Digital Spectrum of the Body, by Caroline Rodrigues
About Tropic of Capricorn, by Kika Nicolela.

North-American Minimalism brought up to modern art the possibility of radical changes in the observer`s point-of-view, according to the space in which the art work is inserted. From this though some of the most creative fields of nowadays` art emerge: Public Art as an existence outside galleries and Video-Art as the nature of digital moving image inside these institutions. When the spatial configuration is changed, the time of perception is also transformed. Therefore, the central point of the discussion is the possible transformations in the phenomenology of perception inside the observer-art interaction.
When the same digital image is yet converted into different media, its nature stretches. That is how Kika Nicolela works, an artist that browses trough the possibilities of the digital world stretching the borders between observation and experience.
Tropic of Capricorn presents itself as the paroxysm of this choice.
Kika invited four transsexuals from São Paulo to expose themselves trough images produced in a cheap hotel bedroom. Despite being the working place of the majority of them, the performance here demanded was about talking about what the situation brings to mind: stories, desires, fears. The camera is high and vertical positioned like the bedroom lamp, lighting the centre of the bed, where they lie themselves down, one by one, and stay for a while, alone with the cine-eye. Jéssica, Jennifer, Márcia and Samara gift the curious observer with erotic stories full of fabling.
The environment turns different between each one of them and the camera, who acts as a hole in the lock, sexual partner and confidant; but in the course of the image production, the atmosphere warms up in each body with the simple talking about it. And despite the monochromatic bodies pasted in the video image surface, the underground becomes deeper, a delusion of self-knowledge through desire indeed found in the last moment of shooting, when Kika asks Jessica: “Was it good for you?”, and after a quick smile comes the answer: “Wonderful”.
The edition of thirty minutes is an intense documentary about the desires` underground. Observed inside an art gallery it may fit as a glance at this distant world, and at the same time intimate in anyone`s skin. But from this voyeur observation an experience has been proposed: in the installation with the same name, Kika rebuilds the scene where the images emerged in a bedroom with a simple bed, where the image is returned to by the projection in realistic dimensions. The transsexuals’ spectrum inhabits now the bed exposed to public.
The bed is not only initial work place of the transsexuals; it is future and potent media of being someone else in a dreamful sleep or in full immanence sex. A possibility of action is brought up here: who lies down in the Tropic of Capricorn`s bed may become another, may become the other`s fetish, the other`s dream, the other`s pain, whether lying aside the projection as an accomplice, whether receiving in the own body the hot skin of the projector`s light, feeling transformed by the trans-sexuality phantomized into art work.
Who lies in Tropic of Capricorn`s bed joins skin`s surfaces and spectral image, moistures the reality of documental representation and the reality of experimenting a body`s spectrum. This can surely lead us to the discovery of the self with Lygia Clark`s relational objects. By means of rocks, plastic bags full with water, sand and several textures placed in the interactor`s body , Clark proposed an intern diving. And couldn`t digital projection be a contemporary relational object, as a self diving through the spectral self of someone else?
Expanding her images to different possible media with digital technology - photography, video-art, cinema, projection - Kika not only shows that her work has a multiple character and a liquid autonomy like the Zigmunt Bauman`s liquid society wishes, but presents a kind of image liquidness that transmutes into horizons of subjective-universal glances. In this way er work streamlines an issue still locked in documental and plastic representation of the other in a Brazilian contemporary art, stretching this other`s conceptual existence until it`s inexistence, trough the double spectrum of projected digital image.

A fantasmática digital do corpo, por Caroline Rodrigues
sobre Trópico de Capricórnio, de Kika Nicolela

