Tamar Guimarães

A MAN CALLED LOVE:
NOTES FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS

Tamar Guimarães 2007
13 minutes
Mono sound
B/W and colour
English voice-over
Voice: Charlotte McGowan-Griffin
Sound: Jasmine Guffond

A MAN CALLED LOVE is a short essay film based on Francisco Candido Xavier (1910 - 2002), a Brazilian psychic medium who dedicated his life to notating the words spoken to him by disembodied spirits. The dead spoke and he wrote it down, as a kind of secretary. A task similar to the civil servant job he held until retirement. Psychography is a technique of channelling spirits in order to write and Xavier is described as the biggest and most prolific psychographer worldwide at all times, having written over 400 books. In the 60s and 70s he was a celebrity in Brazil, drawing large crowds whenever he appeared in public.
One of the books psychographed by Xavier is the novel "Our Home". First published in 1944 and continually in print since, the novel describes a city 'in the vicinity of Rio' where the recently deceased learn and work. The book goes on to narrate a tropical vision of social democracy, describing a town with magnificent squares and benches for a million people, where delicate flowers grow amid illuminated fountains.
Speaking about Xavier is also to speak of race and class relations in Brazil and to think over the military dictatorship lasting from 1964 to 1985, the period in which Xavier reached his greatest popularity. The project touches on the development of Spiritism, its dissemination in Brazil, its early association with utopian socialisms, and later its overt distancing from politics at the time of the military dictatorship.
The film makes use of archival images of Xavier, images of spirit materializations produced in the 30 and 40s in Brazil as photographic proofs of the spiritual world, images of Rio and Sao Paulo urban centres as well as images from the late 60s protests against the military regime in Brazil.

Fonte: http://www.sparwasserhq.de/Index/HTMLaug7/tamar.htm

Formally, the work is indebted to essay films and to the work of Chris Marker. The still images were assembled from public archives in the cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and span a period from the late 19th century to the late 1970s.
The project will be further developed into an installation comprising a silent 16 mm projection and a slide projection with voice over.
Voice: Charlotte McGowan-Griffin
Sound: Jasmine Guffond

