Thiago de Paula Souza, Diane Lima e Beatriz Lemos, the triennial’s curators. Photo: Indiara Duarte
In the midst of a pandemic and political crisis context, what are the curatorial and exhibition possibilities? This was one of the questions that guided months of work in The river is a serpent, third edition of Frestas – Art Triennial. Organized by Sesc São Paulo, based at its Sorocaba unit, it is curated by Beatriz Lemos, Diane Lima and Thiago de Paula Souza.
The invitation to the trio came before the pandemic, enabling the first activities in the construction of the project. On a trip across Brazil, the curators visited locations in the North and Northeast: “The most important thing for us was to create a curatorial body from this moving body in conflict with other territories”, explains Beatriz. It was in this movement that The river is a serpent began to take shape, not as a theme – which would be insufficient for the current moment -, but as a cosmovision that brings together the learnings of its process and aims to discuss the contemporaries movements, their geographies and colonial structures.
But how does Frestas ended up happening in Sorocaba? From a sequence of listening meetings with local artists, producers, managers and educators, the team sought to understand the region’s needs and made education one of the central axes of curatorial thinking. “It has always been a great concern for us not to be like a spaceship that lands in the city ‘bringing knowledge’ and then leaving”, explains Renata Sampaio, educational coordinator. If the general context seemed so vertical, the proposal here was to change this dynamic. “We didn’t want to reproduce the colonial vision of those who just want to teach and not build together”, she adds.
With the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic, the entire art world saw the need to rethink their programming. With the triennial it was no different. The exhibition was postponed several times and is currently scheduled for August 2021. For the curators, this decision brings up a discussion about their professional functions: “perhaps the curatorial practice is not limited to an exhibition organization”, explains Thiago de Paula. With that in mind, they changed the direction of the project and decided to focus even more on educational practices. If “the river is a serpent because it hides and camouflages, and between the unpredictable and the mystery it creates strategies for its own movement”, as the curatorial text summarizes, it is with a focus on the course and curves of this river – and on the dialogues that these promote – that Frestas decides to build itself. “This image has helped us to think about this cosmovision and has enabled us to find strategies and possibilities to face what it means to cure an exhibition of contemporary art at this moment in Brazil”, explains Diane Lima.
It was in this context that the idea of the Study Program took shape. Fifteen artists whose lives and practices are directly connected to colonial violence were invited to participate in a series of virtual meetings with the triennial’s curatorship, production and educational teams. “We had intense meetings discussing projects, poetics, practices and life”, says Thiago. In this meetings, the artists were able to elaborate their own artistic projects, which will make up the exhibition.
Based on the experiences and ideas of Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro, Davi de Jesus do Nascimento, Denilson Baniwa, Denise Alves-Rodrigues, Ella Vieira, Gê Viana, Iagor Peres, Jonas Van Holanda, Juliana dos Santos, Laís Machado, Luana Vitra, Pedro Victor Brandão, Rebeca Carapiá, Sallisa Rosa and Ventura Profana, the meetings brought focus to several of the discussions that permeated curatorial thinking. With this, not only did the artists leave video calls with new provocations, but the curators could rethink the exhibition possibilities. The river is a serpent: topics for difference and social justice, an online teacher training program, held in weekly meetings between October and November 2020, was also taken in this direction. “The approval was so great that the training became an county official course, offering career progression to the participating teachers”, says Renata Sampaio, who led the program.
At each meeting, one or more speakers would join the group to discuss strategies for working in the classroom. “The idea was not to show the teacher how to teach, but to raise awareness about issues that we think are of paramount importance, so that the debate can continue, in a horizontal way, at school”, explains Renata. “The educational in this edition of Frestas is working from non-hegemonic perspectives, agents and concepts, seeking to build relationships with other areas of knowledge”, she adds.
Online, however, expanded Frestas’ geographic borders. In the Training Program, it enabled the participation of educators and guests from different places in Brazil and the availability of this material online so that more people could be impacted. In general terms, it allowed for an even more intense exchange with the international scene, based on the partnership established with the Ayllu collective, a group of artistic-political action and collaborative research formed by migrant, racialized and gender and sexual dissidents from the former Spanish colonies, headquartered in Madrid.
Seeking a critical space for collective thinking and creation, Ayllu developed the Program Oriented to Subaltern Practices (POPS), which brought together around 40 people from eight Latin American countries to question rationalism, scientism and the false objectivity of Eurocentric thinking. The discussions generated a collective fanzine that will be part of the show The river is a serpent and added another discussion to the project, bringing the debate to migration issues.
The participation of people from 25 of the 27 federative units in Brazil in the expography course also sets the tone for this expansion of Frestas. Conducted by Tiago Guimarães, exhibition architect of the triennial itself, the course aimed to contribute so that more people had access to information about the area. Anti-analysis, a mentoring project by Pêdra Costa, assisted 45 artists from all over Brazil when it happened online, which would not have been possible if it had tooken place in Sorocaba, as they had initially thought.
“Os Parixaras”, de Jaider Esbell. Courtesy Sesc Sorocaba
Reaching the mouth of the river
If the initial objective of The river is a serpent was to take the discussions of the Brazilian and world contemporary art circuit to Sorocaba, finding less violent paths, it seems that the educational practices not only created these points of dialogue with the city, through the Training Program , but proposed discussions at other points in the circuit. These discussions will flow into Sorocaba in the face-to-face and virtual exhibition proposed for the second half of 2021.
Along this river, not only were artists and educators able to rethink their processes and the absences and possibilities around them, but so did the Triennial team and Sesc itself. “I’m rooting for the institution to review itself in some practices, because it is still very white and this is something that needs to be thought about”, points out Thiago. The focus on the process, education as the main pillar of the project and the joint construction of knowledge seem to have been important tools for this, because, as Renata Sampaio concludes: “The path of this river was made in the meetings, and the meeting is a two way street, everyone leaves modified after it”.
Joseph Beuys, La Rivoluzioni Siamo Noi (1972). Foto: Cortesia Bergamin & Gomide.
the artist Joseph Beuys was born on May 12, 1921 in Krefeld, Germany, near the Netherlands. In this pandemic year, therefore, his 100 years of birth are celebrated. A precursor to issues that we are systematically debating in these months of confinement, such as the defense of nature, his figure also stands out for rethinking the art system. This theme was addressed by me in a lecture at the Goethe Institut in 2011, in the Third Cycle of German Thought, which turned into a chapter of a book with the same name of the event the following year. The actuality of the debate is maintained and we consider it appropriate to now republish the text, without major modifications.
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One of Beuys’ most significant works is The End of the 20th Century (Das Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts) (1982-83), exhibited at the Hamburger Bahnhof museum in Berlin, an installation composed of 21 basalt rocks that can represent numbness, solidification or even a collective cemetery. Basalt, it is good to remember, contains crystals that are not seen with the naked eye. On each rock, the artist made a circular hole and from there removed a cone, reintroducing it again, this time glued with felt and clay, as signaling that even the most solid and immutable can undergo transformations through human action.
According to Peter-Klaus Schuster, curator of the exhibition The 20th Century: A Century of Art in German – which took place in three major museums in Berlin in 1999, and which placed Beuys as the central artist of his selection on German art in the 20th century -, The End of the 20th Century deals with the “ambivalence of the enormous catastrophes of the century and at the same time , as a positive image of the value of human life.”
It is this essentially humanistic vision, which elects every man not only as a revolutionary, but also as an artist, responsible for contributing to the construction of a new society, defined by Beuys as “social sculpture”, which places him as one of the leading thinkers of the 20th century and whose ideas I intend to address in this text The abandonment of art – inspired by a postcard from 1985 , entitled With this I abandon art – to reflect on the absolutely radical character of its propositions.
The original title of this work, moreover, is Hiermit trete ich aus der Kunst aus and the translation I adopted is that in the book Joseph Beuys, by Alain Borer. Literally, it may not be the most appropriate translation, but conceptually, as we’ll see below, it’s totally pertinent.
1. Beuys: the myth
To understand Beuys’ thinking it is essential to know his own biography. This is not about justifying his work as an illustration of his life, but of the very interrelationship he sought between art and life, a link that became essential in the way art was conceived in the 1960s and 1970s, a period that has in Beuys one of its main figures.
This particular moment of the 20th century caused artists such as Andy Warhol, Hélio Oiticica or Beuys himself to create around him a series of legends, as a symbolic sample of his conceptions of art. Each, in his own way, has created upon himself a series of legends that, whether true or false, it doesn’t matter, are the way they embodied their own conception of art.
In Beuys’ case, his uniform was always that of a simple type: the felt hat, the fisherman’s jacket, the jeans and the heavy shoes, as someone ready to work in one of the oldest professions. The construction of his public figure, a kind of fisherman of souls, still relates directly to the legend that the artist built around his biography. As Borer says, in the quoted publication:
A legend is neither true nor false, it is, in Latin, what must be read and said, what is narrated about the work and its author, “the point at which the biography ceases to be extrinsic”: all that with which the legendary figure contributes and collaborates to the extent that the artist himself watches zealously, and this in every work, what will be said about it. (BORER, p. 12)
It is thus, therefore, that we should read the mythological story of Beuys and his plane crash in Crimea: as a preamble to his work. It is narrated, in his biography published by Heiner Stachelhaus, as follows:
At a young age, he began the study of medicine, intending to devote himself to the humblest. This desire, however, was destroyed when flying his Stuka, after joining the Luftwaffe [the Nazi air force] in 1941. In 1944, at the age of 22, he miraculously escaped death in Asia. His plane, a JU 87, crashed in a snow-covered region called Crime or Crimea. Joseph was unconscious for several days, semi-frozen, was taken by genuine Tatars, who took care of his wounds. The people, born in the place, soon took him for one of his own: “You don’t German, you Tatar,” and brought him back to life, wrapping him in his traditional felt blankets and heating him with animal fat. After his return, having found shelter on a farm, Joseph faced a deep crisis, familiar to all great artists, which allowed him to elaborate the basic principles of his art. (BORER, p. 13)
We must not forget that Beuys assumes there that he participated in the Nazi squadron and his martyrdom thus becomes a kind of redemption, as if he were transformed so vitally with this episode that he had a genesis from the help of the Tatars, with his fraternal and primordial means of rescue.
It is from this story that Beuys justifies not only the character of his artistic propositions as a field that must save the human being from his crises, giving them a therapeutic character; but it also explains the materials involved in his works, especially felt and animal fat, elements that represent a form of protection, through heat, as organic materials that enable a vital relationship to nature, remembering how the human being is an integral part of it.
Art should not be limited to the retina – so I am engaged with substance, as “a process of the spirit (soul)” (HARLAN, p. 14).
It is how Beuys justifies the use of natural elements in his work. In the 1981 version of Chair with Fat (the first was performed in 1964) or in Felt Suit, 1970, we see how the artist is not concerned with creating a sculpture in a traditional way, but in provoking a reflection on the role of the artist, building a narrative from these materials. Thus, Beuys is concerned with reorienting the meaning and function of art.
During Nazism, modern art was officially fought through the Degenerate Art exhibition, a kind of manifesto against modernist movements such as the Bauhaus, Cubism and German Expressionism, which preached in art a new way of observing the world. What the Nazis defended, then, was the return of fine arts, in classical forms as the most appropriate to Aryan society that was intended to erect itself as sovereign.
Degenerate Art, the exhibition that began at Munich’s Haus der Kunst in 1937, and then moved to 11 more cities in Germany and Austria, brought together 650 works by 112 artists, including Paul Klee, Kurt Schwitters, Marc Chagall, Mondrian and Lasar Segall. In four months in Munich, the show gathered more than two million visitors.
Almost twenty years later, in 1955, Arnold Bode created in Kassel an exhibition, Documenta, whose central objective was to reintroduce to the German public the modernists censored in the Nazi regime. This exhibition, which would happen every five years, and today functions as the great beacon of contemporary art, was one of the great platforms used by Beuys for his ideas. He participated in four of his editions – in 1964, 1972, 1977 and 1982 – contributing to the reconstruction of German artistic thought decisively. And what was that way? In Beuys there is an essential question: “What is the need that justifies the creation of something like art?”. And your own answer is pretty clear:
If this question does not become the central focus of such research, and is not resolved in a truly radical way that actually sees art as the starting point for ducing anything at all, in every field of work, then any thought of further development is just a waste of time (HARLAN, p. 10).
When Beuys argues that art is the starting point for producing something in any field, he is in tune with those who, in the 1960s and 1970s, saw in art the only possible space for new practices that would discondition the human being from at least two then hegemonic visions, faces of the same civilizing process, as described by Norbert Elias: the rationalist thinking and the conditioning of the body through forms of behavior then seen as civilized, but which opposes it to the forces of nature, as if man were excluded from them.
One of the central points of Beuys’ thought is precisely the “defense of nature”, as he preaches in a work, a photograph from 1984, in a holistic conception, which is largely related to Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy (1861-1925), that is, the need for integration between man and nature. It is from there that, explains the artist, his work must be understood.
