PUBLIC PROGRAMS

The Seminar Places and meanings in art: debates from the South, curated and mediated by Sabrina Moura, looked to expand on key issues raised by the shows that made up the 19th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil. In connection with the Southern Observatory study program, initiated in May 2015 in partnership with the Goethe-Institut, the seminar discussed the expansion of art as a knowledge production field. Over the course of four meetings, we engaged in dialogues with thinkers, writers and artists to rethink their traditions, spaces of circulation, narratives, and histories.

PANEL 1 | RETHINKING TRADITIONS: ART, GESTURE AND CONTEMPORANEITY
OCT/07 (WED) | 11-13H30 | SESC POMPEIA | THEATER
The notion of contemporary art is shaped by a specific system sustained by particular practices, actors, and institutions. Over the course of the 20th century, the “dematerialization” of the artwork opened space for new artistic languages to emerge—ones that coexist with objects rooted in the so called "traditions". What, then, are the current directions and frameworks that define contemporary art? And if contemporary art is understood as a reflection of the present, how might we rethink and expand the categories through which this cultural practice is conceived? 

PARTICIPANTS
Abdoulaye Konaté (Mali), visual artist.
Júlia Rebouças (Brasil), curator
Roy Dib (Lebanon), visual artist and art critic.
N’gone Fall (Senegal), curator and critic.

PANEL 2 | RETHINKING SPACES: ART, USES AND DAILY LIFE
OCT/10 (SAT) | 14-16H30 | SESC POMPEIA | THEATER
Outside institutional spaces, art seeps into everyday life, shaping how we perceive and engage with the world. Artistic creation transcends formal educational structures, emerging as a powerful tool for generating meaning, knowledge, and critical reflection. What spaces does art occupy today? What uses and possibilities does the artwork suggest?
The discussion will be followed by the launch of the book Southern Panoramas: Perspectives for Other Geographies of Thought. 

PARTICIPANTS
Berhanu Ashagrie Deribew (Ethiopia), artist and the director of the Fine Arts and Design School at Addis Abeba University.
Hoor Al-Qasimi (Sharjah), artist and chair of Sharjah Art Foundation.
Keli Safia-Maksud (Kenya), artist.
Till Fellrath (Germany), curator.

PANEL 3 | RETHINKING NARRATIVES: ART, MEMORY AND FICTION
OCT/22 (THU) | 14-16H | SESC POMPEIA | THEATER
Open to multiple interpretations and perceptions, fiction allows narrative linearity to give way to other sensory logics. The fictional dimension of literature frees the narrator to explore alternative forms of storytelling and to construct personal or collective trajectories. This panel explores creative works that, lacking proof or documentation, seek intersections between word and image as a means of escaping a world confined to the visible—opening instead onto the imaginative and the unseen. 

PARTICIPANTS
Andrea Giunta (Argentina), curator and professor.
Júlio Pimentel (Brazil), historian.
Tânia Rivera (Brazil), essayist, a psychoanalyst and professor.

PANEL 4 | RETHINKING TIME: ART, SILENCES AND HISTORIES
OCT/29 (THU) | 14-16H | SESC POMPEIA | THEATER PARTICIPANTS
Immersed in contexts shaped by the dilemmas of history, the art sphere inevitably reflects the relationships that underpin the social fabric. Its discourses, silences, and acts of denunciation expose the tensions between what societies choose to remember and what they seek to forget. This meeting will explore the practices of thinkers and artists who aim to destabilize—or, at times, reaffirm—the constraining political forces that shape history and memory. 

PARTICIPANTS
Gerardo Mosquera (Cuba), critic and curator.
Karol Radziszewski (Poland), artist, curator and publisher.
Ntone Edjabe (Cameroon), journalist and DJ.

 Curated by Sabrina Moura for the 30th anniversary edition of the Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil, the Public Programs unfolded between November 2013 and February 2014 as a series of eight thematic focuses. These public debates engaged with the Videobrasil archive and its history through transversal and convergent approaches to the exhibitions. Spanning seminars, debates, and performative activations, the program included discussions on topics such as Counter-TV: experimental video practices in the 1980s, Residencies and routes for artistic research, Performance in three movements, and The South in perspective. These encounters—staged both within and beyond the exhibition spaces—expanded the Festival’s discursive reach, layering curatorial gestures with the re-staging of historic performances and proposing new readings of its corpus.

A second axis of the program revisited the reflection zones introduced in the 15th and 16th editions of the Festival (2005 and 2007). These zones, ranging from informal conversations to structured seminars, emphasized the Festival’s commitment to contextualizing artworks beyond the art world, drawing connections to broader historical, political, and social dimensions. Hosted primarily at Sesc Pompeia—also celebrating its 30th anniversary—the activations capitalized on the spatial and symbolic potential of the venue. Between the Galpão and the elevated walkways linking to the sports courts, new exhibition routes invited viewers to move through disassembled narratives, fostering unexpected encounters between art, space, and public life.