Biography
TAMAR B. GUIMARÃES Born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
Lives and works in Copenhagen and Malmö.
Education
07 Whitney Independent Study Program, New York
06 - 07 MA of Fine Arts and Critical Studies, Malmö Art Academy, Sweden
05 - 06 MA of Fine Arts, Malmö Art Academy, Sweden
02 - 04 Guest student at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Denmark
99 - 02 Goldsmiths College, University of London: Fine Art, BA Honours
97 - 98 Oxfordshire School of Art and Design: BTEC/Foundation Art and Design
96 - 97 Rewley House, (University of Oxford): Film Studies
96 - 97 Rewley House, (University of Oxford): Sociological Analysis and Research Methods
Exhibitions and projects
2007
Summer School, Organized by HOMEWORKS, PS122 Gallery, New York.
Larm Festival, Kulturhuset, Stockholm.
LOOP, Film Festival, Barcelona.
Parlour Room, Co-organizer of temporary project space, Copenhagen.
Unravelled, Signal-to-Noise Festival, Malmö.
Filmklubben, Orionbion, Stockholm.
G. A., Seoul, Korea. 2nd KargART video festival, Istanbul, Turkey.
2006
Reading Aloud, in collaboration with Jee Eun Kim, Overgaden, Copenhagen.
Thinking Aloud, in collaboration with Nanna Buhl, Overgaden, Copenhagen.
ION Film festival, fringe to the 63rd Venice film festival, Lido, Venice.
Hetero Utopia: Mapping the Urban Terrain, Soemardja Gallery – ITB, Bandung,
Indonesia. Contemporary Video from Brazilian Artists, Kunst-Werke, Berlin.
Esplanaden 2006 Den Frie, Copenhagen.
Rethinking Nordic Colonialism: A Postcolonial Exhibition Project in Five Acts, Nuuk, Greenland, Curated by Kuratorisk Aktion and NIFCA: The Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art.
KargART screenings, Istanbul, Turkey.
2005
Oleanna at Utopia Station (with Martha Rosler and the Oleanna group) at Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Populism Talk Series: four evenings of discussion on the topic of populism. Co-organized in collaboration with The Populism Exhibition Project, Nifca, Grunduddannelsen, Lotte Petersen and Teori og Formidling at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. For info see: www.mediaart.dk/populism_cph
2004
Homebase, Akishima-shi, Tokyo, Japan. Copenhagen Art Fair, I-N-K stand.
Oleanna at Utopia Station (with Martha Rosler and the Oleanna group), Munich Kunstverein.
Fristad København, I-N-K (Institut for Nutidkunst), Copenhagen.
2003
Who’s the Story Teller, Kiasma museum (Helsinki), Kongliga
Konsthögskolan (Stockholm), Bergen Kunsthall and Overgaden (Copenhagen).
Homebase, Akishima-shi, Tokyo.
50th Venice Biennale (with Martha Rosler and the Oleanna group), Venice, Italy.
Istanbul Student Triennial, Turkey.
RANDOM-IZE Film and Video Festival, Taipei, Taiwan.
At a time when they were friends, Q Gallery, Copenhagen.
Outpost, Film and Video Festival, Herefordshire, UK.
Danger Museum archive, Soft Season, at The Space@ inIVA (Institute of International Visual Arts) London.
2002
Homebase, Akishima-shi, Tokyo, Japan.
Island Film Festival, Docklands and Greenwich Festival, London.
RANDOM-IZE Film and Video Festival, SOVI ART Centre, London.
Graduation exhibition, Goldsmiths College, London.
Elephant and Castle Spectacular, Elephant and Castle Shopping Cent., London.
2001
Conversations, Goldsmith College, London, UK.
2000
Studio B, Goldsmith College, London, UK.
1999
Sound sculpture at Shotover Park, Oxford, UK.
Publications and press
2007
LARM Archives: http://www.larm-festival.se/
2006
Denmark with other eyes, Kristine Kern, Politiken and iByen, 27th November Rethinking Nordic Colonialism, DVD box set, Nifca publication.
Funktionell minnesförlust och kritiska positioner, Ö. Durmusoglu, Pelleten konsttidskift, #265.
Kult: En temaserie for overløbere, Institut for Sprog og Kultur, Roskilde Universitet, DK.
Dictionary, a project by Mia Rosasco, Kristina Ask, Christian Hillesø and M. Rasmussen.
Rethinking Nordic Colonialism, Tom Morris, Art Review, UK, June issue.
Ett idéhistoriskt fyrverkeri, Dan Jönsson, Dagens Nyheter og DN Kultur, SE, 29. April.
Rethinking Nordic Colonialism, User guide, Nifca publication.
2005
Who’s the Story Teller, Nifca/Kuno publication. Video library, Konstfack Stockholm.
2004
Video magazine compilation, Kirkhoff Gallery Videotec.
2003
Less than more, Nochlin, Linda. Artforum, September issue.
50th Venice Biennale, Kopsa, Maxine and Jürgensen, Jacob Dahl, Frieze, issue 77.
Dreams And Conflicts; the dictatorship of the viewer, 50th Venice Biennale Catalogue, Marsilio Press.
3rd International Student Triennial Istanbul, Exhibition Catalogue, Marmara University Press.
Grants
2006
DCA funding for Jan Leton and the Archive. NIFCA funding for Jan Leton and the Archive.
2005
DCA funding for Populism Talk Series. NIFCA funding for Populism Talk Series.
2004
DCA funding for The Most Beautiful Place. 1999 Southern Arts funding for sound sculpture at Shotover Park, Oxford, UK.

