Cachoeira

Three-channel video installation, 2011

I visited Cachoeira do Sul for the first time when I was five. They had just opened the “Dancing Waters” there, and my grandmother took me on a train to see them.

When I was invited by the curator Aracy Amarillo travel around the south of Brazil, researching for my work to be presented a the 8th Bienal do Mercosul, I went back to that town to see those luminous fountains. Forty years had passed since my one and only visit, and everything was still there: the cobogós, the sculpture with multicolored steps that would light up, the curved walls, and the now scarce waters dancing from one side to the other.

When Bugre, the technician, took me to see the installations from which he operated the “Waters”, and opened a door on the old wooden floor, I could understand how everything had always worked: down a small ladder he could access tens of water valves and from there, guided by the soundtrack alone, he would manually execute his weekly choreography for the fountains. His colleague Pelé would monitor the lights through a small panel with multicolored bulbs.

I then decided that I was going to make Cachoeira; together we defined a new sequence of movements and colors, and I recorded the mages over two evenings for the three simultaneous projections with the soundtrack of Chuá-Chuá (by Cascatinha and Inhana), a song that had been used for years to lull the show.