O Minimalismo norte-americano trouxe à arte moderna a possibilidade de alterações do ponto-de-vista do observador de acordo com espaço em que a obra está inserida. Desse pensamento surgem algumas das maiores potências criativas na contemporaneidade: a arte pública como a arte que decide existir fora das galerias e museus e a videoarte como a natureza da imagem digital em movimento dentro dessas instituições. Na mudança do espaço muda-se o tempo de percepção, e com isso se transforma toda a fenomenologia da interação público-arte.
Quando a mesma imagem digital é ainda convertida para suportes diferentes, sua natureza se elastiza. Assim é o trabalho de Kika Nicolela, artista que navega pelas possibilidades do mundo digital esgarçando as bordas entre observação e experiência.
Trópico de Capricórnio se apresenta como o paroxismo dessa opção.
Kika convidou quatro travestis de São Paulo a se exporem em imagens produzidas num quarto barato de hotel. Apesar de ser local de trabalho da maioria delas, a performance pedida aqui é outra: relatar histórias, desejos e medos. A câmera é alta e vertical ao centro da cama, onde elas se deitam e permanecem por um tempo, sozinhas com o cine-olho. Jéssica, Jennifer, Márcia e Samara presenteiam o espectador curioso com narrativas eróticas repletas de fabulação.
O ambiente se diferencia entre cada uma delas e a câmera, que atua como buraco de fechadura, parceira sexual e confidente: mas no decorrer das imagens o clima esquenta no corpo de cada uma com o simples falar dele. E, apesar dos corpos monocromáticos colados à superfície da imagem do vídeo, o submundo torna-se mais profundo, um delírio de auto-conhecimento pela via do desejo, de fato constatado quando no último momento Kika pergunta a Jéssica “Foi bom pra você?”, e depois de uma risadinha cúmplice de si vem a resposta: “Maravilha”.
O vídeo editado em 30 minutos é um intenso documentário sobre o submundo dos desejos. E visto numa galeria de arte pode se tornar uma mirada pilular desse mundo outro e ao mesmo tempo tão imediato na pele de qualquer um. Mas dessa observação voyeur uma experiência foi proposta: na instalação de mesmo nome, Kika refaz o cenário do surgimento das imagens em um quarto com uma cama, para onde a imagem é devolvida pela projeção em dimensões reais. A fantasmática das travestis habita agora a cama exposta a público.
A cama não é só suporte inicial, local de trabalho dos travestis, é lugar futuro e potência de ser outro no sono sonhado ou no sexo de imanência plena, aterrada. E uma possibilidade de ação aqui se abre: quem deita na cama de Trópico de Capricórnio pode ser outro, pode ser o fetiche do outro, o sofrimento do outro, seja deitando ao lado como cúmplice, ou recebendo no corpo a pele quente da luz do projetor, travestindo-se de travesti, transformando-se na trans-sexualidade fantasmagorizada em obra de arte.
Quem deita na cama do Trópico de Capricórnio cola superfícies de pele e imagem espectral, mescla em si a realidade da representação documental e a realidade da experiência de uma fantasmática do corpo. Isso só pode nos remeter à descoberta do self pelos objetos relacionais em Lygia Clark. Com pedras, sacos plásticos repletos de água, pedras, areia e diversas texturas aplicadas no corpo do interator, Lygia propunha o mergulho pra dentro. E não poderia ser a projeção digital um objeto relacional da arte do presente? Um mergulho ao self pelo self espectral do outro?
Ao expandir suas imagens aos diferentes suportes possíveis com a tecnologia digital – fotografia, vídeo-arte, vídeo-filme, projeção- Kika não somente mostra que sua obra tem caráter múltiplo e autonomamente líquido como quer a sociedade recente de Zigmunt Bauman, mas apresenta uma liquidez de imagens que se transmutam em horizontes (e não focos) de olhares subjetivo-universais. E dessa forma dinamiza uma questão ainda travada na representação documental e plástica do outro na arte contemporânea brasileira, alongando a existência desse outro até sua inexistência, pela fantasmática dupla da imagem digital projetada.

ON TROPIC OF CAPRICORN, by K Carr
Guide to Women's Film and Video

Tropic of Capricorn is a short documentary by Kika Nicolela that tells the tales of Brazilian transsexuals. The filmmaker rented out a hotel room. Over the course of an evening four transsexuals are brought in one-by-one. They lie upon the bed and tell their stories to the camera which is mounted on the ceiling, echoing the film’s title, “Tropic of Capricorn,” the southernmost point at which the sun can appear directly overhead.

