videoJonathas de AndradeOlho da Rua
A video that stages a temporary community of homeless people in the streets of downtown Recife, Brazil, where the artist lives.
Inspired by the techniques of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, the film shows a series of performative acts that focus on collective dynamics and looking exercises in a public square. Bordering between fiction and non-fiction, the aim is to engage the cast of non-professional actors in debates about identity, care, family, class consciousness and social and political visibility through actions and words.
Outside the script, the images are delicately receptive to the personalities and emotional worlds of the cast and stand as a powerful testimony to contemporary Brazil, with its rich multiculturalism and structural inequalities. They are accompanied by a hypnotic soundtrack by percussionist Homero Basílio, who uses instruments rooted in the Northeast of Brazil.
The film is not only a reflection on the power dynamics rooted in colonialism – and how these can be linked to who holds the camera – but also a provocation for the viewer. Using the tools of art and radical pedagogy to reposition the stories of marginalised and people who are made invisible, the work promotes ways to collectively rethink reality and imagine alternatives.
