“The beauty is in the reflection,” warns Jonathas de Andrade his cameraman João on the beach of MacEió, Brazil. The visual artist was fascinated as a child by the ‘Jangadeiros’ (local sailors) who rolled their boats on the beach.
In the short documentary Northern Winds (NPO 2) De Andrade tells that his film should ensure ‘the sailors, the Jangada, and the sea culture that is typical of the state of Alagoas. Something that holds and resistance offers, despite changing times, the city, the economy. His work can be seen on international Biennales, great art fairs where countries have their own pavilion and where themes such as capitalism, racism and colonialism are questioned through art.
The Palestinian American thinker Edward Said left in his book Orientalism (1978) Seeing how well-intended art can result in the imperialist dynamics of ‘Othering’: reducing non-Western people and stories to stereotype ‘other’, in a lazy attempt to understand the other person. For example, a fishing boat from MacEió in Venice, in 2022, can become a romantic picture of “the tropical, amazonic, exotic Brazil.” The Andrade fiercely turns against that: “In the pavilion in Venice of a Brazil that is led by [toenmalig president] Bolsonaro, a Brazil that affects human rights, destroying the rider and destroys the native black population. How should I represent that? ” If the beauty is in the reflection, then the Western and the non-Western image is only possible to take the local perspective seriously, and as a Western art lover to “a Brazil struggling to express his terrible truth”.
Art, no noodle soup
Later in the evening the VPRO sent the NPO DOC Search year from director Joris Koptod Nioky from (NPO 2). This raw, intimate film follows the Chinese performance artist Nadh. This good friend of the director is in a crucial phase of his life: he graduated from the art academy after nine years. According to Dutch immigration rules, highly educated immigrants must find a job within a year, otherwise they must leave the Netherlands. If Nadh is unable to earn at least 2,400 euros per month within a year, he must return to China.
Nadh is an artistic soul, who changes his signature every once in a while, then the name of his company, and even his own name. Not very useful for the tax authorities. At the start of the film, NADH still seems to act out of a kind of pampering or immaturity – “I want to make art, not a noodle soup!” – But by the end, the crystal clear is that Nadh really cannot help but make art. His restless, existential creative soul collides with an icy calm, infinitely bureaucratic system with an icy calm. It is blood -curdling painful when director Koptod Nioky films how he drags in one subsidy after the other to make this film, and NADH none for his performance art. Beautiful how many layers are in the film, because of all those different relationships between the director and NADH: the friend, the competitor, the help, the filmmaker, the subject, the other.
If NADH receives the umpteenth subsidy rejection with the explanation that the fund is not sure of the artistic relevance of his work, a radical doubt nestles in NADH. Maybe he should give back to China and his artist’s life. “What does art really bring about? Nothing, I think.”
The art world says it cherishes diversity, but is often only open in a recognizable form to be used. The other is only allowed when he has been suitable for the stereotype template that is ready for him. Be as little as possible different, then you can stay. Whether Nadh remained eventually left the film in the middle. In an interview with the VPRO, Koptod Nioky says that after making all contact with NADH, he was lost.