Cobo Social: 11th Berlin Biennale
The somber, almost surreal setting of the video Marcha à ré [Reverse Gear] (2020) was one of the first works to greet visitors of the Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art this year. The film captured a caravan of cars driving backwards on São Paulo’s Paulista Avenue in the middle of the night in the direction of Cemitério da Consolação, one of the city’s central cemeteries. The choreographed spectacle of the reversing automobile procession on one of the city’s main traffic arteries was directed by masked drivers and drew many nightly onlookers. Marcha à ré [Reverse Gear] documented the protests in August against Brazilian authorities’ ignorance vis-à-vis the ongoing pandemic threat, and a gesture of public mourning of the recent COVID-19 victims—over 148,000 deaths in Brazil at the time of writing—this work by Brazilian theatre group Teatro da Vertigem set the tone for the Biennale’s 11th iteration, titled “The Crack Beings Within,” taking place amid a global health crisis.