissemination within cultural venues and events, promoting production and innovation. This includes art expressions directly linked to new technologies and language research, thus working with what is most innovative to produce a Brazilian aesthetic with the quality to compete in the vast territory of new media.
The Expanded Audiovisual embraces contemporary artistic languages that are a cross between video art, visual music, live theater, art and technology, and it dialogues with pop music circuits, dance, performance, and experimental theater beyond the search for new platforms and media formats.
MIRANTE – ALTav na Oca
(6 Live VJ performances / 3h – 60 videos program from the network)
The SCREEN moving image art festival, part of the LOOP Platform from Barcelona, articulates projects among 16 different cities throughout the northern hemisphere. It holds an active network that brings together cultural institutions, art galleries, artists, and universities, and has attracted around 200,000 people to its events and exhibitions during the 11th edition in Barcelona.
Demetrio Portugal was part of the strategic team that planned interventions in São Paulo – SCREEN Occupies Art Palácio, Rio de Janeiro – interaction with Multiplicidade Festival, and Paraty – interaction with Paraty em Foco Festival. The goal was to introduce the SCREEN Festival in Brazil and promote the idea of partnership among festivals and the integration with the city as a SCREEN. These were the main features of the project that aimed to address the changes we are experiencing today in São Paulo, as well as in other cities around the globe.
About São Paulo Intervention:
THE VIDEO ART INSTALATION:
The video art work invites the audience to immerse themselves in the imaginative window of cinema. Its narrative offers a poetic, familiar, and yet fantastic perspective on memory, environmental change, and creation. This black and white film, with its absence of dialogue and its musical score, connects the history of cinema, the city, and ourselves.
Art Palacio main room:
The Nonon Creatures Art Group was invited to create the scenographic intervention, and they developed all the lightweight design objects, beanbags, and other materials. By proposing the use of waste from the City Hall’s deposit, they raised questions about abandonment and reuse within the City Hall’s internal processes.
The intervention in São Paulo occurred in an abandoned historic cinema owned by the City of São Paulo called Art Palacio, and focused on the theme of environmental and structural changes in the city linked to art and cinema. The protagonists of this intervention were the ancient history of the theater and Hans Op de Beeck’s video art piece, “Staging Silence.”
The building itself holds indices of the cinema and the city of São Paulo’s changes since the 1930s. Therefore, the art-education intervention group Lab.Experimental guided the audience so they could have contact with the historical dimensions of Art Palácio.
Immersed in 70 years of urban and cinema industry changes, the audience was invited to enter the dark room, an empty space of 1,200 m2, with only a few chairs and puffs in front of an 11x6m screen showing Op de Beeck’s “Staging Silence” film piece
This experience blended concepts of art, technology intervention, GPS.Art, cartography, and education. The PublicMap project took place during a Virada Cultural in São Paulo, a large-scale event with music stages distributed throughout the city’s historic center.
For this intervention, the general public was invited to participate by using their smartphones. Our app worked as a pencil tool to generate dots and lines by referring to geolocation displacement within the city. The result was a sequence of participatory drawings ruled by the anonymous multitude’s displacements.
Conceptually, this intervention took place at the border between city geography, cellphone data, internet, and geolocation, revealing a puzzling relationship between power and privacy within the operational paradigms of today’s networks.
Therefore, we decided to build an app that is free to everyone and preserves one’s privacy by not gathering any information or data from the participant that is not strictly necessary to make the platform work. In this way, the intervention questioned and challenged the technological infrastructure that could naturally attend to a logic that is broader and free (truly open and collective) but seems to prioritize control and private interests.
We also gathered information on the origin of 50 participants to generate another map, a worldwide one. Both maps were shown on a house-sized LED wall structure in the middle of Vale do Anhangabaú, the largest downtown square in São Paulo’s historic center.
The project was in pursuit of the collective figure, the image of the crowd in movement, with the creative and libertarian essence that the internet has fostered since its inception.
