281 art practitioners in the international art scene. His work bore close relation to the strand of production pioneered by Nam June Paik and Wolf Vostell around 1959, using both museums and galleries as well as television channels, such as WGBH from Boston, WHNET from New York and WDR from Cologne, who offered them creative research laboratories191. Zanini wanted to install something similar at the MAC-USP, a centre for video production and, consequently, foment a generation of Brazilian video artists. After a few initiatives, such as the consignment of local works to the Videoart192 exhibition, at the Institute of Contemporary Art of the University of Pennsylvania, he managed to buy a filming camera and an edit suit and in 1977 founded a Video Art Sector in the museum, coordinated by Cacilda Teixeira da Costa and Marília Saboya. The research activities and production that were carried out using this medium resulted in new works by artists such as Gabriel Borba, José Roberto Aguilar, Carmela Gross, Julio Plaza, Regina Silveira and Marcello Nitsche.
Although the Video Art Sector lasted only one year, ending in 1978, when Walter Zanini left his position as director of the museum, the debates and experimentations in video production continued to take place in new locations and with other agents. In 1979 Roberto Sandoval and Renata Padovan opened a production company at a mix venue which consisted of a school, an office and a studio called Aster,193 on Cardoso de Almeida Street, in São Paulo. In August 1983, the first edition of the Videobrasil festival took place at the Museu da Imagem e do Som de São Paulo (MIS-SP), which juxtaposed single-channel projections, on a cinema screen or monitor, with installations and performances. According to the organizer Solange Farkas, the festival was born from the realization that “the video was looking for a place to exhibit its language”194. During the first half of the 1980s, the network of video producers and programmers in Brazil continued to grow, as well as the technical filming, editing and exhibition possibilities. During this time, equipment such as the home videocassette and the U-Matic system, which were more modern and lighter than the Portapack195, finally arrived in Brazil. An 191 In the context of the public television networks, a number of workshops and research laboratories were environment had been formed for the carried out with the artists to experiment with equip- emergence of independent producers,
ment and languages. Fred Barzyk used the Public Broadcasting Service to direct The Medium is the Medium in 1969, while Nam June Paik made Global Groove in 1973. Cf. ZANINI, Walter. “Videoarte: uma poética aberta”. In: MACHADO, Arlindo. Videobrasil: Três décadas de vídeo brasileiro. São Paulo: Instituto Itaú Cultural, 2003, p. 51. 192 At the request of Suzanne Delehanty, Walter Zanini compiled a list of Brazilian atists interested in making vídeo work. Regina Silveira, Julio Plaza, Donato Ferrari and Gabriel Borba, all based in São Paulo, did realize their projects due to lack of equipment. Ultimately the representatives were Antonio Dias, who had made works in Italy and in the United States, and participants of the group from Rio de Janeiro, Anna Bella Geiger, Sonia Andrade, Fernando Cocchiarale and Ivens Machado, who used the equipment owned by diplomat John Azulay.
193 Regina Silveira, Mary Dritschel, Julio Plaza and Sonia Fontanezi were among those who made use of the infrastructure of the production company to make their own vídeo works. Silveira and Plaza shared a printinmaking studio in the same house with Donato Ferrari. In another space, Walter Zanini, Cacilda Teixeira da Costa and Marília Saboya set up the office where they carried out the research for the book História geral da arte no Brasil [General history of art in Brazil] launched in 1983 by the Instituto Moreira Salles. Cf. TEIXEIRA DA COSTA, Cacilda. “Videoarte no MAC”. In: MACHADO, Arlindo, op. cit., p. 73. 194 Cf. FARKAS, Solange. “OVideobrasil e o vídeo no Brasil: Uma trajetória paralela”. In: MACHADO, Arlindo, op. cit., p. 228. 195 Cf. MELLO, Christine, op. cit., p. 97.