Chair – Gabriel Menotti (UFES)
- Making Passeio Público: Montage as a way of seeing places and dealing with discontinuities and absences of the past (Andréa França, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) and Nicholas Andueza, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ))
- Activating Media, Memory and Resistances: Where Were You in 1992? (Amanda Egbe, University of Bedfordshire and Rastko Novaković, Independent Artist)
- VR Simulation of David Hall’s TV Interruptions: The Installation, 1971/2006 (Adam Lockhart and Sang-hun Yu, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee)
- Nomad (Sophie Dixon and Abira Hussein)
Making Passeio Público: Montage as a way of seeing places and dealing with discontinuities and absences of the past
Andréa França and Nicholas Andueza
Passeio Público (1) is made of four elements: Alberto Botelho’s 1924 film, The City of Rio de Janeiro, which was an extraordinary birthday gift to a member of the Italian royal family on an official visit to Brazil; the Botelho film Carnival (1922); the Silvino Santos’ film Enchanted Land (1923) and photographs by Augusto Malta. Only a few haunting fragments remain of these films.
Silent film era footage is rare in Brazil. The City of Rio de Janeiro only exists as it was taken away from Brazil in its first incarnation as a birthday present. The questions we wanted to address as researchers and filmmakers were: What can we do with these film fragments? How can we rework material shot by others? What implications are involved in this gesture?
This paper points out that the editing process came across several layers of absence – historical, cinematographic etc. It draws attentions to the editing process as a way of operating with those gaps in order to make them visible and sensitive (instead of dissimulating them). It depicts formal issues and problems linked to the physical state of the original material as well as some historical questions.
Passeio Público was an insight into our own city, Rio de Janeiro, a look into people’s lives we see passing through the film and a way to face these issues: images that have disappeared, images that have survived, images that have migrated elsewhere. Still the short have became the object of historical, methodological and aesthetic research.
(1)It’s a 14-minute short video made by Andréa França and Nicholas Andueza. It was screened in a few film festivals in Brazil and abroad: 12ª CineOP (Ouro Preto – Minas Gerais), 2017, FIDBA (Buenos Aires – Argentina), 2017, ISFF (Kolkata – India), Arquivo em Cartaz (Rio de Janeiro), 2017. The short is accessible in: https://vimeo.com/176315630
Andréa França Martins is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Communication at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). She is researcher of National Counsel of Technological and Scientific Development /CNPq. Member of the Decision Committee at SOCINE – Brazilian society of Cinema and Audiovisual Studies. Her contributions include chapter “Os brinquedos-fósseis e o tempo da memória” for Eu assino embaixo: Biografia, memória e cultura (2014), “La invención del Lugar en el cine brasilero contemporâneo” for Déplacements culturels : migrations et identités (2013), “Documentary Cinema and the Return of What Was” for New Argentine and Brazilian Cinema: Reality Effects (2013), “A imagem-excesso, a imagem-fóssil, a imagem-dissenso: propostas cinematográficas para a experiência da ditadura no Brasil” for Narrativas Sensoriais (2014).
Nicholas Andueza is a film editor and a PhD student in Communication and Culture at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). He is a teacher in short-term courses of Cinema in Nova Friburgo (RJ). Along with papers published in the areas of Communication and Cinema, he has also published articles in Dasartes Magazine, specialized in visual arts.
Activating Media, Memory and Resistances: Where Were You in 1992?
Amanda Egbe and Rastko Novaković
This paper will bring to the fore the resisting character of moving image materials situated as tactical and strategic, through their activation by archival and media practices.
Where Were You in 1992? is a multi-platform time-based project that contends with the technologies and practices of activism. Starting from the anti-racist struggle in the UK and the resistance to ethno-nationalism in Yugoslavia, it explores the legacy of European ‘liberalism’, ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘social cohesion’. It contrasts these with notions of solidarity, anti-racism, and anti-authoritarianism. It gathers hitherto unseen or forgotten testimonies, still and moving images, minutes, leaflets, banners and working notes from individuals and organisations. The project uses the open source archive and notation platform pan.do/ra, and an archive established at the MayDay Rooms archive in London.
The paper is concerned with how to mobilise audio-visual materials, testimony and metadata to investigate a global historical situation and map parallels between the social spaces of grassroots activism of the 1990s. Specifically the paper will focus on how specific moments of differing scale, such as the shift between analogue and digital (longue durée) on one hand, and the subjective description of political actions (historical events) on the other hand can be brought together in montage.
