Guilherme Peters

Robespierre e a tentativa de retomar a revolução [Robespierre and the attempt to retake the revolution]. 2010. Digital video. 9’35”. Photo: Iason Pachos.

 
São Paulo, Brazil, 1987. Lives in São Paulo.
 
For Guilherme Peters, the notion of territory comes from his journeys and routes through the city. The artist’s experience of the urban surroundings takes place on wheels, in the shape of a skateboard. The landscape is experienced in movement, either through live recordings by microphones underneath the skateboard, or through drawings made directly in the streets. Danger and display of the body have been a constant feature in his still short career, recurring throughout his practice of demarcating public or private territories. The demarcated area, particularly in performances referring to Joseph Beuys, is previously prepared with a greasy coating that prevents the fluid movement of the skateboard wheels. In another work, his body is pulled by a car throughout the Valle de La Muerte in the Atacama Desert in Chile. His work is an indirect pursuit of limits and boundaries, with actions continuing until the materials break down or the body can no longer endure it. Tentativa de levar uma boia rosa até o horizonte, involves marking out the territory based simply on running, and the frontier is measured by the scope of vision.
 
In Robespierre e a tentativa de retomar a revolução, Guilherme Peters interprets one of the most radical and respected French revolutionaries. Wearing the typical costume, the artist returns to the sources of the current republican movement and the formation of the contemporary nation, humorously revealing the impossibility of the revolutionary utopia in a world of dizzying simple repetitive tasks.