From July 15 through August 9, 2014, Galeria Vermelho is presenting the 10th edition of the performance art show Verbo.

Created in 2005 by Vermelho, Verbo is now in its 10th edition and features actions by artists from Brazil and other countries (see complete list below).

To discuss questions related to the documentation and recording of actions and performances by way of photos, videos, musical scores and propositions, their autonomy in time and their status and relevance in the current art system, the program of the 10th edition of Verbo also includes an exhibition of photos and videos, as well as the 3rd edition of the seminar “Verbo Conjugado.” Mediated by the show’s artistic director, Marcos Gallon, the four tables that compose the seminar have been elaborated based on themes related to the recording and documentation of performances and actions. To discuss questions related with “The Body and Its Image,” the organizers invited choreographer and university professor Juliana Moraes (Brazil), and photographer and performer Manuel Vason (Italy-England). Curator and director of Videobrasil Solange Farkas, together with Agnès Violeau, who curated the exhibition Des Choses em Moins, des Choses en Plus – Les Collections Imaterielles du CNAP, presented recently at the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), and the artist Maurício Ianês will discuss “Curatorship and Performance”. The theme of the third table is “Where is the art object? Where is the artist?” presented by gallerist Jaqueline Martins along with artist and university professor Mario Ramiro. The Brazilian curator residing in Copenhagen, Julia Rodrigues, and the artist Ana Montenegro will present “Propositions and Scores.” Full program of the festival enclosed.

The Performances

The performances featured at the 10th edition of Verbo were selected with the aim of presenting the public with a panorama concerning the questions and procedures that make up the lexicon of the artists dedicated to performance today.

The institutional criticism installed at the core of the performance appears in Projeto para Inhotim (2014), by Dora Longo Bahia, in Las Posiciones by the artist duo Los Torreznos, in Círculos Concêntricos (2013) by Enrique Ježik, and in I can’t hear you (2014), by Lot Meijers.

The ways in which performance artists have resorted to the use of technological tools like computer programs and devices that enlarge the limits of the body appear in the performance A representação pornográfica do artista em seu atelier (2014), by Guilherme Peters, and in Metáfora (2014), by Manuel Vason.

The research into the possibilities and limits of language arise in The Writer (2014), by Maurício Ianês, and in Modelo Vivo (2014), by Fabio Morais. Collaborative processes based on musical scores and sonic elements appear in Antifonia para Lira e Serrote (2014), by Ana Montenegro and Wilson Sukorsky, in the concert proposed by the Cão artist collective, composed of Dora Longo Bahia, Ricardo Carioba, Maurício Ianês and Bruno Palazzo, in Later will be too late (2014), by Nina Glockner, and in Objects of Desire (2014), by Nina Wijnmaalen. The body of the artist as a catalyzer of energies, expectations and ambitions arises in AL13FB<3 by Fernando Belfiore. Questions associated to the construction of identity arise in The dog needs to eat, by Olivia Reschofsky, and in Temporal Affairs #2, by Rose Akras in partnership with Dutch artists Dirk Jan Jager and Rob Visser. The final complete list of the artists is given below.

The Exhibition / The Seminar

By recording actions and performances, photography and video make transitory projects perennial and occupy the intermediate place between the work and its documentation, questioning the role of the institutions and their practices by shuffling categories such as artwork and document.

The works presented at the exhibition that accompanies Verbo 2014 were created for photographic cameras or video as autonomous objects, tangible in space and in time. They are recordings of some ephemeral action, remaining as a testimony of processes carried out by artists in the intimacy of the studio or in public spaces. By registering actions and situations, the artist makes transitory projects perennial.

In the photographs and films of actions and performances, the artwork is mixed with its documentation. The proof of the artist’s action is the eye of the camera that recorded a temporary existence. In the case of the performance, this means that the artist’s direct intervention in the environment supposes the testimony of the image which, when analyzed based on the dynamics that pervade the art system, challenges the fetishism of the object, accustomed to the expectations of the market and to the accepted and naturalized idea of what an artwork is. As a work of the moment, the performance acquires permanence in time by means of its photographic documentation, by videos and films that perennialize the artist’s fleeting gesture. These works are not defined by way of rigid notions, but rather within a wider conception of the artwork, and they demand a review of the criteria for its institutionalization. This is what makes these objects determinant for this event, making their processual and conceptual poetics seminal for contemporary art.

The seminar “Verbo Conjugado” became part of Verbo’s programming in 2008. It aims to establish a field of discussion concerning current questions in the field of performance and to generate texts for reflection by publishing transcriptions of these encounters, thus responding to the lack of literature on this theme in Brazil.

The importance acquired by recordings of gestures of artists in photographs and a wide range of technological means currently constitutes a paradigm in the art system. To discuss these questions, the seminar “Verbo Conjugado” will include four meetings that will take place on successive Thursdays: on July 17, 24 and 31, and on August 7, starting at 8 p.m., in Room 1 at Gallery Vermelho.

Performance Art Show (10th Edition)

Artists: Rose Akras (Brasil-Holanda), Keila Alaver (Brasil), Jonathas de Andrade (Brasil) , Iván Argote (Colômbia), Dora Longo Bahia (Brasil), Marcio Banfi (Brasil), Lenora de Barros (Brasil), Rodrigo Braga (Brasil), Fernando Belfiore (Brasil-Holanda), Cris Bierrenbach (Brasil), Cão (Brasil), Henrique Cesar (Brasil), Lia Chaia (Brasil), Edouard Fraipont (Brasil), Nina Glockner (Holanda), Maurício Ianês (Brasil), Clara Ianni (Brasil), Dirk Jan Jager (Holanda), Enrique Ježik (Argentina-México), Maija Karhunen (Finlândia), Amal Kenawy (Egito), Cristiano Lenhardt (Brasil), Cinthia Marcelle (Brasil), Jean Meeran (África do Sul), Lot Meijers (Holanda), Ana Montenegro e Wilson Sukorski (Brasil), Fabio Morais (Brasil), Gisela Motta e Leandro Lima (Brasil), Hugo Nadeau (Canadá), Guilherme Peters (Brasil), Alice Pons (França), Rosângela Rennó (Brasil), Olivia Reschofsky (Hungria), Nicolás Robbio (Argentina-Brasil), Marco Paulo Rolla (Brasil), Julian Rosefeldt (Alemanha), LOS TORREZNOS (Espanha), Manuel Vason (Itália-Inglaterra), Rob Visser (Holanda), Nina Wijnmaalen (Alemanha) and Carla Zaccagnini (Argentina-Brasil).