Fonte: http://www.pushthebuttonplay.com/fairplay2007/artists/guimaraes.html


Miguel Rio Branco


Miguel da Silva Paranhos do Rio Branco nasceu em 1946 em Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Espanha. É pintor, fotógrafo, diretor de cinema, além de criador de instalações multimídia . Atualmente vive e trabalha no Rio de Janeiro. Trabalhou intensamente na Europa e Américas desde o começo de sua carreira, em 1964, com uma exposição em Berna, Suiça.
Em 1966 estudou no New York Institute of Photography e em 1968 na Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial no Rio de Janeiro. Rio Branco começou expondo pinturas em 1964, fotografias e filmes em 1972. Trabalhou como fotógrafo e diretor de filmes experimentais em Nova Iorque de 1970 a 1972. Dirigiu e fotografou curtas metragens e longas nos próximos nove anos. Paralelamente, perseguindo sua fotografia pessoal, desenvolveu um trabalho documental de forte carga poética. Em pouco tempo foi reconhecido como um dos melhores fotojornalists de cor. É correspondente da Magnum Photos desde 1980, tendo seu trabalho publicado por todo o mundo.
Nos anos 80 Miguel Rio Branco foi aclamado internacionalmente por seus filmes e fotografias na forma de prêmios, publicações e exposições como o Grande Prêmio da Primeira Trienal de Fotografia do Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo e o Prêmio Kodak de la Critique Photographique, de 1982, na França, que foi dividido com dois outros fotógrafos. Seu trabalho fotográfico foi visto em várias exposições nos últimos 20 anos, como no Centre George Pompidou, Paris; Bienal de São Paulo, 1983; no Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1989; no Palazzo Fortuny, Venice, 1988; Burden Gallery, Aperture Foundation, New York, 1986; Magnum Gallery, Paris, 1985; MASP, São Paulo; Fotogaleria FUNARTE, Rio de Janeiro, 1988; Kunstverein Frankfurt, in Prospect 1996; Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, 1996.
Miguel Rio Branco dirigiu 14 curtas metragens e fotografou 8 longas. Seu trabalho mais recente como diretor de fotografia pode ser visto em 1988 no filme “Uma avenida chamada Brasil” de Otavio Bezerra. Ganhou o prêmio de melhor direção de fotografia por seu trabalho em “Memória Viva” de Otavio Bezerra e “Abolição” de Zozimo Bulbul no Festival de Cinema do Brasil de 1988. Também dirigiu e fotografou 7 filmes experimentais e 2 videos, incluindo “Nada levarei qundo morrer aqueles que mim deve cobrarei no inferno”, que ganhou o prêmio de melhor fotografia no Festival de Cinema de Brasília e o Prêmio Especial do Juri e o Prêmio da Crítica Internacional no XI Festival Internacional de Documentários e Curtas de Lille, França, 1982.
As fotografias de Rio Branco foram publicadas em diversas revistas como Stern, National Geographic, Geo, Aperture, Photo Magazine, Europeo, Paseante. Dulce Sudor Amargo, o primeiro livro de Rio Branco foi publicado em 1985 pelo Fundo de Cultura Economica, Mexico. O segundo, Nakta, com um poema de Louis Calaferte foi publicado em 1996 pela Fundação Cultural de Curitiba. Em 1998 lançou dois livros: Miguel Rio Branco, com ensaio de David Levi Strauss, lançado pela Aperture; e Silent Book, pela Cosac Naify.