PROJEC BY LAB*EXPERIMENTAL Creative Concept & Coordenation:
Demétrio Portugal / Jonaya de Castro / Felipe Brait / Rafael Zenorini Invited Artists: Vitor George / EduZal Art Educators: Jana Tineo / Maíra Vaz Valente
/ Manuela dAlbertas / Luciana Nassan / Lucilio Correia
Seminar that brought together nightlife thinkers, artists, citizens, businessmen, and workers to understand a contemporary city like São Paulo as a 24-hour system. The result is a manifesto that gathers important proposals and insights collected during the four-day open meetings.
Demetrio Portugal managed the dialogue groups to understand the critical content and to collectively produce mind maps that formed the basis of the manifesto book.
country: Belgium / 2013, 20’25’’
Full HD video transferred to Blu-ray disc; black and white, sound
Edition of 10 + 2 AP
Hans Op de Beeck’s film Staging Silence (2) is based around abstract, archetypal settings that lingered in the memory of the artist as the common denominator of the many similar public places he has experienced.
The video images themselves are both ridiculous and serious, just like the eclectic mix of pictures in our minds. The decision to film in black and white heightens this ambiguity: the theatre like approach of the video invokes the legacy of slapstick, as well as the insidious suspense and latent derailment of film noir.
The title refers to the staging of such dormant decors where, in the absence of people, the spectator can project himself as the lone protagonist. Memory images are disproportionate mixtures of concrete information and fantasies, and in this film they materialise before the spectator’s eyes through anonymous tinkering and improvising hands.
Arms and hands appear and disappear at random, manipulating banal objects, scale representations and artificial lighting into alienating yet recognisable locations. These places are no more or less than animated decors for possible stories, evocative visual propositions to the spectator.
Op de Beeck’s film is accompanied by a score which, inspired by the images themselves, has been composed by composer-musician Scanner (UK).
Courtesy of the artist and of Galleria Continua, San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin; Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna; Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York; Galerie Ron Mandos, Rotterdam / Amsterdam.
This project, in partnership with the São Paulo’s City Culture Department, was one of the first cultural interventions to upcycle an empty government building. The aim was to first approach the abandoned historical building from a cultural and social perspective to stop physical degradation and identify public demand for the space. The public’s ideas and analysis were then collected and compiled into a dossier to be handed to the government as a different approach to building development.
Building qualification:
/// The goals of the project
were to qualify the space to facilitate future interventions and empower public interaction with the immersive experience of the project and building history. Additionally, participatory ways of interaction among the project, the city hall structure, and cultural actors were explored, and possible developments for the Art Palacio were identified according to their vocations, territory, and the needs of São Paulo’s contemporary cultural scene.
/// The intervention
was made possible by the engagement of SCREEN Festival, a part of the 11-year-old LOOP international platform for video and contemporary art based in Barcelona. Two protagonists were featured in the project: The Art Palacio building and the Hans Op de Beeck – Staging Silence peace of art. Two intervention groups were also invited: Nonon Cratures, which explored the city hall waste dynamics, and Lab.Experimental, which explored art-education and relations with the public.
The partnership with Lab.Experimental group resulted in the Estudo Livre project, which outlines the experience with the public and their indications for the future of Art Palácio.
Art Palacio is a part of São Paulo’s cinema history as it was the first large theatre built in downtown during the mid-1930s, and therefore became the founding stone of Cinelândia Paulista, a nickname for the area where all the big city theatres used to be. Initially built for 3.7 thousand people facing a single huge screen, Art Palácio’s history is intertwined with São Paulo’s and cinema’s histories. The building was an investment from UFA, the largest German (and possibly European) company at the time, and its construction blends two styles, Art Deco for the cinema and German Concretism for the hotel above it.
Two years after the opening, the management of the theatre was transferred to a Brazilian film distribution company during the international boycott of Nazism. Over the next twenty years, São Paulo’s population grew from 800 thousand to 3 million inhabitants, leading to drastic changes in the city’s spatial and temporal dimensions. As television became a mass-produced product, coinciding with the Brazilian military intervention from the 1960s to the 1980s, Sao Paulo’s downtown began to depreciate due to real estate speculation elsewhere in the city. Cinelândia, once the most elegant and culturally enriched area of the city, became a forgotten area with cinemas becoming venues for hard porn to survive economically, and Art Palácio was one of them.
