Fernando Velázquez (Montevideo, Uruguay, 1970). Lives and works in São Paulo.
New technologies demand new structures of thought. Fernando Velázquez´work intertwine these two tracks
towards novelty: he simultaneously brings to the art world algorithms that had hitherto been secluded to
computer labs and disseminates the thought of collective creation. Several of his works use open image
data-bases and need the participation of the spectator to generate the work.
In “Your life, our movie”, for instance, the work starts from a word chosen by the participant. In fact, the work
only begins to exist when there are at least three participants simultaneously. This trinity sparks the work,
which then continues to exist by its own, taking the physical form of three consecutive screens that reminds
one of an altar-piece. A computer software selects in real time three images from Flickr (a public and
collective base of images) , and by placing them in sequence, generates a film. The three films are projected
on the screens of this 21st century altar-piece. After some seconds, the software examines the tags that
users of Flickr assigned to the selected images and finds another common word that tags them. And restarts.
Tree, landscape, sky, plane, disaster, war, children... The movies build and show visually the connections
that guide the way we current organize information, les mots and les choses. If Foucault is already
insinuated in this study on the order of things, he becomes
a central reference in the discussion on
authorship triggered by this one and other works by Velázquez. Who is the author of the work? The artist?
The software programmer? The three initial participants? The collective that created the image repository on
the Internet? The holy trinity unfolds into a uncountable multiplicity in this net art.
The series of photographies “Avatar” corroborates the artist´s interest in the anonymous multitude. Photos of
agglomerations of people are altered digitally, gaining an undefined background that highlights the flux of
people, the costumes, bags, and postures, fictional avatars that are only indexes of the existence of real
people. The paintings from the series “in Between” also suggest the idea of passage, but focusing the place ,
not the people. Architectural plans of airports from all over the world are reproduced by Velazquez in black
and white, in dynamic compositions that, with several diagonal lines point to a flux, a system. Technology
here appears in the substitution of the traditional landscape by an aerial landscape that frames a place–
machine of flows. New perspectives need to be invented to the landscapes and mental maps of our age.
Fernando Velazquez is a PhD candidate in Communications and Semiotics at PUC-SP, and his prolific
production has been awarded by a grant from FUNARTE (São Paulo, 2010), by 8º Sérgio Motta Award for
Art and Technology (São Paulo, 2009), by “Vida Artificial 11.0” Award (Madrid, 2008) and Locative Medias
Award Arte.mov of the International Festival of Mobile Media (Belo Horizonte, 2008), among others. From the
various group shows he has taken part of, we highlight 7ª Bienal do Mercosul (Porto Alegre,2009), FILE –
Festival Internacional de Linguagem Eletrônica (São Paulo, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009 e 2010) and Pocket
Film Festival at Centre Pompidou (Paris, 2007). Velázquez had recently a solo show at Parque das Ruínas,
in Rio de Janeiro and at Centro Cultural São Paulo.
Paula Braga, 2010