Every year, the European Media Arts Platform (EMAP) promotes a programme of residencies in different European cities to support projects by emerging artists in video, digital art, robotics, bio art, and other Media Arts domains.

Among the 16 names included in this year's residency programme, Luiz Zanotello, a Brazilian artist based in Berlin, was the name selected and assigned to the city of Braga (over two months), working on a collaborative work to be presented at the gnration. Used to working with Media Arts - where he dedicates himself to the creation of images and poetics through the perfusion of various electronic languages - the artist joined Ricardo Vieira to explore the ambivalence of the word ‘time’, an idea that led to the creation of the exhibition ‘Tempo e Tempo’ (Time and Time), hosted by gnration until January 2025.

After completing his residency, Luiz Zanotello talked with Braga Media Arts and gnration, revealing the concept behind his artistic work, which combines nature, art, and technology.

Braga Media Arts: What is the origin of the whole concept of this piece ‘Tempo e Tempo' (Time and Time)?

Luiz Zanotello: This work was born, in fact, from the double meaning of the word ‘time’ but also from how technology and ecology create a certain type of time-image. It was a desire to return to the Portuguese language that led me to think about verbal language and language as a way of translating the world, our way of connecting with the world.

That's how I created ‘Tempo e Tempo’. In Portuguese, ‘tempo’ (time) is a word that has two or even more meanings.

BMA: And from a practical point of view, how is the piece constructed?

LZ: In practical terms, it's not a single piece. Here at gnration, the exhibition is a room divided into two. One is a square space and the other is more rectangular. When you enter the room, there's a window on the right and a door on the left, always open.

In this first moment, what we are projecting is an entrance into the universe of language. When we entered the room, we found the starting point of the project, which was language itself. In this first ‘time’, there is a text, running at a specific speed. An infinite text that I wrote with Ricardo Vieira - with whom I collaborate on this project. It's a text that also creates a certain idea of infinitude, which escapes the linearity of the line drawn by the text in space. When we enter, bodies and people become part of that text. It ceases to be something that is given to us in a transcendental format and becomes something in which we participate.

In the second gesture, we are confronted with images of online cameras around the world, that follow the circular movement of a compass - which can also be a clock, depending on each person. We (Ricardo and I) are looking for open-access cameras that measure the time, in this case climate/weather, around the planet. These devices observe rivers, lakes, forests, or the sky and analyze the changes in these places. Here, when we see these images, our perception of time is scrambled, because everything we see - a cloud passing over Portugal at a certain moment, will soon arrive in Spain - and the images themselves bring us a time that, as well as being climatic, is also linked to the past, the present and the future.

It's an interesting topic because in the first room we have time as a line, which redoubles into infinity. And in the second room we have time as a circle, which also redoubles in infinity.

BMA: Where did the desire to analyze and explore open-access cameras come from?

LZ: I've always had this thing of looking at these cameras. These images are looking at a mountain or a river, and often nobody is watching. There's something that fascinates me about that and the distance involved in that image. 

When I developed the project proposal and started looking for the accesses and entities that managed these images, I analyzed how to take this feed from the online cameras and work on them in real-time using an algorithm that I developed, especially here at gnration. This is an algorithm that uses different languages. I experimented with Python, OpenCV, etc., and with more technical things until I found my technological mother tongue: Java Processing itself, where I developed the algorithm that we are experiencing in space.

The whole experience has been interesting. I feel that we've almost managed to break down borders. At a certain point, borders ceased to exist, not just because of the images. Spatial and metric distances become obsolete because the temporal distance becomes apparent.

BMA: How was the process of working within the EMAP network?

LZ: I was so happy when the work was selected by the EMAP network. I'd been applying for several years and this time I applied with everything already defined. I already knew that I wanted to come to Portugal, that I wanted to do this research here and at gnration. And this was possible thanks to EMAP.

It's incredible because when I joined the network it was the first time I'd been in a room with a group of people who speak the same artistic language. EMAP showed me a network that connects our questions, proposals, and practices.

The exhibition is on show at gnration's Zero Gallery until 4 January 2025, with free admission. Find Luiz Zanotello's work on his website and learn more about ‘Tempo e Tempo’ at emap.eu and gnration.pt.