Made in Brasil: Três Décadas do Vídeo Brasileiro

by Arlindo Machado, Editor
Itaú cultural, Sao Paulo, 2003
275 pp., illus. Paper, $N/A
ISBN: 85-85291-37-0.

Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen
Hogeschool Gent
Jan Delvinlaan 115, 9000 Gent, Belgium

stefaan.vanryssen@pandora.be

Made In Brasil is the first exhaustive——if ever such a thing exists——and systematic overview of 30 years of Brasilian video making. The result of this project, sponsored by the cultural branch of one of the leading Brasilian banks and coordinated by artist and critic Arlindo Machado is not just another list of artists and works in some formal ordering. Instead, it collects and connects the mature reflections of a score of authors who take different viewpoints on the history of video production for television and the cinema, as an artistic medium and with respect to literature and the visual arts in general.

In his introductory chapter Machado unpacks the lines of force of Brasilian video history, which by the way are not so very different elsewhere: video and (the representation of) the body, purely technologically driven advances, non-figurative and non-narrative experimental works, the ‘deconstruction of Brasil, visible and invisible cities, videoperformance and videoinstallations, affect and ‘disaffect’ and macro- and micropolitics. All this is placed in a context of video in its television mode or as an independent medium. What doesn’t get told explicitly is the very deep influence of semiotics in the Brasilian video scene and in the visual arts in general——legacy of Vilém Flusser?

The second chapter is devoted to the pioneering years of Brasilian video as seen through the eyes of early curators, producers and artists. And in chapter three ‘languages and media’, the entire field is covered in terms of media study jargon and semiotics. Finally, five artists and producers have contributed ‘depositions’ or testimonials.

It is a pity that this book isn’t available in English because it covers pretty well every single artist and production of any significance in Brasilian video. For video buffs, critics and curators who have even the most basic knowledge of Portuguese, it is an absolute must, and the alphabetical index turns it almost into a book of reference.