Sandmann

Visual Fetishism in Contemporary Communication
Massimo Canevacci (ethnography), Sheila Ribeiro (choreography), Yotsuya Simon (doll), Guillaume-Van Roberge (music)

Body, Metropolis and Visual Fetishism
It is not ballet-like traditional choreography; it is not academic university-like seminar. It is the body of mutation and syncretism: performative seminar – seminary performance:
Images and Words
Choreography and Ethnography
Dolls and Human Beings
Woman and Man
Errrrrrrrrotica and Uncannnnnnny
Sheila Ribeira and Massimo Canevacci

We are going to penetrate new visual fetishisms of contemporary culture.Der Sandmann, a tale by E.T.A. Hoffmann is going to help us. Erotica, eyes, technology, automata, doll, double – these are our key-words. They fascinate, they astonish: they penetrate fetishist beings. We are going to pass through Freud’s essay Unheimlich (Uncanny), through Rilke’s essay Die Puppenseele Scheinfrüchte (the uncanny dolls), through Hans Bellmer’s Die Puppe disturbing images to reach the new visual fetishism of advertising, design, communicational metropolis and contemporary Art. The apearence of Yotsuya Simon’s Doll is expected.

Massimo Canevacci proposes an ethnography dealing with Hoffmann, Freud and with actual fetish transformed in words, images (live and recorded) and sound.

Sheila Ribeiro, at the same space, proposes a multimedia choreographic installation, within a dramaturgy inspired on several visions of the human body expression (temporality, volume, focus). Sheila incorporates the double and the body-corpse. This automata is a disturbing and seductive mobile being who transforms methodological, hypertextual and choreographic fetishes: crosses disciplines. Dancing fetish goes beyond traditional anthropology.

“Der Sandmann”’s breathing architecture construcs a multi-communicational and a multi-sensorial set. We offer decentralized ways of SEEING.

We underline the raising significance of visual fetishisms, deeply related with digital culture, performative consumer and communicational metropolis.

There are great disjunctions between new and old versions/visions on fetishism, in addition to interconnected “secret” passages. Inside of a complex flux of fragmentations, citations, meanings the visual fetishist codes cross advertising, contemporary Art (body art, psychical sculpture and body modification), sports and cinema (Lynch, Cronenberg), pornosoft sites, places of fashion (dress-code), fashion designers, urban design, electronic music, body graphics (piercing, scarification, tatoo). This why we are in urge to establish new ways of seeing: innovative theories and approaches over this compulsive manifestation, The Visual Fetishisms.

Fetishism embraces raising aspects of contemporary communication along with strong seductive pulse. The body is the fluid scene of visual fetish; it is the passage towards a panoramatic body, bodyscape, a body floating among symbols and signs. Thus, we propose a trans-disciplinary and performative approach, submerging ourselves into the mutant fetish scene that can only be presented in a plural and/or multi sensorial logic.

Massimo Canevacci

Cultural Anthropology Professor at the Faculty of Communication Sciences at University of Rome "La Sapienza".Visiting Professor in many Brazilian Universities particularly in São Paulo (since 1984). His fieldwork is Focused on: body culture, urban communication, diasporic subjects, syncretic styles, extreme cultures, visual arts, native self-representation (Bororo and Xavante). Founder of the “Avatar” magazine, which is now being transformed at the online magazine ZON/A.

Sheila Ribeiro/dona orpheline

Contemporary dance artist (stage, installation and video) and a film actress (since 1992). A Brazilian-Canadian (lives between São Paulo and Rome), who is transiting all over with knowledge on Arab cultures. Interested on power dynamics, Sheila Ribeiro/dona orpheline’s work primarily concerns illusion and desire in the field of advertising and contemporary communication. Uses elements of impurity, confusion and libido to approach symbolic violence and body displacement. Its work has been showing in Brazil, North America, Europe, Scandinavia and in the Arab World. Long collaboration history with musicians, sculptures, film makers, photographers, anthropologists, critics and other dance artists. Presented her works in Montpellier Danse Festival, Festival des Films sur l’Art, Panorama de Dança, Kunsten Festival des Arts, Kunstnernes Hus gallery and PUC, UFBA, Unicamp, UQÀM Univerities.

Guillaume-Van Roberge

Writer and composer born in 1974 in Vietnam, Guillaume-Van Roberge grows up in the province of Quebec, Canada. From 1996 to 2002 he studies literature at the Université du Québec à Montréal. In 2005 has been published J'arrive (récit(s)), by Les Éditions Rodrigol, Montreal, and then, a couple of short stories with the same publisher. Parallel to it, from 1998 to 2007, he has composed music for different collaboration projects, including theatre play, dance, documentary and new media. From 1990 to 2006, he has been an active member of different music bands like The Urbanauts, Stereotonic and Q-pid (ep), Wikkid Records inc., and Coldpeople. In 2007, he assumed the sound design and the dramatic art aspects for a creation of the choreographer Fabricia Martins, in residency at the Centre National de la Danse (Pantin, France). A new book illustrated by the artist Catherine Genest should come out in 2008. Since 2005, he lives and works in Paris.

Yotsuya Simon

Supported by: Canadian Embassy in Tokyo, Embaixada do Brasil em Toquio, Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec

Curated by ENTOMORODIA

Flier designed by Kiyota Naohara