ÎlE BRÈSIL
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ABOUT
Alongside the photographic component of the Île Brésil project, Vincent Catala sought to recover, through moving image and sound, the sensations that run throughout this body of work: space, silence, symbols. As he explains, “These are clues that, together, form a single narrative.” He therefore returned to locations that were already familiar to him and that belong to the areas he photographed. The result is a series of short sequence shots, all sharing the aim of extending and expanding the visual universe developed by the artist.
Artist Charlotte Sarian composed an original soundtrack for each of these films. Drawing on the real sound recordings captured on site by the photographer, she developed an electroacoustic language that is both instrumental and experimental. The result is a singular sound world, acting as a bridge between what is seen, what is heard, and what is felt.
This audiovisual proposal takes the form of video capsules with integrated sound, incorporated into the exhibition scenography of the Île Brésil series.
Video, sound / 4’26’’ | Link to the movie
In this video, a young woman stands still, facing the camera. To her left, a steep, dark-coloured slope. In the background, a mountainous landscape of tropical forest. The scene is set in Cubatão, on the outskirts of São Paulo, within an industrial site owned by Petrobras, one of the most toxic areas in the country. The ground is black, covered with a layer of tar, from which moisture seeps and lingers.
For more than two centuries, Cubatão was one of the strongholds of the Bandeirantes, the slave-hunting groups emblematic of Brazil’s colonisation. The sound accompanying the video was recorded directly on Petrobras’s massive pipelines, located just a few metres from this sequence shot. These metal pipes carry gas down from the mountain to the valley. The noise is dull, insistent, and regular—like a troubled and troubling pulse.
Video, sound / 1’ | Link to the movie
The camera focuses on a pine tree, slightly stirred by the wind. One can make out the structure of a residential building, a garden, and, omnipresent, a thick mist with the milky light typical of Rio de Janeiro’s mountainous landscape in winter. The soundtrack captures the sounds of the building: an electrical generator, followed by a crackling radio.
Video, sound / 1’ | Link to the movie
Another sequence shot shows a section of the Rodovia dos Imigrantes, one of the main highways leading into São Paulo. Night is falling, a storm is approaching. Trucks move through the clouds, like large animals fleeing from an unknown threat.
Video, sound / 3’40’’ | Link to the movie
A fourth sequence shot shows a jagged coastline, seemingly eroded by ocean mist. An anchored vessel slowly emerges from the fog, only to disappear into it once again. The soundtrack captures maritime sounds that unfold into infinity. The scene is set in Salvador de Bahia, one of the first points in Brazil where Portuguese colonisers arrived, followed by the enslaved people they brought with them. These waters have witnessed history and still carry its memory.
Two sequence shots were filmed on the outskirts of Brasília. On the left, a drift scene unfolds—the name given to car competitions in which modified engines perform circular manoeuvres, burning through the rubber of their tyres to the limit before the engine gives out. This is a speciality of the Federal District region—leading the country in ethanol and rubber production—which consistently draws large, predominantly male audiences.
On the right, two young women sit on a sofa, staring fixedly at a screen that remains unseen. Between the two shots, a circular closed space takes shape, echoing the strangely languid arabesques traced by the vehicles, like a metaphor for an absurdity condemned to repeat itself endlessly, driven by some unknown mechanism.
Two sequence shots were filmed in Brasília on 31 October 2022, the day after the presidential election. In both cases, helicopters were circling overhead. The sound of their rotors, at times loud, at times more distant, forms the basis of a curiously similar soundscape that gradually imposes itself with inescapable insistence.
On the left, we see the entrance to the National Congress, the Brazilian parliament. The building is austere and perfectly ordered. It appears to dominate—almost to crush—a solitary man, probably a civil servant, whose gait is hesitant, even erratic. Ten weeks later, the Congress would be invaded and ransacked by supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro.
The scene on the right was filmed a few hours later and at a short distance, on the margins of Brasília’s Pilot Plan. In a chaotic setting typical of Brazil’s urban peripheries, a group supporting the far-right candidate blocks a highway. The phenomenon would repeat itself across Brazil, paralysing parts of the country in the final months of 2022.