By Beatriz Lemos

Traveling? In order to travel it is enough to exist.

Fernando Pessoa

1st Trip

In 2005, during my first trip to Buenos Aires where I was, first, as a tourist, I realized that when I met artists, moving around its events and learning from the social dynamics of the circles of art, the understanding of history and culture of that country became clearer, and the works, quite familiar. Would it be possible to run the world and understand it as having an entry door to the contemporary art? Understanding the context through aesthetics and appreciating specificities taking into account situations was - and continues to be -the engine for my mobility. Following this track, I start the research / articulation around Latin American countries with the constant concern: how to disseminate this desire to realize my own work from the confrontation with other, the different, the distant, and the opposite?

Chasing this thought, I have proposed migration exercises among artists and theorists of Brazil and other Latin American countries, as well as among Rio de Janeiro (where I live and work) and other Brazilian states and cities.

There are no foreigners in art[1]

We live the period of displacement with vigilance. The same enthusiastic euphoria about the Great Navigations era - the period between XV and XVI centuries - is present in a time when communications technology that enhances every moment and globalization is much more widespread than understood in all its complexity. Economic factors and government incentives allow us to witness the ease of travel and cultural exchanges, however, in parallel and contrary movement, the obstacles pop up for those border crossings, due to the wave of international fear and paranoia, raising tensions and frustrations.

Nowadays, we don’t travel with caravels, which enter the sea to conquer new worlds or to meet the exotic. We move quickly (many without a fixed landing). We are mobile, transient, and we share the utopia of a borderless world.

There is a clear familiarity with similarities and cultural differences that we perceive, although we live this paradox of coming and going. If culture is the way we understand and behave toward the world, this cultural re-knowledge, from the displacement, triggers different forms of perception and understanding of world and life. That is, the more opportunities we have to untie a comfort zone for experiencing unprecedented situations, or even  external situations to the routine, we know that on returning home we will be more hybrids[2]. In the art of recent years this search for canclinian hybridity has become the focus of artistic and curatorial investigations, generating concepts for works and exhibitions[3].

Trips, residences and logbooks are no longer part of the process only; they are also the result of researches. The atelier becomes the mobile space or may be restricted to one notebook: the record often is the memory.

This experience in personal level (experience), which translates into Art, allows other relationship with space and time. Guidelines cartographic hallucinating drifts and affective exchanges in movement provide oxygen to researches and works, at the same time that constitute initial dynamic for the legitimate interaction with the place. In proposing a work from displacement, paying attention to the specificities of each context, it has to nurture the sense of belonging making it available to identify conflicts, solutions and possibilities for mediation, that is, let you be affected by the place.

Network of contacts - collaborative actions

The displacement of artists has always been an important factor for the construction of identities and social emotions in the whole history of culture. Currently, this practice is widespread in a significant way through the artist residency programs. The artist doesn’t move further just for the registration or documentation. Mobility is practiced targeting the maturation of production and exchange, whether among people or in relation to the place. Through the spaces of residence and their actions on the network, the art work receives tools for interaction.

Much of these spaces constitutes independent initiatives (some started as art projects) and self-organized that support their activities from the experience and the work in process. They rely on collaborative networks of information, dissemination of projects and the intersection of proposals for participative programs, of which costs relating to the exchange are provided. With regard to Ibero-American areas of residence, their collaborations in networking, since 2008, have occurred in large scale by residencias_en_red [residenciasenred.blogspot.com]. This networking, which is currently logistically and financially coordinated by the Centro Cultural de Espanha (Spanish Cultural Center) in São Paulo, aims to sewing a joint project of self-management and financing, taking into account diversities found in each context.

In countries where public policies for culture can not reach satisfactory levels, initiatives that encourage the practice of thinking about other ways to make art, not those tied to large legitimating institutions, are more than answers to local needs - they are the result of a society and its reflections.

Three examples of independent initiatives that transformed the artistic scene in their cities, and that I could see up close as a resident curator, are: Lugar a Dudas in Cali,Colombia; Kiosko in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia and Batiscafo in Havana, Cuba. Lugar a Dudas [lugaradudas.org] was my first artistic/curatorial residence. From that and from the experiences involved in Cali, I outlined the intentions of my research project. Conceived by the artist Oscar Muñoz and coordinated by him and his partner Sally Mizrachi, Lugar a Dudas, currently focuses a space with accommodations for residence, documentation center, exhibition halls, periodicity in publications and film festivals, which brought great recognition and visitation. It started its activities in a local landscape completely poor of political spaces for contemporary art, but today it is already the center of reference throughout Colombia, as in others Latin American countries. For the local scene, its emergence has enabled exchanges with other residence centers around the world, the impulse to collective and public actions of art and the incentive to research and critical production, increasing even more the fervent Colombian production in art.

In Bolivia, the contemporary language, however, is meeting resistance from more traditional art class and the current government, hindering the work of artists, theorists and managers of the area. In two months I spent in the country as a resident, I had no knowledge of public programs for financing and found a few independent spaces. The presence of Kiosko Galery [kioskogaleria.com] and its residence program are of extreme activating force for the nation. The gallery and the program are part of the organizational chart of Simple design studio, which started its activities autonomously due to the initiative of a group of artists and designers. Located in the economically stronger city (with characteristics and political positioning opposed to the capital La Paz), Kiosko generates to Bolivia a fundamental exchange of ideas and projects, because, next to the Proyecto Martadero Cochabamba, it articulates the possibilities of residences in the country.

Batiscafo [batiscafo.org] operates in Cuba in a clandestine way, like other initiatives on the island that aren’t administered by the government. It has no fixed headquarters - residents stay in the homes of Cubans - and constitutes only a small staff (which aren’t fixed as well) working at the logistics and in the follow-up of artists and visitor curators. Currently, the residence passes for some indefinition regarding to its continuity, due to the termination of foreign funding for scholarships and no possibility of local support. However, since 2002, Batiscafo manages exchanges between pairs - always a Cuban artist and a foreigner - by promoting debate and action on Havana that reverberate throughout the world. Batiscafo is primarily an initiative of resistance. Political activism in the shape of residence program.

Articulations in research or The traveler curator

Encouraging the sewing of these networks of affections and desires, has been my activity- almost daily - for 5 years. In person or virtually, I try to weave experiences, physical or intellectual, of displacement and propose situations between zones of intervals. The notion of space-time via Internet expands and compresses simultaneously, making distances, personal rhythms and merged languages​​ promote communication to the tool that celebrates diversity. By taking advantage of this great technological network (the brain of the world) we have the opportunity to act in cooperation for the effectiveness and dissemination of experiences among countries, states or cities. Some are the thoughts and projects that I have been taking from my own trips. How does the act of going from one place to another distant one, interfere with the production of an artist? Which place would be more instigating for a person? What artist would be more stimulating for a particular context? And also: what are the possible ways in landscapes of scarce resources, to conduct an artistic residence?

