Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This text by Arlindo Machado addresses iconoclasm, that is, aversion to the image. Some cultures over the course of history—among them Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Greek and Reformation thought—have nourished mistrust, and even rejection, of [...]

In this text, Arlindo Machado analyzes the characteristics of the technological image, from the invention of photography to the computer and from Renaissance perspective to the synthesis of computer-generated images. Machado argues that in [...]

Arlindo Machado’s point of departure in this text is that noise, rather than signals, is the basis of writing in video. Grids of lines and dots are laid out on a surface, but when an electrical current is applied the figures are manipulated and [...]

Arlindo Machado believes Luiz Braga’s camera can capture the colors seen everywhere on the streets in the port neighborhood of Belém (Pará) without succumbing to the traditional distancing that a colonial attitude will insert between the lens and [...]

In this text, Arlindo Machado discusses the change in paradigm in cultural production due to the use of technology as an instrument in works of art. Images, sounds, objects, and events are now produced by means of automating algorithms of procedures [...]

In this text, Arlindo Machado addresses the beginnings of video art in Brazil, placing emphasis on those artists that challenge a dated figurative approach by distorting the image of a supposed reality. He believes that the historical role of video [...]

In this 1983 essay, published in a book in 2006, Arlindo Machado describes videotext. Videotext preceded the Internet and, for the first time, “connectivity” and “interactivity” were available on public networks. The first [...]

This essay is a brief history of how independent video developed in Brazil. Arlindo Machado highlights the role played by the renewal of open-signal television language. He notes that video emerged in the 1980s, at a time when Brazilian [...]

In this essay, Arlindo Machado analyses the idea of technological “interactivity.” Quoting the art critic Raymond Williams, Machado states that it cannot be understood as a simple reaction, as a choice of options. He claims that it also implies [...]

In this article, the author claims that the emergence of video art prompted a reversal of figurative expectations in the field of technical images. Heavily influenced by a Renaissance approach to visual expression (based on a monocular geometric [...]

This text was written by Arlindo Machado and Julio Plaza to be published in the catalogue for Artecnologia, the exhibition that the two authors co-curated and presented on September 2-9, 1985 at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de São Paulo – [...]

At the end of his book, A ilusão especular[AB1] , Arlindo Machado focuses on the issue of representation in photography, which he calls the “referent.”  He deconstructs its codes, as in any other system for representing images, freeing them [...]