In spite of the sadness brought on by the fire in the archives of Helio Oiticica, which happened in the technical reserve at his family home in Jardim Botanico, Rio de Janeiro, there are so many questions without answers and the absurdness, which remains without explanation that the shock passing, urges us to reflect.
One of the very evident problems that came to light in the days following the fire, as seen from the in-fighting among Oiticica family members and municipal administrators – which, by the way, did not contribute to clearing things up and added even more controversy to the subject – was a public/private relation and what is practiced in Brazilian society. Citizens as well as public administration practice it. In the case of the Helio Oiticica Project and the Rio de Janeiro City Hall, we have the worst of examples – and the worst possible consequences.
In 1966, when the Art Center Helio Oiticica (CAHO) was created and destined to preserve the archives of artists, the Arts Center Helio Oiticica/Project Helio Oiticica together in the same block, the Municipal Culture Secretary, in a text signed by the then secretary Ricardo Macieira, called himself protector of the archives Helio Oiticica. He recognized Helio Oiticica as “one of the great expressionists of art of the 20th century, as a “seminal figure” and exalts the Project HO: “institution that knows how to take care of its collection.” In the end, he declares an intention of collaborative work and commitment as a “promotion and memory of Brazilian art.” At the time, the director of the Center was Luciano Figueiredo, curator and friend of Helio Oiticica, who left after 6 months, alleging a lack of working conditions due to non-commitment on the part of the City Hall. In 2003, he was invited to return as director by Cesar Oiticica and Macieira, leaving in 2005, as has been told, for the same problem of municipal administration: lack of carrying out the agreement.
Giving merit to the words – that in the case of the management of Macieira/Cesar Maia they did not have any value at all – it is said that there is a document, “terms of permission and use,” that establishes an agreement between the City Hall and the Project HO and foresaw the implanting of a technical reserve in the building. After the fire, Cesar Oiticica gave a public declaration mentioning the lack of minimum conditions of the technical reserve.
However, forgetting the merit of the written words, signed, thrown to the wind and the gutter, the greatest absurdity is that the initial document did not evolve into a commodity contract that would specify the rights and obligations of both parties. In this case, the responsibility is doubled.
There were 13 years of use of the building and receipt of monthly municipal finance, with reasonable continuity, taking into consideration the exhibitions and publications, among other initiatives that the Project Helio Oiticica carried out during this period.
Helio Oiticica was the only artist (although now dead) who received more than a decade of public financing in Brazil – a correct decision by the State, if in the case in question, it were not another factoid of the City Hall. However, there is lacking, in terms of satisfaction of society, the creation of a site of the Project HO for, as well as divulging works, makes public the developed actions, such as the destination of the money invested. All sectors of society that are financed by the State should retake financing and give account of it. It should not have been different for the Project Helio Oiticica.
Maintaining a situation of occupation of the Project HO building in a “lazy” way, without a contract of rights and strong and observed obligations by both parties and without the public knowing, revealed a lack of professionalism and seriousness of the management of the Rio de Janeiro authorities – and not even mentioning the disregard with respect to the very important archives – also showed the way in which Brazilians deal with public resources and art spaces: as if they were private. In the absence of definitions and limits, some periods without programming and given the institutional vacuum, the space was used as a business office, and exclusive to the Project HO.
That is, a lack of clear limits and transparency in the public/private relations is at times functional! It could interest one of the parties, the other, and both… In this was lost the opportunity of constructing an exemplary and unique institutional relation, through which the work of a contemporary artist is gathered, preserved, worked, studied, exposed and available to public access.
If the relation of the Oiticica family with the municipal management of Maia/Maceira was used up, all of the Rio de Janeiro artistic class also suffered the reprisals of the City Hall. This was in consequences of the victorious fight of the artists and other professionals of the area against the implanting of the Guggenheim Museum on the quays of the Rio port.Production and research scholarships were cut, art spaces were closed and the Sergio Porto Cultural Space suffered a fire due to the incompetence and disregard of the management and it remained closed for a year. To crown everything, the institution of visual arts (Rioarte) was taken down, which had functioned for decades with important and very successful projects – it is said that Rioarte was deactivated due to the total impossibility of balancing the accounts of the entity.