The approach to these questions, through the curatorial logic, only becomes possible (in a loyal way) after research in situ, in which local specificities are treated with respect and become determinants. Understanding the curatorship as the activation of responsible dialogues among artist, context, work, audience, individual and world, leads to a practice to an articulating of senses performance, close to a political and ideological thought. As branches of Projeto de Pesquisa Intercâmbios (Research Project Exchanges), proposals for exhibitions, works in collaboration and movable residences have happened during these past years, playing a unifying role. The art project in Loco (2009-2010) [inlocoproject.blogspot.com], which I shared the curatorship with Pablo Terra, carried out the exchange between Brazilian and Argentinean involving exhibitions and a month of residence in each country. The actions took place in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, with exhibitions at the Fundação de Estudos Brasileiros (Foundation for Brazilian Studies) and Museu da Maré, respectively. Belén Gunset, Daniel Murgel, Ezequiel Semo, Federico Zukerfeld, Joana Traub Cseko, Loreto Garín, Luciana Lamothe and Yuri Firmeza participated in the exchange project, which generated almost a year of conversations and reflections on the urban space, the conflict between cultures and the importance of fun in art. “If it’s not fun it is not sustainable “[4].

As a suggestion to reconnect ties attached during my wanderings, and literally taking tips from travel books, I continue to call Brazilian artists to the movable residences within the project Mobil(c)idades (Mobil (c) ities): f. s. 1 motion communicated on any force [mobilcidades.blogspot.com]. The mobile residence Mobilidades consists of and exhibition and journey on different cities within the same country, with the intention of aggregating visual and sensitive baggage to the artist. At this proposal has already boarded Gustavo Speridião to Bolivia, Guga Ferraz to Ecuador, and in March 2011, Julio Callado will go to Chile. This initiative is supported by collectors and producers of art in partnership with the artists themselves. Strategic solutions for the circulation of productions and international/transitional experiences. The pioneering proposal of displacement of artists in my curatorial performance was the “projeto 4 territórios” (4 territories project) [4territorios.blogspot.com], which I believe is a good example of expanding the public’s understanding of artistic residencies. The project was awarded by the edict Conexão Artes Visuais Funarte (Connection Funarte Visual Arts) in 2007 and had its completion in 2008 in Rio de Janeiro, Olinda, Brasilia, Curitiba and Belém. Seven artists and a collective, working in duos, switched homes to make interventions and videos that proposed travel diaries. The project doesn’t consecrated catalogs, exhibitions and lectures - understood as possibilities of record of results and evidence of accomplished work. It consisted, with emphasis on the justification for the edict, the importance of experience. The art from travel reaches ramifications perhaps unthought before.

In these situations it is not only the artist or their work which become visible and with which we must be related. In travels, supportive lodgings[5] and collaborations of work, the person behind the professional (artist) is also in constant evidence. It is in this detail that the eye of the curator is of singular importance. The success of a project that depends on moments of coexistence relates to the very wise choice of place, environment and personality of each person. This happy decision must be intrinsically connected to the curatorial proposal. The coexistence and displacement, if they want to be productive, should contain, in identical and accurate measurements, tension, anxiety, creativity and wealth.

Translated by Denise Pierrotti

[1] Proposed sentence as one of the curatorial axis of the 52nd Biennial of Venice.

[2] Thought held by Nestor Garcia Canclini on hybridity in the cultures in: CANCLINI, Néstor García. Culturas Híbridas: estratégias para entrar e sair da modernidade. São Paulo: Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, 2006.

[3] As examples: 52ª Venice Biennial (2007) and Tate Britain Art Triennial (2009).

[4] One of the criteria used by residents of sustainable communities in times of decision making. Here, the ownership refers to the allusion to the meaning of the verb to bear.

[5] As research proposal, when traveling without prior invitations from residence spaces, I try to stay in homes of local artists as a faster way to interact with the place. So I try to articulate the same for artists, attached to or not in artistic projects, they want the displacement at low cost and the expansion of their network of friends.

TATUÍ_ As we know–and your artistic/ curatorial practice have shown–, the place of mobility, of displacement, has been, increasingly, the protagonist of contemporary art – in its field and for its creation. What senses does the idea of ​​mobility have to you? How do you realize it embodied in art and in thought that have been developed?

HARUM _ Mobility? I believe that nowadays there are several circumstances of professional life that involve what we came here to call ‘mobility’. Thinking of the art system in the foreground, if there are favorable conditions, we must go where the work calls us – it doesn’t matter that much if it is an invitation to participate in a seminar, jury for selecting edicts, awards committee of some small-town hall, lecture, orientation workshop, Board for Masters Degree or even a scholarship-residence for research or completion of a project. Of course, this disengagement has to do with personal lifestyle; they are particularly reactions that arise from the junction of desires: the speed of adaptation and the attitude of knowing about a new environment, looking at the world with curiosity and producing different things, real or imaginary. Any international corporation, whatever the order, is more than aware to their backstage talents when the issue is carrying out some conceptual brand or raw material. It is fun to realize what we might consider as a very natural behavior among the agents of the medium – some restless to be/being– nominated as “mobility”.  But not every standard follows the rules of ordinary reality, see: in a recent work experience, I met an artist who has great difficulty in getting on a plane and couldn’t relax away from home, even in good hotels. But even rarer is the case of a curator I know who holds a heavy international agenda but hates to travel. Let’s say that here MO-BI-LI-TY is about Shima, who moves every 3-4 days in some new direction, and Tatuí, which each number is released in several capital cities.

SHIMA _ Relevant facts in my story make me think about the idea of ​​mobility and I have no doubts how important it is for the thought that I developed in my artistic work: I am a son of Japanese immigrants - both paternal and maternal side - who came to Brazil in 1958. Settled in São Paulo, they have developed a system of life that set them where they live, creating inclusive grouping schemes and social and political life, with the creation of cultural and sportive associations and the maintenance of a calendar of events that support similar activities to the life they had in Japan, but completely influenced by Brazilian culture.

My grandfather has worked in a shipbuilding company in Southeast Asia for 12 years (when single), my father had to work for 17 years in Japan as a consequence of the Plano Collor (Collor Plan)[1] (1992 to 2009). I think if some of this need to move doesn’t have certain genetic liability. However, it leads me to also think I know many people - artists or not - who invest part of their time investigating and reflecting on their own presence. We are exactly in the middle and on behalf of other paths we find ourselves where we are. Where will we point our arrow and it will be targeted to the future? We can not forget that we are a country of mestizos.

MICHELINE _ It has been over 12 years that I went through many countries and cities worldwide, presenting works of art. I always thought that, for most of those places, I would never have money to go if it weren’t presenting these works. It is through my art-making that I can go through territories: geographical, subjective, political, cultural, oceans, passports and Juazeiro do Norte. All these different territories comprehend everything that goes over them: their  people and relationships, homes, their economical, cultural and political contexts, their beliefs and contradictions, besides, of course, several  non-discursive or photographable situations  we experienced,  experiences that, just for being in place and ”wasting” time to be there, we have gained. Something like small local treasures, souvenirs that are printed on my body and my production, such as the iron spiked to mark breeding bull that I saw last week in Goiânia.

