Page 118 - ARTE!Brasileiros #56

ENGLISH VERSION IMAGE AND POWER

When I did Pequena Ecologia da Imagem I was Do we always go around with the miracles that interesting, tastier, more instigating to discuss
interested in thinking about a certain idea of seem to solve everything? photography than the essays that were made,
image economics. It is a question related to Deep down that’s exactly what it is. I created modernist character photography, photography
a thinker who in the 1980s marked me a lot, a new fiction for an individual named Joseph as art. I always found that boring. I really think
Andreas Müller-Pohle. Very few people read, Nobody. He’s Joseph, not a Joe. Only he has that few people used, at the time, the medium
very few people spoke of it, but he was the editor a question. He will seek scientific help, which itself to discuss this. It were talked about in the
of the European Photography magazine along gives him two types of treatment: either he academy, the texts were there for you to read. But
with Vilém Flusser and had wonderful texts. takes “Amnesilax” or “Memorilla”. Both have in Brasil you had very few people questioning or
Basically, what he called the political principle side effects, no diagnosis is categorical, he has doing some work where this was actually seen.
of the ecology of information I brought to the to choose. Only he doesn’t choose and his life It took time to get here because photography
territory of the images. Because I was, already is still the same. It’s sad, I showed it to friends was long associated with photojournalism. Like
at that time, a collector of these photographic who said it’s depressing. it or not, we came from a period of repression.
debris that populated my laboratory, not knowing You ask for photography to stop being the
very well what to do with it. If I was dealing with A dark humor, a deep-sea melancholy that window of the real or to discuss reality, it was
the image as information, it was natural for me somehow permeates your entire work, doesn’t it? even very cruel. After all, she had this agenda
that I worked with the titles. That was the joke, Yes, because I think that’s what life is, we do what of commitment to the complaint. I have a lot of
this forced intertextuality. And it was from the we can. I couldn’t tell another story from those respect for photographers who have long done
Pequena Ecologia da Imagem that I assumed images, a story that had some happy ending. It’s this work, within the most difficult conditions
this thing of creating these reading noises. slide, no moving image. I didn’t want anything to in the world. How many photographers have
The images I enlarged with the remains of the escape the original logic. The slides are modified, made subtle images to talk about such unsubtle
laboratory and put some titles kind of crazy, each image has been updated. I did the job with things? That’s it, I think there was a great inertia
some nonsense, linked to a kind of hecatomb of a friend, Isabel Escobar. She’s one of my video to accept that photography could have a bigger
the world . Do you remember that Terry Gilliam editors and she’s great on collage. agenda than it was accepted at the time. And
movie Brazil? In addition to the beautiful look, I’ve always had it almost like some kind of flag,
still had that thing of playing Aquarela do Brasil This story reminded me of the question of you know? I guess that’s why I always say I’m a
in the background, something of a world post identity and another work of yours, Espelho photographer. I always have been. I just don’t
third world war. And there was also my inspiration Diário... need to take a picture.
for the crazy titles: We were happy before the It has everything to do. So much so that we
bomb; Electron beam towards the 21st century… made the obvious choice of putting the two jobs Does that still apply today?
I looked at it and thought: look what I did in 1988! together. We have on the left the Espelho Diário I don’t think it even fits today, because everyone
And then it was impossible not to bring back this (Daily Mirror) and on the right the José Ninguém makes digital image. It doesn’t even make much
work. I really liked to be able to call the exhibition (Joseph Nobody). Mirror is one of the issues sense. It’s just that there was a niche, because
Pequena Ecologia. very linked to the photographic universe, since of a technical specificity. And you had to master
forever. It’s on a lot of issues, on the subject of that technique to be able to work with it. Not to
the negatives, the doubles. I’ve always worked photograph I learned to shoot. I’ve always been
Speaking of the latest works, is there also a a lot with the notion of double. lazy when it came to taking pictures. For me
work done especially for the show? photo has always been half xerox. But I know,
You have two super new jobs, actually. There’s the The exhibition is organized in three different I learned. I wanted to work with a medium and
Eaux des Colonies. It’s a pun, infamous, basic. I nuclei, brings closer works that deal with the use all the power that that medium allowed me.
