Contrainte/Restraint : New Media Art Practices from Brazil and Peru (Montréal)

Since the beginning of his career, Amilcar Packer has been exploring the relationship between the body and its environment, testing its possibilities and limitations by creating temporary assemblages formed by his own body and clothes, furniture and architectural features of enclosed spaces. His seemingly absurd, studio-based Naumanesque experiments initially resulted in photo-performances; more recently he has produced photographic and video works that take place in urban space.

The two-channel video installation Video #15 records Packer’s unwavering attempts to keep seated on a chair in an enclosed space without windows or doors. This image is simultaneously presented in two different angles to the viewer, who stands between the symmetrically opposed screens as if trapped inside the same room. We can hear loud rumbling sounds as the room quakes vigorously and the artist’s body is violently thrown against the walls. It is only after a while that we realize that the action is taking place on the back of a moving truck.

In spite of not making any direct reference to these themes, the installation suggests a range of situations linked to biopolitical power: torture, forced displacement or the smuggling of immigrants across borders. Both the work and the images it evokes are exemplary of some circumstances where the body is subjected to external forces or external control. But at the same time as exposing the fragility of the body, Video #15 also emphasizes its resoluteness, as the artist is constantly returning to his initial position.
 

In this video animation, nature is not immune to the neuroses of large city dwellers who live in places such as Mexico City where the artist made this piece. On the pavement stressed out shrubs scream, shudder, and moan to passers-by, as if absorbing their anxieties and undisguised sadness. The video shows a particular tree species, a bush/shrub, plentiful in cities such as Lima and Mexico City, the “Benjamin Ficus”. This simultaneously common and weird natural urban element represents contemporary cities’ restraint and control paranoia which extends even against nature, for these plants are always kept within concrete or asphalt borders and pruned in different ways and forms bordering on a kitsch obsession. The unexpected movement of these elements reveal themselves as a sign of a small revolution in everyday life.
 

Stereo Reality Environment 3: Brutalismo inhabits a space between physical and social architectures and archetypes. The artist's model is a rendition of the iconic Peruvian "Pentagonito" which houses the Peruvian secret service. Its name was inspired by the Pentagon, the famous American Department of Defense building. The mechanized model serves as a cocoon for images and texts it spouts out. The association between "brutalisms,” brings forth dualistic associations spun from the dark history of the Pentagonito, juxtaposed with the allure of a brutal form.

Collection of Tate Modern

The pistols, submachine guns, rifles and sniper guns reconstructed in paper by Motta and Lima were taken from several popular video games commonly known as shooters, a fairly wide subgenre of action games in which the avatars use some kind of weapon. In their turn, the guns featured in these games are digital renderings of actual popular firearms, most of which can be associated with a specific conflict or country. As well as making fairly accurate replicas, in-game weapons designers usually attempt to emulate the functioning of real guns to create a more realistic experience.

Motta and Lima have hacked the games in order to extract the original 3D files, which were then transformed into 2D files that were subsequently printed and assembled as life-size paper models. Arranged on the gallery wall in the style of a traditional gun collection, from a distance these pieces resemble real weapons, as their three-dimensionality gives them volume and ‘weight.’ But as visitors approach them, it becomes evident that these are only reproductions, as the polygonal simplification and the pixellated quality of the game files have been maintained.

This series addresses the complex issue of how perception is affected by technology, raising the question of whether virtual experience is any less real than what is experienced in the ‘real world.’ The link between exposure to video game violence and aggressive behaviour is a contentious subject that has been widely debated over the last decade. Brought back into the physical world, these weapons seem to regain— albeit temporarily—the gravity they have in the real world.
 

As visitors enter a determined field within the exhibition space, the image of a target is projected on their bodies, following them as they move about. Their image is captured in real time by a camera connected to a computer with software that receives a signal and decodes this image through a process called ‘tracking,’ which reveals a series of coordinates. This information is then used to automatically place the target on the visitor’s body. Only one target is projected, and it follows the visitor who moves the most. If nothing moves within the determined field, then the computer doesn’t identify any reference points in order to project the target, and the space remains empty.

This installation gives visibility to the state of constant paranoia experienced by many São Paulo citizens who feel not only that they are the potential victims of urban violence, but who are also increasingly monitored by pervasive security devices such as CCTV cameras, sensor-triggered alarms, and even heavily armed private security personnel. As such, it exposes the fine line that separates notions of aggression and protection, reminding us that the over monitored spaces and situations produced by excessive security measures can be as threatening and intimidating as those produced by crime. Following the logic of the panopticon, this interactive installation also evokes a paranoid feeling that emerges from modern surveillance technologies’ ability to exercise the ‘power of mind over mind.
 

Run>Routine was created from the observation of common operations that people carry out everyday and which are based on computer routines. For instance, the choice of a song or of a video file in a player in which there is a graphic interface, a repetitive process which is foreign to the world we normally live in and listen to.

The title is important: ‘run,’ in computing language, is a kind of habit associated to the execution of commands, scripts, programs or programming routines. That is, it is a command that triggers events. The word ‘routine’ affirms the ironic character of the project, as it suggests something less than a habit and more like a repetition of small everyday life incidents.

