OPEN CALL – 19th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil

October 5, 2014Leave a comment

Associação Cultural Videobrasil and Sesc São Paulo are calling upon artists interested in taking part in the 19^th edition of the Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil, due from October 6 to December 6, 2015 at Sesc Pompeia, in São Paulo, Brazil. Entries will be accepted from September 15 to November 16, 2014.

19th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil OPEN CALL

The Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil has become established over the years as a diverse, multiple framework designed to spread, foster and reflect on art production from the “global South”, understood as Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, Oceania, parts of Europe and Asia.Significant geopolitical changes are underway, radically resizing the notions of North and South. Nonetheless, the need persists to work for art and culture in areas that are yet to invent new forms of circulation and visibility.

In its 19^th edition, the Festival aligns its curated sections with the South, rather than its competitive show only, as it did in the past. The entire program is therefore oriented towards the South and its myriad issues. These issues – which provide inspiration and parameters for the selection of artworks and projects for the Festival – concern the diasporas, hybrid identities, travel and migration flows, personal narratives, isolation, the social fabric and insularity

For the first time ever, the call for submissions comprises two separate open calls: one for artworks and another for projects, to be developed under the oversight of curators and with backing from the Festival; both the artworks and the projects are to be featured in the upcoming edition of the Festival. Artworks and projects will be accepted in all supports, artistic expressions and techniques, by artists either born or resident in the Festival’s target areas for over five years. Each artist may submit up to three (03) artworks and/or one (01) project, in keeping with the terms set forth in the open calls available on the website as of the opening date for entry.

The Curatorial Committee will select 4 (four) projects for production of artworks. Each project will receive financial support of up to R$ 30,000 (thirty thousand reais) and will be overseen by one of the curators until its presentation at the Festival.

In this edition, the Curatorial Committee is formed by Solange Farkas and by invited curators Bernardo de Souza, Bitu Cassunde, João Laia and Júlia Rebouças.

Based on the Award Jury’s selection (to be announced in 2015), the Festival will grant 1 (one) cash prize of R$ 75,000 (seventy-five thousand reais) and 9 (nine) two-month artist residency prizes to be undertaken in Videobrasil Residency Network’s partner organizations around the world. Prizes do not apply to the projects produced by the Festival.

As a strategy of publicizing the selected artworks and spreading knowledge about the artists’ creative processes, the Festival will showcase the works via Associação’s online research tool PLATFORM:VB; publications; and documentary films and interviews produced for VB Channel.

Aiming to consolidate an active network of exchange that contributes to the insertion of the selected artists on the contemporary artistic and cultural circuit, the 19^th edition of the Festival will also promote Public Programs activities, with meetings between artists, curators, critics, researchers, delegates from different organizations and residency sponsors.

Carefully read both calls for entries prior to your application on Videobrasil’s website

More on the Festival

In addition to exhibiting artworks and projects by shortlisted and guest artists, the Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil offers artist residencies, public programs, educational actions and publication launches.

In a bid to publicize the productions of shortlisted artists, the Festival also conducts actions to make their work available in its digital research platforms, books, websites, social media, as well as documentaries and TV programs produced by the organization. The artists also participate in meetings and debates that bring together curators, critics, researchers and delegates from art institutions and artist residencies to reflect on and discuss pressing issues in contemporary art and culture.

The Festival also awards a cash prize and nine artist residency prizes to be undertaken at Videobrasil Residency Network partner organizations around the world. All of the winners are given trophies designed for each edition by artists such as Tunga, Rosângela Rennó, Erika Verzutti, Carmela Gross, Luiz Zerbini, Raquel Garbelotti, among others.

New Books in the CLRR!

October 3, 2014Leave a comment

We are pleased to announce that the full suite of books donated to the Colleen Lewis Reading Room by Jessica Bensley, Clyde Cave, Winston Edghill and Leslie Taylor have all arrived.

Included in the delicious suite are the following:

Caribbean Political Thought: (i) Theories of the Post-Colonial State and (ii) the Colonial State to Caribbean Internationalisms and, (iii) Caribbean Cultural Thought: From Plantation to Diaspora – edited by Aaron Kamugisha and Yanique Hume – both lecturers in Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies.

Global Studies: Mapping Contemporary Art and Culture edited by Hans Belting, Jacob Birken, Andrea Buddensieg and Peter Wiebel. This is the third volume in a series that is part of the “GAM – Global Art and the Museum” project, providing an overview of the institutional and ideological landscape of contemporary art and culture in a global context.