should have done a residence last year in Cologne scales of the individual, the collective and the
to search the archives of the industries there, political. But at least in these two works all artist no martins [paGEs 82 to 85]
only that the residence did not roll because of these aspects are present. Deep down, is your
the pandemic. But Germans are Germans and job political all the time, even when you’re not NEVER LIKE NOW:
the exhibition has not been postponed. And it explicitly talking about it?
turned out better than we planned. I ended up For me these ratings are always very difficult. RECENT PAINTINGS
inverting the logic of the production of the work I have certain concerns, certain issues, things
and opened the range accessing everything that have led me to make certain decisions one BY NO MARTINS
that told me about the history of colony water, way and not the other, and I can’t stop thinking
about the history of perfumery worldwide. I about it. An outside reading is always cool. This With large-scale works that counter the
ended up understanding a whole logic that is what is collective and what is individual, my narratives where lack and violence are
related the colony water to the city of Cologne, work has all the time. And Rosângelas is an immediately associated with the daily
which was a Roman colony, which inevitably explicit exercise of that. I created a collective lives of black people, the artist presents
led me to the issue of colonization. And then it character, false, but it is made of 133 specific an artistic project that understands its
got a lot tastier work, a lot more fun. I was able cases of Rosângelas. With horrible or funny historical social dimension.
to aggregate stories and talk about colonies, stories. That’s what the Arquivo Universal is all
about colonization. And about consumerism, about. They are specific cases, but the moment
a universe in which we’re immersed and I don’t I take the name, the historical reference, you By claudinEi roBErto da silva
see how to get out. form an image that can come from many places.
as it is alreaDY possible to see, the recent history
And the second job, that you are doing especially There is a question a little inevitable You are of that portion of Brazilian art that we conventionally
for the exhibition? a photographer who rarely photographs. call contemporary will be marked by the emergence of
Since last year I’ve been working on an idea. I Works with the economy of the image, with a peripheral artistic production, previously neglected,
won a series of slides, which are educational the circulation of the image, but takes out all which, despite its current eminence, remains beset
kits produced by the Salesians, which are a this side of the authorship. Today this is more by multiple adversities.
catechesis, in the broad sense, is not only the common, but at the time you started to do was This global phenomenon reflects a sensitivity
teaching of religion. A very strange material, a great novelty. It would be interesting if you that is intended to be decolonized, multicultural and
but which interested me a lot because I realized could talk a little about it. polycentric, referring not only to the Afro-Atlantic
that, in the pedagogical question, practically When you asked me if I give importance or not diaspora populations and native peoples, but to the
nothing has changed, except some very punctual to theory, I can’t say I don’t. Of course, I do. entire set of divergent bodies subjected to imposed
things. I realized that within the problems, or Many ideas and convictions were born in the epistemicide and ethnocide to the excluded - as
the construction of the subject - one of the 1980s due to many things that I read. And one a consequence of the experience, contested, but
sequences was Life in Construction - there was of the things that marked me a lot was Bourdieu. hitherto hegemonic, of white heteronormativity,
no talk of racism, for example. It’s not exactly He speaks a lot of this average art, which is which in defense of their privileges creates and puts
the same thing. photography. It was by coming to understand into practice the necropolitics that promotes the
photography so I became interested in the devaluation of an entire intellectual and symbolic
Are we stuck in the same cycle, like a hellish wide range of photography, that in a way is production.
repetition? invisible. Or that was never much explored, or When effective, some strategies organized
We’re over there in Terry Gilliam’s film Brazil. So it was not what was the artistic. I discovered by these segments of society instigate cultural
I thought, that’s what I’m going to do now. I took that was cooler, much more interesting for me, institutions, including the media and the press, to
the story of Zé Ninguém, o homem que não era to work with everything that was not done with review their policies for the exhibition and acquisition
Homem - Jo Nobody, the man that wasn’t a Man an aesthetic proposal behind. And then I had of works of art - which has created an unprecedented
(with a capital M), who was the original name to learn: scientific photography, vernacular circulation of productions made from these margins.
of this parable, and reversed it. Joe Nobody photography, the micro and macro, that is, the Attentive to this rather complex phenomenon,
became Joseph Nobody. In the original story scientific uses you make with the image, from the art system, through its multiple institutions, has
the character takes “Personalina” and becomes the image under the microscope to the one (sometimes reticently) sought to adapt its semantic
a man, the history of the Salesians was that. captured via telescope. All this for me was more repertoires and collections, making them more
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