Page 120 - ARTE!Brasileiros #56

ENGLISH VERSION IMAGE AND POWER

in the Amazon city, she found a mirror. “I’m starting through photogrammetry - the process of building the hegemonic ones. “Maybe show their unfoldings,
to recognize myself in these images and see them as a virtual space through photographs. About this contradictions and oppositions”. For them - whose
possible here in this place - and I’m so impossible in frequent use of new technologies, he highlights: identities are preserved in anonymity - the power of
São Paulo.” The artist points out that when she arrived “The use of any technology should not be naive, memes lies in their fictional character. “Paraphrasing
in the Amazon, she thought only of the indigenous including the traditional ones in the artistic field. Karl Ove Knausgård, maybe we are trying to combat
image, “but the black image is part of the context Each tool carries unique characteristics that open up fiction with fiction”. At the end of the second volume of
and ends up being as essential as it is”. Today, she possibilities for the development of different ideas. the Norwegian writer’s series My Struggle, it reads -
says, “I and the Amazon are recognizing each other”. The use, for example, of videomapping, mechanics and the New Memeseum quotes: “It was a crisis, I felt
In recent years, Marcela has dedicated herself to and automation came from the specific interest it in every fibre of my body, something saturating was
a work of retaking the black Amazon, portraying of animating objects. Perhaps I would never have spreading through my consciousness like lard, not
populations that live further away from the city: explored these techniques were it not for the need least because the nucleus of all this fiction, whether
riverside dwellers, traditional peoples, people from for the work itself”. true or not, was verisimilitude and the distance it
terreiros. “It’s very important to say that they are held to reality was constant. In other words, it saw
populations, in the plural, because the word ‘black’ a possible portrait of the Current sCene the same. This sameness, which was our world, was
seems like a lean thing, right? Before I was black, For Luiz Camillo Osorio, to have Castiel, Denilson, being mass-produced”.
they were identities. More than 500 years after [the Ilê, Marcela and Ventura in this year’s edition With regard to this counterposition activity, Cem
arrival of the Portuguese], we are here, taking this demonstrates the moment of great political upheaval A. (also known as @freeze_magazine, in parody of
word, this reduction and enlarging it in multiplicity”. and strong development of experimental poetics the British art magazine) presents the possibility
Therefore, for the photographer, it makes little sense that we are witnessing in today’s Brazil. “Each of memes as agents of change, although not in a
to deal with these issues without placing herself within of them evidences works in process, in which revolutionist way, but reformist. “Memes should be
the discussion. “The idea is to give new meaning to the performative, new technologies, ancestry, seen as a tool to popularise forward-thinking ideas.
this process, as a layer of this photography. It is on experimentation, politics, are all mixed up, fertilly Their popularity can give us the upper hand in the
these parallel lines that I stand in front of the mirror mixed, pointing to the unknown and with great conversation. This is where their strength lies. The
in this black Amazon”. poetic force”. crucial danger here is how they might be absorbed by
While Marcela departs from the communities These proposals will be better understood by the the art market. If memes were commercialised with
to understand her identity, Ventura Profana public in the online exhibition, scheduled to take a short sighted approach, this would only make them
departs from her private experience to express place between September and October 2021. Each less popular, genuine and efficient. It would make me
another reflection. Created in the midst of a Baptist artist will occupy pipa’s website and social networks question if they could be considered memes at all”.
tradition, it seeks to investigate the implications of for a week, will make an original work available to When the establishment begins to swallow
evangelicalism in Brazil and its impact on colonial circulate virtually and will participate in a series of memes (which, until then, resisted it with acidic
relations. “I try, through these investigations of other activities. In addition, at the end of this year, the and humorous criticisms), do they lose strength
Christianity, to understand how the colonial process new bilingual catalog to be launched by the institute (by integrating what they once have challenged)?
became impregnated” and how it is sustained will bring together works by the five winners, as well An important observation is made by Hilde Lynn
today, she explains in a video recorded for pipa. If, as by Daiara Tukano and Ruth Albernaz - pipa Online Helphenstein, creator of the virtual character Jerry
in her view, Christianity acts as a missionary arm winners - and the other 58 nominees. Gogosian (the name alludes to two recognized
for the implantation of colonial dynamics, in her figures in the art world, the critic Jerry Saltz and
personal and artistic practice Ventura prophesies report mEmEs and art [paGEs 92 to 96] the mega gallerist Larry Gagosian): “The ways in
the abundant black, indigenous and transvestite which I plan to monetize what I’ve created with @
life, seeking healing strategies. She does it through INGLOURIOUS BASTARDS jerrygogosian will be a means to achieve a version
collages, music, installations, performances and of the art world I can live with on a micro-scale. My
texts. “I always try to bring a message of life to bodies Anonymous meme profiles on Instagram artistic achievements will be perpetuated by the
and subjects that have been denied this – whether - such as @freeze_magazine, @ capitalist machine and I have no problem with that.