The Image of the Black in Western Art – The Twentieth Century: The Impact of Africa. V Part 1, edited by David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. looks at the history of the representation of people of African descent.

Caribbean Political Thought edited by Aaron Kamugisha

Caribbean Cultural Thought edited Yanique Hume and Aaron Kamugisha

The Image of the Black in Western Art edited by David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Global Studies: Mapping Contemporary Art and Culture

The CLRR is open by appointment on Tuesday and Thursday. Please contact us at freshmilkbarbados@gmail.com to set up a time to visit the CLRR.

Thank you to the donors.

Fresh Stops: First Up, Evan Avery!

October 2, 2014January 23, 20151 Comment

In September this year Fresh Milk announced a collaborative partnership with the local initiative Adopt A Stop to bring art into the public space, commissioning six young Barbadian artists to produce original artwork for the benches which will pop up around the island from October. The first artist to have their work presented will be Evan Avery, whose bench ‘Let’s Go to the Future Together‘ will soon appear at a location near you.

The other participating artists will include Matthew Clarke, Versia Harris, Mark King, Simone Padmore and Ronald Williams. This project is an opportunity to create visibility for the work these emerging creatives are doing, allowing the public to encounter and interact with their pieces in everyday life, generating interest and inviting dialogue about their practices.

Evan Avery working on his bench at Fresh Milk

Primed! Bench in process

Evan Avery working on his bench at Fresh Milk

Bench in process

Artist Statement: Let’s go to the Future Together

I’ve used the bench as a way to talk to the public with colour. Art in the public setting provides a way to strengthen communities, and everyone could use some colour in their lives. Straying away from my character and text driven work, I took a minimalist approach and experimented with polygonal shapes and lines to convey a message of connectivity. The straight lines and juxtaposed angles have a haphazard flow to them, creating interesting movements, wrapping the bench with a mesh of colour.

Biography

Evan Avery

Evan Avery is a young, Barbadian artist; and a graduate of the Barbados Community College, receiving a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine arts. His primary medium is acrylic paint; working with flat, bright colours, he creates compositions with characters ‘the Miniis’ which he uses to represent himself or others, as well as events in his life. He is now in the process of creating a business around his work, transferring his characters and ideas onto clothing and other objects as a means to share the ‘Miniis’ with people all over the world. From September 2013 – March 2014, Evan’s work was exhibited at Casa Tomada, Sao Paulo, in their public art programme ‘A Casa Recebe’.

About Adopt A Stop:

The Adopt A Stop project provides socially beneficial advertising in the form of bus shelters, benches and outdoor fitness stations at prime sites around Barbados. They embrace solar lighting, local materials and tropical design in keeping with their goal of environmental sustainability.

Cherise Ward is now at Falmouth University, England

September 25, 2014September 25, 2014Leave a comment

In May 2014, Cherise Ward undertook a residency at Fresh Milk for a month developing her illustrations and puppet making. We are pleased to share the good news that Cherise has just begun a postgraduate program at Falmouth University in England where she will spend the next year in their MA Illustration program. Read more below from Cherise:

I made the decision to study MA Illustration: Authorial Practice at Falmouth University because I wanted a different experience than that of studying in New York City, which was where I got my undergraduate degree at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. Falmouth university is located in Cornwall, England and I am attracted to the diverse, one year, Illustration programme. This is my first time in England, and I’m looking forward to doing a lot of exploring and experimenting, expanding on ideas I developed during my residency at Fresh Milk, as well as new ideas inspired by this new environment. So far, I have experienced orientation trips to Eden Project as well as St.Ives, explored the beautiful little shops in Falmouth town and seen the beach on both a clear day and a heavily foggy day. I’m excited to get started and for what this coming year will bring.

One of the places that Cherise Ward visited during orientation

Telling our Stories: Achille Brice & Eka Christa Assam

September 23, 2014September 23, 2014Leave a comment

On September 3, 2014, former Akademie Schloss Solitude resident Achille Brice and fellow filmmaker Eka Christa Assam presented the German premiere of three film shorts – I.C.U., I-BEMSI and Beleh – at Generationshaus, Stuttgart. Barbadian artist and writer Katherine Kennedy, who is currently in residence at the Akademie acting as a correspondent between the Caribbean and the community here, spoke with them after the screening. The conversation provided an opportunity to discuss not only the works themselves, but the larger context in which they function in Cameroonian society. Through a series of questions, observations and personal anecdotes, cultural exchanges occurred, emphasizing the importance of perspective in both the telling and appreciation of a story.