Fonte: http://www.miguelriobranco.com.br/


Miguel Rio Branco (Ilhas Canárias, Espanha, 1946). Vive e trabalha no Rio de Janeiro.
Miguel Rio Branco tem seu nome predominantemente ligado a fotografia, mas seu trabalho se expande também pelas instalações e pinturas. No entanto, é nas fotos que se encontra o cerne de sua construção poética. A questão do olhar permeia toda sua obra. Há uma clara escolha por personagens e objetos marginais nas suas fotografias. Ao descentrar, ao deslocar sua objetiva para fora do centro, cada corpo e objeto fotografado trazem sempre as cicatrizes da existência e de sua dura passagem pelo mundo. Muito do drama que encontramos em suas imagens deriva de um uso todo singular da luz e da cor. Miguel Rio Branco é um dos maiores poetas da cor da arte contemporânea. Suas fotos não são de forma alguma factuais, atuam no campo da poesia. Objetos e pessoas gozam do mesmo estatuto formal na obra de Miguel. Mas esse horizonte não é traçado numa perspectiva formalista; ao contrário: os objetos se emancipam e vibram energicamente como coisas porque estão imantados dos usos que deles fazem os seres humanos. É como mediadores de relações humanas, e não simples instrumentos passivos, que eles se inscrevem na obra do artista Miguel Rio Branco.
Filho de diplomata, vive a infância e adolescência entre Espanha, Portugal, Brasil, Suíça e Estados Unidos. Em 1966, estuda no New York Institute of Photography [Instituto de Fotografia de Nova York] e, dois anos depois, na Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial - Esdi, no Rio de Janeiro. De 1969 a 1981, dirige filmes experimentais e trabalha como diretor de fotografia para cineastas como Gilberto Loureiro (1947) e Júlio Bressane (1946). Paralelamente, atua como fotógrafo documental. Entre 1978 a 1982, é correspondente da Agência Magnum, em Paris, e se destaca pelo uso de cores saturadas em seus trabalhos. Desde 1980, realiza instalações audiovisuais utilizando fotografia, pintura, cinema e expõe regularmente no Brasil e no exterior.

Fonte: http://www.cultura.gov.br/brasil_arte_contemporanea/?page_id=176

Milton Machado


Milton Machado is an artist and writer who was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1947. He studied at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro from 1970 - 1985 and completed a BA in Architecture and a MSc in Urban Planning. From 1994 - 1999 he concluded his PhD at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He currently lives and works in Rio de Janeiro and London. In his work Machado plays with the dialectics of time as suspension and time as consumption.
Fonte: http://www.iniva.org/library/archive/people/m/machado_milton


Milton Machado (Rio de Janeiro, RJ, 1947). Vive e trabalha no Rio de Janeiro.
Pintor, desenhista, escultor, crítico, fotógrafo, professor. Entre 1965 e 1970, cursa arquitetura e urbanismo na Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro - FAU/UFRJ. Em 1969, participa da 10ª Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, e conquista, com sua equipe, medalha de prata no Concurso Internacional de Escolas de Arquitetura. Realiza sua primeira individual em 1975, na Galeria Maison de France, no Rio de Janeiro. Na mesma cidade, leciona no Centro de Arquitetura e Artes da Universidade Santa Úrsula, entre 1979 e 1994, e na Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage - EAV/Parque Lage, de 1983 a 1994. Obtém título de mestre em planejamento urbano e regional pela UFRJ em 1985. Muda-se para Londres, em 1994, onde inicia doutorado em artes visuais no Goldsmiths College University of London, concluído em 2000. Volta ao Brasil em 2001 e, em 2002, passa a lecionar história e teoria da arte na Escola de Belas Artes da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro - EBA/UFRJ.

Fonte: http://www.nararoesler.com.br/sobre/milton-machado


Mais informações interessantes: http://www.artfacts.net/en/artist/milton-machado-77322/profile.html