Amanda Egbe is an artist, filmmaker and Lecturer in Media Production at the University of Bedfordshire. Rastko Novaković is an artist working with the moving image, active in trade union and housing struggles. Together, over the past 17 years, they have created short and feature films, participatory videos, web-based projects, expanded cinema and site-specific works.
VR Simulation of David Hall’s TV Interruptions: The Installation, 1971/2006.
Adam Lockhart & Sang-hun Yu
David Hall (1937-2014) was one of the pioneers of video art in the UK, beginning with his ubiquitous TV Interruptions he made for STV in 1971 as part of the Edinburgh Art Festival. He continued to make single screen video works, but his main focus was the creation of video sculptures. Most of these sculptures used old cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors which are no longer manufactured. Although these are still available at the moment, over time they will gradually disappear and it will become more and more difficult to find any working examples. Due to these problems with technological obsolescence, many of Hall’s and numerous other artists works may not be so easily replicated in the future. With this in mind, other ways to present these works need to be considered to allow them to be appreciated by future audiences. One way to do this is by using virtual reality.
This paper will discuss the historical background and the recreation of David Hall’s video installation TV Interruptions: The Installation, 1971/2006 in virtual reality. Viewers can experience the work by being immersed in a 3D virtual gallery, giving the viewer an idea and ‘feel’ of what the work would be like in real life. The process of creation, maintaining the integrity of the work, authenticity and the user experience will be examined in the paper. This experiment is part of on-going research we are developing in this field.
Adam Lockhart is the Media Archivist & Researcher at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design (University of Dundee, Scotland, UK). He is a leading specialist in the conservation, preservation and restoration of artists’ video. Lockhart has worked on a number of AHRC research projects including REWIND| Artists’ Video in the 70s & 80s, Narrative Exploration in Expanded Cinema with Central St Martins College of Art & Design, REWIND Italia, European Women’s Video Art & Richard Demarco: The Italian Connection . He has acted as curator, co-curator and consultant for a number of screenings and exhibitions at organisations such as Tate Modern, Tate Britain, BFI Southbank, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Scottish National Galleries of Modern Art, Ambika P3, Streetlevel Photoworks Glasgow, DOCVA in Milan and Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum.
Sang-hun Yu is the 3D animation and visualisation specialist at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design (University of Dundee, Scotland, UK), where he is also a PhD student. Sang-hun Yu is an expert in the field of 3D animation and visualisation. He currently lectures and delivers workshops related to 3D visualisation to staff and students throughout the university. He is also working with and developing concepts in virtual reality / augmented reality. As part of his PhD, he is working on collaborative VR projects between Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design and the Leverhulme Research Centre in forensic science. Before working in his current role, he worked as an animator on various animation projects and TV commercials including the Oscar nominated animated feature film ‘l’illusionniste’ (the Illusionist) directed by Sylvain Chomet.
Nomad (work in progress) a Mixed Reality experience for the Microsoft HoloLens
Sophie Dixon and Abira Hussein
‘Nomad’ is a collaborative work between Sophie Dixon and Ed Silverton at Mnemoscene.io, and Abira Hussein, an independent researcher and curator specialising in Somali heritage.
How can we reconnect everyday objects from nomadic Somali culture with their intangible heritage?
This was the starting point for ‘Nomad’ – an artistic project for the Microsoft HoloLens, inspired by Somali artefacts and sounds digitised at UK based museums and libraries.
This presentation will discuss ‘Nomad’ as a work in progress, touching upon the challenges facing the preservation and presentation of Somali cultural heritage and the use of Mixed Reality and Photogrammetry to respond to them.
Sophie Dixon is an artist working with moving image, Virtual Reality, and Mixed Reality. She has undertaken residencies in the UK and Europe and has exhibited in solo and group shows, including at the EYE Film Museum, Amsterdam, and the Turner Contemporary, UK. In 2017 she co-founded Mnemoscene.io with Ed Silverton.
Ed Silverton is a creative technologist working with Mixed Reality at Mnemoscene.io and is lead developer of the Universal Viewer (universalviewer.io) – a leading open source viewer for cultural heritage content, used internationally by institutions including the British Library, the National Library of Wales, and Stanford University.
Abira Hussein is an independent researcher and curator specialising in Somali heritage, digital archives, migration, and health. In recent years she has worked with The British Museum, British Library, London Metropolitan Archives, Refugee Council Archive, and Somali Week Festival, to deliver a number of projects and workshops engaging with the Somali Community. In 2017 she created the VR experience ‘Coming Home’ – in partnership with the British Museum and funded by Brighton Digital Festival.