The city as an artistic object and not just as mere support for interventions is a recurring issue in the works of Paulo Bruscky. A multimedia artist, he was one of the pioneers in the use of Xerox and Postal art in Brazil. Widely recognized in the world of conceptual Brazilian art, he has developed a vast and multiple array of artistic work, making a significant contribution to the course that contemporary Brazilian art would take from the 1960s onward, a period in which he began his artistic trajectory.
The urban interventions produced by Paulo Bruscky has the daily urban life and the streets as a raw material. Not only in its “physical” aspect, but also “immaterial”, understanding that the concept of the “street” is also made up of historical situations, political, social and aesthetic elements from which the artist carries out research and (re) elaboration.
In an attempt to understand the relationships between the wanderings, the game and the subversion that the artist constitutes in his urban interventions, we carried out an analysis of the work produced by the artist in the 1970s, developed in the capital of the state of Pernambuco and which presents transgression, transience and the game as fundamental concepts. In light of these perspectives, the objective of this text is to analyze and describe the main aesthetic structures and concepts of Paulo Bruscky´s urban interventions, reflecting on how public spaces with their habitual city functions interact with the aesthetic issues that these works conjure up.
The wanderings, the game and the subversion, on a large or small scale, interact in the processes of creating Bruscky´s propositions, being presented in new provocative solutions that have the street as a focus – in its possible functions and dimensions: symbolic, aesthetic, utilitarian, etc. As this is a question of city activities, the artist´s proposals also focus on collectivity, represented by the city´s public spaces and the individuals who interact there every day. In this way, his propositions are open to collective experimentation of both artists that are participating and those who are passing through, are living in, or are using the city at the time of the intervention.
We also perceive, on the basis of his proposals of urban intervention, the practice of wandering, which has existed throughout the history of cities in the digressions of surrealists and Dadaists and more directly in the artistic proposals of the Fluxus group.
Regarding situationists and surrealists, Bruscky´s interventions contain urban wanderings in banal places, as well as the creation of situations and environments that make it possible to escape from and to give a new meaning to day-to-day apathy, common places and the determinations of the use of public spaces. Regarding Fluxus, we have the conception of the city as a field that is open to artistic investigations: a place where art and life unite in an integral and synesthetic experience.
The digressions proposed in Bruscky´s interventions take possession of urban space – disrupting the place or a day-to-day situation -, giving it other meanings, often impregnated with heavy criticism of the current system of art and the complicated political climate of the 1970s.
In works such as Recife em Recife, in which the center of Recife is taken by Paulo Bruscky and turned into an immense art gallery, passers-by are invited to visit an exposition where several places in the city are defined as “works of art” to be admired: “the Avenida Guararapes at night”; “the river Capibaribe seen from the 5th floor of the Tereza Cristina building”; “dawn on the Avenida Conde da Boa Vista”.
The highlight of these proposals is the intense relationship the artist has with certain places in the city: places he has known since his childhood and with which he has a strong poetic and emotional relationship. As far as Bruscky is concerned, the river Capibaribe, the bridges, the squares and the traditional places in the center of Recife are the raw materials for his art. Places that are banal and practically invisible to daily urban routine are given nw meanings in playful, interactive and subversive propositions, constituted from Bruscky´s critical and aesthetic vision of his hometown.
The element of the game, present in the connections with the wanderings in the artist´s interventions, gains a broader dimension, not necessarily linked to the competition or subject to a system of rules. In this sense, in its propositions, the game is often characterized by the absence of competitive spirit, where the tension resulting from winning or losing is nullified. In this way, the playfulness of the game gets closer, as in the wanderings, to the situationist definition of the game, according to which: “the element of competition should disappear in favor of a more collective concept of the game: the common creation of selected playful ambiences” (International Situationist IS nº 1, June 1958).
In Artemcágado (1972), a proposal developed by Paulo Bruscky in partnership with Daniel Santiago, in the Praça do Diário in the center of Recife, the population is invited to participate in a tortoise exposition/competition, by means of invitations and an advertisement in the newspaper. The invitation explained what was necessary to participate: to bring a decorated tortoise to be voted for by a panel of artists. The unusual competition/exposition gains an ironic sense of the game, discussing the temporality of the contemporary city and proposing a rapid intervention so it is seen in a different light, aesthetically.
In the project Mala, from 1974/2001, game, wandering and subversion interact as in the other interventions that have been analyzed. Passers-by are invited to explore the city based on the provocation of a banal object: a suitcase. In this proposal, the suitcase is abandoned by chance in the “exhibition area” (city) and the visitor is invited to carry it around randomly. Part of the rules and provocations of this game are the curiosity sparked by the object, the chance, the unexpected and the action of the passer-by, who is also drawn into the poetic process of the intervention.
The interventions on the bridges use a landmark of the city of Recife: the river Capibaribe, the use of which, at the time of the intervention, subverts and creates new meanings such as in Arteaerobis (1973). The presence of the game and playfulness once again reveals the ironic, collective and transgressive character of the artist´s interventions, which propose passers-by, unknown artists and friends throw paper airplanes at each other during aviation week. An unusual and provocative atmosphere is created, altering habitual circuits and inciting the curiosity of those passing by and seeing that uncommon situation.
All the propositions quoted and analyzed are transitory and unique whilst an experience shared by the artist, by those passing by in the street and by those participating in the proposals. Paulo Bruscky creates ways of registering these propositions using and organizing photographs, film footage, collages and records.
Without intending to go into a deeper analysis, we have pointed out the fundamental aspects that can be observed in Bruscky´s urban interventions. The approaches presented in this text emphasize, in a synthetic way, the multiplicity of issues that pervade the artistic conception of Pernambuco artists and their relationship with the city of Recife. Above all, we underline the importance of the city in his works, as well as the poetic process that incorporates the playful, symbolic and functional dimensions of urban geography. The result becomes the fruit of the interrelation of the urban with the game, the subversion and the wanderings, elements that process and define values, meanings and expressions of the artistic, social and cultural universe of Recife.