Mira Schendel


Mira Schendel ou Myrrha Dagmar Dub (Zurique, 7 de junho de 1919 — São Paulo, 24 de julho de 1988) foi uma artista plástica suíça radicada no Brasil, hoje considerada um dos expoentes da arte contemporânea brasileira.
Seu pai era tchecoslovaco, de família judaica, enquanto a mãe era filha de um alemão e de uma italiana de origem judaica, convertida ao catolicismo. Os pais se separaram quando Mira era ainda um bebê, e a mãe se casou novamente com um conde italiano.
Em Milão, na década de 1930, estudou Filosofia na Universidade Católica e, a partir de 1936, também freqüentou a escola de arte. Durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial, acaba abandonando os estudos. Em 1941, vai para Sofia, na Bulgária, fugindo da perseguição nazista. Acaba em Sarajevo, na Iugoslávia, onde se casa com Josip Hargesheimer, com o intuito de conseguir permissão para emigrar.
No imediato pós-guerra, entre 1946 e janeiro de 1949, o casal permanece em Roma. Mira é considerada "pessoa deslocada”, no jargão das autoridades, e trabalha na Organização Internacional de Refugiados. Nessa época mantém correspondência com o teólogo Ferdinando Tartaglia.
Finalmente, obtém permissão para vir para o Brasil, chegando ao Rio de Janeiro em 12 de janeiro de 1949. Em seguida, fixa-se em Porto Alegre. Ali, além de pintar, dá aulas de pintura e trabalhar com cerâmica. Também estuda e publica poesias. Assinaria suas obras com o sobrenome Hargesheimer até 1953.
Seus primeiros trabalhos modernos são marcados por uma certa rigidez e alheamento, semelhantes às naturezas-mortas de Morandi, em meados da década de 1950. Haroldo de Campos, que era próximo a Mira, disse, em entrevista a Sônia Salzstein, que Mira "sentia aquilo que o Julio Cortázar chamava de ‘dificuldade de estar de todo’: ela se sentia meio exilada”.
Sua participação na 1ª Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, em 1951, lhe permite contato com experiências internacionais e a inserção na cena nacional. Dois anos depois, em 1953, muda-se para São Paulo, onde conhece o livreiro alemão Knut Schendel, que se tornou o pai de seu filho único e posteriormente seu marido. Mira adota o sobrenome Schendel.
Na década de 1960 produz mais de dois mil desenhos com a técnica da monotipia em papel-arroz. Estes são divididos em subgrupos, apelidades de "linhas", "arquiteturas (linhas em forma de u), "letras" (alfabeto e símbolos matemáticos) e "escritas" (em várias línguas).
Em 1966, após a apresentação em Londres de sua série Droguinhas, elaborada com papel-arroz retorcido, conhece o filósofo e semiólogo Max Bense (1910-1990), que contribui para uma de suas exposições e com quem mantém correspondência até 1975. As peças de acrílico datam de 1968, quando ela produz obras como Objetos Gráficos e Toquinhos.
Entre 1970 e 1971 realiza um conjunto de 150 cadernos, desdobrados em várias séries. Na década de 1980, produz as têmperas brancas e negras, os Sarrafos, e inicia uma série de quadros com pó de tijolo.
Após sua morte, muitas exposições apresentam sua obra dentro e fora do Brasil. Em 1994, a 22ª Bienal Internacional de São Paulo dedica-lhe uma sala especial. Em 1997, o marchand Paulo Figueiredo doa grande número de obras da artista ao Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM/SP) - em homenagem à sua generosidade o museu decide dar o seu nome a uma de suas salas de exposição, hoje Sala Paulo Figueiredo.
Em 2009, no MoMA, realizou-se uma exposição retrospectiva de Mira Schendel e do artista argentino León Ferrari - a maior exposição de trabalhos desses dois artistas já realizada nos Estados Unidos.

Fonte: http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mira_Schendel


Myrrha Dagmar Dub (Zurique, Suíça 1919 - São Paulo SP 1988). Pintora, desenhista. Muda-se para Milão, Itália, na década de 1930, onde estuda arte e filosofia. Abandona os estudos durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial (1939-1945). Estabelece-se em Roma em 1946, e, em 1949, obtém permissão para mudar-se para o Brasil. Fixa residência em Porto Alegre, onde trabalha com design gráfico, faz pintura, escultura de cerâmica, restauro de imagens barrocas e poemas. Sua participação na 1ª Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, em 1951, permite contato com experiências internacionais e a inserção na cena nacional. Dois anos depois muda-se para São Paulo e adota o sobrenome Schendel. Na década de 1960 realiza desenhos em papel-arroz. Em 1966, cria a série Droguinhas, elaborada com papel-arroz retorcido e trançado, que é apresentada em Londres, na Galeria Signals, por indicação do crítico Guy Brett (1942). Nesse ano, passa por Milão, Veneza, Lisboa e Sttutgart. Conhece o filósofo e semiólogo Max Bense (1910 - 1990), que contribui para a realização de sua exposição em Nurembergue, Alemanha, e é autor do texto do catálogo. Em 1968 começa a produzir obras utilizando o acrílico, como Objetos Gráficos e Toquinhos. Entre 1970 e 1971 realiza um conjunto de 150 cadernos, desdobrados em várias séries. Na década de 1980, produz as têmperas brancas e negras, os Sarrafos e inicia uma série de quadros com pó de tijolo. Após sua morte, em 1988, muitas exposições apresentam sua obra dentro e fora do Brasil e, em 1994, a 22ª Bienal Internacional de São Paulo lhe dedica uma sala especial. Em 1997, o marchand Paulo Figueiredo doa grande número de obras da artista ao Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo - MAM/SP.

