Page 92 - ARTE!Brasileiros #47

THE POWER OF ART ENGLISH VERSION
BOOK_ARTE_47_JUNHO2019.indb
EDITORIAL | PAGE 12
"WE AGREED WE ARE NOT
GOING TO DIE", 2019
BY PATRICIA ROUSSEAUX, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
The title of our editorial is borrowed from the name of the work of Jota Mombaça, whose details we publish on the
cover of this edition. The work was done in collaboration with Michelle Mattiuzzi, Cíntia Guedes, Ana Giza, Adrielle
Rezende, Juão Nin and Paulet Lindacelva, and is part of a sequence of performances at Casa do Povo in São Paulo.
The action consisted of, among other things, the manufacture of knives with twines, branches and glasses, which
is exhibited today at SESC 24 de Maio at the À Nordeste exhibition, commented on in this issue by the journalist
Jamyle Rkain and criticized by historian and the curator Aracy Amaral.
The presence or the allusion to violence in several of the interviews or expositions that we follow in recent times is
notorious. In the works, the imminence of danger is latent, the feeling of helplessness, the need to find answers and
resist, to find ways of healing for the subject and the environment. We are surrounded by a moment of enormous
violence. The violence of a society that attacks not equal; of citizens and politicians who advocate putting arms at
the disposal of a population whose difficulties and intolerance only increase. The violence of having to beg education,
work, health and watch the increasingly precarious quality of life. The violence of post-truth and post-lie.
The violence of doing nothing to prevent violence. The artist Berna Reale, in her 2013 video, Americano, and the artist
Cinthia Marcelle, in Chão de Caça, 2017, presented these works at the Brazilian Pavilion at the Venice Biennials of
2015 and 2017, denouncing the conditions of indigence and prison overcrowding in the country. They anticipated, with
their images, several rebellions and the carnage that imploded in these days in the jails of Manaus, leaving dozens of
dead. Almost an allegory to the book Chronicle of a Death Foretold by the Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Art usually fulfills its role, a kind of mirror and permanent alertness about everything around us. Cildo Meireles,
one of the greatest contemporary Brazilian artists has said: "No political work is done in art. It becomes political".
In contrast to the institutionalization of barbarism, a kind of ode to death that makes the day obscure, we adhere
to life and art, and use it as a symbol of power and the force with which the drive of life and death appears in it. "It
is a death-life. Whenever an artist proclaims the death of art, a new leap is given, and art accumulates forces for a
new stage", Frederico de Morais was quoted as saying in Contra a arte afluente. O corpo é o motor da obra, 1970.
In the month of May the Tomie Ohtake Institute, through its nucleus of Culture and Participation in partnership with
the philosopher, essayist and translator Peter Pál Pelbart invited one of the most active thinkers of the present time,
the French philosopher and professor of the Sorbonne (Paris I) David Lapoujade*. For nearly two hours he spoke
about a text entitled "The Force of Art" featuring ideas by Nietzsche and Deleuze that reflect on how much art gives
us a "promise", "a belief in this world here", not a belief theological, since we should not believe in anything when
we are with the work and, at the end, said:
"That is, the force of art - when it has it - is to be able to justify itself (and justify ourselves) better than any other form
of reality, to be able to acquire, exclusively by its force, a reason to exist and to make us exist. If I were to summarize
in one word (to conclude) what the force of art consists of, I would say, therefore, that this word is justice".
COLLABORATORS | PAGE 10
ISSUE 47 JUNE JULY AUGUST 2019 artebrasileiros.com.br
ARACY AMARAL is an art critic, curator, art historian and architect and journalist. Professor of History of Art at the
Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of São Paulo.
MIRIAM CHNAIDERMAN is a filmmaker and a psychoanalyst. She produced the short film Gilete Azul (2003), among
others. Miriam is also a professor at the Sedes Sapientiae Institute.
DURVAL MUNIZ DE ALBUQUERQUE JÚNIOR holds a PhD in History from the State University of Campinas, he is a visiting
professor at the State University of Paraíba. He wrote A invenção do Nordeste e outras Artes (Cortez, 1999).
HELIO CAMPOS MELLO is a photojournalist and co-founder of Brasileiros Editora. He was part of the refoundation of
Agencia Estado, of the Estado de S. Paulo group. He was editor-in-chief of IstoÉ magazine. He won an Esso prize.
TADEU CHIARELLI is a curator and an art critic. He is a full professor in the Visual Arts course at USP.
Cover: Detail on A gente combinamos de não morrer, 2019, Jota Mombaça
92 17/06/19 22:33