The seminar "Pensar a Imagem" ("to think about image") is held in dialogue with the curatorial proposal of the 14th Cine Esquema Novo - Brazilian Audiovisual Art aiming to provide thematic meetings dedicated to discussing aesthetic, political, theoretical, conceptual, narrative, and consumer issues related to images, especially to auteur and experimental production. In 2021, we propose that its theme be "Repertoires and affections: spectatorialities and oppositional looks". Online YouTube broadcast of the festival - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4YhUX_47j6BgsJDqQR2zxQ

Factors that include public policies, access to technology, and popularization of socio-technical networks in the last two decades have provided the re-emergence of diverse epistemic communities that share some common goals and at the same time guard their singularities, such as women, black people, LGBTQIA+, and/or low income people, as speaking bodies. These communities, whether within their specific demands or in their shared political agendas, dispute the field of the symbolic and the right to narrate, in an emancipatory perspective that includes demands for the occupation of spaces, equal opportunities, and the production of their own images, erasing imaginaries historically constituted around these groups.

In the field of images, this process results not only from access to the possibilities of realization, but also from a gaze politics, from the recognition of its spectator positions before visual and audiovisual representations in the media (cinema, television, journalism, etc.) and in the arts that have been showing themselves to be lacking and problematic for decades.

The ambiguous affections and sensations derived from this consumption – between fascination and absence, enchantment and repulse, conciliation and confrontation – produce an ethical position that unfolds into action, guided sometimes by an opposing gaze, sometimes by the practice of reparation, when these epistemic communities also start to work with images, whether in production, research, criticism, social activism, curation, preservation, or in dealing with collections.

The seminar Pensar a Imagem proposes to explore possibilities of exercising oppositional looks (HOOKS, 2019) in relation to hegemonic visualities and also to explore, as possible practices of reparation (SEDGWICK, 2003), some forms of fabulation posed by subjects that problematize the relations between aesthetics, images, gaze, and power.

The seminar will be held online. There will be four talks, one per night (19h - 21h), each joined by two guests and mediator Gabriela Ramos de Almeida, who is also responsible for the event's conception and programming. Each talk will last two hours that will comprise the guests' talks and time for debate with the audience. 

PROGRAM

April 12, Monday, 19h

Anti-racist images and practices, with Mariani Ferreira and Rosane Borges

The debate on the construction of an anti-racist imaginary in the Brazilian Audiovisual field has been raised in recent years by both the field of production of and research on images. Events such as Black Film Festivals and training initiatives aimed at erasing controlled and crystallized representations of black bodies in various media have brought to the center of the discussion a fundamental question: what types of visibilities have historically been built for black bodies, who have not always been able to narrate themselves, or even to posses archives of any kind about their lives, including visual archives? How to imagine aesthetics that humanize black characters? How to decolonize our narratives and our looks?

April 13, Tuesday, 19h

Opposing Curatorship Views, with Rayanne Layssa and Igor Simões

Based on curatorial experiences in the fields of cinema and the visual arts by Rayanne Layssa and Igor Simões, the proposal of this round table is, on the one hand, to generate a conversation about curatorships made by black people and specific black audiovisual events, thus discussing the importance of these festivals, the films that circulate in them, and the consequences of the existence of these spaces of circulation and discussion of works for the Brazilian audiovisual production chain. And, on the other hand, to debate the notion of a place of speech in curatorial practice, gathering contemporary productions that have shaken the notion of Brazilian art. One wonders, after watching these productions, as well as considering some recent exhibitions and notions of Afro-Brazilian art: what is the name of the other part of the country's art? Is it White-Brazilian? Euro-Brazilian? How do these debates expose the whitened constitution of the notion of art produced in this corner of the world?

