Video and digital media occupy a huge space in visual arts production in Brazil as well as globally. The supposed ease of use and cheapness of technologies such as mobile phones and computers – certainly stimulated by the social distancing effected by the COVID-19 pandemic – increasingly encourage artists with diverse interests to explore moving images. Distant, however, from the more documental uses of the camera, either recording their bodies in action or looking at the “other” in dialogue with cinema, artists who create images using software are usually immersed in fantasy, fiction and, not rarely, literature. All the artists here, coming not only from different regions of Brazil but also from a broad generational bracket, are interested in the notion of ancestry, antiquity, history, and the past.

The pyramids of Egypt are one of the greatest symbols of particular ideas of antiquity and notions of ancestry. By placing them alongside rendering, a verb used to designate the moment when editing, creating, and processing images using software becomes an actual piece of work, I propose an encounter between different temporalities that rub against each other.“Rendering Pyramids” is therefore a video program that gathers artists who deal with the digital to reflect on how to fold, shape, invent, fragment, and even implode fictional charges from the “past” with both feet in the present and through a visual culture that, in the blink of an eye, could still be called “futuristic.”

The Film & Media Department will be hosting Raphael Fonseca, one of the curators of this year's Videobrasil Biennale, for a workshop and presentation/screening.

This workshop discusses possibilities of curating in a transhistorical perspective, focusing on artists and spaces from the Global South. How can curators generate friction between this South and the hegemonic North? How to create conversations between artists, images, and institutions that are separated not only historically but also geographically, as seen under the prism of a "Global South"? The activity is underpinned on the discussion of a series of moving image works. After exploring these works collectively, participants will receive one of them to use as the basis for a fictional curatorial program that creates connections between images distant from each other in time. In a week's time, participant will present their programs to the group. The workshop is meant to be an engaging - and, of course, fun - experience to explore our ability to create relations, propose projects, respond to specific artworks, and deal creatively with emerging cultural conditions.

Please enroll using the following url: https://forms.gle/gjcC1PMVgrtRYSZk7