After being closed for three years, Demetrio Portugal proposed a cultural intervention as the director of the SCREEN Festival São Paulo pre-edition 2013, with the aim of upcycling the abandoned historical building. The project proposed a cultural and social approach to the building, aiming to halt its physical degradation and to identify its calling and demands from the public. The ideas collected and systematized were then presented to the government as a dossier containing public analysis and ideas for the building’s development and unfolding, which was a different approach than usual.
Art Palacio is a part of São Paulo’s cinema history as it was the first large theatre built in downtown during the mid-1930s, and therefore became the founding stone of Cinelândia Paulista, a nickname for the area where all the big city theatres used to be. Initially built for 3.7 thousand people facing a single huge screen, Art Palácio’s history is intertwined with São Paulo’s and cinema’s histories. The building was an investment from UFA, the largest German (and possibly European) company at the time, and its construction blends two styles, Art Deco for the cinema and German Concretism for the hotel above it.
Two years after the opening, the management of the theatre was transferred to a Brazilian film distribution company during the international boycott of Nazism. Over the next twenty years, São Paulo’s population grew from 800 thousand to 3 million inhabitants, leading to drastic changes in the city’s spatial and temporal dimensions. As television became a mass-produced product, coinciding with the Brazilian military intervention from the 1960s to the 1980s, Sao Paulo’s downtown began to depreciate due to real estate speculation elsewhere in the city. Cinelândia, once the most elegant and culturally enriched area of the city, became a forgotten area with cinemas becoming venues for hard porn to survive economically, and Art Palácio was one of them.
After being closed for three years, Demetrio Portugal proposed a cultural intervention as the director of the SCREEN Festival São Paulo pre-edition 2013, with the aim of upcycling the abandoned historical building. The project proposed a cultural and social approach to the building, aiming to halt its physical degradation and to identify its calling and demands from the public. The ideas collected and systematized were then presented to the government as a dossier containing public analysis and ideas for the building’s development and unfolding, which was a different approach than usual.
About the Building:
/// DISCOORDINATED SAO PAULO CITY EXPANTION SINCE 1880 /// SAO PAULO CINEMA OCCUPATION HISTORIC
Art Palacio is a part of São Paulo’s cinema history as it was the first large theatre built in downtown during the mid-1930s, and therefore became the founding stone of Cinelândia Paulista, a nickname for the area where all the big city theatres used to be. Initially built for 3.7 thousand people facing a single huge screen, Art Palácio’s history is intertwined with São Paulo’s and cinema’s histories. The building was an investment from UFA, the largest German (and possibly European) company at the time, and its construction blends two styles, Art Deco for the cinema and German Concretism for the hotel above it.
Two years after the opening, the management of the theatre was transferred to a Brazilian film distribution company during the international boycott of Nazism. Over the next twenty years, São Paulo’s population grew from 800 thousand to 3 million inhabitants, leading to drastic changes in the city’s spatial and temporal dimensions. As television became a mass-produced product, coinciding with the Brazilian military intervention from the 1960s to the 1980s, Sao Paulo’s downtown began to depreciate due to real estate speculation elsewhere in the city. Cinelândia, once the most elegant and culturally enriched area of the city, became a forgotten area with cinemas becoming venues for hard porn to survive economically, and Art Palácio was one of them.
After being closed for three years, Demetrio Portugal proposed a cultural intervention as the director of the SCREEN Festival São Paulo pre-edition 2013, with the aim of upcycling the abandoned historical building. The project proposed a cultural and social approach to the building, aiming to halt its physical degradation and to identify its calling and demands from the public. The ideas collected and systematized were then presented to the government as a dossier containing public analysis and ideas for the building’s development and unfolding, which was a different approach than usual.
The SCREEN Festival brought to Paraty em Foco Festival two video interventions.
2 – video projection with movement interaction was displayed on a building situated in a historical square of the city during the Paraty Festival. The technical development was done by Emotique using the festival’s image collection.
1 – The site-specific video installation by Cia de Fotos occupied the historic Capelinha building, with the SCREEN crew working alongside the artist group and Emotique technicians to create a translation of their work into a video projection installation. The narrative of the installation is inspired by the iPhone app book released by the group during the festival by the Cosac Naify Publisher..
