Funk Staden
2007
Three–channel video installation
Commissioned for Documenta 12
Loop: 14’32” | Variable dimensions
Hans Staden was born in the region of Kassel in the 16th Century. He was shipwrecked and washed up on the coast of what would soon be Brazil, whereupon he was held captive by Tupinambá Indians for two years. He later published his book Wahrhaftige Historia in an illustrated account of this adventure, and it was largely responsible for searing the image of the savage, cannibal–infested tropics into the European mind, fuelling a cliché that would be used to legitimize violent colonization. Dias & Riedweg re–enact this universe within the aesthetics of funk carioca, a genuine contemporary cultural expression of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, and present it in a three–screen video installation alternated with three mirroring surfaces, recreating an octagonal arena that involves viewers in a kind of anthropophagical pot.
“THE VIDEO INSTALLATION ESTABLISHES A LINK BETWEEN THE BRAZILIAN COAST DESCRIBED BY STADEN IN 1557 AND ITS REALITY 450 YEARS LATER. THE CONTEMPORARY ANTHROPOPHAGIST IS THE MARGINALIZED URBAN DWELLER: FUNKERS DEVOUR ELECTRONIC TECHNOLOGY, MAKING OF IT THE MEANS OF COMMUNICATION FOR THEIR ANCESTRAL CHANT. THE DANCE-EYE OF THE IBIRAPEMA-CAMERA CONDUCTS THE NARRATIVE, CUTTING THROUGH THE LAYERS OF STEREOTYPES THAT SEPARATE US FROM THIS OTHER AND MASKS THE VIOLENCE OF THIS RELATIONSHIP.”
SUELY ROLNIK IN THE CATALOGUE OF DOCUMENTA 12, KASSEL 2007
THE Process
