The 17th International Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil confirms an orientation that first began to form a decade ago. The Festival’s opening up to all forms of artistic expression brings to fruition a gradual approximation with the visual arts prefigured over the course of four editions devoted to such languages as performance and cinema, and placing increasing importance on exhibition segments beyond their original remit. The intensification of this dialogue was in synch with the growing space allotted to video and the moving image on the contemporary art scene, in their capacity as the preferred mediums for artistic experimentation.

The Southern Panoramas exhibition was created out of a surprising body of submitted work, of which over a third was produced in languages not normally within the Festival’s remit. Coming from all regions covered by the exhibition—Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Oceania—, they comprise four sections that informed the curatorial project and materialized as exhibition chapters.