Bestiário [Bestiary]

Lais Myrrah combines in “Bestiário” seven editions of the national news program “Journal Nacional” on the Rede lobo TV network, which appear simultaneously, coinciding only at the moment when the anchors state in unison “Agora, no Jornal Nacional!” [Now, the National News!]. The video obscures the information being transmitted, while showing how the news is, in the artist’s words, “constructed, formatted, and manipulated in order to compose a homogenized frame.” In revealing how television news becomes a biased blend of reality and myth, “Bestiário” operates like a contemporary counterpart to medieval compendiums that featured natural and mythical beasts. Given the central tole that the media- and the “Jornal Nacional in particular- has played during political crises in recent Brazilian history, “Bestiário” offers a timely examination of the inability of the news to operate outside the spectacle of the mass media, obscuring rather than clarifying the ongoing scandals and power struggles in Brazil.