The seventh Mercosul Biennial had as its theme the binomial “Grito e Escuta” (Scream and Listening). It was a project selected through a notice, whose curatorial team was formed mostly by artists and that had the artistic process as a focus for all exhibitions. John Cage was the conceptual father of the event. Those information concerning the configuration of the exhibition have always created a very positive expectation about what would be, after all, this biennial. What artists and works would be called for both the curators, as for the exhibitions? How to “formalize” in an exhibition that takes place in a particular space-time, dense and complex discussions about art?
It is known that this dualism – theoretical discussion X artistic propositions – follows many of the large exhibitions. As you might expect, many times you cannot read in the objects which the written reflection suggests, nor anticipate in the text works of art. In other words, it is interesting and positive to see how works evade readings and is not limited to one or another occasional approach. Therefore, it is not exactly this aspect that matters to criticize in an exhibition. Criticism of a project of this gender develops, mainly on what is visible: the exhibition dimension of the event.
Of course it is also interesting a look about the relevance of the proposed discussions on a biennial – its strategies and “flags” – even when this whole does not coincide with what is exposed. Now, there is a hierarchy among these fields and what really matters is always the works. Furthermore: it is evident that the greater the amount of good work, less interested in the theoretical discussion that guides the selection. At the same time, such a discussion begins to make sense when quality prevails. However, when the opposite occurs, a weak exhibition in terms of artistic proposals, the central question of the exhibition can be devalued by the fragility of aesthetics that is exposed.
The Biennial of Mercosul has raised very interesting questions to be addressed and discussed: the artistic process, the artist’s role in the system of art, the trusteeship as a work. It is lamentable that most of the works gathered on the exhibition were below the proposed debate. Exhibitions such as Absurdo (Absurd) Árvore Magnética (Magnetic Tree) and Projetáveis (Projectives), presented works that, mostly, illustrated concepts such as adversity, transformation, and interactivity more than it was worth them to exist.
Artists, curators and curatorial
The two complementary pivots of discussion of this Biennial were the artistic process and the artist. . The seven exhibits that made up the exhibition and the biennial radio unfolded in bias of this artistic process, but without setting radically in their assumptions – which is positive in art. And of the 10 curators involved in the event, nine were artists.
The best exhibitions of the biennial were Texto Público (Public Texts), with works scattered in the urban space, Desenho das Idéias (Design of Ideas), in the MARGS and Ficções do Invisível (Fictions of the Invisible), at Armazém A4. Among those ones, Ficções and Desenhos were curated by Victoria Noorthoom, the only non-artist of the team. I consider these three exhibitions the best ones because they contained a large number of works with conceptual and formal qualities. In the case of Victoria’s exhibitions, which took place indoors, we could also note the expanded notion of the concepts that guided the selections. The issue of the experiment, the annotation, in the MARGS works, and the self-reference in Armazém A4, seemed to compose the exhibitions concept with the curatory. I mean, they were not illustrative: focuses on the based theoretical propositions. For example, at the exhibition Desenho e Idéias, we could cite the series of Maria Lucia Cattani’s videos, which presents the question of drawing as a way of looking and not of “gesture.” Otherwise in the exhibition of the Ficções do Invisível we could cite the record of the performance of Samba do Crioulo Doido by Luiz de Abreu, in which the artist is the character and subject of the action.
The conclusion of this commentary is not that artists cannot be curators, but that artists don’t need to be curators. Usually an artist is better as an artist, usually a curator is better as a curator. Usually.
The Biennial has presented us with five other exhibitions, one of which, the Projetáveis, brought together selected works via public bidding. As an initiative, the idea was very interesting, since this is “the” current mechanism of insertion into the art circuit. So, a biennial can point and at the same time, take advantage of this strategy. The result, however, was below expectations. In a withdrawn manner, this exhibition brought together the less potent work of the biennial, with naive works as to discussions of technology, with poor technical quality and, moreover, exposed in a weird and sloppy way. Surely the biggest problem is the selection and the museography of the works, because they reveal the incompetence of the team that focused on pointing works that would approach and were worth, in a relevant and interesting way, the technological motto that guided the exhibition.
Ingenuity was also the dominant tone in the Árvore Magnética exhibition, which included the modification of the works assembled there for the discussion of alive work. Now, if we understand that for a work being alive it must suffer physical changes, we could never reread Alice, knowing that everything is just a character’s dream, it doesn’t end with the Wonderland.
