Art Gallery of York University, 2019
9×11 in, 120 pp, 202 col, smyth-sewn flexicover
ISBN 978-0-921972-79-2
$39.95

Order this book from:

• AGYU directly
• Art Metropole
• York University Bookstore online

Collaborating since 2011, the Brazilian-based artists Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca have invented a new cinematic genre: not the music documentary, but the documentary musical. Blurring the line between fiction and verité, their experimental documentaries focus on how cultural forms of the past adapt in response to changing economic conditions. Within Wagner and de Burca’s films, the participants are scripted but play themselves. The films’ construction mimics the protagonists’ strategies as singers, dancers, and spoken word poets negotiate self-fashioning through the affective labour of social media outlets.

Bárbara Wagner (Brasilia, 1980) and Benjamin de Burca (Munich, 1975) have shown at the 32nd São Paulo Biennial, Brazil (2016), Skulptur Projekte Münster, Germany (2017), Art Gallery of York University, Toronto, Canada (2018), the Berlinale International Film Festival, Germany (2018, 2019), and the 2019 Venice Biennale where they represented Brazil. Wagner and de Burca currently live in Recife, Brazil.

Designed by Lisa Kiss, the book includes essays by Emelie Chhangur (Toronto), André Lepecki (New York), Hélio Menezes (Brazil), and Evan Moffit (New York).

This is the first monograph on the artists.