by the government, the system, or the implications jerrygogosian and @newmemeseum - An artist has to dream big (and eat)”.
of this colonialism”, she adds. risk cunning criticism at the art world, “We are not sure whether the institutionalization of
Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro also seeks freedom its peculiarities and its flirtation with memes can cause any impact or change for content
from colonial gestures, by showing that some unsustainable business models creators”, notes New Memeseum, when considering
mythologies constructed for racialized people that, perhaps, the impact is on the institutions
and transvestites are just fallacies. “What I do are themselves, who, “by looking with less distinction
invitations and reminders that we can live a different By miGuEl Groisman between high and low culture, are incorporating
story than this racial and gender one”, she explains languages that can attract new audiences into
in a video recorded to pipa. Visual artist, writer and in ocupar os memes é preciso, the researcher their programming”. Digging deeper, they question
psychologist, Castiel builds her productions from the and professor of University of São Paulo, Giselle whether the narrative could not be told in reverse:
dialogues between knowledge of art, macumbaria, Beiguelman, resumes the origin of the word “meme”, from the perspective of social networks, it may
psychology, witchcraft, healerism and “whatever tracing it back to a time before the internet. The be that museums and galleries are the “spaces of
she deems necessary to produce survival”. Not name we use today was coined by the English exception”, precisely because art is still somewhat
defining herself in a specific artistic technique, in biologist Richard Dawkins, in 1976, in the book The inaccessible to the majority of the population [at
her latest works opt for installation experiences. “My Selfish Gene. In Dawkins’ theory, as Beiguelman least in Brazil]. According to what they observe in
artistic production has needed to be an experience of summarizes, “the meme is a replicator unit that today’s scenario, institutions have started to seek
incorporation, where I understand my black, testicular spreads by imitation, always subjected to mutation their space on the Internet, investing and worrying
and female body as a place of memory and I use and mixing, and that functions as critical resistance”. about their virtual platforms.”There is a desire for
this organicity to produce what I have been calling Dislinking itself from its origin, and “back to audience engagement. The economy of likes has
perishable freedoms - that they are experiences the future”, the meme as we understand begins to also impacted the sources of sponsorship - let’s
both in my existential territory, in the form of a cure, appear in the 2000s and spreads with sharing via remember the cultural edict that, recently, assumed
but also experiences of reterritorialization of these social networks. Far from being restricted to pop as criterion the sum of social media followers of the
geographies that I cohabit with”, she declares. culture, memes have taken roots to other fields, members from each project”, they add. With these
It is by addressing the absence of the body or its such as politics, and, gradually, have been operated questions put on the horizon, they point out that New
idealized image - often fragmented or constructed by propaganda and advertising. Memeseum (in the same way as Jerry and Freeze) is
from different parts - that Ilê Sartuzi builds his Without imprisoning them in a categorical an Instagram profile and, as such, works within an
works, often permeated by the use of unconventional definition, Beiguelman rather points to their frequent app managed by a trillion-dollar conglomerate. “We
technologies. The idealized image mainly comes composition: “They present a format in which the text also live under the regency of algorithms”.
from the significant presence of mannequins in does not function as an explanatory complement to Under such regency, is humor an effective format
his production, often assembled in improbable the image nor the image serves merely to illustrate to face the established powers?, asks Hilde, to which
ways. “This mountable and reproducible body the text, but the two elements chain themselves she herself responds negatively. “Being the jester
indefinitely gives way – materially and conceptually together to produce a third sense”. On Instagram, who states the obvious to the court in the presence
– to a construction in modular parts. Since this is a in particular, another visual element is included, of the king is still beholden to the king. Humor is
condition of mass manufacturing of these bodies, it positioned in a certain “between” - neither completely a medicine which temporarily soothes the pain of
seemed coherent to me that they could be reproduced inside or outside the post - which is the location of the those not in power and creates the illusion of taking
and combined in different ways, which brought me photo, used more and more to add depth to the joke. back control. Taking money from the powers that
closer to the figure of Frankenstein”, he explains. “Low resolution, bastards and without signature; be and redistributing wealth is probably the only
Sometimes, these objects are even moved from [memes] are poor images, in the sense given by way to “win” in late stage capitalism…but it feels
automation and accompanied by videomapping, the German artist and essayist Hito Steyerl to the good to laugh, whether you’re winning or losing”.
giving them theatricality. However, it is important expression, which can act as a counterpoint to the In The Value of Laughter, Virginia Woolf expresses
to point out that this is not a monothematic and dominant representation systems”, Beiguelman that laughter preserves our sense of proportion,
linear research, as the artist himself explains. In his describes. The Brazilian profile New Memeseum is in recalls New Memeseum. In Woolf’s words: “Dogs,
body of works, we are frequently faced with the total line with the argument when it indicates that memes mercifully, cannot laugh, because, if they could, they
absence of a body, especially in the videos made possibly help to formulate narratives different from would realise the terrible limitations of being a dog.
120