AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

Brazil, Sao Paulo
SESC Belenzinho – São Paulo, Brasil

Source http://www2.sescsp.org.br/sesc/videobrasil/site/sobre/sobre_en.asp

The particularities of contemporary artistic production from the geopolitical South of the world inspire the Southern Panoramas Seminar, the main activity in the Educational Curatorial Program developed for the 17th International Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil. The series of meetings, that will bring together artists, curators and critics from different regions of he world, aims to explore the potency and singularity of this circuit, marked by discontinuity and born out of contexts in which political, social and cultural tensions tend to constantly alter and rearticulate symbolic forms and the way in which information and images circulate.

Due to open on September 30th in São Paulo, the 17th Videobrasil's competitive exhibition, also named Southern Panoramas, will feature recent artwork by 101 artists from South America, Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Oceania. Featuring artist Tania Bruguera (Cuba) and curators Paola Santoscoy (Mexico) and Bisi Silva (Nigeria), among other participants, the Seminar will address the need for building a conceptual and critical articulation capable of generating new forms of visibility, dialogue and transit, not only within the scope of the Southern circuit, but also in its multiple relations to the Northern axis.

The seminar is structured around four axes that seek to conform, in a dynamic way, this vast field of connections, confrontations, wear-outs and paradoxes. The panels will be based around four thematic axes: art as a territory for learning; institutions at the margin of networks; curatorial propositions for the South; and editorial intentions. Each session will feature two case studies, whose function is to illustrate different dimensions of the subject matters; a guest participation in video; a mediator; and a debater, who will summon up the set of issues presented into one critical proposal.

On September 24th, the initial panel will present the Festival and the Southern Panoramas exhibition, featuring curator general Solange Farkas. The will to promote the political exercise of creative autonomy is the premise on which the second panel is based. Due the same day, it will look into art as a terrain for the breeding of citizenship, emphasizing the cultural experience of building knowledge in the face of the work of art and projects that turn art into a learning platform.

Featuring a video participation of Uruguayan artist Luis Camnitzer, the panel will focus on two cases. Cuban artist Tania Bruguera will present the public work Cátedra Arte de Conducta (2002–2009), created in Havana as an organization offering free educational practices in fields such as architecture, theatre, art, dancing, cuisine and writing. Next, Mexican curator Paola Santoscoy will discuss the public platform Casa M, a space for artistic exchange and research that will propose various learning experiences, throughout 2011, at the 8th Mercosur Biennial (Porto Alegre, 2011). Brazilian curator Janaina Melo takes part in this panel as a debater.

Scheduled for October, November and December 2011, the three following panels focus on the relation between institutions and networks in the context of the Southern circuit, as well as curatorial and editorial propositions for the South. Mexican curator Pablo León de la Barra presents the exhibition program he has developed for the Centre for the Aesthetic Revolution, based in London; the creators of Tatuí (Brazil) and Asterisco (Colombia) magazines, both devoted to the visual arts, present their publications; and Brazilian curators Tainá Azevedo and Thereza Farkas talk about the experience of Casa Tomada, a facility aimed at artistic coexistence and production in São Paulo.

The panels will also feature curators and researchers such as Lisette Lagnado, Marcio Harum, Marcos Moraes, Eduardo de Jesus, Fernando Oliva, Cristiana Tejo, Cristina Freire and Valquíria Prates (Brazil), María Inéz Rodríguez (Colombia), Bisi Silva (Nigeria) and Miguel López (Peru).

The 17th International Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil is an undertaking of Associação Cultural Videobrasil (www.videobrasil.org.br) and SESC São Paulo (www.sescsp.org.br).

from Art4Development