Fonte: http://www.escritoriodearte.com/listarQuadros.asp?artista=117#biografia


Moshekwa Langa


Bibliografia: No contemporary artist has challenged the South African art world like Moshekwa Langa. His fellow artist, the art historian and curator Colin Richards, captures the prevailing view: Before a work by Langa `You're unsettled, you're undone, because you can't place him and consequently you don't know where your place is.'
`On the one hand I have the image of a perfidious trickster and on the other hand there is that earnest innocence that he has developed to a fine art.'
Richards goes on to describe Langa as a `disruptive enigma', `enabling narcissist', `knowing child'. Cryptic epithets abound, but what remains indisputable is the fact that Langa is `a real challenge'. Hence Richard's recourse to a language of paradox. Or Langa's avowal that his work has `no logical narrative' and resists `semantic closure'.
'People can't reconcile my idiosyncratic views with their own desire to classify me,' says Langa. 'I sometimes have a sense of people trying to lay claim to me, of putting me where they think I should be and not leaving me to do my experiments, have my failures in peace ... people seem to talk about me rather than to me.' These words, from an interview with Hazel Friedman, form a striking contrast to Langa's understanding of what he does. Consider these remarks by Langa in his presentation at the Fault Lines conference in Cape Town: 'Many things have happened to me, around me, away from me. I don't remember them them sequentially. But I remember some of them, as if they are happening at that moment. The work I produced some ninety days ago is as recent as the work produced now. When producing a work, sometimes I am absent, perhaps partially. Rarely am I fully present. When I have done the work sometimes I return to it, sometimes it catches up with me.'
'I was quite surprised to discover that people were receptive to what I was doing,' said Langa in an earlier interview. 'I don't really understand why I am treated like this because it never used to happen before.' Langa's remarks then were a response to his stratospheric rise in the wake of his first exhibition at the Rembrandt van Rijn Gallery in Johannesburg in September 1995. Untitled, the main piece and the exhibition came to be known, per Victor Metsoamere, a Sowetan journalist, as 'Skins'. Made of ripped-open cement sacks treated with Vaseline, turpentine and creosote, these were first seen on the Twirly-dry in Langa's yard in KwaNdebele. In the gallery the 'skins' were piled in a heap on the floor and bound with wire in bundles as wall pieces. The effect was obscene and precise - a grim and brilliant simulation of slaughter. On the strength of this work alone, Langa's ascendance was assured. At once protective and suspicious, he attributes his success to the fact that he is young and black and without formal art training. A 'new curio from Africa', as he refers to himself, he chooses not to be answerable to his national and international success. 'The work is not being received by me,' he says. 'It's being received by other people. They are the ones who have to be accountable to their ha ha ha.'
'I think that my work is unclassifiable in terms that a lot of people are used to using to talk about South African art and black art. I don't think people expect black people to make the work do ... and not having an art education makes it all the more complex.' Langa' allure is compounded by the fact that he is 'not very literate in terms of art criticism'. 'I have never really thought about the materials I am using. It has more I suppose to do with economics than with any specific psychological conditioning.' However, Langa admits that his process of art making was 'a kind of therapy', and that a central issue for him is 'the thing of not really belonging, not fitting in anywhere' - the ambivalence of being 'an inside-outsider'.
'I pick it off the street and from dumps, Langa says of the throwaway materials he uses. The works exhibited at the Rembrandt van Rijn Gallery, and later shown in Germany, were made in the backyard of his mother's home in KwaNdebele. They were never intended to be exhibited in a metropolitan arena. Langa sees the works as part of an 'open-ended' continuum - a dense doc ument. 'I don't have separate pieces. All the work I do is a continuation.' 'These things don't have titles because titles tend to fix things.'
'Cut and paste' is Langa's method. His notebooks are a case in point. Therein one finds a strikingly unique way of sticking things down, layering meanings, altering images. Exhibited widely, the notebooks are constructed autobiographical records of 'rural areas ... moving from place to place'. They are also clues to Langa's exhibition, 'Skins,'in Johannesburg, and more recently, his installation at the 'Fault Lines' exhibition at the Castle in Cape Town - where Langa described his contribution as not being about 'anything', but about 'flashes of things ... about the dangerous potential of innocence, about artifice represented as reality, and the borderline between this and that, where one is neither fish nor fowl.'
What distinguishes the work is the astonishingly inventive use of throw-away materials - concrete sacks, plastic bags stuffed with paper and cooking fat, shredded paper, clear plastic, coat-hangers, bubble wrap, buff tape, Jeyes Fluid. For Langa, what matters is the articulation of matter. Though the work presented is not titled, one finds compelled to give it meaning, to read the viscer. Walking through 'Skins' one is reminded of genocide - the mounting up of carcasses. Or witness Langa's installation at the Cape Town Castle, with its sticky flayed strips of brown paper jammed into wire mesh, its glutinous floor strewn with crumbling pieces of masonite. The impression is synaesthetic and physical. One thinks of an abattoir. The pungency of Jeyes Fluid forces back the heady stench of carrion.
Or consider Langa's soiled 'stick figure', redolent of cave paintings and children's drawings. And yet, with its sullied and disarming combination of materials, a distinctly postmodern piece. There is the head frayed about the edges, two strips of buff tape for a neck, a torso of bubble wrap with its sachets of air, legs made of transparent tape within which fine tribes of shredded paper are sealed. The arms fan outwards, the symmetry broken by the annexure to one arm of a tumorotis bubble-wrap extension against which sealed plastic straws are fixed. At the clavicle there is an expired phone card. Along the invaded chest a row of cigarette butts; a narrow distance away, an unlit cigarette. The fingers, made of filthy buff tape, fan tentacular. What compels one here is Langa's canny urgency - a chastening convergence of pollution and innocence.

