In The Box: Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca Terremoto Santo

Jennifer Lange
Curator, Film/Video Studio Program

Combining traditional documentary and ethnographic filmmaking techniques with a healthy dose of cinematic aesthetics, Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca explore in their works the tension between reality and artifice and the possibilities for representation that emerge from a synthesis of fiction and nonfiction. Their interest lies in portraying the “popular body,” how indiv-iduals (often from social margins) position themselves in the contemporary public sphere; their practice stems from a sincere curiosity to understand and represent subcultures. Using a collaborative approach explicitly involving the individuals they work with and taking music as their entry point, Wagner and de Burca have made a series of videos focused on specific musical genres, including Brazilian Frevo (Faz que vai / Set to Go, 2015), Brazilian Tecno brega (Estás vendo coisas / You Are Seeing Things, 2017), and German Schlager music (Bye Bye Deutschland! Eine Lebensmelodie / Bye Bye Germany! A Life Melody, 2017). In their most recent film, the artists turn their lens to the booming gospel music industry in Brazil, a byproduct of—and promotional tool for—the country's surging Evangelical and Pentecostal churches.

In an interview at the Berlinale Shorts festival, Wagner explained their creative strategy for Terremoto Santo:

We are interested in cinema as a form of con-versation, which means we don't think of our films as being “about” a subject, but “in a nego-tiation with” the players of the music genre we are looking at. In Terremoto Santo…we come closer to artists of a young generation who are transforming popular traditions into a contem-porary social-media oriented phenomenon. It's a musical informed by the aesthetics of Gospel songs in a moment when we see the rise of the evangelic church reflected in a massive shift of values in Brazilian society. If it's important to talk about them, it's even more crucial to be able to talk to them.

Wagner and de Burca do just that, engaging directly with people who partake in the gospel music industry— believers and proselytizers—and asking them to choose songs and settings that best represent their points of view. It's a conceit that can be unsettling at times, as some of the subjects' choices skirt the line of campiness. Yet, by situating their film in the space between reality and artifice, Wagner and de Burca offer a provocative challenge to the viewer: that our urge to be critical or dismissive of the subjects' religious fervor might find balance in an urge to empathize with their desire for change. Perhaps the only way to understand the other, the out-sider, is to confront stereotypes head-on.

Terremoto Santo's closing scene takes place in a decided-ly different setting from the lush, tropical environments that precede it. The viewer is placed inside a plain, un-finished concrete building with unfinished floors and walls and no windows. It is unclear at first what this building will be. The final performer, a construction worker, washes his hands and takes off his hard hat as he begins his song. Eventually surrounded by a chorus of fellow workers, he sings fervently of the kind of world that is possible for the faithful: one of order and safety, with no locks or gates, no disease, and no guilt. As the song ends, the film cuts to an exterior shot revealing that another new church is being built. As evangelism grows in Brazil with all its concomitant moral assertions (however questionable many of them are), Terremoto Santo offers a window into the dreams and realities of those who see in it the promise of transformation.

Bárbara Wagner (b. 1980) and Benjamin de Burca (b. 1975) have been collaborating since 2011. Their work has shown at galleries, museums, and international festivals including the Berlinale Shorts, the Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil, the Panorama de Arte Brasileira, and the Skulptur Projekte Münster. They live and work in Recife, Brazil.

Wagner and de Burca are artists-in-residence in the Wexner Center's Film/Video Studio through July 9, completing postproduction on their newest video, RISE, com-missioned by the Art Gallery of York University and made in collaboration with RISE Edutainment (Reaching Intelligent Souls Everywhere). RISE premieres at the Front International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art alongside screenings of Faz que vai and Estás vendo coisas on July 14.