Read the interview originally conducted for the Akademie Schloss Solitude Blog below:

The German premiere of I.C.U., I-BEMSI and Beleh. Premiere pictures courtesy of Eka Christa Assam.

Katherine Kennedy: Can you begin by telling me about your background in acting/filmmaking, and the context you are working out of in Cameroon; is there already an industry you are situating yourself in, or is it now emerging?

Eka Christa Assam: I actually studied accounting after high school, but I always wanted to act. At some point I dropped out, and after a year or two I got my first movie role in 2006. After being in a couple of films, I realized I wasn’t interested in the kind of scripts that came my way. In Cameroon, the film industry is still trying to find its feet, especially the English speaking section. Many filmmakers try to copy what Nollywood – the Nigerian film industry – is doing, which is mostly home videos for entertainment that don’t follow cinematic techniques, and I wanted more from the genre. I felt that film was tool we could use to address some of the issues we are facing in our country.

Eka Christa Assam

After a while I tried writing and directing my first short – but that didn’t even make it out of post. It was very hard because I hadn’t been to film school, I had no experience. I tried to read up on it but I don’t think I was quite prepared yet. I tried to get books on filmmaking, looked for information online and studied lots of Western films. Then I met Achille, who had been here at Akademie Schloss Solitude, and he was kind of like a mentor. He gave me pointers and sources for material, and he helped me with the second short, Doormat, which was 6 minutes long. With that piece I got accepted into the Durban Talent Campus 2012.

The second project we worked on was Beleh, which has been doing really well. It’s been screened at 12 festivals to date and won best short film at the ZAFAA African Film Academy Awards in London in 2013 and got a jury mention at the Africa International Film Festival (AFRIFF) in Nigeria. It’s a slow process, but it’s picking up – the more you do, the more you improve, and because we have no formal training we learn on the job. It’s a bit of a struggle, but now that our work is getting out there and we’re getting opportunities to interact with other artists, we’re learning from them, getting inspired by their work, and approaching our own work from a different perspective.

Achille Brice

Achille Brice: In terms of coming into the industry, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be a film artist at first. I started as more of a recording artist and I was editing pictures for fun part time. A Cameroonian director had seen some of my work, and approached me in 2003 to suggest I try my hand at video editing. The first movie I ever edited was feature length; it was chaotic, but it was an amazing experience and ever since then I have been doing a lot of homework, trying to gain experience. I was lucky to be selected for the Durban Talent Campus in 2008, and in the same year selected for the Berlinale Talent Campus in Germany, so I think those were turning points in my artistic career. I got to meet professionals that have been in the industry for a long time, network and share ideas. I think that was a source of motivation.

Being able to manipulate scenarios, in a sense giving meaning to nothing, is what brought me to the industry. As Eka said, I discovered it was a platform where I could pick out relevant topics, and use video to break a barrier that other genres cannot really cross in the same way. I would say the artistic scene in Cameroon, especially in film, is slow because there are no real film institutions. If you want to become an artist you have to take the initiative in educating yourself.

KK: Given that the industry is still in its latent phases, did that lead to the founding of BinAm Studios? What are some of the obstacles you’ve had to overcome?

AB: There is a problem with movie financing because a lot of investors don’t want to put their money into a sector where nobody has had formal training, but I think it’s a necessary risk to invest in and encourage talent. BinAm Studios was created as a platform to celebrate our own, because the general population of Cameroon tends to embrace foreign products. Sometimes when we do movies, people say that we’re copying Nigeria, but we’re trying to tell our own stories. It’s a gradual process; first we have to prove our worth, and then we can use this platform to showcase ourselves so that Cameroonians and those living in the diaspora know that things like this can happen in our own home. I founded BinAm Studios to cultivate this field while exposing our best. We have amazing actors, directors and producers who don’t get recognition because people think moviemaking is just a part time thing, but for me moviemaking is my saviour. It’s where I found my home.

ECA: Film is more than a hobby – it’s a passion and a profession, and you have to find that balance. Too many people do it for the wrong reasons. They may not even be finished editing the first draft, and they’re already starting on the promotion because they want their friends to know they will be on camera. They’re in a hurry to get it out there – but why are they doing it? The reason determines how well it is done. I feel that, as much talent as we have – and there are so many talented Cameroonians – once your attitude gets tainted, your whole art will crumble. And that is one of the biggest problems in our industry. We don’t have a market for our films yet, so the challenge is for us to be able to find our own voice and style, and make the public believe in our ability to present unique content.
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