Looking at it, I wonder:

Does the fact that I move widely for different contexts, make me pay attention at these differences of places and how they have an impact on me? But what about the fact that, even before these flows related to travel, I’ve always been interested in ”places other than here”, understanding these other places not only geographically but also aesthetically, economically, and existentially or ”how does it occur in the field photography?”, or “how does that player handle different dynamics and makes it a fugue for piano?”.

I look to my production and I understand that this axiomatic question presents a false dilemma that demands an answer. And at the same time, provides a fertile territory if considers that it is in the same chattering of its questioning where is its permanent preciousness.

And it makes me write this sentence like this: live to eat and be eaten by territories and people and contexts and differences. And this kind of eating, rumination, vomiting, strolls from slow to fast food, full of contradictions and lumps.

TATUÍ_ Taking into account the artistic/ curatorial residencies as one of the major modes of displacement of artists / curators today, we would like to know the way it occurs with you, the experience of going through other contexts, cities and individuals in the process of such residences. Is it possible to understand the resident, still, in the idea of the flâneur? What other ”place” could the resident be in relating to the city?

MICHELINE_ Each residence or each stopping on a place happens in a different way, though sometimes they appear to offer the same conditions of stay. As well, for each stay you can experience a different way to be in place and look at it and suck it or be sucked by it. Okay, my words sound obvious, don’t they? “You cannot go the same river twice” (Heraclitus of Ephesus). Yeah, so I’ll start in a more specific way.

My last work, which is called I promise, this is Political, was made ​​in / from a context of artistic residencies in different countries, with economic, spatial and participatory conditions, highly diverse. This feature has become how the work was done and it became about what the work deals, as well. In this process of construction, which took 2 years, I have been to Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, France, Portugal, Norway and Mexico, experimenting ways to build together, pointing out differences and operating on different localities, nationalities and material conditions. During the artistic process, the issues of collaboration, continuity and economic conditions of the surroundings were inevitably at stake.

I am tough, unsatisfied, I’m really annoyed at the attitude of the flâneur that might be able to fulfill myself as an artist.

Yes, this controversy also comes from an understanding (limited?) that ”flâneur” is little, is little compared to the involvement that I need to be in one place. Or, more specifically, when a flâneur is a deterritorialized wandering adhesive and it comes with super bonder on the middle page of my artistic passport. I do not even  accept this adhesive.

HARUM _ Apart from the literary model of Baudelaire’s flâneur, the artist and / or curator in residence at times is still stigmatized as not fixed and vagabond by a conservative layer of the art world professional. There are critics and curators who are able to comment that they don’t trust the praxis of artists who live from residence to residence, for failing to ensure a stable production. No doubt, this speech would fit more to the roll of the commercial concerns of a gallery owner than the sensitivity / logic of a critic. It’s the same to say that an artist who doesn’t speak English, then, is no artist, do you agree? And as to curatorial residence, Brazil faces a general shortage of programs and candidates, which creates a high degree of ignorance on the subject. It is not uncommon for a curator who has departed for an international residency program to be seen as a bon vivant by the wing institutionally resented. After all, aren’t we advocating the professionalization of the tasks of the curator the whole time? What’s more professional than to be able to accept and receive an official invitation that includes airline tickets, place to live and a research fellowship? It shouldn’t represent anything new to realize, once everything is marketing, that beyond the recognized role of the curator of the institution, the curator of the biennial or a teacher, there is also the curator who structures the international circuit of research fellowship and residencies. It is exactly this one who is now seen as an unemployed, a freelancer, an independent one or now a conqueror of some momentary supporting worldwide. Although with medical residents, no one messes, isn’t it true?

MICHELINE _ I felt terrible when I found myself within a group of Europeans, visiting Monte Alban, an important archaeological site located about 10km from Oaxaca, Mexico, one of the oldest pre-Hispanic cities  and has been the capital city of the Zapotecs between the years 500 and 800 BC. The literary  flâneur from Baudelaire  can come and stroll through many connotations and contexts, but I was in Mexico, I wasn’t from there, my clothes, my group, my nationality wasn’t from there and anyway, being  the other who buys the postcard, I was there, living that discomfort. I started thinking that I can dive deeper than this, being in other territories. I know this will be my exercise at all times and has no end, only a renewed practice.

SHIMA _ When I cannot find familiarity or similarity to my way of life, I feel strange, dislocated, undocked. The senses become keen to understand this new habitat, to understand this new “being in the world”. I notice patterns of behavior, different schedules, peculiar habits, (different) labels, prejudices and thoughts. There is no way to maintain individuality in another place; otherwise we annul our presence at the expense of integrity, a unity. The resident is obliged to relate even to understand their role in this new environment. An individual may also be where it always was, immersed in their daily lives, and becoming a resident in their own place.

I think, otherwise to remain cloistered in a studio, you’d better stay home. The alienated does not interact with the world. The invitation to move isn’t merely geographical; there are other influences that eventually affect an entire thought and a behavior of work. Being in the winter out in the Netherlands, where the sun rises sideways at 10am and sets before 3pm, deeply affects the states of an artist. It’s quite shocking when compared to the coast of Pernambuco winter, for example. There are other factors that alter the trajectory: food, language and even the quality of water (tap or shower, or even rain). Socio-political contexts, environmental and economic influences, it is necessary that an individual has a minimal awareness of where one stands to take the next step.

MICHELINE _ I really like the Antoni Muntadas’ phrase: ”ATTENTION, PERCEPTION REQUIRES INVOLVEMENT”, and we understand this phrase when a scientist realizes (and was slow to realize!) that he doesn’t observe the event with neutrality and distance, but as a reactive in chemistry that disrupts the medium.

I really believe that the discomfort of being a tourist, even momentarily, can be instructive, even a poison, that intricate points of view and the relationship with the place that one occupies.

[1] NT: The Collor Plan (Plano Collor), is the name given to a collection of economic reforms and inflation-stabilization plans carried out during the presidency of  Fernando Collor de Melo of Brazil between 1990 and 1992. The plan was officially called New Brazil Plan (Plano Brasil Novo), but it became closely associated with Collor himself, with “Plano Collor” becoming its  de facto name.

See in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plano_Collor

Once a picture is presented as art, by this very act, a new reference frame is created which cannot escape. It becomes part of an institution as surely as the toy in the nursery. (E.H. Gombrich) [1]

The inevitability of advances in telecommunications, in addition to its growing popularity, has strained skepticism and endorsed the capabilities of wireless devices as tools in the network, as cinematic devices or as plausible structures for artistic expression. Given the previous sections, such as net-art, locative media accumulate the kindness to have escaped the confines of desktop screens, and permit the resuming of experiments in the texture of cities, as recommended by Marc Tuters and Kazys Varnelis in Beyond Locative Media.[2]

Since the early 2000s, we see in these technologies the prospect of serious and complex creation, which extends to relevant social issues, empowers communities and allows, at least technically, a pattern of participation in online communication on a planetary scale.

