Performed by the Brazilian musician, poet and multimedia artist Arnaldo Antunes, “Não tem que” (Don’t have to) is a video poem composed of photographic images synchronized to voice and song. It is part of a transmedia project titled Nome (“Name”) released in book, CD, and VHS in 1993, and remastered and reissued in CD and DVD in 2006. Nome consists of 30 multimedia works that are situated between songs and poems. Despite not having been developed exclusively for the digital medium, it was composed and designed with animation, audio editing, image and video digital techniques.
We can notice in “Não tem que” an affinity with “Popcretos“: poster-poems marked by a social appeal and created by concrete poet Augusto de Campos during the 1960s consisting of cutouts of text and pictures printed in newspapers and magazines. This poem uses photographed fragments of traffic and street signs and other forms of urban scriptures to form a text. The rapid sequence of editing images reveals the verses speedily through the rhythmic beat of percussion instruments and the gravelly voice of the artist, who says:
não tem que (don’t have to)
nem precisa de (nor need to)
não tem que precisar de (don’t have to need to)
nem precisa ter que (nor need to have to)
não tem que precisar ter que (don’t have to need to have to)
nem precisa ter que precisar de (nor need to have to need to)
The Antunes videopoem expresses through disrupted verses the fragmented attention of the people and the incompleteness of everyday experiences. “Não tem que” uses in its formal structure the technique of repetition of words, ranging gradually expanding its syntax and the semantic value of its verses. Through these features of poetic composition, the poem not only interacts frenetically with images of signs and signboards writing at the same time his verses, but also translates through your sonority and his rhythm, the dynamism of daily life the city.