Centerminal

1974
Video, magnetic tape, ½”. B+W
Sound : ambient, voiced by artist on camera
Duration :  1’55” 
Camera : Jom Tob Azulay

Summary 
During an artist action in the forest, Anna Belle Geiger makes a stick a target and takes aim at it – missing.

Overview 
Anna Bella Geiger walks, precariously, through a dense forest. In a clearing she treads in circles. She marks the center by pounding a stick into the ground. She steps back and takes aim at it, hurling sticks like native arrows and spears and comments that she feels she is channeling indigenous peoples, who have and who still inhabit Brazil’s vast woodlands.

Historical note
The title suggests a mashup of the English words, “central” and “terminal.” 
Gestures here, posit whether Brazilian interface with Nature is to be central or terminal. Geiger and her contemporaries engage many artistic means to ponder the core of Brazilian identity in light of its history, landscapes, ethnicities and demographics. 

Anna Bella Geiger reflects
In 1974, I made the video that I called Centerminal, in which I go into the forest, in the Atlantic rainforest, I walk around in circles and at a certain moment I try to hit a target with an indigenous arrow, but I can’t reach it. Everything was about not being able to reach the center. Interview, Hans Ulrich Obrist: entrevistas brasileiras. Vol. I. 2019. (p. 188).