But if locative media as applied to art endorse the discourse of ”beyond the galleries or from computer screens as territories”[3], where are these works today? Why do we not see the emergence of a truly consistent production and more present in our expectations of confluence between the virtual and real? If this type of proposal guards intrinsic relationships with powerful practices in the field of art, such as the concept of site-specific and relational art, why the apathy of the art circuit with respect to projects of this type? Among the current practices, subsidized in most cases, spontaneous in the minority, that consistency can be expected for this ’locative art’?

Why haven’t been great locative artists?

Whenever issues like this emerge, I remember an article by Steve Dietz[4], which has the title: Why haven’t there been major net-artists?[5] Such a question applied to the universe of the net-art would means, according to Dietz, in remaking the trap of an eager legitimation, rhetorically articulated. It would be something like taking on the weakness of a segment in aspiring as authentic in the contemporary art circuit.

Thus, the question ‘why haven’t been great locative artists?’ It would be like declaring a condition already in deficit, anxious again, assuming reactively the limitation of a technological field - which seeks to establish itself as a practice of convergence, breaking with the physical divisions of traditional supports -launching to the realm of art, a problem that seems to be found less in the quality of the artists, and more on the mechanisms of assessment and inclusion typical of the art system.

The contradictions are gradually evident. The strategies demanded by art have always been considered incompatible with effective social actions, as well as they now show the relations managed by the confliction of the artists in the face of  manufacturers, registered brand mark, operators, urban space and public authorities, especially in works that are intended to be immersed in the locative field.

If we made a list of the most significant that was produced in the world we would have a panorama that would be counted as a counter-argument to the trick question. [6] But the trap is more damaging and corrosive if we don’t see what is actually being placed.

Given this set of forces, one might ask which points of tension, expressivity or artistic qualities one perceives, objectively or subjectively, in a work said to be locative,  thereafter seeking to understand the supposed disappointment with respect to art of this nature.

A new nomadism between expectations and assumptions

Somewhere at the core of our expectations or the technology itself, perhaps there is a subtle feeling of disappointment at the practices of locative art. Perhaps we are not equalizing well our euphoria. Maybe we expect a larger number of projects being shot in 3G networks to a potential between art and life that could be better supported by technology. Some may wish to see the great biennials or art fairs absorbing this production and producing the new stars of the art of placement and location.

From an operational standpoint, these practice tensions are evident: so-called locative projects require a logistics associated with interests do not always confluent.  In order to happen they depend on subsidies, a lateral and parallel structure, which implies negotiations, investments in programming and setups, involving producers, agencies, manufacturers, communication carriers, corporations. These dependencies don’t necessarily mean ideological submission, as the purists want, but one that involves making strategies and agreements that are part of the circuit of art at least since the Renaissance. On the other hand, maintenance or permanence implies efforts aside, most often mobilizing structures and teams to monitor its operation.

But from a more theoretical point of view, we see how the euphoric postulates fall down, as technologies and concepts associated with them begin to have side effects. Or as they show latent assumptions, the typical example of rhetorical slogans such as Anytime, Anywhere, Everywhere, or Connecting People, which show an efficiency less persuasive with the public and more the wills of a omnipresent brand.[7]

Among the possible dystopias, there are the frustrations with respect to more effective shares or the belief that technological advances would promote mobilization as never seen before - but operate under the logic of a semiotic and cognitive capitalism.

Another current assumption, when one speaks of ’mobility’ refers to the alleged facilities in realizing the physical space on a global scale, often translated into catchphrases about the possibilities of a supposedly free, ‘nomadic’ displacement. Thus when we think of dislocations, not only physical, but tested on subjective conditions, we are urged to imagine a  ’nomadic’, creative, exciting condition by the ignorance of the specificities of spaces temporarily inhabited. However, the problems of the spatial extent were supplanted by temporal problems, of expired or missing time

We all like to believe more in the pleasures of this state in displacement, constantly coming, an upgrade of ‘coming-to-be’ in terms of space, the prospect of living in distinct contexts simultaneously. For Jordan Crandall,[8] this would be a condition of readiness, efficiency and continuous warning that is requested. However, this state is clearly incompatible with precarious systems - with social injustice, with the hacks in the third world - demanding heterogeneous joints, as a configuration of the outskirts and the center together, the slum networking, and the local conflicts with the global Not physical obstacles , but mainly economic and political, which impede the free flow of communications.

In this context, what kind of nomadism may for example be characterized by technologies that do not allow a minimally comfortable telephone communication between neighboring countries in South America? What kind of nomadism can be conceived for a context of restriction of civil liberties by technologies that are refined in control, positioning and biometrics? Physical boundaries in this new space-time equation don’t vanish. On the contrary, they seem to be increasingly strict.

Twenty years ago the Berlin Wall fell, but today customs control is more complicated around the world. Despite the crisis of opportunities in Europe, it is estimated that over the last decade more than 2,500 immigrants have lost their lives trying to enter illegally into European countries. One wonders if the comings and goings, the transit through its borders, the displacement between cultures has indeed been facilitated from a mediated world? The evidences show that the traffic becomes more complex, more suspicious, subject to biometric measurements, due to the scrutinization tools we use sometimes – such as cookies, small Trojan Horses – knowing the uselessness of placing in the balance the pros and cons, knowing that at any moment everything can be turned against our choices. We are talking here less about vigilance but about tracking and control, as emphasized by authors not so apocalyptic as Thomas Levin, David Lyons, Brian Holmes and Felix Stalder.

The hyperconnected  crowd  in a country like Brazil (more than 168 million mobile phones in use[9]) inevitably involves the participation of the ”slow men” in networks  developed by the geographer Milton Santos[10], who suggests survival strategies for those fatally excluded from increasing technological mediation and immediacy of today’s life. These would be ” implied subjective forces, [...] wishes and desires that refuse the hegemonic order [...] escape routes that forge alternative paths”, as interpreted by Peter Pál Pelbart[11] regarding ”the empire forces” by Hardt and Negri.

We could then understand that ’places’ are not even strict on his physical constitution and to be under the aegis of a world that sees efficiency does not just imply efficiency in connivance or cooptation. That means believing in micro-politics potencies, in nomadism as a place of invention, and perhaps in new semantic nuances for the word ’negotiation’.

As Crandall says, ”if the technologies of networking, speed and tracking reactivated these places of ‘micro’ - the affective space, recognition of intimacy, the willingness and readiness - then this is a space that can be politicized.”[12] Before packing one more euphoric slogan for an Era, we must understand the negotiations that involve these said to be nomadic flows,

that live beyond appearances, the eagerness and willingness for full-time connectivity between the submission and awareness of media systems.