The transsexual subjects that the camera is poised on are quite visually odd. However, challenging the viewer’s expectation, this visual oddity is not rooted in their transexuality. Instead, they “glow.” Through the use of video filters, each character radiates their own unique color. And so not only are we put in a strange position as a viewer but also the transsexual subjects are made equally strange. The setting equal of the strangeness of the viewer and the subject is telling. It is an early sign in the film of the politics of “setting equal” and “seeing as the same”.

They crawl into bed or cuddle. Some splay out while others straddle. All take their own unique position upon the bed and all tell their story. In regards to the topic at hand, the bed seems to be of great importance. It serves as a location of comfort, home and intimacy. Moreover, for the transsexuals interviewed that worked as prostitutes the bed is even more familiar. It is the workplace. The intimacy that the bed affords adds to the identification of the viewer to the interviewee. Moreover, the lack of camera movement which places the locus solely on the bed and the transsexual offers a similar intimacy.

From above, the glowing transsexual looks not so much different than sensational fictional alien autopsy: odd colors, strange anatomy. At first this may cause a resistance and designation of otherness for the viewer. However, the aforementioned intimacy that is established refuses this. “All I really wanted to do was work abroad and settle down…thats it,” says Jessica as she glows red. It is hard to imagine this not being a universal sentiment of all persons. It is not a transsexual speaking but a human being and perhaps they’re not that different after all. And so taboo has been confronted. A fearful situation is established. The audience is thrust into a dark room with a sexually “other” person and the bed is right there. Oh No! But soon enough, through the gripping conversations that the interviewees have, the focus is shifted from the visual and superficial to something deeper seated.

Since the films release in 2005 it has been honored, among other places, at the Sopot Independent Film Festival as “Best Documentary” and has been nominated as “Best Film” at both the International Experimental Film Festival Carbunari and Mostra do Filme Livre. Such films, especially addressing such taboo topics often find little distribution space and eventually see quite a small audience in places like festivals. However, the advent of Internet media films like this can be found much more easily by those seeking media addressing such topics. As of April 2007, The film is legally available in its entirely on multiple streaming Internet sites such as youtube.com.

Digital Spectrum of the Body, by Caroline Rodrigues
About Tropic of Capricorn, by Kika Nicolela.

North-American Minimalism brought up to modern art the possibility of radical changes in the observer`s point-of-view, according to the space in which the art work is inserted. From this though some of the most creative fields of nowadays` art emerge: Public Art as an existence outside galleries and Video-Art as the nature of digital moving image inside these institutions. When the spatial configuration is changed, the time of perception is also transformed. Therefore, the central point of the discussion is the possible transformations in the phenomenology of perception inside the observer-art interaction.
When the same digital image is yet converted into different media, its nature stretches. That is how Kika Nicolela works, an artist that browses trough the possibilities of the digital world stretching the borders between observation and experience.
Tropic of Capricorn presents itself as the paroxysm of this choice.
Kika invited four transsexuals from São Paulo to expose themselves trough images produced in a cheap hotel bedroom. Despite being the working place of the majority of them, the performance here demanded was about talking about what the situation brings to mind: stories, desires, fears. The camera is high and vertical positioned like the bedroom lamp, lighting the centre of the bed, where they lie themselves down, one by one, and stay for a while, alone with the cine-eye. Jéssica, Jennifer, Márcia and Samara gift the curious observer with erotic stories full of fabling.
The environment turns different between each one of them and the camera, who acts as a hole in the lock, sexual partner and confidant; but in the course of the image production, the atmosphere warms up in each body with the simple talking about it. And despite the monochromatic bodies pasted in the video image surface, the underground becomes deeper, a delusion of self-knowledge through desire indeed found in the last moment of shooting, when Kika asks Jessica: “Was it good for you?”, and after a quick smile comes the answer: “Wonderful”.
The edition of thirty minutes is an intense documentary about the desires` underground. Observed inside an art gallery it may fit as a glance at this distant world, and at the same time intimate in anyone`s skin. But from this voyeur observation an experience has been proposed: in the installation with the same name, Kika rebuilds the scene where the images emerged in a bedroom with a simple bed, where the image is returned to by the projection in realistic dimensions. The transsexuals’ spectrum inhabits now the bed exposed to public.
The bed is not only initial work place of the transsexuals; it is future and potent media of being someone else in a dreamful sleep or in full immanence sex. A possibility of action is brought up here: who lies down in the Tropic of Capricorn`s bed may become another, may become the other`s fetish, the other`s dream, the other`s pain, whether lying aside the projection as an accomplice, whether receiving in the own body the hot skin of the projector`s light, feeling transformed by the trans-sexuality phantomized into art work.
Who lies in Tropic of Capricorn`s bed joins skin`s surfaces and spectral image, moistures the reality of documental representation and the reality of experimenting a body`s spectrum. This can surely lead us to the discovery of the self with Lygia Clark`s relational objects. By means of rocks, plastic bags full with water, sand and several textures placed in the interactor`s body , Clark proposed an intern diving. And couldn`t digital projection be a contemporary relational object, as a self diving through the spectral self of someone else?
Expanding her images to different possible media with digital technology - photography, video-art, cinema, projection - Kika not only shows that her work has a multiple character and a liquid autonomy like the Zigmunt Bauman`s liquid society wishes, but presents a kind of image liquidness that transmutes into horizons of subjective-universal glances. In this way er work streamlines an issue still locked in documental and plastic representation of the other in a Brazilian contemporary art, stretching this other`s conceptual existence until it`s inexistence, trough the double spectrum of projected digital image.

