Ricky Seabra
cel & whatsapp:
(61)99657-2810 / rickyseabra@gmail.com
Education: BFA in Communication Design from Parsons School of Design 1987 and a
Masters in Design Research from the Design Academy Eindhoven 2002 / Thesis: The
ISADORA Module; An Arts & Humanities Module for the International Space
Station.
http://www.rickyseabra.com/ISADORA%20THESIS%20CD/CLICK_ME_FIRST.html
Languages: Fluent in English and Portuguese and
communicates in Spanish, Dutch and French.
Urban
Experience: An
eclectic cultural experience having lived 12 years in Washington DC, 13 years
in Brasilia, 7 in New York City, 8 in Amsterdam, 7 in Rio de Janeiro, 5 in
Crato, Ceará.
Dual
Nationality: American and Brazilian currently living in Brasília.
Natural
Language Institute, Brasilia
2018 - 2019 : Natural Language Institute - English language teacher for
beginners, intermediate and advanced adults and teenagers. Together with the IT
team I am developing a digital dictionary for the indeigenous language Kariri.
The dictionary will be Kariri – Portuguese – English.
Director of
Historic Museum of Crato
2013 – 2016: I was director of the Museum
of Crato and Coordinator of the Historical and Cultural Heritage of the city of
Crato. I received the museum as a ruin. The museum had been closed for 7 years.
The job consisted of many initial challenges like organizing the collections
which had been ransacked; photographing and writing a report for the Ministério
Público about the state of the artworks and artifacts. After everything was
catalogued I slowly opened the museum one room at a time. Our biggest
achievement was to set up and open 5 of the museum's 9 rooms at night. The museum
became an extension of the City Square where it is located filled with parents
and children attending the halls. I created an art gallery in one room (the
city had no art galleries) and curated this gallery with local artists. I was
also part of the team that wrote a grant which raised R$ 300,000 museum's
renovation.
On several
occasions I was asked by the Secretary of Culture to represent her in solemnities
in the City Council, the Cultural Institute of Cariri and other events. I
represented the Museum in seminars and lectures in Ceará and in Europe, such as
the European Network of Cultural Centers (ENCC) Seminar in Latvia, the
BNB-Fortaleza Cultural Center, the BNB-Juazeiro do Norte Cultural Center, the
Federal University Do Cariri and the Regional University of Cariri.
Kariri Language
decodification
I digitized a
Catechism of the indigenous language Kariri of 1698 that was documented by the
Jesuit priest Luiz Vincenzio Mamiani. My goal is to create a language
dictionary for current and future researchers of the language and to apply the
statistical translation program MOSES to the language. In December 2017 I had
an article published in the Revista de Linguística Antropológica:
http://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/ling/article/view/28404
Museological
Activities
2016: I presented
lectures in the series of meetings: Ciranda of the Museums in the Museum of
Ceará by the State System of Museums, in September and October in Fortaleza.
2014: Presented a
museological plan for the Cariri-Oeste Museum project in Araripe.
June
2015: In Riga,
Latvia: I was invited to speak to the European Network for Cultural Centers
about the role of tradition in European cultural centers. I also gave two
workshops to the lecturers.
2013
- 2015: Representative
of the Cariri Region in the State System of Museums of Ceará.
2014
- 2015: I was a
guest guide of 3 "Urban Routes" promoted by Banco do Nordeste, a
series of tour/lectures about the building
façades in the centers of Fortaleza, Maranguape and Crato and Juazeiro do
Norte.
2015: Speaker at the
R Cariri Design seminar in Barbalha on the Value of Historical Heritage
together with architect Pedro Rossi.
2015: Speaker at the Cultural
Mediations lecture series at the Banco do Nordeste Cultural Center. Museums: Tabu, Clichés and The Academic
Sin.
2014: I gave lectures
at the Geopark, Federal University of Cariri, and in the Faculty of Juazeiro do
Norte on the Museum of Crato and the historical façades of Crato.
May
2013: Museum Risk Management course with Manuelina
Maria Duarte, at the State Museum of Ceará, Fortaleza.
