Automóvel

2012 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

Cinthia Marcelle

location: Belo Horizonte, Brazil
year born: 1974
gender: female
nationality: Brazilian
home town: Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Cinthia Marcelle’s video work Automóvel (2012) re-edits the mundane rhythms of automotive traffic into a highly compelling and seemingly choreographed meditation on sequence, motion, and time. Shot from an aerial vantage, the camera tracks the daily commute on a small stretch of concrete highway. The camera films the traffic below in short five-second excerpts before blacking out; time begins to collapse as the video shifts between scene, and the hours compress into minutes as daylight quickly turns into night. An uninterrupted soundtrack of car sounds plays continuously throughout, both at play with the images on screen and disjointed from the video’s repeated stops and starts. The vehicles begin to resemble more abstracted forms of shape and color: flattened yet mobile, these synchronous moving blocks form an intricate dance of mechanized motion. Representing the constant flow of vehicles on a two-way urban street, Automóvel focuses on the pace of life on any normal working day, and Marcelle’s video offers a playful reimagining of a traffic jam as a symphonic composition of movement and sound. Despite its frequent visual humor, however, Marcelle also considers the struggles of a modern-day labor force and the inexorable cost of “working” in relation to time and resources. Automóvel , by extension, is also a work about stasis and the experience of being caught in an intermediate space, always in transit to an indeterminate destination that never arrives.


Cinthia Marcelle produces video works that address the mundane and attempt to make sense out of everyday chaos. In her practice, commonplace rhythms, patterns and events are an infinite resource of meaning. Her work frequently reimagines everyday “movements” such as traffic as highly formal and sequenced orchestrations. Through a time-intensive and mathematically precise editing process, she re-choreographs disordered movement, using video and photography to document the effects that her interventions have on the usual order of things. Her compositions are at once satirical and lighthearted, and her actions create situations that challenge our notions of conventional behavior by introducing humorous coincidences and connections. Marcelle’s work has been part of significant group exhibitions including New Museum Triennial, New York (2012),Tate Modern Level2, London (2012) and 29ª Bienal de São Paulo (2010). Her solo exhibitions include Pinchuk Art Center, Kiev (2011), Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo (2011), Camberwell College of Arts, London (2009) and Sprovieri Gallery, London (2009).


Colors:



Related works featuring themes of: » Brazil, » Contemporary Conceptualism, » Contemporary Participation, » Cultural Commentary, » Brazilian  
» see more

Chu’u Mayaa
© » KADIST

Clarissa Tossin

2017

Clarissa Tossin’s film Ch’u Mayaa responds to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House (constructed 1919–21) in Los Angeles, an example of Mayan Revival architecture...

Fordlândia Fieldwork
© » KADIST

Clarissa Tossin

2012

In Fordlândia Fieldwork (2012), Tossin documents the remains of Henry Ford’s rubber enterprise Fordlândia, built in 1928 in the Brazilian Amazon to export cultivated rubber for the booming automobile industry...

Laissez-Faire (Rainbow Flag)
© » KADIST

Alexandre da Cunha

2010

In Laissez-Faire (Rainbow Flag) da Cunha has turned a beach towel into both a painting and a flag...

Eu preciso estar seguro de você 1 (I need to be sure of you 1)
© » KADIST

Marcelo Cidade

2006

This series of photographs reflects Marcelo Cidade’s incessant walks or drifting through the city and his chance encounters with a certain street poetry like the Surrealists or Situationists before him...

Other related works, blended automatically  
» see more

Chu’u Mayaa
© » KADIST

Clarissa Tossin

2017

Clarissa Tossin’s film Ch’u Mayaa responds to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House (constructed 1919–21) in Los Angeles, an example of Mayan Revival architecture...

Fordlândia Fieldwork
© » KADIST

Clarissa Tossin

2012

In Fordlândia Fieldwork (2012), Tossin documents the remains of Henry Ford’s rubber enterprise Fordlândia, built in 1928 in the Brazilian Amazon to export cultivated rubber for the booming automobile industry...