My objects are to be seen as the stimulants for a transformation of the idea of sculpture, or of art in general. They should provoke thoughts about what’s culture can be and how the concept of sculpting can be extended to the invisible materials used by everyone:
Thinking forms – how we mould out thoughts or spoken forms – how we shape our thoughts into words or
SOCIAL SCULPTURE: how we mould and shape the world in which we live: Sculpture as an evolutionary process; everyone artist (HARLAN, p. 9).
In this way, we come here at the heart of Beuys’ conception of art: to use art as a platform for the transformation of society as a stimulus for the reconstruction of the world. As Harlan states in another publication:
The main concern of his artistic work is the reformulation of the social field. He calls the social body social sculpture (FARKAS, p. 27).
However, it is not a purely political platform, Beuys is not only a militant of transformation in the social field, but also a revolutionary of plastic forms, so his discourse and artistic practice cannot be separated: “Art is a type of science of freedom” (HARLAN, p. 10), says Beuys, in a conception very close to that advocated by Brazilian art critic Mário Pedrosa , for whom “art is the experimental exercise of freedom, its idea best known and prowed”.
Beuys used various means as instruments for disseminating his ideas. He was the author of a monumental production, dozens of works, but especially multiples, which by their democratic character, another of the flags of the 1960s and 1970s, were more suited to his proposals. Between 1965 and 1986, he produced no fewer than 557 multiples, some with a circulation of 12,000 copies, such as the wooden box written “Intuition!”. He also produced about 300 posters, still appropriating propaganda as one of his means of expression, the same as the Nazi regime did, but obviously with totally different goals.
Joseph Beuys, La Rivoluzioni Siamo Noi (1972). Photo: Courtesy Bergamin & Gomide.
When Beuys created the poster The revolution are we, in Naples, in 1971, he explained, in an interview with Giancarlo Politi, of Flash Art magazine (n. 168), the meaning of the use of this medium:
To communicate, man uses language, uses gestures, writing, spray a wall, picks up the typewriter and extracts letters from it. In short, it uses means. What means to use for political action? I chose art. Making art is therefore a means of working for man in the field of thought. This is the most important side of my job. The rest, objects, drawings, performances, come second. Deep down, I don’t have much to do with art. Art interests me only while giving me the possibility to dialogue with man.
Here, then, we see a little of the meaning of his postcard, which gives title to this speech, With this I abandon art. The art, for him, was not reduced to conventional spaces, the gallery and the museum, even though he also regularly occupied these places.
2. The places of Beuys
2.1 The academy
To defend his proposals, Beuys used and problematized several fields: the academy, art institutions such as museums and galleries, political institutions, and became one of the founders of the German Green Party in 1980. His presence at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art, for example, was remarkable. There he studied, became professor of sculpture in 1961, and remained for ten years until 1972. For him:
It’s my most important function. To be a teacher is my greatest work of art. The rest is the waste product, a demonstration. If you want to explain yourself you must present something tangible. But after a while this has only the function of a historic document. Objects aren’t very important for me anymore. I want to get to the origin of matter, to the thought behind it (Artforum, 1969).
In this sense, Borer states that in Beuys, “speech is sculpture”, as if his thought materialized in the dialogical relationship with the students.
His classes were very disputed and this facet is the motto for the exposition Beuys and well beyond – Teach as art, organized by Deutsche Bank from its own collection, on display at the Tomie Ohtake Institute [in 2011], which also features works by students such as Blink Palermo, Katharina Sieverding and Lothar Baumgarten, in a somewhat formalist approach, which I intend to address later.
In Düsseldorf, “traditional and strongly hierarchical forms of class were replaced by collective debates, in which both art and social issues were discussed.” In 1971, Beuys came to occupy the secretariat of the Academy of Art, to protest the restrictions on the admission of students, then founding the Organization for Direct Democracy by National Referendum.
A little earlier, that same year, he had already admitted in his class the 142 candidates who were turned down by the Academy, but this set of protests ended up costing him the job and a lawsuit, which he won in 1978. Fundamental here is to reinforce the libertarian character of his activity as a teacher, which represents enabling each student to develop his own work, regardless of their jobs, as he stated in a 1972 interview:
It is often said that in my classes everything would be conceptual or political. But for me it is very important that it results in something sensually palpable, with broad epistemological foundations. My main interest there is to start with the language and let the materializations follow as a correlation of thought and action. The most important thing for me is that the human being, through his products, experiences models of how to co-act in the relationship with the whole; and not only produce articles, but become a visual artist or architect in the entire social organism. The future social order will be formed according to the principles of art (CHRISTENSEN, p. 12).
His belief in the power of institutional education does not end with his departure from the Düsseldorf Academy of Art in 1971. Three years later, he founded the International Free University (F.I.U. – Freie Internationale Universität), which served for the development of many of his projects, such as Seven thousand oaks in the Documenta de Kassel in 1982.
In Documenta itself, but in 1977, in its 6th. Edition, The F.I.U. was responsible for organizing Honey Bomb in the workplace, a room in which Beuys and his collaborators spent a hundred days – the usual time of duration of the show, debating the “social sculpture”, that is, the new model of society. However, the F.I.U. was not created as simply an alternative to the German university system. As Beuys declared in 1985:
The International Free University is an international research community. Its circle of collaborators is relatively small. It is not possible to attend the F.I.U. It is simply the project of a new society, beyond capitalism and communism. To accomplish this task, each has to find support in himself. (FARKAS, p. 45)
As in all of Beuys’ work, F.I.U. also did not constitute a conventional structure of established standards, but proposed a new possibility to disseminate the artist’s thinking in a pragmatic way. To think, in Beuys, is to realize.
2.2 The political system
In 1979, the F.I.U. was one of five organizations that created the Green Party in Germany, making Beuys one of its founders. Before, in 1967, he had already created the German Student Party (Deutsche Studentenpartei) on the eve of the revolutions of May 1968.
Then, in 1970, he created the Organization of Non-Voters – Free Plebiscite (Organisation der Nicht Wahler, Freie Volksabstimmung), and in 1971, because of the crisis at the Dusseldorf Academy of Art, the Organisation for Direct Democracy by Plebiscite (Organisation fur direkte Demokratie durch Volksbastimmung). All these organizations demonstrate how much Beuys believed in transformation by institutional means, at a time when Germany was shaken by associations that also sought change, but by illegal means, such as the far-left guerrilla group Baader Meinhoff, which existed between 1970 and 1988. The use of instruments of direct democracy also points out the importance of the thought of each individual, against the principles of representative democracy.
Even so, Beuys went on to run for the European Parliament in 1979 for the group Other Political Association (Sonstige politische Vereinigung), which the following year would become The Greens. On that occasion, he launched the manifesto “Call for the Alternative”, published in the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper on 23/12/1978, and reprinted in 1979 for the first election to the European Parliament. The text advocated non-violence, the transformation of the use of money and the organization of the State, questioning the escape from reality and even the use of drugs. This manifesto became the poster that integrated its participation in the 15th Bienal de São Paulo, with the title Call for a global alternative, in 1979.
From 1980 to 1986, the Greens maintained, under the direction of Johann Stüttgen, a coordinating office in room 3 of the Academy of Dusseldorf, the former Beuys room.
2.3 The art system
On December 11, 1964, Beuys presented the performance Marcel Duchamp’s silence is overrated (Das Schweigen von Marcel Duchamp wird uberbewertet), an action broadcast live on German TV ZDF, as a member of the Fluxus group, using in addition to speech, its typical materials such as fat and felt.
Duchamp was an indolent who created beautiful and interesting provocations for the bourgeoisie and made the affronts brilliantly in the aesthetic typology of his time. (CHRISTENSEN, p. 32)
This anti-Bourgeois spirit in Beuys’s speech is exactly one of the main characteristics of the Fluxus group, created in 1961 at the ag gallery in New York by Lithuanian artist George Maciunas. With an international character, Fluxus was not characterized by a formal style among its components, but by a common principle: to abolish the objectual question of art as the primacy of its existence and to value the process in its constitution.
Beuys joined the group through colleague Nan June Paik, a Korean artist who was also a teacher in Düsseldorf. In addition, also participated in the events organized by Fluxus artists such as the American musician John Cage, whose experimentations were decisive for the group, and the Japanese Yoko Ono. At Fluxus festivals, Beuys performed especially actions, anticipating the idea of performance, which had not been characterized as a language.
Fluxus is linked, in general, to the anti-art character of the Dada movement, which also used everyday elements and ephemeral actions, questioning the commercial value of art. Maciunas, for example, created several multiples, such as the Fluxus Boxes, an idea that would then be used by Beuys. The use of the video, especially due to the influence of Nan June Paik, was also recurrent in Fluxus, not only because of the emergence of the new medium, but because of the characteristics it provided, that is, the possibility of its retransmission, which would also be widely used by Beuys. However, while the Dada had a negative character, as Giulio Carlo Argan defines, by “demonstrating the impossibility of any relationship between art and society”, Fluxus had a more positive view, which sought to link life and art.
It is remarkable that Marcel Duchamp’s silence is overrated occurred just inside a Fluxus event, because its members had great appreciation for the french artist creator of the ready-made. Beuys’ connection to Fluxus was intense, but it did not last long, and the performance shows how the german artist’s critical character was in the confrontation, within the very space of the institutions where it worked.
This capacity for criticism also occurs in the performance I like America and America likes me, in May 1974 for three consecutive days, eight hours each day, on the occasion of the opening of the gallery of the German René Block in New York.
Beuys arrived in the U.S. by plane and, from JFK airport, set off in an ambulance, going straight to a cage built in the gallery, where he lived with a coiote, an animal considered sacred by the native peoples of the usa. According to the myth of the performance, after three days, the artist would have been taken back to the airport, without having stepped on American soil.
Beuys had been working with Block for a long time. It was in his gallery that he once covered the corners with fat, rounding the rigid shape of his architecture, bringing to it an organic character, which was transformed over the days when the fat was exposed. Here one can see how Beuys cares about the plastic issue, but it is a vehicle for his ideas.
In I like America… their action is more radical. He lives with an animal, wrapped in felt and, leaning on a cane, approaches the interactivity with nature, so important to the idea of “social sculpture”. The performance, in fact, points out how the artist lived his own utopia in his work, showing that the realization of his proposals is feasible, besides pointing out a character of non-objectual art, non-commercial, anti-representational. This is because Beuys, who called himself “a reincarnated caveman” (BORER, p. 30), was living his proposals, was not creating mere illustrations for them. Experience is an essential part of your actions.
This action is also a good example of how, in Borer’s conception, Beuys can be seen as a pastor:
The pastor leads his disciples to a place only he knows – a promise of a higher state; he is the man looking for a path, a path more extensive and vast than him: he opens passage.(BORER, p. 23)
This occurs in a great way in his project Seven thousand oaks, which the artist started in 1982, on the occasion of Documenta 7, created from F.I.U. Its goal was that 7,000 such trees be planted throughout the city, always next to a basalt column. Again, one sees here the insightful ability of Beuys to work with images: to this day, those who visit Kassel face the oaks planted by Beuys and his collaborators.
The symbolic beginning of the vital reforestation of the Earth must take place in Kassel. […] This is a rational action; in this case, tree planting. […] One must first create a global understanding to – wherever possible – make such processes sustainable. (FARKAS, p. 41)
In Seven thousand oaks, Beuys concretizes his idea of “social sculpture” transforming the environment. And it does so with the collaboration of those who are willing, so that each person who lives on Earth can become a creator of forms, a sculptor, a designer of the social organism.
However, all the radicality that marked the period of consolidation of Beuys’ work in the 1960s and 1970s, with the exercise of extensive dialogue with other artists and groups such as Fluxus, and Arte Povera in Italy, and the strong presence of performance artists such as Marina Abramović and Ulay, will transform in the following decade.
Joseph Beuys. “Hiermit trete ich aus der Kunst aus” (1985).
The 1980s are marked by the idea of the “return to painting”, especially in Germany, with the emergence of so-called neoexpressionists such as Georg Baselitz and Anselm Kiefer. This new context was certainly very discouraging for Beuys, which probably led him to create the multiple postcard With this I abandon art, on November 1, 1985, almost three months before he died, on January 23, 1986, due to a heart attack.
This postcard is part of a series of nine sentences, all handwritten, in chalk, on a dark background, just like a blackboard, material he so often used in his works, related to his teacher facet. It should be noted that, knowing himself ill – Beuys had long been weakened as a result of his plane crash – he leaves this last set of works where there is no image, no color, only text. Another of the texts written in this series of postcards is: “The error already begins when someone prepares to buy a screen”(der Fehler fängt schon an, wenn einer sich anschickt, Keilrahmen und Leinwand zu kaufen)
Therefore, the message of the postcards is clear: Beuys no longer saw the possibility of conveying his ideas in the field of art, nor taking part in it. Just as he was fired from the Academy, and never elected by his political associations, the artist found that neither in art his message achieved the necessary repercussion. An emblematic artist of an experimental period in art history, which begins in the post-War period, Beuys arrives pessimistic in the 1980s, when the art market gains strength and power again and the experiments move into the background. It is the decade of the end of history and, according to Arthur C. Danto, the end of art.
