Argonautas / Argonauts
Digital video with sound.
Duration; 2min 37. Loop
2013
Argonautas from Ana Mazzei on Vimeo.
The Argonauts were a band of heroes in Greek mythology, who in the years before the Trojan War, accompanied Jason to Colchis in his quest to find the Golden fleece. Their name comes from their ship, the Argo, named after its builder, Argus. “Argonauts” literally means “Argo sailors”.
In the 1960’s, musician Caetano Veloso composed “The Argonauts”, an ode to the poem “Sailing is necessary, living is not necessary”, written by the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa.
These words honored life as the endless journey and founded Tropicalia which evoked the convergence of the brazilian mixed culture. Argonauts offered a blocked landscape vision; Veloso’s musical poetry offered an existential one. These two memories are carried over to a utopian future where there is no longer part of the continental Brazil but rather a recently formed archipelago.