Eder Santos: English | Barravento Novo

Eder Santos's work encourages us to remove our everyday lenses that make us observe an increasingly monochromatic world. It’s only by taking them off that we can perceive what is not seen. The cold technology of video is metamorphosed by his sensitive gaze and by an utterly nonlinear image editing process that achieves dizzying levels – a sort of barravento.^[1]

 

References to Brazilian cinematic production have been recurrent in the artist's production, and Barravento Novo [New Barravento] is the work of a multimedia pioneer in veneration of Cinema Novo. The video installation, created in collaboration with Japanese-American artist Bruce Yonemoto based on the like-titled film by Glauber Rocha, proposes a juxtaposition that confronts the past and present of not only Brazilian history, but also of filmmaking technologies. In the exhibition space, the scenes shot on 35mm film by the Bahian filmmaker are superimposed on the 4K digital images by the Minas Gerais artist. The worlds of Cota and Firmino, in their key roles from the 1962 film, are impressively merged in the mesmerizing performance by the protagonist of the 2017 video installation, Camila Pitanga, who simultaneously embodies both characters – another sort of barravento.^[2]

 

Avoiding mimicry, Eder Santos closely follows Firmino's shout: the independence of Barravento Novo is evident in the masterful editing that accompanies the speech by Antônio Pitanga at the end of the film – a tribute to the first black lead actor in Brazilian cinema as well as to Glauber’s editing aesthetics – it resounds in the barravento^[3] that unifies the film’s soundscape. The détournement present in the video installation nonetheless preserves the aesthetics and narrative in Glauber Rocha's first feature-length film and underscores some debates and tensions inherent to the Brazilian Cinema Novo movement, which still remain relevant even in this third decade of the 21st century.

 

Just as the African cultural and religious heritage in Bahia goes far beyond the barravento in Glauber Rocha's work, the transatlantic thrust is also found in much of Eder Santos's artistic universe. After his Todos os Santos series (2016), in which religious syncretism is blended in images projected in small oratories, the video-sculpture Oxalá demands from us a kairotic time to unveil landscapes evoked by the placid flight of the orisha and the intermittent dance of feathers, inviting the viewer to an immersive experience within the exhibition space, in a sort of counterpoint to the cyclical and quickened rhythm of Shango that coexists in the gallery.

 

There is furthermore a close bond uniting the worlds of Glauber Rocha and Eder Santos. Both, "with cameras in their hands and ideas in their heads," are extremely engaged and critical in regard to the domesticated society, whose main motto is summarized in the words "work, consume and die." Portraying the violence and precariousness of the third world and reflecting on the deeper layers between the oppressor and the oppressed, Barravento was the initial cornerstone of a movement that was to be severely censored by the military dictatorship in Brazil. Very significantly, Barravento Novo was born fifty-five years later, at a moment when democracy was once again under threat and culture was again being oppressed. While in Glauber Rocha's film, Aruan points out over the Atlantic Ocean toward Africa shouting, "We must react!" in the punk-baroque work by Eder Santos the landscapes that surround us are searched for the answer to Firmino's cry: "Our time is coming!" Demanding an aesthetic and ethical stance in regard to images, the artist reminds us that art always runs against the wind (à barravento^[4]).

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Eder Santos’s research concerns the hybridism inherent to the audiovisual language. His videos provide true sensorial experiences by coupling views of paintings together with a soundtrack, combining distortions of colors and sounds. Exploring themes proper to everyday life in the state of Minas Gerais, Eder Santos’s investigation evinces an understanding of the important role played by the representativity of the technological media in contemporary culture, and their potentials for use as universal communication tools.

 

Eder Santos studied visual arts at the Escola de Belas Artes of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, but then chose to complete his training by attending the visual programming course at the Fundação Mineira de Arte Aleijadinho (FUMA, 1984). He has held solo shows at important institutions such as Sesc Pompeia (2013, São Paulo), MAM-Salvador (2010), the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (2010, Rio de Janeiro), Masp (2010), the Museu de Arte da Pampulha (2007, Belo Horizonte), the University of Virginia Art Museum (2006, USA), and the Museo de Arte Moderna of Buenos Aires (2000, Argentina). He has participated in group shows at venues that most notably include Tate Modern (2017, London, England), the Museu da Imagem e do Som (2014, São Paulo), the Bienal de Curitiba (2013, Paraná), the Liverpool Biennial (2021, England), Itaú Cultural (2007, São Paulo), the Bienal de La Havana (2006, Cuba), MAC-USP (2002, Brazil), the Museo de Arte de Buenos Aires (2000, Argentina), the 23rd Bienal de São Paulo (1996), and MoMA (1993, New York, USA). Eder Santos has taken part in various cinema and video festivals, including most of the editions of the Festival Sesc_Videobrasil (São Paulo), where he has won various prizes, the Videoarte Festival (Locarno, Switzerland), the Tokyo Video Festival (Japan), the Manifestation Internacional Video et Art Electronique (Montreal, Canada), and the New York Video Festival (USA). He also received a grant from the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development (2003, Holland), a special mention at the Festival et Forum International des Nouvelles Images(1996, Locarno, Switzerland), and the prize for best video at the Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano (1995, Havana, Cuba) and at the V Festival Internacional de Video Franco-Latino-Americano (1995, Bogotá, Colombia), among many other awards. His works figure in the collections of important institutions that include the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris, France), the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (USA), MoMA-NY (USA), and MAM-SP/RJ.

Bruce Yonemoto has developed a body of work which positions itself within the overlapping intersections of art and the cinema screen, primarily focusing on the wider world Asian Diaspora.  He believes that the composition of mass media has become a new historical site of the domination of human behavior.

 

Yonemoto has been honored with numerous awards and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Film Institute, and the Maya Deren Award for Experimental Film and Video. Bruce’s installations, photographs and sculptures have been featured in major one-person shows at the ICC in Tokyo, the ICA in Philadelphia, and the Kemper Museum in Kansas City. A retrospective of work by Bruce and his brother Norman was exhibited at the Japanese American National Museum Los Angeles in 1999. His work was featured in Los Angeles 1955-85 at the Pompidou Center, Paris, the Generali Foundation, Vienna, the Gwangju Biennial, Korea, Pacific Standard Time, Getty Museum, a survey show in Kanazawa, Japan, a retrospective at the Hong Gah Museum in Taiwan, a survey show of work he produced in South America at the Luckman Gallery in LA, a solo show at the JACCC Los Angeles and a retrospectives at the Tate Modern London, Anthology Film Archives and the Kunstverein Hamburg. Bruce is a Professor of Art at the University of California Irvine.