Cinema
© » KADIST

Fang Lu

2013

In the work Cinema , Fang Lu explores in a meticulous yet un-dramatic — almost casual — way of how “the self” in our today’s life is a controlled and staged construction of oneself...

Deck Painting I
© » KADIST

Alexandre da Cunha

2005

His Deck Painting I recalls the simplistic stripes of conceptual artist Daniel Buren, or the minimal lines of twentieth century abstract painting, but is in reality a readymade, fashioned from repurposed fabric of deck chairs...

Related works sharing similar palette  
» see more

Death at a 30 Degree Angle
© » KADIST

Bani Abidi

2012

The perceived effortlessness of power, projecting above experiences of labored subordination is examined in Death at a 30 Degree Angle by Bani Abidi, which funnels this projection of image through the studio of Ram Sutar, renowned in India for his monumental statues of political figures, generally from the post-independence generation...

Study of History III
© » KADIST

Subas Tamang

2018

Study of History III by Subas Tamang is an etching and aquatint print based on photographs taken by German photographer Volkmar Wentzel in 1949...

Podcast 106: Boom
© » ARTS EQUATOR

Podcast 106: Boom | ArtsEquator Skip to content In our latest podcast, we discuss Boom, a production by A Mirage which took place on 1-20 July 2022...

15 Most Popular Photo Stories from LensCulture in 2023
© » LENS CULTURE

15 Most Popular Photo Stories from LensCulture in 2023 | LensCulture Feature 15 Most Popular Photo Stories from LensCulture in 2023 Here are 15 of LensCulture’s most popular highlights from 2023 — a mix of new discoveries, photobook reviews, interviews, essays, exhibitions and visual stories...

Related artist(s) to: Cinthia Marcelle » Cildo Meireles, » Milton Machado, » Tiago Mata Machado, » Abraham Cruzvillegas, » Adriano Costa, » Czech Republic, » Ernesto Neto, » Felipe Cohen, » Marcellvs L, » March Meeting  
» see more

Sal Sem Carne
© » KADIST

Cildo Meireles

1975

Meireles, whose work often involves sound, refers to Sal Sem Carne (Salt Without Meat) as a “sound sculpture.” The printed images and sounds recorded on this vinyl record and it’s lithographed sleeve describe the massacre of the Krahó people of Brazil...

Wright Imperial Hotel
© » KADIST

Abraham Cruzvillegas

2004

Wright Imperial Hotel (2004) is a sort of bow and arrow made out of feathers, a São Paulo phone book, and other materials...

Westminster Agua Viva
© » KADIST

Adriano Costa

2014

Westminster Agua Viva is made from Westminster City Council(‘s) recycling bin bags, glued together, that the artist has painted and cut or cut and painted...

Related works found in the same semantic group  
» see more

Safely Maneuvering Across Lin He Road
© » KADIST

Lin Yilin

1995

For his action, Safely Maneuvering across Lin He Road , Lin built a brick wall on one side of a busy main street in the city of Guangzhou...

Untitled
© » KADIST

Mohammed Kazem

2011

“Untitled” was filmed in Bodh Gaya, India during a residency in 2011...

About, to, and for #2 - Joan Naviyuk Kane
© » KADIST

About, for, and to #2 – Joan Naviyuk Kane, Poetry Reading Saturday, February 19, 2022 In conjunction with the exhibition Gala Porras-Kim, Precipitation for an Arid Landscape at Amant, poet Joan Naviyuk Kane reads from her latest book Dark Traffic (2021), in which she focuses on landscape, climate change, and indigenous identity...

Let’s talk about traffic around 10th Street
© » THE ARTBLOG

Artblog | Let’s talk about traffic around 10th Street Artblog Celebrating 20 Years! Support Us Today! Features Reviews News Community About Advertise Donate Contact Features Reviews News Community About Advertise Donate Contact Let’s talk about traffic around 10th Street By Artblog January 29, 2024 Artblog friend, Edward Gruberg, writes a reasoned and elucidating essay on the impact on health and safety of the proposed 76ers Arena...