The artist group, Cia de Fotos, explained their choice of shooting photography in their research titled “Now: between landscape and duration”. They found that thinking about this language leads to undefined spaces, mixtures of media, and transitions between different forms of expression.
In a dialogue with the SCREEN Festival, which occupied the Capelinha historic building by invitation of the , a relationship between cinema and photography dimensions is explored. The installation questions the role of narrative in photography, asking what would the photograph be without the kind of film and narrative that is already contained within the image itself, and how the moment captured in a photograph could always become something else.
The exhibition took place at the Usina do Gasometro Cultural Space in Porto Alegre, Brazil, a major city hall building. In moments of change and urgency, art provides a possible language to express some of the most difficult issues, proposing themes and approaches that would be too chaotic for any other type of expression.
It provided an overview of revolutionary manifestations in Egypt and Tunisia through 2011 and 2012. These events had the density of a mother wave of transformation with peaceful and secular insurgency, followed by other occurrences around the world.
Contemporary art show:
_ Egyptian Venice Biannual Pavilion Ahmed Basiouny’s “30 Days Running at the Place” video installation art piece.
_ Ganzeer’s posters and graffiti intervention overview
_ “Tahrir” foto group exhibition about Egyptian revolution process (Cairo University partnership)
_ “True Defiance” group foto exhibition about Tunisian democratic project (in partnership with International Amnesty)
_ Aalam Wassef video art web interventions overview
_ Pop art expressions as Publications, graffiti and videos
_ Contextualization specialy made video about the major economical and political occurrences in the world since 2008 till 2012. Cinema exhibition:
_ 8 hours film program about the arab spring and its cultural and new film creation context.
An independent, crowd-funded, feature-length documentary about the largest ongoing construction project in Brazil, where both OPINIONS/DEPOSITIONS for and against Belo Monte point towards a environmental, economic and social disaster.
Direção: André D’Elia
Produção Executiva: Beatriz Vilela, Francisco D’Elia
Direção de Fotografia: Rodrigo Levy Piza, Federico Dueñas
Direção de Som: Téo Villa, Diego Depane
Desenho Gráfico: Federico Dueñas
Montagem: Mauro Moreira
Ass. de Montagem: André Souza
Campanha e Mobilização: Digo Castello, Daniel Joppert, Caio Tendolini e Mundano.
PIXO
Brazil, 2010 61 minutos
a film by João Wainer and Roberto T. Oliveira
The film discusses the cultural impact of “pixação”, the most aggressive form of graffiti typical from the streets of São Paulo, and its international influence as one of the main cornerstones of Street Art.
Demetrio Portugal facilitated the building and curatorial process of this exhibition in a way that maintained the collective and non-hierarchical form of organization of Pixadores. He also mediated three debates on the theme with a large presence of Pixadores crews and the general public.
VIDEO PRODUCED BY PIXADORES:
RELATED VIDEOS:
Known as one of the first exhibitions about Pixação, an urban graffiti expression typical of São Paulo, this exhibition explored the social dynamics of their “crews” and highlighted it’s manifestation also as an index of social abyss. Despite being tough and aggressive, Pixação achieves its goals of protest and expression, even if it is not accepted or understood by the general public.
The Pixação intervention achieves its goals even though it is not accepted and understood by the general public. This artistic expression is known for being tough and aggressive in the streets of São Paulo. It involves the destruction of private property as part of its aesthetic, which serves as a way to fight back against the oppressive conditions of poverty and lack of social attention. a fight back bottle massage written on walls that pass through car armored glasses, and shouts how much alive a human being can be despite the poverty, the lack of social attention and a perspectiveless life.
The exhibition showcased 20 years of the Pixação scene, including crew party invitations and poster designs, signature collections on sheets of paper, Pixação sticker albums, videos, photos, and movies. Along with contextualizing artistic elements, the exhibition revealed the complexity of its social organization and intervention methods, highlighting Pixação as a way of life and a way to defy the segregation and invisibility that the megalopolis brings to its citizens. Demetrio Portugal facilitated the building and curatorial process while maintaining the collective and non-hierarchical Pixadores form of organization, and mediated three debates with the crews of Pixadores and the general public.