Beuys participated in all the important shows of the art circuit: four times in Documenta; once at Skulptur Münster in 1977; represented Germany in Venice, in 1976 with Tram stop- Monument to the Future; and in 1980, with Das Kapital Raum from 1970 to 1977; he also represented Germany in three Biennials of São Paulo (1979, 1985, 1989) and was consecrated with a retrospective at the Guggenheim in New York in 1979, which earned him great prestige in the United States.
His epitaph, however, points out that, in fact, these great exhibitions represented little for Beuys, and that he already envisioned an unpromising future for art. Sad observation for who argued that:
Only art, that is, art conceived at the same time as creative self-determination and as a process that generates creation, is capable of freeing us and leading us towards an alternative society (BORER, p. 28)
Bibliography*
CHRISTENSEN, Liz (org.) (2011). Beuys and well beyond. Teach as art. Frankfurt: Deutsche Bank.
BORER, Alain. (2001). Joseph Beuys. São Paulo: Cosac Naify.
FARIAS, Agnaldo. (2001). Bienal 50 anos. São Paulo: São Paulo: Fundação Bienal de SP.
FARKAS, Solange (2010). A revolução somos nós. São Paulo: Associação Cultural Videobrasil/Sesc.
HARLAN, Volker (2004). What Is Art?: Conversation with Joseph Beuys. East Sussex: Clairview Books.
SCHUSTER, Peter-Klaus (1999). Das XX. Jahrhundert: ein jahr hundert kunst in Deutschland. Berlin: Nicolai.
*Some of the bibliography was translated from Portuguese to English, therefore, the present text may differ from original.
Fully ready to be reopened after six years of renovations, the Museum of the Portuguese Language has already started to warm up its engines in anticipation of finally being able to open its doors, which should happen in late July or as soon as the pandemic allows. In addition to the physical reconstruction, which reassembled the structure destroyed by fire in 2015, the institution took the opportunity to conceptually reorganize itself and update content and communication strategies with the public. Overall, the project concept remains the same, based on an anthropological, historical and social perspective on the language, as outlined nearly 20 years ago.
As this is basically a virtual collection, the archives were not destroyed by fire and it was possible to reassemble a large part of the original exhibition. The possibility – and need – of redoing the exhibition from scratch brought, however, the opportunity to improve the permanent exhibition and update important aspects, incorporating transformations the language underwent in the period and proposing a reflection on contemporary debates related to identity issues, which has been intensely mobilizing the debate in recent years.
The institution also opened space for a more intense dialogue with various fields of culture, in addition to its intimate relationship with literature, incorporating new ways of thinking about language also based on everyday elements and other forms of expression, such as the arts. visuals. The result of this new approach is the museum’s first temporary exhibition, already accessible to small groups of visitors, entitled Língua Solta. “Since back then, we wanted to bring objects crossed by the language”, explains the institution’s special curator, Isa Grinspum Ferraz. After all, as Mozambican writer Mia Couto says in an online talk organized by the institution, “the Portuguese language does not work in the abstract”.
The installations “Palavras Cruzadas”, in the foreground, and “O Portuguesa do Brasil”, in the background. Photo: Joca Duarte.
Among the novelties brought by the museum in this new guise are also the increment of the timeline, which runs through the history of the Portuguese language from Lazio, in ancient Rome, to the present day, with the problematization of fundamental moments in this trajectory, such as the year 1500 – in which testimonies of indigenous leaders such as Davi Kopenawa and Ailton Krenak were included, questioning the idea of discovery and explaining the process of invasion of already inhabited lands. In an almost opposite sense, the installation Nós da Língua Portuguesa (“we” both in terms of intertwining and of a pronoun that indicates a collectivity) highlights the importance of Portuguese as a language of liberation for African countries, allowing for a confluence of different peoples and dialects in a common project, experienced in countries like Mozambique, Angola and Cape Verde. Finally, among the novelties, Isa Grinspum highlights the new installation Falares, curated by Marcelino Freire and Roberta Estrela D’Alva, which creates a forest of canvases in which it is possible to take a walk, watching a web of testimonials, of iconic speeches, Portuguese accents and tribes.
When it opened in 2006, the massive use of virtual technology was one of the museum’s strong marks. Today, with a greater familiarity of people with this type of resource and the improvement of equipment, its protagonism seems more diluted. “The technology came to the service, to tell a story. As the language is impalpable, images and sounds are very useful. We do not seek interactivity for interactivity”, points out the curator. According to her, what matters is to stimulate the visitor’s interest as much as possible, making them leave the museum with more questions than they entered.
Faced with the challenges posed by the pandemic – which has been delaying its reopening and imposing the need to find new ways of contacting potential visitors – the museum has also been taking the opportunity to develop new forms of virtual interaction with the public. It took advantage of the international day of the Portuguese language to show a little of its new face, conducting a series of conversations and online presentations, which have already been seen by more than 15,000 viewers, with figures of great relevance in thinking about the role of language, such as Mia Couto, José Eduardo Agualusa and José Miguel Wisnik. It also launched cycles of virtual lectures and intends to establish cycles of debates, teacher training, film screenings, soirees, and other activities capable of spreading this production beyond the physical space.
Going outside is, in fact, one of the museum’s mottos, either in terms of content (to which digital communication can contribute a lot) or in spatial terms, connecting more intensely with the surroundings of its headquarters at Estação da Luz, through which hundreds of thousands of people walk every day.
Overview of the "Língua Solta" exhibition, in the foreground "Olha Minha Lingua", by Alex dos Santos. Photo: Ciete Silverio.
The widespread presence of the word in the world of things, so evident and so little portrayed, is the theme of the Língua Solta exhibition, installed at the Museum of the Portuguese Language until the next month of October. Purposely mixing watertight categories, such as high culture and popular culture, contemporary art and mass culture, the exhibition combines in the same space and in an unordered manner a broad and significant set of contemporary works of art – already endorsed by the market and the circuit – and a wide selection of objects, posters, packaging, commercial or protest banners and other elements of everyday life. In both, the focus is on the language enhanced as a sign. “Looking at the surroundings, we try to recognize that it is the language that animates many of the objects around us”, describes Moacir dos Anjos, who signs the curatorship together with Fabiana Moraes.
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Meme by the Instagram account "Saquinho de Lixo"
Banner by Marta Neves
There is no universalizing or encyclopedic claim to the selection made by the pair. After all, as Moacir says, “curatorship is always a part of the world”. The choices derive from the experiences – objective and subjective – of the couple in the field of art and culture. The result is an exhibition in which the word seems to rebound, indicating different paths of apprehension of the world. One of the most evident aspects is the clear presence of a political demand discourse.
“These are words that express desires, identities, complaints”, explains Fabiana, emphasizing that there is no kind of hierarchy in the exhibition between a language aimed at entertainment, political suggestion or poetic elucubration. The spectator is often presented with manifests that express the urgency of the present day. There is, for example, a set of letters and drawings sent by children living in Maré to the Court, with reactions to the police repression. Or a plaque in honor of councilor Marielle Franco, whose murder goes unpunished. “They are like screams”, explains Fabiana.
Even non-linear and organized in order to promote sparks between different ways of dealing with ideas, forms and words, Língua Solta is articulated around six main cores: media, resistance, home, street, religiosity and pedagogy are the words around which the various objects coalesce together. Many of the selected works belong simultaneously to several of these categories. And they establish enriching dialogues with each other. There is, for example, an interesting reverberation between the slides used by Paulo Freire in the 1960s for literacy and the work ABC da Cana, by Jonathas de Andrade, or the painting Esperança, by Leonilson, which also uses the alphabet as a raw material.
In the exhibition “Língua Solta”, the work “ABC da Cana” (2014) by Jonathas de Andrade. Photo: Ciete Silverio.
Slides used by the Paulo Freire method of adult literacy in the 1960s.
The omnipresent word sometimes gives way to less explicit poetic approaches. This is the case of the group formed by the works of Lygia Pape, Lenora de Barros, Lia Chaia and Anna Maria Maiolino, in which the focus shifts from the written symbol to the physicality of the language. The idea of cut, stain or impossibility of controlling one’s language, something common to the work of these artists, makes the approach between them very powerful.
The list of artists represented in the exhibition is large, with very rare and deliberate gaps, as in the case of São Paulo poets linked to concretism. “We tried to avoid a literary character, privileging the presence of the poetic word in the artistic field”, explains Moacir. These exceptions aside, the great masters of art who appropriate the word are there. Authors such as Arthur Bispo do Rosário, Mira Schendel, Cildo Meireles, Paulo Bruscky, Antonio Manuel, Leonilson, Élida Tessler, Vânia Mignone, Marilá Dardot, Ivan Grilo, Jaime Lauriano, among others, appear, often with more than one work.
“Você me dá sua palavra?”, by Elida Tessler, in the exhibition “Língua Solta”. Photo: Ciete Silvério
There is a permanent effort, in terms of editing, to undo categories, to demonstrate that artistic expression often derives from an attentive look at the world of the street and things, whether maracatu banners, dish towels, cachaça labels or signatures of pixo. A clear example of this hybridity is the work Você me dá sua palavra?, by Elida Tessler, which promotes sewing throughout the exhibition. Thousands of hanging clothespins zigzagged, supported by drying ropes. On them, a number of people invited by the artist wrote a word that was special to each of them. In a presentation made on the occasion of the international day of the Portuguese language, Tom Zé revealed his: “Disobedience”.
Originally, the exhibition was thought of as another nucleus of the museum’s permanent activities. But the difficulties arising from the pandemic, the lack of technical conditions at the institution – which does not have any collection of works of art, so it does not have equipment such as a technical reserve, conservation team, etc. – and the wide presence of works loaned by private and public collections meant that the selection had to be displayed on a temporary basis. On the other hand, it gained a space three times greater than previously planned. It is the only museum activity that can already be seen by the public, being accessible to specific groups by appointment until the end of June. Then, at the end of July, it will reopen together with the entire museum.
The impact caused by the Covid-19 Pandemic has caused unimaginable changes. The perplexity of the present, arising from the protocols of confinement and temporary closings of galleries, museums, fairs and biennials, has shaken the art system since the beginning of last year. In this context, the challenge of overcoming the crisis and finding a way out of the unexpected collapse led to the creation of the collaborative platform Galleries Curate: RHE. The idea came from a group of gallery owners linked to the committee of the three Art Basel fairs – Miami, Hong Kong and Basel – with the idea of promoting simultaneous virtual exhibitions in galleries all over the world, in support of the community.
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"A Rift Valley Crossing" video still. Photo: Reprodução
"A Rift Valley Crossing" video still. Photo: Reprodução
"A Rift Valley Crossing" video still. Photo: Reprodução
The first exhibition has water as its theme and was suggested by the gallery owner Chantal Crousel, from Paris, one of the first to embrace the idea. The group highlighted the undeniable limitations that their spaces were experiencing at that time and decided to change the scenario with a dynamic virtual dialogue between the individual programs of each gallery, whether in Jakarta, Brussels, Singapore, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, or Paris.
The only Brazilian gallery that is part of this international pool is A Gentil Carioca, from Rio de Janeiro, directed by Márcio Botner, one of its owners. Engaged in the Art Basel Miami committee, he is a globetrotter on the circuit, connected to several projects around the world and one of the most animated with Galleries Curate.
“The idea was born from the virtual contacts of a group of 12 people and it impressed me when we soon reached 21 participants”. Involved in so many projects, he believes in horizontal collaboration between artists, gallery owners and critics, uniting people who think closely to the group’s goals. Each gallery proposed what they wanted to show and they started the exhibitions earlier this year. “What is happening is something special. While we have established dealers, we have young enthusiasts with less time in the market. The platform began to be publicly thought of this year and people are now getting to know the project better.”
French Clément Delépine, young coordinator of Galleries Curate: RHE and co-director of the Paris Internationale fair, also mediates part of the project’s lives. For him, since the first negotiations, these conversations are constituted as group therapy. “The project has in its title the enigmatic symbol RHE, a measure of unity and impermanence, defined by two Greek words: panta rei, which means ‘everything moves”. Delépine draws an analogy between the water element, fundamental in our lives, and their effort to create alternatives in the global crisis. The work transcends hosting online exhibitions, a digital platform, as there is also a concern with archiving materials related to the works on display. When new content is added, past and current projects are mixed.
The exhibitions have multiple themes and most talk about the environment. In the Tempest group show, at the Tanya Leighton Gallery in Berlin, the artist Monster Chetwynd stands out for shaping the figure of a huge octopus made of latex, painted and lasciviously placed on the floor. The installation is completed with the woodcut – enlarged in xerox and fixed to the wall – of a copy of the erotic series The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife (Kinoe no komatsu), by artist Katsushika Hokusai, executed in popular shunga printing in the 19th century. Monster Chetwynd’s life touches on the poetic, performance she identifies with. In a game of identities, the Glasgow artist changes her name from time to time, as did Hokusai, the artist she reveres and who throughout her life has had more than 30 names. The water here presents itself as a metaphor, dream or mythical delirium of an unexperienced jouissance.
