Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca

Bárbara Wagner (1980, Brasília) and Benjamin de Burca (1975, Munich) first met in Europe in 2009, while Wagner was pursuing an MFA in the Netherlands. A number of years later, the pair settled in Recife, Brazil, where they began documenting the culture of poorer communities. They have been an artistic duo since 2012. 

Their practice exists at the intersection of film, visual art and performance. Through hybrid videos – incorporating both documentary and fictional elements – Wagner and De Burca turn their sights to specific aspects of popular culture, especially musical and dance traditions and how societal and cultural conditions influence the course of these traditions’ evolution. While much of their work is rooted in the northeastern region of Brazil, the duo has also made films about the German schlager culture; spoken-word traditions among African and Caribbean immigrants in Canada; the historical relationship between the music of Ireland and North Africa; and the straight-edge scene in Germany.

A unique aspect of the duo’s work is their collaborative process: scripts, choreography, costumes and soundtracks are all created in close cooperation with the performers who portray themselves, often across various generations. For the artists, it is not so much about giving ‘marginalized’ groups a platform, but about creating encounters in which the dynamics of collaboration themselves become visible in the work. This approach allows Wagner en De Burca to explore social and political issues from the inside out, via the forms of cultural expression specific communities use to assert their identity. According to Wagner: ‘I think we try to understand these phenomena that may at first seem marginalized, but which actually play a key role in how we experience culture.’