Movable Places

The place ’out there’, the exterior space, has been re-imagined with the help or not of the mediation systems. But from noticed experiences by portability, miniaturization of cameras and by the processors of ubiquitous computing, we are being guided more insistently on their urgency. In the context of a new nomadism, we would speak of one place where one lives temporarily. For this reason it generalizes, it becomes anything - and that tends to generate no emergencies or commitments.

Would there then be a nearly-paradox: the specificity of place demands recognition, involvement, focused attention for a context. While in the portability and the qualities of the flows that characterize a new nomadism, they would often imply a disregard to the particularities of the context. In fact, with the growth of so-called ’informational space’, the context becomes malleable, as measured by semantic and semiotic reading, the effect of certain urban structures built through communication and information.

This ‘strangeness’ of floes of information  in  the world’s  physical forms has allowed us to imagine possible geographies, in experimental and subjective  procedures  - in which mappings leverage from new  procedures, location and positioning measurement.

Thus, in so far as the research around mobility comes to seek the understanding of knowledge and involves interlocking macro realities (paradigms that until recently did not overlap so neatly) constitutes a common basis for questioning the notion of place, discussion of public space and the mappings at multiple scales - where micro and macro policy no longer oppose, but become an ongoing concern.

Negotiating specifics

One way or another, the place is shown again on the agenda.  Before the vastness of possibilities between Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, a work by Richard Serra, a large-scale projection of Jenny Holzer and a project of ’augmented reality’ to a specific area of the city, there are also points in common. The possibilities ‘in-between ‘a concept and another of occupation of space doesn’t avoid the question, perhaps trailing, always subtracted from making art on a grand scale: how these works were traded? How could they be?

What kind of works still emerge in these new and unsteady ’places’ which take shape in the world? How do they explain, in the context of art, their agreements or mechanisms of negotiation?

Among the relevant locative projects already submitted in Brazil we realize that they have established a very fruitful relationship with social reality, but not exactly with the art system. The projects AIR (2007), by Preemptive Media, Can You See Me Know? (2008) by Blast Theory; Tactical Sound Garden (2007-2010) by Mark Shepard; Bi Cycles (2010) by Andrés Burbano or Como se fosse a última vez (As if it was the last time) (2010) by Subtlemob group[13], were adapted to the local context in order to produce an awareness with respect to the context and environment in a broad vision and far from superficiality or opportunism that permeate some projects in this line. The final configuration of these projects was the result of a dialogue at local level (see also ’negotiation’) with the particularities of their surroundings - and less, as expected, an association of more undergrowth, or connected with commercial sponsorship .. That is, they realized the assumptions associated with a locative work, and they have taken into account the political aspects derived from a clash between technology and corporate power. However, an alleged frustration may be associated with the idealization of the expected impact in the media, or the little they managed to dialogue with the ’official’ state of the local art.

In turn, Armin Medosch in 45 Revolutions Per Minute: History on heavy rotation[14], provokes us to think how we can still be repeating earlier euphoria. There have been few utopias in relation to wireless transmission: in transmitting wireless power by Nicola Tesla, in the Futurists manifests in which Marinetti elected radio waves as beneficial, stimulating to the brain. To date, the course of history of mobile media seems to have moved in a contrary direction to the expectation of Bertold Brecht, for example, in order that radio and television are not consolidated from many to many, but from few to many.

It is a fact, however, that the potentially distributive character and open communication systems, in wireless networking is still under configuration. There would be thus a world of possibilities yet to be explored.

Such possibilities are shown attractive from different angles, especially the commercial , particularly in market-countries like China and Brazil. In Brazil, the telephone infrastructure took 100 years to connect some 40 million handsets. In just over 15 years of development of mobile telephones, we come to the aforementioned 168 million handsets in operation.. From the social point of view, or individual expressions, what is asked is how this sea of connectivity can become a distribute platform for common use.

How  this base can leverage  individual expression  beyond  of social networks ‘a la Orkut’[15] or Facebook or beyond the connect ‘one to one’ among private bubbles? What to say or do when you finally have the tools to do so in a global perspective?

In attempting to answer questions like this, there is not only the challenge of facing a system and strengths and weaknesses yet  in turmoil, but also a sense of responsibility: that social reality is not mediated in order to become harmless, flat, without the reliefs and the intensities of life.

To comment on aspects less obvious of the social agencies that involve communication technologies, I highlight the project Ouvidoria, and of the  Lourival Cuquinha and Thelmo Cristovam from Pernembuco, first presented in the exhibition  O Lugar Dissonante (The Dissonant Place) (2009), in the Malakoff Tower, Recife, and thereafter in amplified form in the Carmo Square in Belém downtown  in 2010.

The project aimed to offer free phone calls to the general public in handsets such as ‘phone booths’  located in open and public spaces of circulation. In return, as a way to get the gratuity of the connection, the user gives the right to use the content of their conversation, which is routed to a listening room, where visitors can listen to phone calls - through a system of audio processing which mixes the sound sources. The user is notified beforehand about this detail, through a printout placed next to the equipment.

What is established in this ’bartering’ is an applied form of gift economy[16], in which participants receive small private benefits generated from the good created by a community. In the name of an artistic project, the user has access to certain privileges. Because of this action, and associated telephone costs, we find a relation that equates the benefits and possible harm associated with their privacy. It is for the public to decide on this interaction. As the art critic Clarissa Diniz[17] emphasizes, ”rather than promote the ‘interaction‘of the audience, the Ouvidoria transforms the audience in an accomplice of the work.” It would not be a co-authorship, avoiding a typical jargon  of the boom of interactivity, but rather a form of co-responsibility.

Not only assuming the condition of exchange which is given but also participating in the conflicts generated by a kind of ’surplus value of communication’, the public negotiate its privacy, or in most cases, give that up for a lack of options. Repositioning a simple technology and renegotiating the social - that resonates in the empty listening room and the interstitial leak beyond the exhibition space – the Ouvidoria eventually transfers to the audience the dilemma of negotiation.

This would be a kind of work that doesn’t happen without an agency. Or, perhaps, it is the agency service of their own work.

Given the difficulty of networking - locative media present a recognizable form for visual assessment  or other senses in the field of art - that stand out the negotiation, mediation, agency services, and the exchanges among the artistic, social, commercial and entertainment. By assuming more explicitly these processes and interconnections, perhaps the art of communication achieves new levels. Without the commitment to fulfil the expectations associated with strict artistic precepts, it might be more interesting to detect the emergency for participation in the so called public life, for example.

Or maybe ethics as well as defining an aesthetic set, in a kind of work that doesn’t always produce images, but makes us see what circulates between them.

The inherent values ​​ in the more specific artistic practices don’t always make them see with conventional eyes. It requires the willingness to see the interlocking knowledge embedded in their articulations. Its legitimacy depends on similarities between these eyes, standing side by side the similarities among concepts, political connotations, types of enunciation and tensions.