From a more programmatic perspective of the ecological movement, Galleria Franco Noero, from Turin, shows Simon Starling’s film Project for a crossing of the Rift Valley. The still, composed of paradisiacal images, poetically registers a canoe, built with magnesium extracted from the Dead Sea waters used in 2016, in an attempt to cross it, departing from Israel to Jordan. The experience advances in several directions and reveals that in this stretch, located in the Rift Valley, the water is highly salty and that the place stands out for being the lowest on the planet – it is 427 meters below sea level. He also warns that the region is heavily exploited for keeping special mineral wealth: a liter of water contains 45 grams of magnesium.
There are works philosophically engaged in the symbolism of time and its duration. The Jean Mot gallery, in Brussels, shows the video Canción para Lupita, by Francis Alÿs, from 1998, an animation in 16mm. The water moves in Alÿs’ poetic itinerary throughout the film. A woman pours water from one glass to another repeatedly. The action of doing and undoing is accompanied by a song whose phrase Mañana, mañana és breve para mi can suggest an extension or continuous hope for the future.
The gallery A Gentil Carioca, in Rio de Janeiro, harbor of astral fantasies and renewing experiences, shows Descompasso Atlântico, by Arjan Martins, which takes place in two places and with different poetics. Inside the gallery, the paintings maintain a narrative focus on both the slavery heritage and the current situation of the black population. In the open air, right on Ipanema beach, Arjan Martins creates a colorful installation of geometric inspiration that converses with the Atlantic Ocean, an old route for slave ships. Composed of five windsocks, objects commonly used in airports to control the wind, the installation brings in each one of them a symbol of maritime warnings: man overboard, dangerous cargo, etc. The gallery purposely opened the exhibition on April 22, the day on which, in 1500, Portuguese colonizers landed in Brazil. The ideology of survival traversed by Galleries Curate: RHE makes the declarations of intent of this group an expanded space to see and register the new normal.
Windsocks installation, 2021, Arjan Martins. Photo: Fagner França
the old Certainties, still present in the Brazilian art system, are gradually being erased with initiatives such as Transarte, a pioneer gallery in the presentation of artists with the LGBTQ+ theme and which is now becoming an institute. Since appearing on the art circuit, it has been experiencing physical and conceptual transmutations. Now it leaves the bohemian Vila Madalena and settles, in permanent headquarters, in Gabriel Monteiro da Silva, stronghold of the upper class in São Paulo, with other challenges.
“Ritual Memories”, Iwajla Klinke. Photo: Courtesy of Transarte.
Any new situation, which is added to others, is enough to oxygenate a sense of the future. Conceived by Maria Helena Peres Oliveira, Transarte opened its doors in 2012 showing what it came for. It exhibited works by the enigmatic North American artist Timothy Cummings, the result of a one-year residency held in São Paulo. No traveling backwards or forwards will be able to unravel his tormented work, and not even the self-portraits leave a clue. For Catharine Clark, a San Francisco gallery owner, “Cummings’ work is both classic and subversive, formally beautiful and thematically creepy.” For Maria Helena, the photographer Iwajla Klinke, from Berlin, has an unsuspected quality and that is why she was also invited. She works the beam of natural light as a narrative instrument. The series Ritual Memories, with naked backs of young people, mixes strangeness and sensuality with sequential takes: man alone, man mirror, man narcissus, man faggot. The operation is fluid, but opposite to spontaneity. Klinke adorns them sometimes with rats and frogs hanging around their necks, sometimes with light plastic shuttlecocks or delicate lace.
On the other side of the ocean, the young Brazilian Bia Leite discovered very early on that dreams and perception are built hand to hand with life. She learned to disarm her attackers with a telltale paint job. Awarded in the Transarte LGBTQ+ edict for the canvas Born to ahazar, which became known as Criança Viada, she gained notoriety for having graffiti prejudiced insults (suffered by homosexuals since childhood) on the painting. Bia tries to get rid of the monster that grew inside her, due to the bullying she suffers. The painting participated in the collective Queermuseum, at Centro Cultural Santander, in Porto Alegre, when it was the target of protests, censorship and became one of the vertices of the insane cultural alienation of the moment. Delicacy can also be an act of resistance. Silva M works with objects found by chance and randomly builds sculptures whose surface resembles woodcuts. The young woman invents an active response to this dispersed and abandoned world, weaving fragments with a disconcerting delicacy, replete with fine sutures that reach the edges and recesses, like a dermal aid.
Transarte reinvents itself, but the residences remain in the future perspectives that will occur in the new headquarters, the house that Maria Helena got from her grandfather when she was just 12 years old. Since its creation, Transarte has operated with its own resources, without the support of incentive laws, which is why Maria Helena and her partner Maria Bonomi did not think of a foundation.
The art landscape is urban and marked by surveillance. In order to guarantee a definitive and legitimate space for the artists, it is planned to organize a long-term private initiative so that the Institute can survive after the death of its owners, and there is already money for that. “We had a moment of progress with the approval of same-sex marriage by the stf, but now it has become much worse”, says Maria Helena. Expanding the range of actions, they will form partnerships with residences such as Casa Florescer and other institutions that also welcome LGBTQ+ people of all ages with trauma.
The artists’ reports have terrifying social and psychic intensity. “Many people run away from their place of origin, others leave their parents’ homes because of threats or leave the streets because of beatings, all with nowhere to go”. Maria Helena also wants to propose something like art education as a distraction or as a support for traumatized people. In this way, art seems to have no meaning in itself, but in fact it is crossed by other powers, knowledge, affections, discoveries, which will be part of the Institute’s content. A council will be formed with people from different areas, not only to introduce artists and works in the exhibition circulation, but also to think about the plurality of projects to be generated. Instituto Transarte will continue to include exhibitions, public notices, book publications and artistic residencies. “We are talking about an Institute, but it would be a non-profit NGO. Our proposal is anti-market, we start selling at a low price between three and five thousand reais, divided into up to 10 times, and the artist can still receive it in advance, except for works by foreigners.”
“Pyre of Persona”, Timothy Cummings 2012-13. Courtesy: Transarte.
Maria Helena’s boldness in adolescence, living in a conservative society, seems to be the foundation of her strong and determined personality today. Born and socialized in an elite family, she has always been involved in art, influenced by her close relationship with her uncle Arthur Luiz Piza and by her marriage to Maria Bonomi, both emblematic engravers in the history of Brazilian art. Maria Helena remembers the time of delusions, of love deprivation, when a kiss with another teenager was only possible inside an elevator. She talks about her part of a void that was only filled after she left São Paulo to settle in San Francisco, a city with loose social rules and where she got even closer to art. Graduated in chemistry and with an MBA from FGV, Maria Helena completed her studies in the United States with Masters in Marketing and in Arts Administration, working at SFMOMA, at the San Francisco Opera House and at the Catharine Clark gallery.
She returned to Brazil in 2002 and, since then, produces and coordinates exhibitions in several museums. All this learning was leveraged with other initiatives permeated with social and political issues. Last year, with the Covid-19 pandemic advancing, Transarte sought an art response to the matter, producing the quarantena edict, which totaled 400 entries and distributed six R$1200 prizes. Artists responded to the call with works about this cruel time of physical exclusion. The Transarte Institute appears at the time of the dismantling of culture in Brazil. The prognosis is that this pioneering, challenging project, with an artistic and social impact, will survive in the direction of long-requested transformations.
"À Procura de Emprego", 1948. Courtesy: Galeria Utópica
*By Simonetta Persichetti
in almost all photographers there is a flâneur soul, the pleasure of wandering through the cities, looking with attentive eyes and making discoveries. The flâneur kept these images in his memory, the photographer returns his impressions in a photograph. To narrate everyday life, point out what deserves to be seen, stop to observe small details, situations for which no one would give a damn about. This is how German Lorca (1922-2021) parades his photographs under our eyes. A watchful, critical and often ironic look.
German Lorca, 2018. Photo: José Henrique Lorca. Courtesy of the author.
Born in 1922 – theoretically the year that modernism exploded in Brazil – this paulistano hailed from the neighborhood of Brás, son of Spanish immigrants, of restless walk and easy smile, knew the world by the photographs he saw in the press, in newspapers, in magazines. In 1940 he graduated in accounting, a profession that seemed tight for him. He wanted to wander, photograph, walk through that city of the 1940s that was modernizing, growing. He wanted its reflexes, lights, narratives. And it was in one of these tours that he made a first impact photograph in 1947: a protest against the increase of trams tickets’ price in São Paulo. He was charmed by his record. Two years later he joined the Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante, which became known for bringing modernity to Brazilian photography. It was at Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante that names like Thomaz Farkas, Marcel Giró, Geraldo de Barros and Gaspar Gasparian started experimentalism, breaking boundaries and bringing an image that played all the time with the European avant- gardes, with surrealism, with photographic techniques, besides being a center of discussion and dissemination of photography. It was in this environment that Lorca decided to devote himself entirely to photography.
In his first images, the city of São Paulo remained the main search. So little photographed in its immensity, very judged on its appearance. Whoever defines it as ugly doesn’t know it. Those who define it as enigmatic feel attracted and seek in it some way to understand it. It may be via music, verse, literature, but considerably, the image gives the best homage. Much has been shown, few times it has been understood. Often defined as stone city, gray city, rain and drizzle city. Beloved city, hated city. But it was in its corners and nooks that Lorca discovers and rediscovers it. A city he has always photographed.
“São Paulo Crescendo”, 1965. Courtesy: Galeria Utópica.
In the early 1950s, he opened his photographic studio, moving away from Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante to become a publicity photographer. Two years later he was the official photographer of the 4th Centenary of the City of São Paulo.
In advertising, he took his keen, polite and always irreverent look. To perceive the strength of trivial objects and make this apparent banality into an image that deserved to be seen. And just as he did when he walked the streets, he used the publicity image to question his realistic characteristics. He played with the image. He created doubt, at a time when no one spoke of post-production, but still he disconcerted the viewer’s gaze. Aesthetic games, games of looks, allusions and quotes. He created and had fun. All this combined with new technical possibilities and the freedom with which he used to work. And so it was also with his self-portraits and artistic photographs.
But the city continued to enchant him and, tirelessly, he continued to photograph it. In the late 1990s German Lorca left his studio under the responsibility of his sons and returned to his walk. In 2002 he performs an essay at Ibirapuera, which he had photographed in 1954 and in 2009 returns to the city center.
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"Oca - Parque do Ibirapuera", 1954. Courtesy: Galeria Utópica.
"Oca", 2018, image commissioned for SP-Arte magazine in the same year. Courtesy of SP-Arte and José Henrique Lorca.
Tireless, he is enchanted by post-production, with the power to transform his images on the computer, recreate them and revisit his archive. To discover the power of color for your artwork. Doing, redoing, reviewing, have always been his motto. And that’s why in 2016, at the age of 94, he decided to go to New York, after MoMA bought part of his images together with those of other Brazilian modernist photographers, at a time of rebirth of this aesthetic. There he decided to resume an essay carried out in the 1960s and 1980s, more specifically in Central Park, already thinking about contemporary post-production. His last exhibition took place in 2018 at Itaú Cultural, in São Paulo, curated by Rubens Fernandes Junior and José Henrique Lorca, his son.
“Aeroporto de São Paulo”, 1965. Courtesy: Galeria Utópica.
German Lorca died at the age of 99 on May 8, the day MoMA in New York opened the Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modernist Photography and the Foto-Cine Clube Bandeirante, 1946-1964 exhibition, of which he is one of the authors. And he has left us more than 70 years of photographic experiences, of creative possibilities, of gazes that renew.
“Chuck Coma sofreu uma lesão cerebral por hipóxia depois que seu colega de cela o estrangulou na penitenciária federal em Lewisburg, Pensilvânia, privando seu cérebro de oxigênio. Desde então, ele tem sofrido de perda de memória, alterações extremas de humor e tremores ocasionais. No momento de sua prisão, Coma estava lutando contra um grave PTSD devido ao serviço militar no Panamá e na Guerra do Golfo. Antes das guerras, ele era um pouco encrenqueiro, mas não tinha problemas sérios com a lei. Quando ele deixou o serviço, não conseguiu segurar um emprego e começou a assaltar bancos”. Shelton, Washington. EUA. 2019. | Crédito: Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos. Cortesia do fotógrafo.
On november 13, 2015, American photographer Peter van Agtmael was in Paris during a massive terrorist attack by ISIS. In the evening, upon returning to the hotel room, Peter felt paranoid for the first time in a long time. “I’d been covering conflict for ten years, and I’d always been able to prepare myself for the experience. This time, caught unawares, I stayed half awake the whole night”, he says. The shock continued to reverberate even after the photographer returned home to New York City. Until then, while using the subway, Peter found himself keeping his back to the wall whenever it was possible, and scanning every face, while charting his escape routes. “I’d always been a visitor to other people’s conflicts, but in Paris, when violence arrived so suddenly in a space I’d associated with comfort and sanctuary, I got a small understanding of what ordinary people living in a war feel every day. Ten years of work in conflict, and I’d missed one of the most fundamental lessons.”