Jonathas de Andrade’s work, Ressaca Tropical (Tropical Hangover), present in that exhibition is an installation of photos articulated with pages from a diary. Among recognizable images of a not too distant Recife, annotations of an ordinary man and deterritorialized scenes of leisure, the work allows us to come and go – additional narrative construction of meaning – which is the result of the combination between the really exposed and the history of each spectator.
Being part of the Árvore Magnética, Jonathas’ work reconfigured its spatial organization periodically. In other words, the order of photos changed the sequence of diary pages and the layout of the supports, which now formed a straight line, sometimes a room, or something else. This kind of “movement” happened in all the works of the exhibition. Paulo Nenflídio’s Módulo Lunar (Lunar Module), was indeed a machine and therefore was “embedded” in the “concept” of the exhibition. It was really embarrassing to read the exhibition under the proposed bias, which stressed the movement and interactivity as value in itself, independent of the internal necessity of the work to be read under this light.
Still on the Árvore Magnética, an ethical problem and for being so practical apparently less important: it seems, once again in the Biennial of Mercosul we had a Chilean curator, Mario Navarro, presenting them as one of the artists in his exhibition his wife, Frances Garcia . This has happened in this place three other times, always with Chile. Regardless of the quality of the artist, I cannot be convinced that it is legitimate to happen. As a friend of mine says: in politics the cultural elite is always leftist, but in artistic practice there are many “malufistas”.1
Quaquaquality X quality
Of course, not all curatorial experimentalism were as unsuccessful as to Navarro’s exhibition. Amid other fancy ideas, we had an oasis: the aforementioned exhibition Texto Público, curated by the artist Arthur Lescher. Scheduled to take place within the city, this exhibition brought together really exciting works and showed the expected triplet of curatory X artist/work X institution. For exemplo: Henrique Oliveira’s work, Tapume. It was a sculptural intervention in an abandoned house in the city center. Work built with flexible plywood, we had the impression that the openings in the building “sprouted” a shapeless and organic mass, as if it poured toward the exterior of the house. The work became the property visible, which was neutralized by the profusion of buildings and shops around it that had emerged in recent decades.
This was the first time that Henrique made an intervention outside the traditional exhibition spaces. The perception of the harmony between the work and the city, the radicalization of that relationship bringing it into public space, emerged from conversations between the artist and the curator. From there it was necessary negotiations between the Biennial institution and the city hall, which owns the building that incorporated the work.
In other words, it is obvious how it is interesting when the curators have the ability to put themselves as the active partner of the artists, thinking with them and their work and from that point assuming the bureaucratic process to facilitate the achievement of the project. Here we have a real example of alive work, which goes on thinking while being in the world and finding deadlocks in the path.
To put the artist at the center of discussion of art is not necessary to create a simulacra of equality, forcing them to play a role that has a lot of mediation between the institutional and conceptual, and requires a specific skill. Of course, the traffic between predefined roles is welcome and healthy, yet only when there is an inner unrest in the subjects that would justify a reversal of the place of enunciation. Moreover, once again we have seen artists not getting fee and being housed in different hotels from the curators. That is, not even the most banal, obvious and recurring question of the artists do not get their fees to expose, was purged.
Long live to experience2
All the criticisms made thus far could only be accomplished because a group of people decided to dare, bet, and try other ways to make biennial – centenary exhibition model that is increasingly a resource for legitimate differences and boost economies. If many of the conservative aspects of such an event were not solved, as the eternal battle for paychecks for artists or exhibits somewhat formalistic, we had the opportunity to see and follow a research process of the curatorial doing.
The interaction between the team was notorious, public discussions on the conformation of the exhibits proved to be gregarious and stimulants. The lineup of films and lectures that preceded the opening of the event, and artist residencies have taken place since the middle of 2009, were also intriguing and auspicious. However, as stated, the exhibition was below expectations. This was the case of betting not on qualitative premises: the definition of the curatorial team, for exemple, to insist that the curators needed to be artists, independent of the curatorial skills; or require that the works needed to physically modify in order to indicate its own vivacity.
Experiment carried out, opened the way for rethinking, beyond the pages of magazines, the act of the curatorial doing in the mega events of art.
