'Blind Spaces' - people and places from the Cities, a collaborative initiative by PULSE (Durban) and CEIA (Brazil)
by Gabi Ngcobo
'Blind Spaces' is a project initiated which aims, amongst other things, to provide a privileged space of exchange among artists from different cultures as a strategy for diverse interaction, discussion and involvement. This is done considering the urban space as an important context and vehicle to enhance the artistic research of trans-cultural focus between South Africa and Brazil and investigating the more marginalised spaces within the city structures and also decipher the significant traces of human social exchange inherent within them.
The project is being jointly run by PULSE and CEIA, two artist-run initiatives from Durban and Brazil respectively. Participants include Pablo Lobato (Brazil), Doung Jahangwer (South Africa), Marcos Hill (Brazil), Joacelio Silva (Brazil) and Greg Streak (Durban).
Looking at video as the medium of expression and the various cities as the context to be researched through an exchange of ideas and practices, 'Blind Spaces' intends to accomplish a trans-cultural interface of experience and artistic production between Brazil and South Africa.
The project is structured in four stages which include the dislocation of four Brazilian cultural producers (three artists [two from Belo Horizonte and one from Sao Paulo] and one art critic/commentator from Belo Horizonte) to Durban where they will spend one month researching and filming. This phase has just been completed.
Next will be the dislocation of four South African cultural practitioners to Brazil, where they will assume the role of producers/ makers, whilst the Brazilian counterparts will operate as collaborators in facilitating the production of South African projects.
Stage three will be the showing of films/videos in Belo Horizonte, Sao Paulo, Durban and Johannesburg respectively. Each presentation will incorporate a seminar with public presentations of each artist's proposal coupled with a discussion forum.
The final stage of the project will be a production of a bilingual (Portuguese/English) publication of the entire project. This will include visual documentation, interviews and the formal texts of the participating art theorists/commentators. The publication will be accompanied by a DVD that contains all the videos produced in the project.
CEIA (Brazil) and PULSE (Durban) are independent artist-run initiatives that seek to develop intercultural projects in the visual arts. Both initiatives are partners in the RAIN Artist's Initiative Network - a matrix of artist-run initiatives throughout the developing world. The RAIN network, as well as the network of the contributing funders, will be instrumental in the distribution of the documentation culminating from the project.