Such dissonance between the Americans’ perceptions of the post-9/11 wars and the violence experienced by people trapped in conflict zones is the narrative basis of Peter’s latest project, Sorry for the War. In it, the photos sequenced in a non-linear manner interlace and sew together the war in Iraq during the time of ISIS, the mass exodus of refugees to Europe, militarism, terrorism, nationalism, myth-making and war propaganda. The material gathered in Sorry for the War (whose texts and subtitles are written in both English and Arabic) reminds us that although the recent wars of the United States have been virtually forgotten, their consequences continue to reverberate, as the author notes.
“Jennie Taylor measures a tombstone for the grave of her husband, Brent. She wasn’t home when the casualty notification team arrived at her door and received a cell phone call to go to the National Guard headquarters. As her sister drove her, she wrote, ‘If he is dead, I have to process this. I don’t have a choice. I can’t fall apart. My kids matter most’. She said she knew he was dead when she arrived and no one would look her in the eyes”. North Ogden, Utah. USA. 2019. | Photographs: Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos. Courtesy of the photographer.
The disturbing, endowed with acid humor (accentuated by the plasticity brought in by the use of flash and the cunning ordering of images in the book), contradictory, mysterious and sometimes condemning records are articulated by Peter to study the construction of the idea of an endless war. Although it shows a post-9/11 world – “attack that ‘gave us license’ to use our fears as an excuse for anything” -, Sorry for the War fulfills the duty of using recent history as a guide, but not to be limited to it, since one should “also have to look at the totality of American history as a framework. Things don’t just happen because of one event, they happen as part of the continuum of history”. Off the front, the photographer focuses on the aftermath of this culture, “serving both as evidence and interpretation of a country gone adrift, with often disastrous consequences”, and including the notion of eternal war, exemplified very well in four records of televised speeches by the past U.S. presidents (Bush Senior and Junior, Obama and Trump; with the exception of Bill Clinton), whose addresses should announce the end of certain conflicts and end up reinforcing, in these frozen excerpts by Peter, the other way.
President Donald Trump on his first visit to Iraq. | Photographs: Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos. Courtesy of the photographer.
President George W. Bush announces “Mission Accomplished” regarding the war in Iraq on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003. The vast majority of casualties and violence occurred after the speech. | Photographs: Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos. Courtesy of the photographer.
The title of the book, found in a pink post-it on the cover of the publication, comes from a photograph taken by Peter of an action, with the name Balloons for Kabul, at an art gallery in New York. “New Yorkers wrote notes to the people of Kabul that would be handed out to them with pink balloons during their morning commute. It was a well-intended but totally out of touch response to a then already decade-long conflict. Much of the work that I do is about the disconnect between the us and the consequences of its — or of our — imperial actions abroad. That note, and that event, seemed to symbolize a lot of my mistrust and cynicism I had for our distorted idea of collective empathy.”, he tells, the also photographer, Tanya Habjouqa. “That note seemed appropriate because this book is my apology, and a statement of helplessness, about what has happened these past two decades. I can’t change any outcome, but I can certainly create a rigorous document interpreting what’s come to pass. And I think that’s partly why the gaze on the Americans in this book is kind of brutal and sardonic. I’ve come to know the violence at the heart of America very well. The generosity and grace as well, but just this unremitting violence.”, complements the photographer.
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"The Ms. Veteran America competition combines equal parts femininity and militarism. During the talent competition, a woman dancing in a cheetah costume was sandwiched between testimonials of sexual abuse in the military (one in three women experiences sexual assault while serving). One veteran sang opera, while another talked about her brother’s suicide after suffering from PTSD. The T-shirt commemorating the competition is a cutout silhouette of a woman holding a baby in one hand and a machine gun in the other, with the backdrop of a red American flag". Washington, DC. USA. 2017. | Photographs: Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos. Courtesy of the photographer.
"For years in my youth, I went to the Imperial War Museum in London, enamored with the aesthetics of past wars. In 2018, I went back to the Imperial War Museum, and the violent fragments of my own wars were on exhibit. Warped beams from the Twin Towers. The outline of a predator drone looming overhead. Remnants of a car bomb that exploded in Baghdad on March 5, 2007. At the start of the 20th century, only 10% of war casualties were civilians. Now, the figure is 90%".
London. England. 2018. | Photographs: Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos. Courtesy of the photographer.
The choice of satire as a vehicle for criticism – rather than the deliberate use of shock – shows not only his experience (vast to such a young professional), but outlines a path contrary to that of the news market, as Susan Sontag explains in the book Regarding the Pain of Others: “The hunt for more dramatic (as they’re often described) images drives the photographic enterprise, and is part of the normality of a culture in which shock has become a leading stimulus of consumption and source of value”. Concerning the ‘shock- photos’ (as Roland Barthes called it), Sontag would question: “Can you look at this?”. “There is the satisfaction of being able to look at the image without flinching. [But also] there is the pleasure of flinching [in the face of horror]”. Whether by indignation, mystery or satire, Peter manages to maintain, throughout Sorry for the War, the prevalence of “why?”. “Why was this face in Guantanamo hidden?”; “why do people go to museums to look at drones?”; “why is the scenario behind this child in ruins?”; “why is there a huge sporting celebration in the middle of a book about conflict?”.
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"Refugees peer through the barrier on the Serbia-Hungary border. Earlier that day, Hungary’s nationalist government had closed the border to refugees transiting to Western Europe. The refugee crisis was by far the largest migration I’d ever covered. The vastness of what I saw on any given day was only a drop in the flood of human beings who had been pouring into Europe for weeks and would continue for months to come. What that means, and where that will eventually lead, is still a question. For now, the forces of nationalism, identity politics, fear mongering, and insularity are very much on display". Horgos. Serbia. 2015 | Photographs: Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos. Courtesy of the photographer.
"November is Salute to Service month in the National Football League. The event stemmed from an initiative by the Pentagon to boost waning recruitment for the unpopular wars, and since 2009, the Pentagon has given at least $12.2 million to the NFL for propaganda. Senator John McCain conducted an investigation into the practice and released this statement with a detailed report: 'Americans across the country should be deeply disappointed that many of the ceremonies honoring troops at professional sporting events are not actually being conducted out of a sense of patriotism, but for profit in the form of millions in taxpayer dollars going from the Department of Defense to wealthy pro sports franchises'". Meadowlands, New Jersey. USA. 2018 | Photographs: Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos. Courtesy of the photographer.
Visualizing war?
At a time when politics is often consumed by citizens in a visual way – through social media, video news coverage or popular culture – the need to become aware of the weight of visual communication is ever-more pressing. “This need becomes even greater when we consider that so few of us now have direct experience of war or the military”, argue Nick Robinson and Marcus Schulzke in the study Visualizing War? Towards a Visual Analysis of Videogames and Social Media. According to the authors, war – as it is increasingly experienced by its citizens remotely – ends up being presented as a spectacle centered on the usage of ever-more powerful and technologically sophisticated artillery (e.g. recent images demonstrating the power of the Iron Dome in Israel, sometimes similar to scenes from Star Wars, other times with fireworks).
Robinson and Schulzke point out that: “The consequences of this increasing portrayal of war as entertainment may suggest a move towards an increasingly soporific citizenry that becomes progressively disengaged, no longer questioning why we fight, instead, losing itself in the fact that we fight”. The researchers add that it is possible to observe a variety of citizens’ responses to this kind of content ranging from “distraction, bedazzlement and voyeurism” to “being positively mobilised to actively support military action”.
An important observation made in Visualizing War is that a considerable sample of studies on militarism “emphasize the ways in which nationalistic and militaristic themes emerge in conjunction”, in the interest of a State and its armed forces. Using the United States as a case study, Robinson and Schulzke claim that “the recent disillusionment with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined with a demand to ‘support the troops’ at all times, has led to a subgenre of war media that demonstrate this”. This phenomenon is also described by Peter:
Over recent years, we’ve had a president who created an atmosphere of deep fear by exploiting the idea of threats to this country, our freedom, our security. So, when I look at the presidency of Trump, I see the post- 9/11 world written all over it. The year of 2020 was, to me, the culmination of recent American history. It embodied all the political forces that have been in motion for the last few decades, where nationalism and identity politics took the forefront again.
The study also draws attention to the images of conflict created for video games and, further, their marketing. It is estimated that Call of Duty, for example, has approximately 100 million participants worldwide and that sales of premium products encompassed by the franchise have exceeded 400 million dollars since its launch in October 2003. This is not an isolated case, however. As Roger Stahl, associate professor of Communication Studies at the University of Georgia, identified: “September 11, 2001 and the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq ushered in a boom in sales of war-themed video games for the commercial market”.
Citing the work of Vit Šisler, a researcher focused on the intersection of culture and digital media and assistant professor at Charles University in Prague, the study points out that military games typically contain stereotypical depictions of Muslims. Šisler argues that “the enemy” is collectivized and linguistically identified as “various terrorist groups”, “militants”, and “insurgents”, while American or allied troops are humanized and individualized, with playable and non-playable characters “portrayed with nicknames or specific visual characteristics”. In addition, the “allied forces” are also shown as part of a multilateral force (a coalition of the willing), which would justify “the rhetoric of a war on terror with the Middle Eastern enemy seen as requiring near continuous military intervention and restraint”. But not only: taking as a starting point such representations, it is possible to assume, controversially, that complex social and political problems can be solved in a solely military way. With resistance to this visual typification, Peter van Agtmael reports to Tanya Habjouqa: “When my eye is directed towards the Iraqis, Afghans, and Syrians caught in the middle of this mess, it’s a lot more gentle. And that’s partly because I have a greater degree of sympathy for the true victims of this conflict. And partly it’s a reaction to the fact that these groups have generally been visually marginalized and only seen in moments of extreme violence and grief over the history of photography. I want to push back against those forces”.
Even though, as stated at the beginning of this article, his look at the Americans is more analytical, in Sorry for the War, Peter directs his poignant criticism to the State and to imperialism, not depriving the individual soldiers from his homeland from a humanized portrayal too. Some of these characters deal with physical sequelae from their time in combat, others psychological ones, or even criminality linked to unemployment.
“Chuck Coma suffered a hypoxic brain injury after his cellmate strangled him at the federal penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, depriving his brain of oxygen. Since then, he has suffered from memory loss, ex- treme mood swings, and occasional tremors. At the time of his incarceration, Coma had been battling severe PTSD from his military service in Panama and the Gulf War. Before the wars, he’d been a bit of a troublemaker but had no serious run-ins with the law. When he left the service, he couldn’t hold down a job and started robbing banks”. Shelton, Washington. USA. 2019. | Photographs: Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos. Courtesy of the photographer.
Meredith Kleykamp, director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland, points out that unemployment rates are higher among veterans compared to non- veterans, with the largest disparity occurring among women. In the study Unemployment, earnings and enrollment among post 9/11 veterans, Kleykamp points out that in 2011, approximately 12% of all post-9/11 veterans and nearly 30% of those aged between 18 and 24 were unemployed. Given that today’s veterans are more likely, than their peers from previous generations, to marry and have children, the effects of the transition between military and civilian life present setbacks that extend to their spouses, children and communities. In previous research, she points out that not all soldiers enter military life with aspirations to grow in the army. “Youth with lower socioeconomic status backgrounds were nearly half as likely to enroll in college rather than enlist in the military as their peers from more advantaged backgrounds”, explains. The results of her analysis show that educational goals play an important role in the decision to enlist in the armed forces in the United States, even more with the “Post 9/11 GI Bill”, launched in August 2009, which pays public school in-state tuition and fees.
Army Dreamers
“Mourning in the aerodrome. The weather warmer, he is colder. Four men in uniform to carry home my little soldier,” sings Kate Bush in Army Dreamers, one of 68 songs deemed “inappropriate” to play on the BBC, the UK’s public radio and television corporation, during the Gulf War, for which the British mobilized the largest contingent of soldiers among any European state that participated in combat operations.
A little more than a decade later, the UK became involved in the Iraq War, which began in 2003 and ended in 2011, with the official closure of British combat operations on 30 April 2009.
In the course of the conflict, Steve McQueen was selected by the official artists program of the Imperial War Museum to produce a work of art on the British Armed Forces. In 2006, he traveled to Basra, one of the three largest cities in Iraq, where he spent six days embedded with British troops. Having worked with video art for at least a decade at that point, McQueen planned to produce a testimonial film about troops serving in Iraq; however, even integrated with the fighters, he was subjected to movement restrictions that left him frustrated and nullified his plans. Later, at his home in Amsterdam, McQueen was posting his income tax return when he realized that the stamp on the envelope had a portrait of Vincent van Gogh. The proportions of the portrait on the stamp and the fact that they can reach the various corners of the world, made the idea sound promising to the artist. Imprinting the stamps would be the portraits of soldiers who had died in combat, as a form of tribute. McQueen declared: “An official set of Royal Mail stamps struck me as an intimate but distinguished way of highlighting the sacrifice of individuals in defence of our national ideals. The stamps would focus on individual experience without euphemism. It would form an intimate reflection of national loss that would involve the families of the dead and permeate the everyday – every household and every office”.