Fonte: http://web.uct.ac.za/org/cama/CAMA/countries/southafr/Makers/mlanga/HTML/index.htm


Nan Goldin


Bibliografia: Nan Goldin (Washington, D.C., 1953) é uma fotógrafa americana.
Goldin cresceu em uma familia judia de classe média alta em Boston, Massachusetts. Em 1968 um professor da escola e que estudava, Satya Community School, lhe introduziu a câmera fotográfica; Goldin tinha quinze anos de idade. Sua primeira mostra solo, realizada em Boston em 1973, foi baseada em suas jornadas fotográficas através das comunidades gays e transessuais da cidade, introduzida no meio pelo amigo David Armstrong. Goldin graduou-se na School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston/Tufts University em 1977/1978, onde trabalhou na maioria com impressões através do processo de Cibachrome.
Depois de se formar, Goldin mudou-se para Nova York. Começou então a documentar o cenário new-wave pós-punk, simultaneamente à subcultura gay no final da década de 1970 e começo da década de 1980.

Fonte: http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nan_Goldin



Biography
Goldin was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in an upper-middle-class Jewish family in the Boston, Massachusetts suburb of Lexington. After attending the nearby Lexington High School, she enrolled at the Satya Community School in Lincoln, where a teacher introduced her to the camera in 1968; Goldin was then fifteen years old. Her first solo show, held in Boston in 1973, was based on her photographic journeys among the city's gay and transsexual communities, to which she had been introduced by her friend David Armstrong. Goldin graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston/Tufts University in 1977/1978, where she had worked mostly with Cibachrome prints.
Following graduation, Goldin moved to New York City. She began documenting the post-punk new-wave music scene, along with the city's vibrant, post-Stonewall gay subculture of the late 1970s and early 1980s. She was drawn especially to the Bowery's hard-drug subculture; these photographs, taken between 1979 and 1986, form her famous work The Ballad of Sexual Dependency — a title taken from a song in Bertolt Brecht's Threepenny Opera. These snapshot aesthetic images depict drug use, violent, aggressive couples and autobiographical moments. Most of her Ballad subjects were dead by the 1990s, lost either to drug overdose or AIDS; this tally included close friends and often-photographed subjects Greer Lankton and Cookie Mueller. In 2003, The New York Times nodded to the work's impact, explaining Goldin had "forged a genre, with photography as influential as any in the last twenty years. In addition to Ballad, she combined her Bowery pictures in two other series: "I'll Be Your Mirror" (from a song on The Velvet Underground's The Velvet Underground & Nico album) and "All By Myself".
Goldin's work is most often presented in the form of a slideshow, and has been shown at film festivals; her most famous being a 45 minute show in which 800 pictures are displayed. The main themes of her early pictures are love, gender, domesticity, and sexuality; these frames are usually shot with available light. She has affectionately documented women looking in mirrors, girls in bathrooms and barrooms, drag queens, sexual acts, and the culture of obsession and dependency. The images are viewed like a private journal made public.