April 14, Wednesday, 19h

Politics and fabulation, with Kênia Freitas and Vinicios Ribeiro

April 15, Thursday, 19h

Queer spectatoriality and appropriation of images, with Fabio Ramalho, Márcio Reolon, and Felipe Matzembacher

The round table will be devoted to the debate on the appropriation of audiovisual repertoires as a procedure that crosses the instances of production, circulation, and cultural consumption. The proposal is to think about the formation of repertoires as a network of relationships that connects different temporalities and sensibilities, in addition to inadequacy and deviation as elements to think about queer appropriation practices. An important aspect to have in mind for this discussion is the connection of pleasure and enjoyment with deviation, marginality, and breaking rules. How can we build universes that allow for disobedience, contradiction, imperfection, sin, pessimism, error, and failure to be celebrated? How to think, for example, of criminal queers? How to consider the political potency of queer repertoires that can destabilize, lose themselves, and do not necessarily need to respond or educate?

CURATORS AND PRODUCERS

Gabriela Almeida is a full professor of the Postgraduate Program in Communication and Consumer Practices at ESPM (PPGCOM). She is a member of the 2019-2021 Board of Directors of the Brazilian Society of Film and Audiovisual Studies (Socine) and coordinates the research group Aesthetics, Body Politics and Genres at the Brazilian Society of Interdisciplinary Studies of Communication (Intercom). She is also a member of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) and the Radical Film Network of Researchers and Artists (RFN). She holds a PhD in Communication and Information from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), and interned at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). She is the author of the book O ensaio fílmico ou o cinema à deriva (Alameda, 2018) and co-editor of the collection Comunicação, estética e política: epistemologias, problemas e pesquisas (published by Appris, 2020).

Participants

Fabio Ramalho is a professor in the Film and Audiovisual Course and the Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Program in Latin American Studies (PPGIELA) at the Federal University of Latin American Integration (UNILA). He holds a PhD in Communication from the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), where he developed a thesis on the appropriation and displacement of audiovisual repertoires as modes of affective engagement. He completed a doctoral internship at McGill University in Montréal, Canada. He is one of the coordinators of the NATLA Research Group - Núcleo de Arte e Tecnologia Latinoamericano, and co-director of Imagofagia-Revista de la Asociación Argentina de Estudios de Cine y Audiovisual. He is an awarded essayist at the II Mário Pedrosa Essay Contest on Contemporary Art and Culture. Ramalho is a founding member of Surto & Deslumbramento, an independent audiovisual production collective.

Igor Simões is a professor of History, Theory and Criticism of Art, and Methodology and Practice of Art Teaching (UERGS), and curator. He holds a PhD in Visual Arts - History, Theory, and Art Criticism from the Graduate Program in Visual Arts of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (PPGAV-UFRGS). He is part of the curatorial committee of the National Association of Researchers in Plastic Arts - ANPAP, the UERGS-MARGS Educational Center, and the Art Museum of RS-MARGS Collection Committee. He was an educational curator of the Biennial 12 (Mercosur Biennial). He works with the articulations between Exhibition, Film Montage, Art Histories and Racialization in Brazilian Art and the visibility of black subjects in the visual arts.

Kénia Freitas is a film critic, curator, professor, and researcher of Afrofuturism and black film. She is currently pursuing a post-graduate degree from the Universidade Estadual Paulista Júlio de Mesquita Filho (UNESP) and holds a Ph.D. degree in Communication and Culture from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). She was a curator of the shows Afrofuturismo: cinema e música em uma diáspora intergaláctica (cinema and music in an intergalactic Diaspora) (Caixa Belas Artes / SP), A Magia da Mulher Negra (the magic of the black woman) (Sesc Belenzinho/SP, 2017) and Diretoras Negras no Cinema Brasileiro (black female directors in Brazilian Cinema) (Caixa cultural Brasília and RJ, 2017, Sesc Minas, 2018). She is a member of Elviras - Women Film Critics collective.