Faced with the lack of interest shown by the Ministry of Defense when McQueen presented his project, the artist hired a researcher to contact each one of the families of the fallen soldiers and request an image of their lost ones, as the ministry had also refused to provide the portraits. Initially, 115 families were contacted, of which 102 responded and, of these, 98 agreed to participate. Since the beginning of the project, however, casualties occurred and, likewise, all families were invited by the artist to participate in the project and honor their loved ones in Queen and Country.
“Queen and Country”, 2007. Cabinet with facsimile postage sheets commemorating the British Servicemen and women killed during the conflict in Iraq. Co-comission between Manchester International Festival and Imperial War Museum. Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery. Copyright: Steve McQueen
For the final version of the work, McQueen created an oak cabinet containing 120 double- sided vertical panels, which can be removed for viewing, and on which 160 sheets of stamps are displayed with portraits of the British military personnel who died in service in Iraq. Each sheet contains details such as name, regiment, age and date of death printed on its margin. In the cabinet, the leaves are placed in chronological order, from the seven casualties on March 21, 2003, to raf Sergeant “Baz” Barwood, who died on February 29, 2008. For the BBC’s Jo O’Connor, Steve McQueen said he hoped the exhibition would allow people to think about the victims of the war. “Over 650,000 or more Iraqi men, women and children have also died in this conflict and I am hoping that by allowing people to identify with British soldiers who have died, they will also think about the people in Iraq”.
According to the artist, Queen and Country can never be considered complete until the Royal Mail allows the general use of the stamps. The British postal service denied McQueen’s proposal, justifying that the families of the dead and the public would find the stamps “distressing and disrespectful”, despite the solid support shown by the families, the military and also by the public, who gathered 26,673 signatures in a petition to support the project when Queen and Country finished its exhibition across the uK in 2010.
If I Could Do Anything For You
For art curator Moacir dos Anjos, in Introduction to Aesthetics: A Conversation between Art, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, the works of Steve McQueen and Emily Jacir suffer a cross-pollinatation when they refer to mourning and the brutal consequences of conflicts; in particular, Moacir cites the photographic installationWhere We Come From, by the Palestinian Jacir.
In July 1950, the Law of Return was adopted by the Knesset in Israel, according to which every Jew – regardless of their origin in the world – could claim the right to citizenship and residence in the State of Israel. In contrast, more than 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled the region during its foundation. Exiled by the exiles. Peter Beinart, in an opinion piece for The New York Times, suggests that “acknowledging and beginning to remedy that expulsion — by allowing Palestinian refugees to return — requires imagining a different kind of country, where Palestinians are considered equal citizens, not a demographic threat. To avoid this reckoning, the Israeli government and its American Jewish allies insist that Palestinian refugees abandon hope of returning to their homeland”.
For Edward Said, whose text Orientalism is considered one of the founders of post-colonialist thought, “It is as if the reconstructed Jewish collective experience, as represented by Israel and modern Zionism, could not tolerate another story of dispossession and loss to exist alongside it—an intolerance constantly reinforced by the Israeli hostility to the nationalism of the Palestinians, who for have been painfully reassembling a national identity in exile”.
In this context, taking advantage of her ability to move with relative freedom in Israel with an American passport, Emily Jacir proposed the following question to other Palestinians: “If I could do anything for you, anywhere in Palestine, what would it be?”. In a non-material exchange, they provide their desires, longings and dreams, and she promises to realize them. “She makes her body an extension of these people’s bodies to fulfill their desires,” as Moacir dos Anjos puts it.
In the presentation of Where We Come From, against white panels, black letters describe requests made to Jacir (transcribed in English and Arabic) and immediately by its side, the artist inserts color photos as a documentary update of her mission. In some cases, such as Rizek’s, she adds her own notes below the request. “Go to Bayt Lahia and bring me a picture of my family, especially my brother’s kids. I have been studying at Birzeit University for the past three years, and I have not been allowed to go to Gaza and see my family. I have no permission to be in the West Bank, as a Gazan, so I am confined to Bir Zeit until I finish my studies”, asked Rizek. In her note, Jacir reports that “his family was so happy that I would be able to bring him lemons and strawberries from their land; so they took me to their fields and we picked lemons and strawberries for him. I also carried back ma’mul his mother made, and a pair of boots, two belts and some nuts”. Four photographs show Rizek’s family, and his brother’s children, picking the strawberries and lemons that Jacir cites.
“Where We Come From” 2001-2003 detail (Rizek). Photo: John Sherman. | Copyright: Emily Jacir. Courtesy Alexander and Bonin, New York.
Descriptions involve things we usually take for granted, as guaranteed: visiting our family, playing football, seeing our childhood home. The latter being the case of Ibrahim. “Go to Jaffa and find my family home and take a picture. As a refugee, I am denied a visit to my country by the Israelis, who control all borders, in defiance of un resolutions”. When weaving her answer, the artist admits her failure to get what she had promised in return: “After spending two afternoons in Jaffa, searching for the house, I could not find it. The street names have been changed to Hebrew. I asked the people and spoke with the four oldest people still living in Jaffa, but they could not remember where the house was. They remembered very well the family’s name and knew they were from Jaffa.” In this piece, the part intended for the photographic record is blank.
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"Where We Come From" 2001-2003 detail (Ibrahim). Photo: John Sherman. | Copyright: Emily Jacir, courtesy Alexander and Bonin, New York.
"Where We Come From" 2001-2003 detail (Hana). Photo: John Sherman. | Copyright: Emily Jacir, courtesy Alexander and Bonin, New York.
“Yet it is just this translation, written out in clear language and then realized photographically, that for many is insurmountable. Getting from written description to photographic actualization can be easy enough for some, like Jacir, who have American passports. But for other unfortunates caught up in the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has been raging since 1948, when so many were exiled from their land, the terrain between text and photograph, description and realization, represents an unbridgeable chasm, an impossibility on which a complex of desire is built.”, writes the historian and cultural critic TJ Demos in an essay on the work. “These pieces stage a perverse inequality between things and people. That inequality is the ability of commodities to move about relatively freely through global markets and across national borders, whereas people are restricted physically and geographically. People, not things, are denied entry into certain territories or nations, regimented in ways that are politically instrumental to maintaining political bodies, economic groupings, and ethnic identities.”, adds Demos.
Where We Come From was carried out from 2001 to 2003, Moacir recalls that, the following year, Jacir issued a note clarifying that she would no longer be able to carry out the project, “I am no longer allowed to enter Gaza, and certain Palestinian towns in the West Bank. Israel is relentlessly moving forward in the construction of the Apartheid Wall which began in the spring of 2002. Palestinians with foreign passports are increasingly being denied entry into the country by Israel at all border crossings and are being forced to immigrate. Israel has decided that ‘freedom of movement’ is no longer a right for American passport holders and has created measures to ensure this”, writes the artist in the note.
Even if they alternate between different media and fields – from installation to documentary photography – the four works referred to in this article share the fact that they are documents of suffering, and as written by Susie Linfield: “Documents of suffering are documents of protest: they show us what happens when we unmake the world”.
Arte gráfica de divulgação da primeira edição da CASA-ESCOLA. Foto: Divulgação
A Casa do Povo acaba de lançar a CASA-ESCOLA, programa pedagógico concebido pela instituição paulistana junto aos vários coletivos que a habitam. Intitulada Ool – nome inspirado em texto de Ursula K. Le Guin traduzido pela revista Presente -, a primeira edição do programa imersivo, com duração de 5 meses, foi desenvolvida pela Casa em parceria com a artista e educadora Luiza Crosman. As inscrições para o programa (que passarão por uma seleção) podem ser realizadas até segunda-feira, dia 5 de julho.
Segundo o texto de apresentação de Ool: “O objetivo do programa é encontrar pessoas que já estejam envolvidas com práticas coletivas que tangenciam as artes, e que, de alguma forma, procuram afinar o seu fazer coletivo. Ao longo dos meses de programação, a CASA-ESCOLA pretende funcionar como espaço de aprendizado comum, onde os participantes possam trocar ferramentas, usar a Casa do Povo (e suas redes) e desenhar seus próprios percursos formativos, sejam eles individuais ou coletivos”. A apresentação destaca, ainda, que o programa tem como objetivo fomentar projetos coletivos, sedimentação de redes e o compartilhamento de metodologias e protocolos de ação sistêmica.
Assim como a maioria das atividades da instituição – criada nos anos 1940 por judeus progressistas no Bom Retiro e que, após um período de crise, viveu intensa retomada na última década -, a ideia do novo programa é a de um fazer conjunto, onde o diálogo e os processos ganham grande relevância. A proposta é, também, de discutir pensamentos e ações que tenham resultados concretos de melhoria na vida das pessoas: “Se uma escola da Casa do Povo é um modo de colocar a memória em ação, ela precisa ser elaborada também como espaço de ação; em outras palavras, ela precisa ser uma escola de ativismo, ativando memórias, corpos, ancestralidades e conhecimentos para atuar no presente”, explica o texto do curso.
“Cozinha Aberta”, 2019, ação do coletivo Universidad Desconocida na fachada da Casa Do Povo. Foto: Laura Viana
Destacamos mais alguns trechos do texto: “Ool irá abordar questões acerca da ideia de coletividade sob uma perspectiva contemporânea: quais os significados da coletividade hoje e como praticá-la. O tema parte do reconhecimento de que, atualmente, a forma como nos agrupamos não é mais a mesma. Redes sociais, plataformas, nacionalismos e a pandemia, ressignificam o que é estar junto, criar junto, atacar junto, resistir junto etc. Além disso, o assimétrico risco climático nos impele a reinventar a relação entre o humano e o planeta, o que nos leva a igualmente repensar o que é o humanismo. Esses são pontos que exigem uma reformulação tanto no imaginário da coletividade quanto nas infraestruturas que a tornam possível. Durante o programa iremos explorar formatos poéticos e pragmáticos de ação, compreendendo tanto propostas de ações ativistas quanto a criação de novas ficções.”
“Por meio de oficinas com convidades, investigaremos perguntas que dão contornos mais complexos à ideia de coletividade. Que formas de vida pública o espaço físico e o ambiente digital nos possibilitam? Que formas de economia podemos experimentar a fim de não só expandir a distribuição de recursos financeiros, mas também fomentar ecossistemas complexos e sustentáveis? Como pensar a cidade a partir da interseção entre cultura e pontos específicos de infraestrutura social, política e tecnológica? Como pensar a gestão do tempo coletivo entre ação e contemplação? Quais são os diferentes formatos de ação e de narrativa necessários para dar conta das formas de organização na interseção entre arte, política e tecnologia?”
Ool se divide em dois grupos, entre agosto de 2021 e junho de 2022. Cada grupo terá a duração de 5 meses e contará com a participação de três tutores (Guilherme Marcondes, Alice Noujaim e Amara Moira) e 10 oficinas online. Os participantes terão acesso também a uma verba destinada para as ações coletivas do grupo. Saiba mais detalhes e acesse a ficha de inscrição aqui.
“Chuck Coma sofreu uma lesão cerebral por hipóxia depois que seu colega de cela o estrangulou na penitenciária federal em Lewisburg, Pensilvânia, privando seu cérebro de oxigênio. Desde então, ele tem sofrido de perda de memória, alterações extremas de humor e tremores ocasionais. No momento de sua prisão, Coma estava lutando contra um grave PTSD devido ao serviço militar no Panamá e na Guerra do Golfo. Antes das guerras, ele era um pouco encrenqueiro, mas não tinha problemas sérios com a lei. Quando ele deixou o serviço, não conseguiu segurar um emprego e começou a assaltar bancos”. Shelton, Washington. EUA. 2019. | Crédito: Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos. Cortesia do fotógrafo.
Em 13 de novembro de 2015, o fotógrafo estadunidense Peter van Agtmael estava em Paris durante um ataque terrorista massivo efetuado pelo grupo Estado Islâmico (EI). À noite, ao retornar para o quarto de hotel, Peter se sentiu paranóico pela primeira vez em muito tempo. “Eu já havia coberto conflitos por dez anos e sempre tinha sido capaz de me preparar [psicologicamente] para a experiência. Naquela vez, pego de surpresa, fiquei meio acordado a noite toda”, conta. O choque continuou a reverberar, mesmo após o fotógrafo retornar para casa, em Nova York. Até lá, ao usar o metrô, Peter se via mantendo as costas contra a parede, quando possível, e examinando cada rosto, ao mesmo tempo que mapeava suas rotas de fuga. “Sempre fui um visitante dos conflitos de outras pessoas, mas em Paris, quando a violência chegou tão repentinamente em um espaço que eu associava com conforto e santuário, tive uma pequena compreensão do que as pessoas comuns que vivem em uma guerra sentem todos os dias. Dez anos de trabalho em conflito e eu havia perdido uma das lições mais fundamentais”.