Space-related:
2000
– 2004: Was speaker various space seminars and conferences in London and
Paris about Cultural Utilization of the ISS as well the International
Astronautical Federation Conference in Toulouse about Lunar Architecture, spoke
at the STAIF 2000 Space Technologies and Applications International Forum about
my thesis: The ISADORA Module for the ISS.
2000: The Poetic Potential of Space - Essay written for a series
of books of the Seven Hills Millennium Exhibit at the Martin Gropius Museum in
Berlin, May 2000. Appeared in Volume 3 Cosmos - Suns, Moons, Galaxies: Passage
to the Unknown.
2000: Daimler Chysler
Aeropspace, Bremen, Germany – Collaborated in market study for Cultural Utilization of the
International Space Station.
2002: Ceci N’est Pas Mon Soleil – Exhibit commissioned by
the European Space Agency to create artworks using satellite photography from
the agency’s solar fleet of satellites: SOHO, ULYSSES and CLUSTER. Salle
Gaveau, Paris.
2003: Speaker at Art and Science Symposium, Fiocruz, Rio de Janeiro. Spoke
about the History of Art in Space.
2003: Technical University of Delft – Gave workshop about
lunar architecture to undergraduate students of aerospace engineering sponsored
by the university’s Architecture Department.
Design-related:
2009
– Designing for Post-Olympic Awareness: Workshop for students of architecture
and interior design at the University Veiga de Almeida, Rio de Janeiro.
Independent,
Speculative Design Works as well as giving lectures at the Universidade Veiga
de Almeida about:
Vidigug; a Guggenheim for the Vidigal
Favela
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaiRYQosoAo
The Mirrored Atrium; Entry in World
Trade Center Memorial Design Competition
http://www.rickyseabra.com/WTC_MEMORIAL/WTC_mirrored_atrium.html
Grand Metro Rio; a vision for 5 new
subway lines for Rio de Janeiro
http://www.rickyseabra.com/metrorio.html
In the 90s I worked at Miramax Films
in NYC where I was part of the creative team that designed posters for films such
as Pulp Fiction, the Piano and the House of the Spirits. Other studios included
Indika Design NYC and Propeg Advertising and Marketing in Brasilia. I also
directed the video segments along with Ricardo Nauemberg for a Hamilton Vaz
Pereira play. Between 1989 and 1992 I was known as the “airplane artist” and I
have one piece in the collection of the National Art Museum in Brasilia.
Theater-related:
2009 –
Commissioned by SICA (Dutch Foundation of International Cultural Activities) to write a 30 page
report for the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Dutch Ministry of Culture
and Education entitled “Mapping Theater in Brazil”. I was one of 15 Brazilian
specialists commissioned to map various fields of cultural expression in
Brazil. The report is a guide for the Dutch (or any foreigner) who like to
engage in cultural exchange with Brazil. Whenever representatives of SICA are
in Brazil I am asked to consult with them.
2010 – Asked by
the Dutch Consulate to make a presentation about Brazilian theater scene to the “Brazil in
Amsterdam Festival” organizing committee of the Beurschouwburg of Amsterdam.
2010 – Asked by
the Belgian Consulate to make a presentation about the Brazilian theater scene to the organizing
committee of the “Europalia Festival”.
2008 - Mentor
at DasArts of 9
students in Advanced Studies of Performing Arts Amsterdam. Theater director
Dirk Verstockt and I came up with and gave a 10 week workshop with a budget of
50,000 euros. We called the workshop “Renting the Shade of a Tree” in which we
gave lectures, invited lecturers and gave performance assignments on rethinking
notions of the future in light of the 17 world problems as laid out in the book
The Meaning of the 21st Century by James Martin.
2010 - Mentor for CoLABoratório: Worked as mentor of 10 dancers in
Teresina and Rio for 3 week periods. Workshop based on my own workshop called
“Relevancy, Imagination and Avoiding Cliché in the Creation of Performance,
Dance and Theater”. Organized by the Panorama Dance Festival, Rio de Janeiro.
2011 – Curator
for Mostra Cariri Festival / SESC Ceará . Was one of 4 curators to choose
works for the performing arts segments of the festival.
