This dissertation project aims to shed light on the particularities of presenting, archiving, and theorizing moving image art in the Global South. One paradigmatic example of recent developments in this field is the Contemporary Art Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil, organized by the cultural association Videobrasil in São Paulo, Brazil. What started in 1983 as a national festival showing mostly VHS und U-Matic videotapes gradually transformed into its current format of an international art biennial that is open to works produced in all possible media. Over the course of this development, Videobrasil also prioritized partnerships with other players from the “South” in what could be seen as a “parallel circuit” to the hegemonic art world established in western Europe and the USA.

In order to fully grasp and analyze the specificities of Videobrasil and its partners, I intend to expand the existing debate around the new configurations of film in the context of contemporary art using postcolonial analytical frameworks. Different approaches, like the decolonial shift or the localization of hybrid cultures, will be helpful to understand the aesthetic, social, and political negotiations at stake in dealing with moving image art around the globe today.

Laura Teixeira is an art and film curator based in Frankfurt, having worked in institutions such as the Museum MMK für Moderne Kunst and the DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum. At the DFF she organized the Lecture&Film series with Prof. Vinzenz Hediger from 2017 to 2020 and currently curates the film festival Días de Cine, focused on contemporary Latin-American cinema. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Film Studies at the Federal University of São Carlos in her home country of Brazil before following with a master’s degree in Médiation Culturelle in the University of Liège, Belgium. Already in Germany, she followed a second master’s program in Curatorial Studies at Städelschule and Goethe University before joining the Graduiertenkolleg “Configurations of Film.”

teixeira[at]tfm.uni-frankfurt.de