Tal dissonância entre as percepções, dos estadunidenses, quanto às guerras pós 11 de setembro e a violência vivida por pessoas presas em zonas de conflito é o pilar narrativo do mais recente projeto de Peter, Sorry for the War (Nos perdoem pela guerra, em tradução livre). Nele, as fotos sequenciadas de forma não linear entrelaçam e costuram a guerra no Iraque durante o tempo do EI, o êxodo em massa de refugiados para a Europa, militarismo, terrorismo, nacionalismo, criação de mitos e a propaganda de guerra. O material reunido em Sorry for the War (cujos textos e legendas vêm escritos em inglês e árabe) nos lembra que, embora as guerras recentes dos Estados Unidos tenham sido praticamente esquecidas, suas consequências continuam a reverberar, como nota o autor.
“Jennie Taylor mede uma lápide para o túmulo de seu marido, Brent. Ela não estava em casa quando a equipe de notificação de vítimas chegou à sua porta e recebeu um telefonema para ir ao quartel-general da Guarda Nacional. Enquanto sua irmã a conduzia, ela pensou: ‘Se ele está morto, tenho que processar isso. Eu não tenho escolha. Eu não posso desmoronar. Meus filhos são o que mais importa’. Jennie disse que sabia que ele tinha morrido quando ela chegou lá e ninguém iria olhar nos olhos dela”. North Ogden, Utah. EUA. 2019. | Crédito: Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos. Cortesia do fotógrafo.
Os registros perturbadores, de humor ácido (acentuado pela plasticidade trazida no uso do flash e pela ordenação astuta das imagens no livro), contraditórios, misteriosos e, por vezes, condenatórios, são articulados por Peter para estudar a construção da ideia de uma guerra sem fim. Embora mostre um mundo pós 11 de setembro – “ataque que ‘nos deu licença’ para usar nossos medos como desculpa para qualquer coisa” -, Sorry for the War cumpre o dever de utilizar a história recente como guia, mas não limitar-se a ela, já que “também deve-se olhar para a totalidade da história americana como uma estrutura: as coisas não acontecem apenas por causa de um evento, elas acontecem como parte do continuum da história”. Fora do front, o fotógrafo foca nas sequelas dessa cultura, “servindo tanto como evidência quanto interpretação de um país à deriva, com consequências muitas vezes desastrosas”, e incluindo a noção de guerra eterna, exemplificada muito bem em quatro registros de discursos televisionados dos últimos presidentes dos EUA (Bush pai e filho, Obama e Trump; com exceção de Bill Clinton), cujas falas deveriam anunciar o fim de determinados conflitos e acabam por reforçar, nesses trechos congelados por Peter, o oposto.
Presidente Donald Trump em sua primeira visita ao Iraque. | Crédito: Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos. Cortesia do fotógrafo.
Em 1º de maio de 2003, no porta-aviões Abraham Lincoln, o presidente George W. Bush anuncia “missão cumprida” em relação à guerra no Iraque. A grande maioria das vítimas e da violência ocorreu após o discurso. | Crédito: Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos. Cortesia do fotógrafo.
O título do livro, encontrado em um post-it rosa choque na capa da publicação, vem de uma fotografia tirada por Peter de uma ação, com o nome de Balloons for Kabul (Balões para Cabul, em tradução livre), em uma galeria de arte em Nova York. “Os nova-iorquinos escreveram notas para o povo de Cabul que seriam entregues a eles com balões cor-de-rosa durante seu trajeto matinal. Foi uma resposta bem intencionada, mas totalmente inacessível a um conflito que já durava uma década. Muito do trabalho que faço é sobre a desconexão entre os EUA e as consequências de suas – ou de nossas – ações imperiais no exterior. Aquela nota e aquele evento pareciam simbolizar muito da desconfiança e cinismo que eu nutria por nossa ideia distorcida de empatia coletiva”, ele conta à também fotógrafa Tanya Habjouqa. “Essa nota parecia apropriada porque este livro é meu pedido de desculpas e uma declaração de desamparo sobre o que aconteceu nas últimas duas décadas. Não posso mudar nenhum resultado, mas certamente posso criar um documento rigoroso interpretando o que está acontecendo. E eu acho que é em parte por isso que o olhar sobre os estadunidenses neste livro é meio brutal e sarcástico. Eu conheci a generosidade e a graça no coração dos Estados Unidos. Da mesma forma, conheci muito bem a violência incessante”, complementa o fotógrafo.
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“A competição ‘Ms. Veteran America’ combina feminilidade e militarismo em partes iguais. Durante a competição de talentos, uma mulher dançando em uma fantasia de oncinha foi imprensada entre testemunhos de abuso sexual nas forças armadas (uma em cada três mulheres sofreu agressão sexual enquanto servia). Uma veterana cantou ópera, enquanto outra falou sobre o suicídio de seu irmão após sofrer de PTSD. A camiseta que comemora a competição é a silhueta recortada de uma mulher segurando um bebê em uma das mãos e uma metralhadora na outra, e ao fundo uma bandeira dos Estados Unidos”. Washington DC. EUA. 2017 | Crédito: Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos. Cortesia do fotógrafo.
“Durante anos, na minha juventude, fui ao Imperial War Museum em Londres, apaixonado pela estética das guerras passadas. Em 2018, voltei ao Imperial War Museum e os fragmentos violentos de minhas próprias guerras estavam em exibição. Vigas empenadas das Torres Gêmeas. O contorno de um drone assomando no alto. Restos de um carro-bomba que explodiu em Bagdá em 5 de março de 2007. No início do século 20, apenas 10% das casualidades de guerra eram civis. Agora, o número é de 90%”. Londres. Inglaterra. 2018. | Crédito: Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos. Cortesia do fotógrafo.
A escolha da sátira como veículo da crítica – ao invés do uso deliberado do choque – mostra não só sua experiência (vasta para um profissional tão jovem), mas delineia um caminho contrário ao do mercado de notícias, como explica Susan Sontag no livro Diante da Dor dos Outros: “A busca por imagens mais dramáticas (como elas são descritas frequentemente) guia a produção de fotografias, e é parte da normalidade de uma cultura em que o choque se tornou um estímulo de consumo e fonte de valor”. Sobre as fotos-choque (como chamou Roland Barthes), Sontag questionaria: “Você pode olhar para isso?”. “Existe uma satisfação em ser capaz de ver a imagem sem fechar os olhos. [Mas também] existe o prazer de fechar os olhos diante do horror”, pontua. Seja pela indignação, pelo mistério ou pela sátira, Peter consegue manter, através de Sorry for the War, a prevalência do “por que?”. “Por que essa face em Guantánamo foi escondida?”; “por que as pessoas vão a museus olhar drones?”; “por que o cenário atrás dessa criança está em ruínas?”; “por que há uma enorme celebração esportiva no meio de um livro sobre conflito?”.
Refugiados perscrutam a barreira na fronteira entre a Sérvia e a Hungria. Mais cedo naquele dia, o governo nacionalista da Hungria havia fechado a fronteira para refugiados em trânsito para a Europa Ocidental. Na esteira da crise dos refugiados europeus, a UE foi dividida em dois grupos: aqueles que desejam receber migrantes de acordo com um sistema de cotas e aqueles que recusam. Essa crise foi de longe a maior migração que já cobri. Por enquanto, as forças do nacionalismo, da comercialização do medo e da insularidade estão em exibição.
Horgos. Sérvia. 2015 | Crédito: Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos. Cortesia do fotógrafo.
“Novembro é o mês de Saudação ao Serviço na Liga Nacional de Futebol (NFL). Ela surgiu de uma iniciativa do Pentágono para aumentar o recrutamento e, desde 2009, o Pentágono deu pelo menos $12,2 milhões para a NFL para propaganda. O senador John McCain conduziu uma investigação sobre a prática e divulgou esta declaração com um relatório detalhado de suas descobertas: “Os americanos deveriam estar profundamente desapontados com o fato de muitas das cerimônias de homenagem às tropas em eventos esportivos profissionais não estarem realmente sendo conduzidas por um senso de patriotismo, mas para lucro na forma de milhões em dólares do contribuinte, que vão do Departamento de Defesa para ricas franquias de esporte”. EUA. 2018 | Crédito: Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos. Cortesia do fotógrafo.
Visualizando a guerra?
Em uma época na qual política é frequentemente consumida pelos cidadãos de maneira visual – por meio das mídias sociais, coberturas noticiosas em vídeo ou cultura popular -, a necessidade de tomar consciência do peso da comunicação visual é cada vez mais premente. “Essa necessidade se torna ainda maior ao considerarmos que tão poucos de nós [habitantes de áreas isentas de conflito] têm, agora, experiência direta na guerra ou com o exército”, assim argumentam Nick Robinson e Marcus Schulzke no estudo Visualizing War? Towards a Visual Analysis of Videogames and Social Media. Segundo os autores, ao ser vivenciada cada vez mais remotamente pelos cidadãos, a guerra acaba sendo apresentada como um espetáculo centrado no uso de artilharia remota cada vez mais poderosa e tecnologicamente sofisticada (a exemplo das imagens recentes demonstrando o poderio do Domo de Ferro, em Israel, ora parecidas com cenas de Star Wars, outras com fogos de artifício).
Robinson e Schulzke apontam que: “As consequências desse retrato crescente da guerra como entretenimento podem sugerir um movimento em direção a uma cidadania cada vez mais soporífera que se torna progressivamente desengajada, não questionando mais por que lutamos, ao invés disso se perdendo ‘no fato de que lutamos”’. Os pesquisadores complementam que é possível observar uma variedade de respostas dos cidadãos a essa espécie de conteúdo “de distração, deslumbramento e voyeurismo” a ser “positivamente mobilizado para apoiar ativamente a ação militar”.
Uma observação importante feita em Visualizing War é que uma amostra considerável dos estudos acerca do militarismo “enfatizam as maneiras pelas quais temas nacionalistas e militaristas surgem em conjunto”, no interesse do Estado e de suas forças armadas. Utilizando os Estados Unidos como estudo de caso, Robinson e Schulzke afirmam que “a recente desilusão com as guerras no Iraque e no Afeganistão, combinada com uma demanda de ‘apoiar as tropas’ em todos os momentos, levou a um subgênero de meios de comunicação de guerra que demonstram isso”. Tal fenômeno também é descrito por Peter:
Nos últimos anos, tivemos [nos EUA] um presidente que criou uma atmosfera de profundo medo ao explorar a ideia de ameaças a este país, nossa liberdade, nossa segurança. Então, quando eu olho para a presidência de Trump, vejo o mundo pós 11 de setembro escrito por toda parte. O ano de 2020 foi, para mim, o ápice da história americana recente. Ele incorporou todas as forças políticas que estiveram em movimento nas últimas décadas.
O estudo também chama atenção para as imagens de conflito criadas para videogames e as envolvidas em sua divulgação. É estimado que o jogo Call of Duty, por exemplo, tenha aproximadamente 100 milhões de participantes mundialmente e que as vendas dos produtos premium englobados pela franquia tenham ultrapassado 400 milhões de dólares, desde seu lançamento em outubro de 2003. Esse não é um caso isolado, no entanto. Como o professor associado de Ciências da Comunicação da Universidade da Georgia, Roger Stahl, identificou: “11 de setembro de 2001 e as guerras que se seguiram no Afeganistão e no Iraque deram início a um boom nas vendas de videogames com tema de guerra”.
Citando o trabalho de Vit Šisler, pesquisador da intersecção de cultura e mídia digital e professor assistente da Charles University, em Praga, o estudo ressalta que os jogos militares normalmente contêm representações estereotipadas dos muçulmanos. Šisler argumenta que “o inimigo” é coletivizado e linguisticamente identificado como “grupos terroristas”, “militantes”, e “insurgentes”, enquanto as tropas americanas ou aliadas são humanizadas e individualizadas, com personagens jogáveis e não jogáveis “retratados com apelidos ou características visuais específicas”. Além disso, as “forças aliadas” também são mostradas como parte de uma ação multilateral, o que justificaria “a retórica de uma guerra contra o terrorismo, com o inimigo do Oriente Médio, exigindo contenção e intervenção militar quase contínua”. Mas não só: tomando como ponto de partida tais representações, é possível supor, controvertidamente, que problemas sociais e políticos complexos podem ser resolvidos de forma tão somente militar. Em renitência a essa tipificação visual, Peter van Agtmael relata a Tanya Habjouqa: “Quando meus olhos estão voltados para os iraquianos, afegãos e sírios pegos no meio desse caos, é muito mais gentil. E isso é em parte porque tenho um maior grau de simpatia pelas verdadeiras vítimas deste conflito. Uma reação ao fato de que esses grupos geralmente foram marginalizados visualmente e apenas vistos em momentos de extrema violência e tristeza ao longo da história da fotografia”.
Mesmo que, como dito acima, seu olhar sobre os estadunidenses seja mais analítico, em Sorry for the War, Peter direciona sua crítica pungente ao Estado e ao imperialismo, retratando soldados de sua terra natal com humanidade também. Alguns desses personagens lidam com sequelas físicas do seu tempo em combate, outros psicológicas, ou ainda, criminalidade em decorrência do desemprego.