Historical Pixação Signature Book
This exhibition distinguishes itself from others about the Pixação movement by bringing together the founders’ groups from the five regions of São Paulo in one room. It raises the understanding that Pixação is much more than an aesthetic intervention made in a non-hierarchical way, but rather a phenomenon from the city as a living being.
Chomic story made by Paulo Ito about Pixação intervention, lately intervened by the audience.
Among hundreds of thousands of participants, Pixação is an extreme form of art with a high mortality rate due to gang fights, conflicts with the police, building falls, and other dangers.
The legitimacy of the exhibition was derived from the scene itself, which, instead of its usual aggressiveness and destructive interventions, participated in the exhibit with aesthetic accord and reverence. “I am grateful to have honored this contemporary expression in this way,” says Demétrio.
PHOTOS BY VICTOR MORYAMA:
PHOTOS ABOUT THE EXHIBITION LAST DAY. By Jared Levy
Banksy is a graffiti artist with a global reputation whose work can be seen on walls from post-hurricane New Orleans to the separation barrier on the Palestinian West Bank. He fiercely guards his anonymity to avoid prosecution. An eccentric French shop keeper turned documentary maker attempts to locate and befriend Banksy, only to have the artist turn the camera back on its owner. Includes footage of Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Invader and many of the world’s most infamous graffiti artists at work, on walls and in interview. As Banksy describes it, “It’s basically the story of how one man set out to film the un-filmable. And failed.”
Comprising paintings, objects, photographs, wall interventions, projections, and workshops, the exhibition brings together five of the most representative names in Stencil Art from São Paulo. Read More
The Matilha Cultural project was launched in 2008, at a time when a new independent scene was emerging in São Paulo that was mature and innovative enough to drive change. New forms of expression emerging from the internet age and street manifestations found a place for experimentation and recognition at Matilha.
The cultural space focused on themes related to the city streets, collective expression, awareness, and art. It had three main pillars: the development of independent culture, environmental activism, and animal rights. Demetrio Portugal played a key role in conceptualizing, implementing, and managing programs for the first four years.
The space hosted an average of 12 art exhibitions and 27 educational programs annually, showcasing hundreds of films, including those from the four biggest festivals in São Paulo, and many other programs related to new productions from Brazil and around the world. The space directly served around 20,000 people each year.
The projects conducted by Demetrio Portugal used contemporary group dynamic techniques and design thinking as visualization resources and tools, enabling multi-background groups to participate equally in the planning process. The resulting master and business plan became formalized for the space.
naOrelha was the first multimedia web magazine about Brazilian music and was a pioneer in multimedia navigation experience, design, and content format. It was also a reference for understanding the music scene of the 21st century.
In 2002, the NaOrelha project was launched in São Paulo with the goal of understanding the transformation that was happening in music worldwide and its effects on a new scene that was just beginning to emerge in Brazil.
The transformation was driven by the internet, technology, and new business models, and the medium chosen to capture this was sound, video, images, and text, all flowing around even through telephone connections.
Within two years, the website was invited to join UOL, the largest portal in Brazil. It had 75,000 monthly unique visitors, 25 collaborators, and around 850 minutes of multimedia content available to the public for free.
The web magazine featured interviews and articles about the impact of technology on the music industry, collective production, remote work, the reorganization of the music industry, the cheapening of music production, new business models, perspectives on intellectual property and work, and of course, music and its history in Brazil.
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Picturing the collective face.
Demetrio Portugal facilitated the building and curatorial process of this exhibition in a way that maintained the collective and non-hierarchical form of organization of Pixadores. He also mediated three debates on the theme with a large presence of Pixadores crews and the general public.
Banksy is a graffiti artist with a global reputation whose work can be seen on walls from post-hurricane New Orleans to the separation barrier on the Palestinian West Bank. He fiercely guards his anonymity to avoid prosecution. An eccentric French shop keeper turned documentary maker attempts to locate and befriend Banksy, only to have the artist turn the camera back on its owner. Includes footage of Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Invader and many of the world’s most infamous graffiti artists at work, on walls and in interview. As Banksy describes it, “It’s basically the story of how one man set out to film the un-filmable. And failed.”