In fact, the structures of negotiation and strategy are nothing new, they are just more visible. One way or another, they are built into the system of art and the relationships we have in public spaces.

Translated by Denise Pierrotti

[1] “Meditações sobre um cavalinho de pau”,( Meditations on a hobby horse), published essays collected in 1963.

[2] Tuters, Marc and Varnelis, Kazys, Beyond Locative Media. Networked Publics, 2006

<http://networkedpublics.org/locative_media/beyond_locative_media>

[3] Ibid.

[4] Dietz, Steve, “Por que não tem havido grandes net-artistas?” in Leão, Lucia (org.) Derivas: Cartografias do Ciberespaço, São Paulo, Anablume/Senac, 2004, pgs. 137-147

[5] This is a provocative formulation, based on another made ​​in 1971 by art historian Linda Nochlin, in her article: “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”  The question showed the extent to which feminist issues remained trapped in a male hegemonic status. “The first reaction of feminists was to swallow the bait, hook, line and sinker, and try to answer the problem as it is given” comments Nochlin. In this case, to explain the traps of a sectarian discourse can be a way of seeing the ideologies at play.

[6] There are hundreds of dissertations or theses currently systematizing this type of research. I put myself as a careful observer also through my involvement with Festival arte.mov, which since 2006 critically discusses the evolution of so-called ”locative art” through projects that extend into the urban space and trigger social aspects of relevance.

[7] The expression ”Anytime, anywhere, everywhere”(in a literal translation), has been widely used by corporations linked to telecommunication, not so much as a slogan, but as a widespread discourse. Connecting People is a slogan associated with Nokia and aims to highlight the intended humane and intimate in their products. They are two among many other possible examples that seek to instill a euphoric and idealized aspect of our time.

[8] Crandall, Jordan, Tracking and its landscapes of readiness, Nettime.org, 2005.

[9] According to Anatel. Source: http://www.anatel.gov.br/Portal/exibirPortalInternet.do

[10] Santos, Milton, A natureza do espaço. Técnica e tempo. Razão e emoção,

São Paulo: Hucitec, 1996, pgs. 50, 75, 204.

[11] Pelbart, Peter Pál, Vida Capital: Ensaios de Biopolítica, São Paulo: Iluminuras, 2003, p. 88

[12] Crandall, Jordan, Op. cit.

[13] Projects made possible by Festival arte.mov.

[14] Text presented as opening lecture of the symposium arte.mov 2007, under the theme “Utopias, dystopias and emerging communities”.

[15] Brazil ranks first in using this platform, with 62% of users on the planet, far above the U.S. (14%) and India (10%).  Source: http://novo-mundo.org/log/wp-content/uploads/orkut-stats.gif

[16] The concept, originating in social sciences, is used here in reference to updating of the term by Richard Barbrook in his essay The Hi-Tech Gift Economy (1998) who refers to modes of exchange used in the Internet context.

[17] The curator of O Lugar Dissonante (The Place Dissonant) is signed by  Clarissa Diniz and Lucas  Bambozzi. The text on the work Ouvidoria in the exhibition catalog was written mostly by Clarissa, as is the case of quotation.

TATUÍ_ Usually, on the idea of mobility - and the resulting network formed by the displacement of professionals from the field of art throughout Brazil - we aggregate democratic intentions. Mobility adds up the idea of decentralization. While in Brazil today, on the other hand, as mobility is more closely tied to the displacement of individuals (professionals) and not necessarily actions (events, exhibitions,   publications  etc.), how much do you believe  in the power of decentralization and democratization arising from this practice ? Would we not be, paradoxically, at the risk of accumulating on certain individuals, under the argument of ”experience”,  a large amount of information, knowledge, etc., in a way that can hardly be, in fact, suitable collectively? What does your experience as a curator and manager make you think about this?

At the moment when I read the question and tried to understand its complexity, I wondered what really mattered, or what would serve as the physical or just virtual displacement of the artist.. In the first half of the twentieth century, there was a temporary displacement with the clear objective of studying, to attend and receive guidance in a studio abroad (the case of Tarsila do Amaral, Anita Malfatti, among many others who received the Prêmio Viagem ao Exterior do Salão Nacional ). They went in order to obtain updates and insert themselves in a trans-vanguard environment in major centers of the time as Paris and New York. It was crucial for the growth of the artist to live in for a while or at least to pass through these cities.

But currently, there are several cities that allow for an environment for the development of a more experimental art or an art market with strong museums. However, the artist goes not only to the capitals or centers of Berlin, London, Madrid, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, they also go to outlying and smaller cities, like Belo Horizonte, Cali, Cordoba, Valparaiso, Natal, Recife, Bogota, among many others. And even for the experience of living in the forests and remote regions of the planet, such as a village in Jordan or in conflict areas such as Palestine. In the Istanbul Biennial in 2009, I observed that most of the artists who participated had been born in one city, but lived and worked in another, often another country or continent. But I understand that the artwork, the materialization of an idea, the artistic creation, the formalization of a concept, are the result of that aesthetic, political and conceptual contamination or mirroring, which occurs in these displacements. On the idea of global art, it ends up turning into a condition or requirement in contemporary art. On the other hand, there seems to be a need for coexistence, contact, free exchange with other people and cultures. The accumulation of knowledge and experience is a consequence of this new status of the globetrotter artist.

TATUÍ_ Certainly, there is an individual of today who is constantly moving around - perhaps it is not by chance that some of the recent institutional projects of mapping  and dissemination of contemporary art in Brazil carry in their bosom, as by their name, this predisposition and intentionality for mobility: Rumos (Directions) (Itaú Cultural Institute, SP), Trajetórias (Trajectories) (Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, PE) Projéteis (Projectiles) (Funarte), among others. However, our ”wanderers” impetus  even seems individual and it is too rarefied to the movement of national activities, projects, exhibitions etc. in its wholeness, and, perhaps, would “decentralize” more systematically, beyond the sphere of the individual in the  experience field  (and thus not through the ”documentation or record of these experiences), the potential of moving on. In this regard, returning to the original question, we would like to explore their opinion on the risk of accumulating ”on certain individuals (…) a large amount of information, knowledge, etc., in a way that can hardly be, in fact,  collectively suitable.

I see no risk.

I would add in the early formulation of the inquiry the edict Rede da Funarte (Funarte Network) that best exemplifies the institutional policies for the circulation of the artist, the critic of art (curator), their art work and of their thinking.

The edict, established in 2004, assumes the physical moving on and of ideas. The proponent must necessarily take or bring back the action . It has generated rich experiences in the formation of artists and audience, thus, as forms of collective ownership and dissemination of ideas and practices.

These questions have a lot to do with the speech of the Frenchman Nicolas Bourriaud, the Relational Aesthetics, based on the necessity for the contemporary artist to interact  and  live trading environment, experience and sociability.