Goldin's work since 1995 has included a wide array of subject matter: collaborative book projects with famed Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki; New York City skylines; uncanny landscapes (notably of people in water); her lover, Siobhan; and babies, parenthood and family life.
Goldin lives in New York and Paris—one reason the French Pompidou Centre mounted a major retrospective of her work in 2002. Her hand was injured in a fall in 2002, and she currently retains less ability to turn it than in the past.
In 2006, her exhibition, Chasing a Ghost, opened in New York. It was the first installation by her to include moving pictures, a fully narrative score, and voiceover, and included the disturbing three-screen slide and video presentation Sisters, Saints, & Sybils. The work involved her sister Barbara's suicide and how she coped through a numerous amount of images and narratives. Her works are developing more and more into cinemaesque features, exemplifying her graviation towards working with films.
She was presented the 2007 Hasselblad Award on 10 November, 2007. She has been represented in America exclusively by Matthew Marks Gallery since 1992 and Yvon Lambert Gallery in Paris.

Criticism
Some critics have accused her of making heroin-use appear glamorous, and of pioneering a grunge style that later became popularized by youth fashion magazines such as The Face and I-D. However, in a 2002 interview with The Observer, Goldin herself called the use of "heroin chic" to sell clothes and perfumes "reprehensible and evil".

Portrayal in film
The photographs by the character Lucy Berliner, played by actress Ally Sheedy in the 1998 film High Art, were based on those by Goldin.

Bibliography
• (2009) Variety: Photographs by Nan Goldin. Skira Rizzoli. ISBN 978-0847832552.
• (2007) The Beautiful Smile. Steidl. ISBN 978-3865215390.
• (2003) Devils Playground. Phaidon Press. ISBN 978-0714842233.
• (2001) Nan Goldin. 55, Phaidon Press, London. ISBN 978-0714840734.
• (1999) Nan Goldin: Recent Photographs. Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston.
• (1998) Couples and Loneliness. Korinsha Press, Tokyo.
• (1998) Ten Years After: Naples 1986-1996. Scalo Publishers. ISBN 978-3931141790.
• (1998) Emotions and Relations (exhibition catalogue). Taschen, Cologne.
• (1997) Love Streams (exhibition catalogue). Yvon Lambert, Paris.
• (1996) I'll Be Your Mirror (exhibition catalogue). Scalo Publishers. ISBN 978-3931141332.
• (1995) The Golden Years (exhibition catalogue). Yvon Lambert, Paris.
• (1994) Tokyo Love. Hon don do, Tokyo.
• (1994) A double life. Scalo, Zurich.
• (1994) Desire by Numbers. Artspace, San Francisco.
• (1993) Vakat. Watler Konig, Cologne.
• (1993) The Other Side. Perseus Distribution Services. ISBN 1881616037
• (1991) Cookie Mueller (exhibition catalogue). Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York.
• (1986) The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. Aperture. ISBN 978-0893812362.

Fonte: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nan_Goldin