A fantasmática digital do corpo, por Caroline Rodrigues
sobre Trópico de Capricórnio, de Kika Nicolela

O Minimalismo norte-americano trouxe à arte moderna a possibilidade de alterações do ponto-de-vista do observador de acordo com espaço em que a obra está inserida. Desse pensamento surgem algumas das maiores potências criativas na contemporaneidade: a arte pública como a arte que decide existir fora das galerias e museus e a videoarte como a natureza da imagem digital em movimento dentro dessas instituições. Na mudança do espaço muda-se o tempo de percepção, e com isso se transforma toda a fenomenologia da interação público-arte.
Quando a mesma imagem digital é ainda convertida para suportes diferentes, sua natureza se elastiza. Assim é o trabalho de Kika Nicolela, artista que navega pelas possibilidades do mundo digital esgarçando as bordas entre observação e experiência.
Trópico de Capricórnio se apresenta como o paroxismo dessa opção.
Kika convidou quatro travestis de São Paulo a se exporem em imagens produzidas num quarto barato de hotel. Apesar de ser local de trabalho da maioria delas, a performance pedida aqui é outra: relatar histórias, desejos e medos. A câmera é alta e vertical ao centro da cama, onde elas se deitam e permanecem por um tempo, sozinhas com o cine-olho. Jéssica, Jennifer, Márcia e Samara presenteiam o espectador curioso com narrativas eróticas repletas de fabulação.
O ambiente se diferencia entre cada uma delas e a câmera, que atua como buraco de fechadura, parceira sexual e confidente: mas no decorrer das imagens o clima esquenta no corpo de cada uma com o simples falar dele. E, apesar dos corpos monocromáticos colados à superfície da imagem do vídeo, o submundo torna-se mais profundo, um delírio de auto-conhecimento pela via do desejo, de fato constatado quando no último momento Kika pergunta a Jéssica “Foi bom pra você?”, e depois de uma risadinha cúmplice de si vem a resposta: “Maravilha”.
O vídeo editado em 30 minutos é um intenso documentário sobre o submundo dos desejos. E visto numa galeria de arte pode se tornar uma mirada pilular desse mundo outro e ao mesmo tempo tão imediato na pele de qualquer um. Mas dessa observação voyeur uma experiência foi proposta: na instalação de mesmo nome, Kika refaz o cenário do surgimento das imagens em um quarto com uma cama, para onde a imagem é devolvida pela projeção em dimensões reais. A fantasmática das travestis habita agora a cama exposta a público.
A cama não é só suporte inicial, local de trabalho dos travestis, é lugar futuro e potência de ser outro no sono sonhado ou no sexo de imanência plena, aterrada. E uma possibilidade de ação aqui se abre: quem deita na cama de Trópico de Capricórnio pode ser outro, pode ser o fetiche do outro, o sofrimento do outro, seja deitando ao lado como cúmplice, ou recebendo no corpo a pele quente da luz do projetor, travestindo-se de travesti, transformando-se na trans-sexualidade fantasmagorizada em obra de arte.
Quem deita na cama do Trópico de Capricórnio cola superfícies de pele e imagem espectral, mescla em si a realidade da representação documental e a realidade da experiência de uma fantasmática do corpo. Isso só pode nos remeter à descoberta do self pelos objetos relacionais em Lygia Clark. Com pedras, sacos plásticos repletos de água, pedras, areia e diversas texturas aplicadas no corpo do interator, Lygia propunha o mergulho pra dentro. E não poderia ser a projeção digital um objeto relacional da arte do presente? Um mergulho ao self pelo self espectral do outro?
Ao expandir suas imagens aos diferentes suportes possíveis com a tecnologia digital – fotografia, vídeo-arte, vídeo-filme, projeção- Kika não somente mostra que sua obra tem caráter múltiplo e autonomamente líquido como quer a sociedade recente de Zigmunt Bauman, mas apresenta uma liquidez de imagens que se transmutam em horizontes (e não focos) de olhares subjetivo-universais. E dessa forma dinamiza uma questão ainda travada na representação documental e plástica do outro na arte contemporânea brasileira, alongando a existência desse outro até sua inexistência, pela fantasmática dupla da imagem digital projetada.

