The arts department of SPA has been in my sights for a long time. Ever since I began to be interested in understanding the possible ties between arts and politics, I took this opportunity, as a local privileged person in Recife, to develop the relationship. So as to encourage urban intervention, much that was produced in the event shows contemporary matters that involve politics in a wider sense, among which are environmental problems, the necessity to make more significant the lives of individuals in the city, to activate sensitiveness and the recognizing of the other person in urban space. Many of the works done for the SPA have the strong characteristic of provoking interaction with the city, to insert a rupture and questioning of the public sphere and to work the tensions existent within this space.
Throughout the investigation, the necessity to approach the focus on the event arose and not only looking at the relation between art and politics present in some works produced for it. Looking exclusively at SPA brought to light many more instigated (and problematic) questions, the principal one being the relationship between urban art and institutional dimensions. The outbreak of the crises in this year’s edition collaborated even more in the decision to give priority to the analyses of this relationship, apparently so paradoxical, between artistic action in urban space – experimental – and the City Council.
In this way, 2009 was decisive in my choosing to understand SPA better, seeing that it was pointed out as the moment of recognition of its critical phase. Ideas that went wrong, a reduction in the participation of artists, difficulties in reaching a wider range of public are some of the obstacles and challenges imposed on the committee, which, each year, try to resolve the matters adapting SPA to these demands. However, in this eighth edition, these challenges become even more difficult to face due to the drastic reduction of finance destined to the event by the City Council.
For now, I would like to share some initial impressions that arose after the first year of research. We are not dealing here with conclusive or diagnostics theories that are the basis for the problems of SPA. At this initial moment, what worried me more was the raising of matters that needed a solution throughout the work that I would carry out latterly. It is my intention to raise hypothesis on the crises of SPA, which will be tested during the investigation. These initial questions and hypothesis have the job of helping to lay out the object of research and, even more so, initiate a debate on the outbreak of the crises of SPA, and which of them could be possible solutions?
On SPA and the crises
One of the matters which I think important to point out on the analysis of SPA is the fact that it was created, evolved, implanted and maintained (until now) by artists. This engagement of artists in the institutional sphere, as creators of public politics in arts, is a phenomenon that Sônia Salzstein identifies in the history of Brazilian art as it has occurred, at least, since 1980. It is what she would have called amateur management. The directors and participants in this management “were mobilized by the objective of consolidating contemporary Brazilian art and, in turn, lacking in external areas for an institutional carrier, were individuals who perceived in the State an opportunity to unite energies and stimulate experimental work. It was in this so very Brazilian way that radical artistic projects ended up being subsidized by State or Municipal cultural Ministries or Secretariats, patrons of much more conservative and popular projects.”1 It was in this way “so very Brazilian” of institutionalizing that made possible, in 2002, the emerging of events such as Arts SPA in the midst of the Recife City Hall.
The SPA presents, at least, three interesting characteristics in its conception: one is the necessity to enlarge the space for contemporary art in the city; another is the existence of artists (instead of bureaucrats or politicians) promoting public politics around the artistic sector of the City Hall; the third is the necessity of affirming an experimental character of art, stimulating urban intervention as a privileged artistic action. The SPA proposes presenting new artists and inviting them to take up talks between the city and contemporary art, seeing that institutions cannot manage to carry out this job.
While the event was being extended, gaining in importance in the cultural agenda of Recife, its initial contribution to the artists also needed to be extended, from which, among other actions, the Scholarship for Incentive and Production was implanted, through which costs were given to the artists to carry out their work of urban intervention and also to their workshops. The scholarships were awarded through a selection of projects, following on from a notice from the City Council. This action permitted the amplifying the frontiers of the event beyond the city of Recife. On publishing the notice nationally, participation of artists from the Northeast of Brazil, and other regions, was made possible, thus increasing dialogue between national production and artistic presence in Recife.
It is from here onwards that the institutional dimension of the SPA was amplified and became a true institutionalized alternative to the museums and art galleries as a space of representation, exhibition and, now also, legitimate production of artists. A commission composed of artists and critics does the selective process and curators evaluate and choose which projects will be part of the event. The notice nominates and lists the possibilities of artistic urban intervention, marks the possible locations of the execution of the projects, uses bureaucracy and formalizes artistic participation in the city.
