PLATFORM:VB
18th Festival launches online tool for collaboration and reflection on art
Dots, tags and mappings compose an environment designed for the collaborative production of contents and research on creative processes. Launched during the 18th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil—due in São Paulo (Brazil) from November 6, 2013 to February 2, 2014—PLATFORM:VB is an online art research tool in which the voices of artists, curators, researchers, educators, and the audience converge criss-cross one another, based on authorial contents and on the institution’s own collection. “One of Videobrasil’s missions is to have its collection be constantly revisited and put into context with current issues from art and the world, encouraging dialogue between old works and new productions. Extending beyond the Festival, which is held biennially, the Platform becomes a permanent tool in our work,” says Solange Farkas, director of Videobrasil and one of the curators of the Festival’s 30th anniversary edition.
The experimental (beta) version of PLATFORM:VB will be up on November 4, 2013 at the Videobrasil website, initially focusing on the 18th Festival itself. The artists shortlisted for this edition of the Southern Panoramas competitive show were the first to have their contents made available in the Platform. There, statements, references, videos, photographs, and online articles will outline the creative processes leading up to the works selected for the show, relating them to politics, history, anthropology, religion etc. As noted by Fernando Oliva, one of the Panoramas curators, “through the Platform, the audience gets in touch with the artist’s creative process in pluridisciplinary, horizontal fashion.” The horizontality Oliva refers to is the visitor’s freedom to navigate the contents without a hierarchy predetermined by editorial preferences or lists. This way, content production becomes customized and collaborative, enabling comments and the creation of new connections between the materials.
PLATFORM:VB: QR code and playlists
From unpretentious navigation to the preparation of classes and seminars, PLATFORM:VB can be used as a device for research and curating, as well as for educational purposes. Not only artists and audience members, but also critics, curators, professors, researchers and art educators can use the tool to create their own mappings from the connections between contents accessed in the Platform, and to record their own comments as well. Both the mappings created by guests and the collaboration of users should bring contributions and particular references from people who may be closer to the universe of each content.
During the 18th Festival, PLATFORM:VB can be accessed in different ways. For visitors at the show, beside each artwork on display in Southern Panoramas, a QR code included on the piece’s plaque will connect the audience with the contents and references made available by the artist. In the Warehouse where the 30 Years show will take place as part of the historical section marking the Festival’s thirtieth anniversary, computer terminals will provide access to both Platform content and a video library containing 1,300 pieces from the institution’s collection. Professors and teachers interested in the tool may use the Platform to create their own mappings, which can be converted into playlists that they can schedule to play at the video library in the warehouse, with support from the festival mediation team.
In the virtual realm, the Platform grants access to the artists’ creative process, references, and reflections, fostering research and linking these contents to the Videobrasil collection, which will soon have a new home: Videobrasil’s next mission is to set up a headquarters for the Associação where, among other activities, the collection works will be shown from new perspectives and in new curated programs.
The Platform is open to your collaboration. We invite you to navigate the site, peruse its mappings, and understand its coordinates. Each dot includes a field for your questions and comments. You can also create new connections and devise mappings of your own; they may eventually be published on the site, based on the editor’s choices. We invite you to participate and bring your references and impressions into this collaborative, reflection-oriented universe.
Get to know PLATFORM:VB right away