ON TROPIC OF CAPRICORN, by K Carr
Guide to Women's Film and Video

Tropic of Capricorn is a short documentary by Kika Nicolela that tells the tales of Brazilian transsexuals. The filmmaker rented out a hotel room. Over the course of an evening four transsexuals are brought in one-by-one. They lie upon the bed and tell their stories to the camera which is mounted on the ceiling, echoing the film’s title, “Tropic of Capricorn,” the southernmost point at which the sun can appear directly overhead.

The transsexual subjects that the camera is poised on are quite visually odd. However, challenging the viewer’s expectation, this visual oddity is not rooted in their transexuality. Instead, they “glow.” Through the use of video filters, each character radiates their own unique color. And so not only are we put in a strange position as a viewer but also the transsexual subjects are made equally strange. The setting equal of the strangeness of the viewer and the subject is telling. It is an early sign in the film of the politics of “setting equal” and “seeing as the same”.

They crawl into bed or cuddle. Some splay out while others straddle. All take their own unique position upon the bed and all tell their story. In regards to the topic at hand, the bed seems to be of great importance. It serves as a location of comfort, home and intimacy. Moreover, for the transsexuals interviewed that worked as prostitutes the bed is even more familiar. It is the workplace. The intimacy that the bed affords adds to the identification of the viewer to the interviewee. Moreover, the lack of camera movement which places the locus solely on the bed and the transsexual offers a similar intimacy.

From above, the glowing transsexual looks not so much different than sensational fictional alien autopsy: odd colors, strange anatomy. At first this may cause a resistance and designation of otherness for the viewer. However, the aforementioned intimacy that is established refuses this. “All I really wanted to do was work abroad and settle down…thats it,” says Jessica as she glows red. It is hard to imagine this not being a universal sentiment of all persons. It is not a transsexual speaking but a human being and perhaps they’re not that different after all. And so taboo has been confronted. A fearful situation is established. The audience is thrust into a dark room with a sexually “other” person and the bed is right there. Oh No! But soon enough, through the gripping conversations that the interviewees have, the focus is shifted from the visual and superficial to something deeper seated.

Since the films release in 2005 it has been honored, among other places, at the Sopot Independent Film Festival as “Best Documentary” and has been nominated as “Best Film” at both the International Experimental Film Festival Carbunari and Mostra do Filme Livre. Such films, especially addressing such taboo topics often find little distribution space and eventually see quite a small audience in places like festivals. However, the advent of Internet media films like this can be found much more easily by those seeking media addressing such topics. As of April 2007, The film is legally available in its entirely on multiple streaming Internet sites such as youtube.com.