“Chuck Coma sofreu uma lesão cerebral por hipóxia depois que seu colega de cela o estrangulou na penitenciária federal em Lewisburg, Pensilvânia, privando seu cérebro de oxigênio. Desde então, ele tem sofrido de perda de memória, alterações extremas de humor e tremores ocasionais. No momento de sua prisão, Coma estava lutando contra um grave PTSD devido ao serviço militar no Panamá e na Guerra do Golfo. Antes das guerras, ele era um pouco encrenqueiro, mas não tinha problemas sérios com a lei. Quando ele deixou o serviço, não conseguiu segurar um emprego e começou a assaltar bancos”. Shelton, Washington. EUA. 2019. | Crédito: Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos. Cortesia do fotógrafo.
Meredith Kleykamp, diretora do Center for Research on Military Organization, da Universidade de Maryland, salienta que as taxas de desemprego são mais altas entre os veteranos, em comparação aos não veteranos, com a maior disparidade ocorrendo entre as mulheres. No estudo Unemployment, earnings and enrollment among post 9/11 veterans, Kleykamp indica que, em 2011, aproximadamente 12% de todos os veteranos pós 11 de setembro e quase 30% daqueles com idade entre 18 e 24 anos estavam desempregados. Dado que os veteranos de hoje são mais propensos, que seus pares de gerações anteriores, a casar e ter filhos, os efeitos da transição entre vida militar e civil apresentam reveses que se estendem aos seus cônjuges, crianças e comunidades. Em pesquisa anterior, ela aponta que nem todos os soldados entram na vida militar com ensejos de crescimento no exército. “Os jovens com nível socioeconômico mais baixo tinham quase metade da probabilidade – do que seus pares de origens mais favorecidas – de se matricular na faculdade em vez de se alistar nas forças armadas”, explica. Os resultados de sua análise mostram que as metas educacionais desempenham um papel importante na decisão de se alistar nas forças armadas nos Estados Unidos, ainda mais com a chamada “Post 9/11 GI Bill”, lançada em agosto de 2009, que paga as mensalidades e taxas de escolas estaduais.
Army Dreamers
“Luto no aeródromo. O clima está mais quente, ele está mais frio. Quatro homens de uniforme para levar para casa o meu pequeno soldado”, canta Kate Bush em Army Dreamers, uma das 68 músicas consideradas “inapropriadas” para tocar na BBC, a corporação pública de rádio e televisão do Reino Unido, durante a Guerra do Golfo, para a qual foi mobilizado pelos ingleses o maior contingente de soldados entre qualquer estado europeu que participou das operações de combate.
Pouco mais de uma década depois, o Reino Unido se envolveu na Guerra do Iraque, iniciada em 2003 e finalizada em 2011, com o encerramento oficial das operações de combate inglesas em 30 de abril de 2009.
No decorrer do conflito, Steve McQueen foi selecionado pelo programa oficial de artistas do Museu Imperial da Guerra para produzir uma obra de arte sobre as Forças Armadas Britânicas. Em 2006, viajou para Baçorá, uma das três maiores cidades do Iraque, onde passou seis dias integrado com as tropas britânicas. Tendo trabalhado com vídeo arte por pelo menos uma década neste ponto, McQueen planejava produzir um filme testemunho sobre as tropas servindo no Iraque; no entanto, mesmo integrado aos combatentes, ele foi submetido a restrições de movimento que deixaram-no frustrado e anularam seus planos. Mais tarde, em sua casa em Amsterdã, McQueen estava postando sua declaração de imposto de renda quando percebeu que o selo no envelope tinha um retrato de Vincent van Gogh. As proporções do retrato no selo e o fato de que eles podem chegar aos diversos cantos do mundo, fizeram com que a ideia soasse promissora ao artista. Estampando os selos estariam, então, retratos de soldados que haviam morrido em combate, como uma forma de homenagem. McQueen declarou: “Um conjunto oficial de selos do Royal Mail me pareceu uma forma íntima, porém distinta de destacar o sacrifício de indivíduos em defesa de nossos ideais nacionais. Os selos se concentrariam na experiência individual sem eufemismos. Seria um reflexo íntimo da perda nacional, isso envolveria as famílias dos mortos e permearia o dia a dia – cada casa e cada escritório”.
Diante do desinteresse mostrado pelo Ministério de Defesa quando McQueen apresentou seu projeto, o artista contratou um pesquisador para entrar em contato com cada uma das famílias que haviam perdido entes queridos no Iraque e solicitar uma imagem deles, já que o ministério também havia se recusado a fornecer os retratos. Inicialmente foram contatadas 115 famílias, das quais 102 responderam e, dessas, 98 concordaram em participar. Desde o início do projeto, no entanto, mais baixas ocorreram e, da mesma forma, todas as famílias foram convidadas pelo artista a participar do projeto e honrar seus entes em Queen and Country (Pela Rainha e pela pátria, em tradução livre).
“Queen and Country”, 2007. Gabinete com fac-símile de folhas de correio homenageando os militares britânicos mortos durante o conflito no Iraque. Co-comissão entre o Manchester International Festival e o Imperial War Museum. Cortesia do artista e da Galeria Marian Goodman. Copyright: Steve McQueen
Para a versão final do trabalho, McQueen criou um gabinete de carvalho contendo 120 painéis verticais de dupla face, que podem ser retirados para visualização, e nos quais são exibidas 160 folhas de selos com os retratos dos militares britânicos que morreram em serviço no Iraque. Cada folha contém detalhes como nome, regimento, idade e data da morte impressos em sua margem. No gabinete, as folhas estão colocadas em ordem cronológica, das sete baixas em 21 de março de 2003, até o sargento “Baz” Barwood, da RAF, morto em 29 de fevereiro de 2008. Para Jo O’Connor, da BBC, Steve McQueen afirmou que tinha esperanças que a exposição permitisse às pessoas a reflexão sobre as vítimas da guerra. “Mais de 650.000 homens, mulheres e crianças iraquianos também morreram neste conflito e espero que, ao permitir que as pessoas se identifiquem com os soldados britânicos que morreram, também pensem nas pessoas no Iraque”, disse o cineasta.
De acordo com o artista, Queen and Country nunca poderá ser completa até que o Royal Mail permita o uso geral dos selos. O serviço de correio inglês negou a proposta de McQueen justificando que as famílias dos mortos e o público achariam os selos “angustiantes e desrespeitosos”, apesar do sólido apoio demonstrado pelas famílias, pelas forças armadas e, também, pelo público, que juntou 26.673 assinaturas em uma petição para apoiar o projeto, quando Queen and Country terminou sua exibição pelo país em 2010.
Se eu pudesse fazer alguma coisa por você
Para o curador de arte Moacir dos Anjos, em Introdução à Estética: Uma conversa entre arte, filosofia e psicanálise, os trabalhos de Steve McQueen e Emily Jacir sofrem uma polinização cruzada quando se referem ao luto e às consequências brutais dos conflitos; em especial, Moacir cita a instalação fotográfica Where We Come From, da palestina Jacir.
Em julho de 1950, a Lei do Retorno foi adotada pelo Knesset, em Israel, segundo a qual, todo judeu – não importando sua origem no mundo – poderia clamar o direito a cidadania e residência no Estado de Israel. Em contrapartida, mais de 700.000 palestinos foram expulsos ou fugiram da região durante sua fundação. O exílio pelos exilados. Peter Beinart, em artigo de opinião para o The New York Times, sugere que “reconhecer e começar a remediar essa expulsão – permitindo o retorno dos refugiados palestinos – exige imaginar um tipo diferente de país, onde os palestinos são considerados cidadãos iguais, não uma ameaça demográfica. Para evitar esse ajuste de contas, o governo israelense e seus aliados insistem que os refugiados palestinos abandonem a esperança de retornar à sua terra natal”.
Para Edward Said, cujo texto Orientalismo é considerado um dos fundadores do pensamento pós-colonialista, “é como se a experiência coletiva judaica reconstruída, representada por Israel e o sionismo moderno, não pudesse tolerar que outra história de expropriação e perda existisse ao lado dela – uma intolerância constantemente reforçada pela hostilidade israelense ao nacionalismo dos palestinos, que têm reconstruído dolorosamente uma identidade nacional no exílio”.
Nesse contexto, aproveitando sua capacidade de se mover com relativa liberdade em Israel com um passaporte americano, Emily Jacir propôs a seguinte questão a outros palestinos: “Se eu pudesse fazer qualquer coisa por você, em qualquer lugar da Palestina, o que seria?”. Em uma troca não material, eles fornecem seus desejos, saudades e sonhos, e ela promete realizá-los. “Ela faz do corpo dela uma extensão do corpo dessas pessoas para realizar os seus desejos”, como coloca Moacir dos Anjos.
Na apresentação de Where We Come From (De Onde Nós Viemos, em tradução livre), contra painéis brancos, letras pretas descrevem os pedidos feitos a Jacir (transcritos em inglês e árabe) e imediatamente ao seu lado, a artista insere fotos coloridas como atualização documental de sua missão. Em alguns casos, como o de Rizek, ela acrescenta notas próprias abaixo do pedido. “Vá até Bayt Lahia e traga uma foto da minha família, especialmente dos filhos do meu irmão. Faz três anos que estudo na Universidade de Birzeit e não consigo permissão para ir a Gaza ver minha família. Não tenho permissão para estar na Cisjordânia como um cidadão de Gaza; assim, estou confinado a Birzeit até terminar meus estudos”, pediu Rizek. Em sua nota, Jacir relata que “sua família ficou muito feliz por eu poder trazer limões e morangos plantados por eles. Eles me levaram à sua plantação e colhemos limões e morangos para Rizek. Também trouxe para ele o ma’amoul que sua mãe fez, um par de botas, dois cintos e nozes”. Quatro fotografias mostram a família de Rizek e os filhos de seu irmão colhendo os frutos que Jacir cita.
Detalhe de Where We Come From 2001-2003 (Rizek). Foto: John Sherman. Crédito: Emily Jacir, cortesia da galeria Alexander and Bonin, New York.
As descrições envolvem coisas que geralmente tomamos como certas, como garantidas: visitar nossa família, jogar futebol, rever a casa da nossa infância. Este último foi o caso de Ibrahim. “Vá a Jaffa, encontre a casa de minha família e tire uma foto. Como refugiado, sou proibido de visitar meu país pelas autoridades israelenses, que controlam todas as fronteiras em desafio às resoluções da ONU”. Ao tecer sua resposta, a artista admite a falha em conseguir o que havia prometido em troca: “Depois de passar duas tardes em Jaffa, não consegui encontrar a casa. Os nomes das ruas, agora, são em hebraico. Perguntei às pessoas e conversei com quatro dos moradores mais velhos de Jaffa, mas eles não lembravam onde ficava a casa. Recordavam-se muito bem do nome da família e sabiam que era de Jaffa”. Nessa peça, a parte destinada ao registro fotográfico está em branco.
Detalhe de Where We Come From 2001-2003 (Hana). Foto: John Sherman. | Crédito: Emily Jacir, cortesia da galeria Alexander and Bonin, New York. Clique na foto para visualizar melhor o texto.
“No entanto, é apenas essa tradução, escrita em linguagem clara e depois realizada fotograficamente, que para muitos é intransponível. Ir da descrição escrita à atualização fotográfica pode ser fácil para alguns, como Jacir, que tem passaportes americanos. Mas para outros desafortunados envolvidos na política do conflito israelense-palestino que vem ocorrendo desde 1948, o terreno entre texto e fotografia, descrição e realização, representa um abismo intransponível, uma impossibilidade na qual um complexo de desejo é construído”, escreve o historiador e crítico cultural T. J. Demos em um ensaio sobre a obra. “Essas peças encenam uma desigualdade perversa entre as coisas e as pessoas. Essa desigualdade é a capacidade das mercadorias de se moverem com relativa liberdade nos mercados globais e nas fronteiras nacionais, ao passo que as pessoas são restritas física e geograficamente. Pessoas, não coisas, têm a entrada negada em certos territórios ou nações, arregimentados de maneiras que são politicamente instrumentais para manter corpos políticos, agrupamentos econômicos e identidades étnicas”, completa Demos.
Where We Come From foi realizado de 2001 a 2003. Moacir lembra que, no ano seguinte, Jacir emitiu uma nota esclarecendo que não conseguiria mais realizar o projeto, “não tenho mais permissão para entrar em Gaza e em certas cidades palestinas na Cisjordânia”, conta ela. “Palestinos com passaportes estrangeiros estão cada vez mais sendo impedidos de entrar no país em todas as travessias de fronteira e sendo forçados a emigrar. Israel decidiu que a ‘liberdade de movimento’ não é mais um direito dos titulares de passaportes americanos e criou medidas para garantir isso”, escreve a artista na nota.
Mesmo que transitem entre meios e campos diferentes – da instalação à fotografia documental – os quatro trabalhos referidos neste artigo compartilham o fato de serem documentos de sofrimento, e como escrito por Susie Linfield, “documentos de sofrimento são documentos de protesto: eles nos mostram o que acontece quando nós desfazemos o mundo”.