Márcio Reolon and Felipe Matzembacher are screenwriters and film directors from Porto Alegre. The duo's first feature film, Beira mar, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival's Forum in 2015 and won the Best Film award at the Mostra Novos Ruminos of Rio Festival. Their second feature, Tinta Bruta, was awarded the Teddy Award, also at the Berlinale.

Mariani Ferreira is an audiovisual screenwriter, producer, and director from Porto Alegre. She directed the short film Leo (2014), selected for the Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano De La Habana, the Guadalajara International Film Festival, and the Mostra Cinema e Direitos Humanos no Mundo. She was the executive producer of the documentary o Caso do Homem Errado, directed by Camila de Moraes, shortlisted for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film (Brazil) in 2018. She was a curator of the FRAPA - Porto Alegre Screenwriting Festival feature film competition and is one of the curators and producers of the Ela na Tela festival, which screens films directed by and starring women. She is a member of MacumbaLab, a collective of black professionals from Rio Grande do Sul.

Rayanne Layssa pursues a degree in Film from the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) and is a curator. She was an assistant curator of the Festival Internacional de Cinema de Realizadoras  (International Film Festival of Female Directors - FINCAR), in Recife and collaborated in the Palco Preto Festival of Integrated Arts (PE), and in the curation of the second edition of Mostra Itinerante Cinemas Negros – Mohamed Bamba (BA) She was a member of the jury and a young critic of the XIV Panorama Coisa de Cinema in 2018 (BA), curator of the CacheiraDoc Festival 2020 (BA), and curator of the programming #vidasnegrasimportam for the Paradiso Drive-In promoted by the Olga Rabinovich Institute, Municipal Secretary of Culture, and Spcine in 2020 (SP).

Rosane Borges is a journalist, researcher-collaborator of Colabor (Multidisciplinary Center for Research in collaborative creations and digital Languages / Centro Multidisciplinar de Pesquisas em Criações Colaborativas e Linguagens Digitais) at the School of Communications and Arts of the University of São Paulo (USP). She holds a PhD and a master's degree in Communication Sciences from USP, is a former national coordinator of the National Center for Information and Reference of Black Culture (CNIRC), of the Palmares Foundation, an organ of the Ministry of Culture. She was coordinator of the Education Project in Communication and Human Rights of Ceaslas (La Salle Teaching and Social Assistance Center); Project Advisor of the Scalabrinias congregation, worked in the area of Communication and Technology of the Geledés Institute; coordinated the communication program of the Kuanza Institute. She comes to the field of research on race, gender and Brazilian problems from the field of Communication. She is an articulator of the Carta Capital Digital Magazine and Boitempo Publishing company's blog. She also writes regularly for the news portal Jornalistas Livres. Member of CORE (Conselho Internacional Reinventando a Educação - International Council reinventing education), whose patron is Edgard Morin. Member of the editorial label Aquilombô (MG). She was part of the editorial committee of Imprensa Oficial publishing house and Caligrama magazine (USP). She was also part of the National Council for the promotion of racial equality policies (Conselho Nacional de Promoção de Políticas da Igualdade Racial - CNPIR) of Secretaria Especial de Políticas de Promoção da Igualdade Racial - Seppir (special secretariat for policies for the promotion of Racial Equality) (2012-2014). She has published several books, like Esboços de um tempo presente (2016), Mídia e Racismo (2012); Jornal: da forma ao discurso (2002), Rádio: a arte de falar e ouvir (2003), Espelho infiel: o negro no jornalismo brasileiro (2004).

Vinicios Ribeiro is an adjunct professor at the School of Fine Arts at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (EBA / UFRJ). Leader of the research group "Ways to Live in the Present (CNPQ). He holds a PhD in Communication and Culture from the School of Communication at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (ECO / UFRJ), in the line of research in Communication and Aesthetic Technologies, and Master in Visual Culture by the Federal University of Goiás (UFG), he has worked, in his researches, with body, gender, sexuality and its relations with the visual arts, cinema, photography and contemporary visual culture.