varzea (subtitled)

Brazilian geographer Milton Santos1 defines space as a dynamic configuration of fixed and flowing aspects. We are aware that the dynamics that inhabit and ceaselessly reconfigure the urban space contain various forms of power. Flat or grooved, the space becomes an arena for clashes and tensions, some of them silent and gradual, and others not quite.

It is in this context -- the city as a constantly mutating field of tensions -- that we may place the work of the Bijari collective. That is no different from the »Várzea« video (2006), awarded at the 16th edition of the International Electronic Art Festival SESC Videobrasil, in São Paulo.

Bijari turns the city into a huge amateur football field. The territory of the seasonally flooded areas in which football was typically played, in peripheral areas (várzea), invades the centre, creating a superimposed »network-territory« that has us thinking about the multiple relations between centre and periphery in the present-day context.

Whenever boundaries become too fluid and spaces become network-territories (those created in a reticular and discontinuous manner), the experience of the cities begins to harbour multiplicities. We may also consider Bijari's video from the perspective of those multiplicities. Sports narration, typical of Brazilian television and radio stations (providing a soundtrack of sorts to Sunday afternoons, when many matches are broadcasted), receives a touch of irony that draws a parallel between the competition typical of football games, and the modes of survival in the cities.
Solange Farkas

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• video
• dance
• art
• performance
• footbal
• soccer