It is clear, of course, that the emerging of the notice of selection is not contradictory or absurd, if seen from the point of view of the greater objective, which always permeated the SPA: stimulation of the production of contemporary art in the city. With the increase of the event, and consequently the greater availability of resources to promote the event, the question is why not create more effective mechanisms of support to artists and their productions? Why do they not include other regions of the country by increasing even more the range of the event? However, the question, which arises, is: and urban intervention? How can you conciliate artistic work, which configures as short-lived actions of intervention in the city space as a notice? It is important to say, that in my research I took as urban artwork with characteristics of rupture, of indetermination, of significance of the place, of dialogue with the public, of negotiation with tensions existent in these places, confliction by excellence, based on authors such as Chantal Mouffe, for example.
This paradoxical relation between urban art and notice could be the basis of the crises of the SPA. In the first observations made one of the principal indicators of this critical moment found was the reduction in the participation of artists – fact that leads to think of the possibilities of a breakdown of the form of the event. The question to consider is could not this conflicting relation between notice and urban art be the motive of the distancing of artists from the SPA?
The notice, in a certain way, obligates the artists to think in specific media and to consider the city as a place of execution for whatever work of art could not have been foreseen. In this sense, could artists who seek incentive for the production of their work, but who do not intend to promote urban intervention, feel no stimulation to participate in the SPA? – The SPA does not configure as an ideal space to carry out an exhibition of their work (in spite of the fact that the SPA has already inserted headquarters in their program as places of exhibition). Alternatively, on the other hand, could artists who feel the necessity to interfere artistically in urban space feel intimidated with the presence of a notice, which would lead them to think of specific support, locations and means of action – as a species of directions for artistic action in the environment? Could this be the factor that caused the reduction in the participation of artists in the SPA?
As well as the conflict between urban art and the notice, the SPA lives with a certain decomposition between an experimental proposal and new (and growing) necessities of artistic legitimization and of the exhibition space that the artists had demanded. Recife, in a certain way, has already made part of the national map as a pole producer of contemporary art. Projects such as SPA and others like Pathways, of the Joaquim Nabuco Foundation, for example, breathed new life to artistic production and revealed several young artists to the national art market. Other exhibition spaces open to contemporary art were created in the city such as the Mamam no Pátio and the Banco Real Institute, for example – which, in a yet precarious and insufficient manner, divulged part of what is at present done in Recife. Galleries slightly increased their participation in contemporary production, launching new artists in the national art market (however, preferring those already consecrated to the work of the much younger artists).
This movement, although not configuring an institutional and market structure of contemporary art in Recife, gave birth to the artists the necessity to become known in this circuit, to enter the art market leaving the SPA in the shadows in this context. That is, it seems to me today that the event is one more option among those already within the institutional circuit. One more of the lesser effective seeing that it is infirm and does not maintain nor reproduce what is produced by it for a long time. The majority of the young artists – the major focus of the SPA – seek legitimization and, for many, this is the reason why they subscribe to a project of urban intervention in the Arts SPA. Before the increasing necessity to be part of the market and legitimization by the artists, the proposals of the SPA could be dying out.
For this reason it is left to us to ask of coordinators, participants, researchers, journalists and all of those interested in the event the following: should the SPA change its format in order to adapt to the new necessities of growing artists? Alternatively, it could continue with the proposal of artistic experimentation thinking around the urban. It is not up to us to say what the outcome of this event will be. I feel that, in face of what has been briefly set out here, profound changes will take place in its future editions. I see a SPA with much more space for exhibitions, with many more proposals offered to artists for their inclusion in the market circuit and thinking less of the question of urban art. If my reading into the subject is correct or not, only the SPA itself can say. However, if it continues as it is Recife will lose and important and necessary space for reflection and execution of urban, artistic intervention. As for myself, I will continue to observe, read and get to know the SPA better trying to bring some contribution to its process of reflection and change. In the meantime, I route for the city to maintain this important space for many more editions.
