“Fun to watch the first ever UK/Brazil telenovela being made and live-streamed tonight… an Olympian feat of bi-lingual, international, multi-city, sci-fi collaboration!” - Audience Feedback
2 Olympic cities. 2 time zones. 2 halves of one screen.
On Saturday 30 July 2016, UP Projects’ homepage become the place for audiences to step into the first English - Brazilian soap opera. Actors and audiences were brought together through superimposed performances in a fictional online landscape to discover Contracorrente ∞ Upstream. The performance led the way for a 'self build' style of interactive performances; to be watched anywhere with an internet connection.
Shot over one day and connecting live performances in the UK and Brazil, the two halves of the screen were streamed simultaneously from action in Casa 24 (Rio de Janeiro) and The Floating Cinema. The project was a proof of concept that created global performance on an intimate scale, focusing on communities based on shared interest, not location.
Contracorrente ∞ Upstream was set against the backdrop of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park as a stage for nation-building and in the context of Brazil and the UK's current social mood.
Ahead of Contracorrente ∞ Upstream screening, Aesthetica Magazine talked to UP Projects and artist Leah Lovett about our programme, the project and making work in two countries.
“I am interested in how television has been used to create culture, and whether it is possible to be critical of it with the use of new telematic technologies. These technologies allow for a certain cutting across, or connecting of social and political contexts, which are themselves very much in flux, but they also disrupt that connection.” – Leah Lovett
You can read the full article below.
Contracorrente ∞ Upstream was inspired by Herbert Read’s novel, The Green Child (1935) by artist Leah Lovett in collaboration with Argentinian practitioner Maria Lombardini and curated by UP Projects in partnership with Foundation for Future London.