2010 – Curator
for Dança em Foco (An International Dance-Video Festival in Rio de Janeiro) asked me to be one of
three curators/jurors to select 5 artists to receive money prizes to produce
dance-video artworks.
2011 – International Performance
Festival of Belo Horizonte Showed new work Preâmbulos in which I engage the audience to rewrite the
Preamble of the Brazilian Constitution.
2009 – International Performance
Festival of Belo Horizonte invited three artists to give a one week workshop on image, sound and text. I
was chosen for image. Other two artists were Luca Forucci and Lúcio Agra.
2004
– Speaker at Proeflokaal 7 Event in Rotterdam. 18 artists were invited to
speak at the Rotterdam Municipal Theater about the Srebenica massacre.
Author and performer of the
following theater pieces:
1998
- 1999 – From Sand to Sea, Performance with dance and sand drawings with Andrea Jabor
presented in various cities in Venezuela and Brazil.
2002
– 2006 - Artist in residence at the Kunstencentrum Nona in Mechlen, Belgium where I
created Airplanes & Skyscrapers, Isadora.Orb and Empire Love to Love You
Baby among others. Granted the New Artists Tour through Holland and showed
works in theaters like Culturgest in Lisbon, De Singel in Antwerp and the
National Review of Live Arts in Glasgow amongst many others.
2006
– 2012, showed works at the main festivals of Brazil and Europe - Won various grants such as
Caixa Economica and Funarte Petrobras (State bank and oil company). Performed
in venues such as Les Halles de Schaarbeek in Brussels, Menagerie de Verre in
Paris, National Review of Live Art in Glasgow, KaaiTheater in Brussels and
TeatroStageFest in NYC. In October 2010 I premiered: “Koyaanisqatsi The
Performance” co-produced by the KaaiTheater in Brussels. My latest piece is
called Preambles, an interactive theater piece which I last showed at the Museu
da Cidade in Brasilia at the Marco Zero Festival.
About
my works critics have written:
Suspense
is maintained from beginning to end in the performance of objects and
projections Airplanes & Skyscrapers, manipulated with brilliance by
American-Brazilian Ricky Seabra. The attacks of September 11, 2001 are
re-examined through the magical prism of the memory of Seabra, a fan since
childhood of planes and skyscrapers. The two are subject of an emotional
decoding related to the life of the artist. Seabra works out a sophisticated
scenario in which he manipulates images cut out from magazines, composes
collages, makes miniature planes glide, shows archive footage. One misses
nothing of this definitive epos like the loss of innocence and faith in the
future. After Ricky Seabra, one can no longer look at airplanes and skyscrapers
the same way.
-
Rosita Boisseau - LE MONDE, Paris
Isadora.orb
cleverly mixes dance and audiovisuals. Fine humor, great precision and good use
of technical means and live movement.
-
Carlos Gil Zamora, REVISTS ARTEZ, Bilbao
Empire
is a light-hearted, intelligent performance. Seabra doesn't do more than
collect images from TV, films and internet, as far as they fit his subject. A
bit like Michael Moore. But Seabra doesn't feel the need to convince his
audience. Moore makes his arguments with a hammer - which has its value - and
Seabra with the wink of an eye.
-
Marc Cloostermans, DE STANDAARD, Brussels
Koyaanisqatsi
The Performance is built on an ecological awareness that in the 80's had
already been raised, but since then has not progressed. Quite the contrary. Yet
in the context of the current ecological crisis and eco-tendencies, Seabra
manages to enchant his audience. Against the pessimistic mindset of the end of the
world, the artist puts a positive response using humor and dignity. His final
prophecy shows a universal acceptance of human error but in a dignified and
elegant way. Ricky Seabra can show the most desperate situation in a positive
light. This demonstrates the Brazilian energy and vitality of Seabra.
- Anne
Watthee (Ghent University), "Koyaanisqatsi, The Performance" - from
ecological disaster to euphoria.
Last updated – May 15 2019 For more information: www.rickyseabra.com
cel & whatsapp: +55 61 99657-2810
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