The title of this CD-Rom refers on the one hand to a slang expression (Valetes, the jacks in a pack of playing cards) for several people using the same bed in turns . 'Slow motion' on the other hand is a term from the world of film and television. The CD contains the account of an anthropological study of ideas of space and time in an overcrowded São Paulo prison, and includes both the (interactive) video sections forming the basic materials of the study and the (linear) academic text. The literally unlimited duration of long-term imprisonment and the confined space of the prison complex are the starting point of filmed interviews on the subject of daily life in prison. It is a life in which drugs, homosexuality, trust and suspicion are the central objects of concern. Philosophical and scholarly texts by among others, Deleuze, Virilio and Castro ("no one teaches the unwritten code, the prisoner learns it by himself in due course'), alternating with raw quotations from the interviews ("they were informing sons of bitches, no one likes sons of bitches who inform on their brothers, so it comes down to this: they had to die. So I killed them") light up in the image and slowly go out. At first sight the interactivity and design of the work resemble games such as 'Myst' and 'Riven'. But whereas the latter tempts the player into a limitless roaming about, the tracks of 'Valetes em slow motion' lead continually to a dead end. By accident you encounter an icon which takes you back to the start page from which you can set off along another trail, past interviews, fragmentary texts and explanations of the everyday activities of a prison. Here you are endlessly (time) stuck whichever path you choose, so that the form and content of the study and the CD-Rom have become metaphors of each other.
– Loek Stolwijk
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Concept, editing: Kiko Goifman, Lucas Bambozzi, Music: Rinaldo Gino, Graphic design: Katia Limongelli
Kiko Goifman ° 1968, Belo Horizonte (Brazil)
Lives and works in São Paulo (Brazil)
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