This convivial aspect - sociological - of art (and it is not that it did not exist before) generates an accumulation of knowledge and the aesthetic and relational result of these experiences is natural and belongs to every individual. To live is to accumulate experience and art in times of relational art becomes more and more a social experiences. However, in such knowledge not everything is shareable.

What knowledge should be shared by the artist in an era in which the keywords have been multiculturalism, deterritorialization and globalization?

Invest in the individual. Invest in the education of the artist. Invest in its displacement. Invest in the accumulation of information. It is this accumulation of contemporary knowledge that does not necessarily have to be shared.  The sharing takes place in the work of art, in artistic practices. Somehow, the knowledge gained will become public knowledge when the artist takes their work into the exhibition space and shares it with the public.

TATUÍ_ Against the backdrop of encouraging mobility, we realize that today there is a tendency to treat the displacement in itself as a value-added production of art and thought. Thus, often artists and other professionals in the field of art are less legitimized by factors inherent  in its production, and more by the amount and character of the dislocation that their work or themselves perform .. What do you think about this?

The filling of the gaps will always occur. People that need to be in one place or another just to overcome a lack of artistry, of knowledge, such an emptiness of ideas and creation, will always exist.  Many of these artists or intellectuals move around just to fill the void in their works.

For  artist artists, trips, houses or even  all this mobility that we see  in the art world tends to help the maturing of the work. You meet and exchange artistic experiences, improve your vocabulary and update discourse. It allows the worldly knowledge. However, with or without displacement, there will always be the poor artist or the poor  critic, the good artist and the good critic. They are those globetrotters who arrive late to meetings at the artists’ studios of artists or  in the artists’  residencies. They arrive in high heels  watching the clock for the next visit or trip.

We are in times of exhibitions and theories with plenty of suggestive titles on what is discussed here: How to live together; Living in Contact; How to build worlds; Relational Art; Liquid Society; Liquid Love; There’s always a cup of sea for the man to navigate; Contemplation of the World …

Also significantly, Marc Augé, who was known for his book  Non-Places, this year launched a publication which promises to become a bestseller among artists, For an Anthropology of Mobility (co-edition Edufal and Unesp, 2010), which deals with transculturality.

However, transculturality already was understood long before this phenomenon, as evidenced by the interview (O Estado de Sao Paulo, 18/12/10) of the pianist and composer of American jazz, Dave Brubeck, who revolutionized the genre 51 years ago with his album Time Out, mentioning what his teacher, Darius Milhaud had taught him: “Milhaud often spoke of the time he spent in Brazil and how the country has influenced his musical language. ”  He often told me of his trips around the country to listen to folk songs that inspired him to write some of their most popular and beautiful pieces . He gave me a piece of advice, that is, to travel and keep my ears opened. He firmly believed in the importance of folk music from different cultures, citing particularly the case of Stravinsky and Bartok, whose work was marked by this approach. Somehow, the introduction of the classic jazz tools is similar to the adoption of methods of Milhaud’s classical composition to incorporate Brazilian folk music”. The interviewee refers something like 50 years ago.

Translated by Denise Pierrotti

In times of intense flow of information, individuals and resources, how has the art been produced, thought and made viable? In a context of generalized mobility, where the displacement becomes not only a means to implement projects, as well as the purpose of many of them, what  needs and demands  have arisen? Among globalized flows and local specificities, how do we move?

Networking, residencies, technology, export programs, diffusion policies, cultural economy, exchanges, aesthetic experience, internationalization, walks, creation, history and art criticism are some of the questions addressed in this Tatuí 11, which is presented as a debate built among layers of texts, interviews, letters, speeches and conversations among artists, curators, critics and administrators.

The ideas about our growing traffic situation are, on the other hand, pierced by Nelson Felix’s drawings, in which are placed experiences ​​(often solitary) of worldwide displacement. A work that sets up in movements of departure and return – moments of almost absolute evanescence and still, resounding appearance.

Within the urgent needs of the coming and going, the concerns of the path remain, and on which focuses this Tatuí.

Name: Paulo Sérgio da Silva, by baptism _

PAULO NAZARETH _ ARTE CONTEMPORÂNEA / LTDA [as object of art]  ———- PNAC/LTDA

Date of birth: 26 de maio de 1977

Place of birth: Morro do carapina – Governador Valadares / Minas Gerais

Place of de residence: Rua Albertina Neves Carvalho 233, Palmital A setor 7                                                .                                   _ Santa Luzia / Minas Gerais – BRASIL

:  JUST TO SEE THINGS IN THE SEA [displacement as object of art]

When I was born the gauche Angel

He who said to the poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade to be gauche in life

Now with the definite article for winning fame, after the poem

And back to the United States of America

Told me: seja léfte in dê laife mininu !

Seeing that I did not understand, he repeated in good French: Etê vu gôche an la viê menino!

I kept without understanding the strange language of an angel migrant.

Until the same home language, said: be gauge, walk the gauge paths, be naughty, be roguish, survive! … make art in life, which is a thing of boy! Vá ver o mar que fica longe de casa!

Making art in life would be a difficult thing for a boy born in a town from Minas Gerais – Brazil – that is not part of traditional baroque cities, and away from Guignard’s Belo Horizonte. What remains is to make art to the way of the countryside, building toys with scraps of wood, nuts and seeds or put fire in those remains and see the fire draw shadows on some closer wall or fence.

Art is what makes some gentlemen, between their 70s and 80s, trying to mend or repair domestic appliances without the instruction manual or booklet by the Brazilian Institute of Distance Education. Also is art the acts of converting a transistor radio into electrical energy, even though the risk of becoming a homemade bomb, just to save some coins or for the pleasure of the discovery of energy. It is also the electric clincher and the ride through the desert of New Mexico and the memory of that crossing. Being away from the center causes a distinct way of seeing and understanding what is the object of art.

Artist sometimes were the ”fools” who walked in the city, coming from more distant localities from Bahia or Rio de Janeiro _ through the highway that cut the city_ or from Espírito Santo _ through the railroad, performing the most eccentric actions / performances that would leave disconcerted many avant-garde. The dictatorship police, designed to maintain public order, preventing major works never intruded with the said makers of art, for which there were a special force that were the psychiatrists from Barbacena, who one time or another dragged these artists to the Mental Hospital of Barbacena the largest national provider of corpses for institutes of medical education, a rich contribution to the development of the country.

The imagery is populated with countless performances: the man with a huge sac that is transformed into a legendary being eater of children. Others, simply for being ”ugly”, populated the childish and abominable world of beasts: the man who castrates boys, taking them the testicles or sometimes the entire penis. Other artists decide for a little more sophisticated actions, feeling entitled to come and go and leave toward the borders of the Americas, they take seriously the lemma of independence of the United States of America: ”America for Americans”. And like good Americans they don’t respect impositions from other Americans and invented and continue to invent many ways to assert the rights of coming and going. In this context I follow the advice of an angel of terreiro (yard) that one night of Cosme and Damião,  say to me that we’re all a bunch of  MACUNAÍMAS in Wonderland of a few: make links and whatever is necessary to keep yourself alive.