Run>Routine seeks to associate coding routines with domestic routines. If the former are ‘programmable,’ supposedly unfailing, the latter are almost always unforeseeable. But both can cause tribulations.

The work consists of a synchronized system, with two screens, one of them running the programming script that randomly triggers the videos and another showing the short clips of the incidents—things falling, producing a repetition of small chaotic sequences that capture the viewers’ attention for an instant in a singular fashion.

(Text by Lucas Bambozzi)
 

Nicole Franchy’s research began with the study of the accelerated growth of Chinese cities in the Pearl River delta. This huge urban area, a meshwork of architecture and landscape covering 1500 kilometres of highway, connects three cities, and has 5 airports. This great parasite organism—apparently perfect—encompasses dysfunctions due to its vertiginous growth: ghost towns that are disconnected from the networks of abandoned highways and industrial complexes. Following this discussion, Franchy provides an analogy between electronic circuit patterns and these new models of urban growth. This is an interactive installation based on a dystopian view of contemporary global society as well as on the technical specifications of a circuit: a technological nomenclature. Franchy abstracts architectural constants and standardizes them in three patterns that structure the models of three cities. The installation configures a translucent network similar to that of a living organism in which one can see the functioning of its internal organs. This seemingly perfect system encloses functionality in a paradoxical form: the video projections of highways in the midst of the transparent diorama do not connect the different zones with each other but, on the contrary, isolate them.

While both South Pole and Tokyo consist of zooming effects and long takes, Grand Canyon revolves around several takes captured at various speeds and angles that were later edited together. This time the camera travels mainly across the canyon’s uninhabited land and the soundtrack evokes a sense of nervousness and suspense.

As the camera moves, a range of visual effects takes place: mountains are formed, pop up and disappear, as if the land was alive and pulsating. These effects actually result from a combination of connection speed and navigation controls, which affect the speed of the camera movement and image rendering.

The Grand Canyon is one of the few places in Google Earth with 3D elevation views, and it is also amongst its most popular destinations.
 

South Pole begins with slowly changing abstract images and geometric shapes, which sometimes resemble the shape of an iris. Light and darkness oscillate on the screen, accompanied by a soundtrack that suggests a certain suspense, until a bright white light finally predominates. The hypnotic rhythm and the mystifying images linger on into about three quarters of the film.

From this point on, the camera starts to zoom out, revealing the outline of this white mass surrounded by vivid blue patches. But it is with the appearance of the earth’s outline at the end of the zoom that we realize what the film is about: the South Pole. This icy, desolate and largely uncharted territory is here depicted at the centre of the globe, as if it were closer, more accessible.

As part of Matheus’ Google Earth trilogy, this video also deals with how our voyeuristic urge is unleashed by the idea of a technology that brings distant, previously inaccessible geographical locations to our desktops. Following the program’s logic, we come to the conclusion that the camera started by closely scrutinizing the actual territory and showing us what the South Pole really looks like. However, satellites are unable to register this area of the globe, as it is covered in snow, reflecting white light. Therefore all that the artist shows us is moving shapes and colors that frustrate our desire to see the unseen.
 

At the beginning all we see is a blurred image whose various elements are rather indistinct. But as the camera slowly zooms out, we can start identifying the grey solid blocks which appear to be floating over what we can now recognize as a kind of suburban scenario with the houses located in seemingly quiet streets. The lengthy camera movement is now accompanied by a cacophony of voices speaking in a foreign language—apparently Japanese.

A few seconds later, one enters what is familiar territory for most internet users; it now becomes clear that this is a Google Earth camera gradually revealing an aerial view of a city. Simultaneously, the soundtrack becomes increasingly more jarring, adding a certain sense of tension to this seemingly ordinary video. Soon, a few corporate logos start to pop up as if to denote locations that have been identified via satellite data.

But, as the camera continues to zoom out these logos start to rapidly proliferate, to the point when they almost entirely cover the depicted area. The sound slowly subsides and the logos start to vibrate madly and ridiculously in synchrony with a kind of pop techno track reminiscent of video game sounds.

Tokyo plays with the notion that the possibilities offered by recent surveillance techniques are undoubtedly seductive, as they potentially create windows to every part of the world at the click of a mouse. However, it equally reminds us that these same spaces also become much more vulnerable to the control and exploitation by corporate or military power.
 

The Matari 69200 project focuses on the political violence suffered during the 1980s in Peru. The medium used by the artist for this purpose is a video game and the ATARI 2600, a very popular video game console during the same decade. The number “69200” in the title refers to the number of fatalities during the war. The armed conflict was between the Peruvian government, represented by the Army, and the Maoist Shining Path guerrilla. Thousands of people were murdered and tortured and many others disappeared. The brutality came from a fundamentalist guerrilla and from the police force who carried out an abusive and indiscriminate repression that did not respect any human rights. The same TV screen that showed images of this war was also used for playing Pac Man and Space Invaders. Matari 69200 conflates these two experiences into a video game based on episodes of a real war.