All of this draining of finances also affected, obviously, the Helio Oiticica Art Center. In 2009, the municipal administration changed and the new cultural secretary, Jadira Feghali, assumed the position by party politics agreement. Having come from the medical area, his indication was not very well accepted by artists. With the new management and consequent auditing of the accounts, there seemed to have been a lapse of time in which the Project HO remained without definition by the City Hall. However, the removal of the archives from the building was already being carried out since the time of the previous management. The key of the room, in the CAHO, where part of the archives still remained was still with the family and was not handed over to the new director, the artist Ana Durães.
It seems that, with the coming of the new secretary, there was precipitation in removing the archives from the building. And for what? We could ask if the family had apprehensions that the secretary (communist) would make it a public enterprise, against the law. A comical hypothesis, if it was not for the tragic context, which would be a threat to possible capitalist intentions of the Project HO. Information on the international values of the work of Helio Oiticica and the negotiations of the Project HO are available in the media.
There is no good in going into details of the misunderstandings of the new management with the Oiticica family, whereas it is certain that the Project Helio Oiticica received years of public money for the consolidating and maintaining the archives in the CAHO and to keep them local. The City Hall, as maintainer, had a monthly expense of 20,500 reals (where is the balance sheet?). This money, however, would not be sufficient for the external projects and events and/or parallel to the shows in the very place. The Project Helio Oiticica also received money for this, including government sponsorships.
From the fact of non-negotiation and non-creation of a group of friends, artists, curators, critics and citizens, who would exercise pressure and would make the managers (in the municipal, state and federal levels) to put into effect a commodity agreement, the Project Helio Oiticica took upon itself, in practice, the entire responsibility for the destiny of the archives. Cesar Oiticica said this publically after the fire. To assume in this way the responsibility for the fire, exempting public organs, was to bet on opacity, the lack of going all out, to put himself in an ambiguous position of “villain/victim”, to secure compassion and transfer the “place” of the fire – a public, local, national and international place – to his own backyard (literally).
Emptiness is created and irresponsibility is perpetuated beyond the loss of the archives with the lack of an investigation of the decisions and omissions of the agreement, as well as the circumstances that led to the fire. Brazilian society looses one more opportunity to affirm a dimension of citizenship – always vindicated, demanded, charged to the State, but not carried out – when you decide to affirm this exercise on behalf of the citizens.
If, as everyone agrees, the HO archives are a cultural patrimony of public interest, they were not treated as such due to incompetence, lack of material or mutual mistrust. The fact that festive and irresponsible administration more than once put it at risk, even within the CAHO building, where it should have been rigorously guarded. The result of all this is now lamented.
Historically, the lack of presence of the State in the formulation and implementation of politicians in acquiring, keeping and maintaining the archives of important artists who are representative of Brazilian culture, reflect centuries of the unimportance of art in the national priority. This situation of indigence of art comes from the inexistence of cited strategies until the non-preoccupation of the public (of the State and society) with the forming of present and future generations. Up-dated, historical and contemporary information is not offered; the creating of knowledge and understanding of art is not prioritized – its transformations, processes, practices, conceptual markings – and in the course of artists and their work – some fundamentals, international recognized, as Helio Oiticica.
During the management of Gilberto Gil and Juca Fereira at the Culture Ministry, the posture of the government presented sensitive changes, including demonstrating interest in finding solutions for the matters concerning the archives. On the side of civil society, it would be the case of accompanying the new times, leaving off practicing the idea of “privatization” in the public sphere and investing in creating channels and institutional mechanisms, as well as using those already in existence. It would urge a change in that traditional Brazilian profile of the well off classes, though ignorant, the autocrat coronels whose power is founded in money, land ownership, their sir name and the large knife. Men with power of life and death, who subject those beneath them in an inhuman and cynical way, whereas without culture, knowledge or any form of education which makes up the spirit of a nation: art.
The codes of original familiarity from this are, still, evident in the streets and the National Congress, the countryside, the towns, the apartments of the middle classes and the shantytowns. If this profile is the hard aspect of our economically favored classes, it urges us also to rethink the subtle aspect of this same code of social familiarity, practiced by the culturally favored classes, in public office or not: the traffic of influence, the exercise of power of familiar relations based on signs of prestige, the search for privileges, the private demands in public ambience, the Brazilian way of resolving things, the “contentment”, private acquisition of goods and public resources, the profound disrespect for democratic rules of the game.
In this sad event, everything stands out as destiny, as a fragile indication of Brazilian citizenship, in spite of our music, our art, our cultural manifestations, our brilliant musicians and artists, such as Helio Oiticica.