And in all these acts I realize what I call OBJECT OF ART.

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When an ancient relative crossed the Atlantic from an Italian port, there is hunger in Italy and elsewhere in Europe_ in late 800. The Brazilian government has made ​​advertising posters and brochures and also with enticers to the Promised Land known as Brazil, where by law the black man would no longer be a slave. In the early 500 using ships, arrive to these lands, the kraí-krenton [non-Indians] who thinking to be in India named Indians those who were born here. The Krén [aimorés_ Tupi name] ancestors of the krenaks resist invasion; walking to the south is stepped into the lands we know today by Minas Gerais occupying the region of Watu _ Vale do Rio Doce for the Lusophones. With the decision of Napoleon to occupy the Iberian Peninsula, the king Don João VI abandons his people and escapes to our shores, bringing the colony to the category of the Kingdom of Brazil. The king who left their land for fear of war declares Just War to relatives of the krenaks, who according to kraí-Kreton impeded the progress. The railroad train is progress _ cut indigenous lands using state companies such as Vale do Rio Doce, privatized then to encourage further progress. Walking from Belo Horizonte to the city of Liberdade / Mantiqueira [mountain that cries] away or close of my eyes is the train carrying iron ore _ part of the mountains _ to other parts of this world. While walking south for eight days I hear the sound of the iron machine ripping the land in January 2010. From the workers of the road I get help to continue my journey_ in the chapel of Bom Jesus do Livramento I see ex-votos of those who are freed from misfortunes. For about 136 hours living on top of an Araucaria _I want to remain silent. For 12 days I don’t say a word _at home when see my mother I want to ask for the blessing, with the blessing I return to speak. Relatives of krenaks, nomads, walked into the woods. The relative who came from the lands where the center of Catholicism is couldn’t walk over the sea. Jesus of Nazareth walked over the waters of the Sea of Galilee, the largest freshwater lake in Israel, in the sacred texts of Christianity, calling on the apostles to do the same and  Peter  after some steps, for vacillation sunk into the waters weren’t the master to hold his hands “reproaching him” for the little faith. Nazareth Cassiano de Jesus, my mother’s mother, krenaks’ daughter received a Christian name, practitioner of Candomblé was admitted in a mental hospital in Barbacena _ people say that she became insane after pledging half bag of coffee to the devil in exchange for the love of the mestizo, Pedro Gonçalves da Silva, my mother’s father. Divino Gonçalves da Silva, full brother to my mother with indigenous stereotype, belonged to Candomblé _ always walked in the stretch working here and there on farms and other services. the last time I saw him still a child [shortly before start working with pigs] _ for over 20 years, in a gas station, he told me that he was going to Rondônia [land where there are still slaves, lured by promises of Eldorado], since then he is not seen. The slaves brought to Minas Gerais went walking_ horses were used only by free men. Between September 1989 and February 1990 on the highway between Belo Horizonte and Curvelo/MG I always saw a boy whose coal on the skin, in my imagination, made him black like Africa.

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THE NAME OF THE POPE [on behalf of the mother]

When a woman marries adopts the name of her husband’s family, she can remain with hers or just use the man’s. Upon marrying, a man almost never adopts the name of the woman’s family; and children can receive both names, of father and mother, but if they receive only one, it is rare to be the mother’s. Peter, one of the apostles of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, is appointed as the cornerstone of Christianity [Catholicism], considered the first pope of the Catholic Church. Pedro Gonçalves da Silva, my mother’s mestizo father was named after his father and his mother. An African slave in America was losing his original name and received the family name of the slave master. When his children were born they received this new name and carried it when sold to other lands. When freed those same slaves remained with the family name of the slave master and transmitted to their children. With the abolition in Brazil in 1888, many slaves in Minas Gerais, from Benin, that had made ​​efforts to save money with mining, returned to their country of origin, where today is the / kartiE BrEzilian /, with the names of the families of their slaveholders. It is possible to find in the French Africa many individuals named Da Silva. Nazareth Cassiano de Jesus, the daughter of krenaks Indians, had a Christian name, her parents when leave their lands to live among whites didn’t baptize her with the Krenak name. A pope when elected can choose and adopt a new name, honoring a previous pope, or can keep his own name. The Tuxauas  Indians  from Amazon has a habit of not reveal their indigenous name to those so called “civilized”, nor even for Christian missionaries who stay there for many years, for them they have names of Latin-Christian origins, as Paul for example. For Tuxauas as well as for other Amazonian peoples, the name is the soul of a ”man” and a people, which can be stolen and lost if the name is given / presented to a ”white”. A Tuxaua can not lose their soul for a missionary. When Nazareth Cassiano de Jesus married Pedro Gonçalves da Silva, hasn’t adopted the man’s family name, but her name was not given to their children. Artists usually adopt another name when they assume the status of artist; they can choose a nickname, create a corruption of their own name, and among many, choose the name of their city as birth mark. A city can receive the name of a person who somehow had an influence on its history, by birth or political issues. When Jewish people from Portugal were persecuted by the Inquisition they converted to Catholicism and chose other names to reintroduce them, many of the names were derived from the local fauna as Figueiras or Oliveiras and others are generic as Silveiras or Da Silva [wild, sylvatic, from the jungle], they were known as New Christians and began to be monitored by the Inquisition in order to avoiding them of practicing the Jewish rites secretly. As having remote lands not very propitious to fiscal Catholics, Brazil received a large group of new Christians who ended up moving to the interior of Minas Gerais,  land still wild where  was being born the baroque art with its  sacred and secular features  reigning and reflecting the local lifestyle . The mining towns like many others of Brazil were named from Catholic saints, as the number of towns was infinitely larger than the number of saints or the saints had devotees in different parts of the world, the cities complemented the names with a particular characteristic such as Santo Antonio das Figueiras. Ana Gonçalves da Silva when married Manuel Miguel da Silva, already had the name chosen by the New Christians, it wasn’t necessary to adopt the husband’s name. Jesus of Nazareth was a Jewish from  the town  of NAZARETH, who had revolutionary ideas of liberation, that bothered both a privileged few Jews and the Roman Empire, to transmit his thoughts traveled by the ancient world and gathered 12 apostles who would help him in such a task, among them was Peter, the fisherman, who for a moment of disbelief couldn’t walk over the Sea of Galilee, but who has followed the Christ throughout the old world, while he lived, but for fear, and following the prophecy  denied  being  his friend before the Roman soldiers who would take him to death. Nevertheless Peter followed the thoughts of Christ, being considered by the Catholic Church the cornerstone of Christianity, his name is given to several Christians. Saul Roman soldier, a persecutor of Christians, is visited by the angel sent from God, he changes his thoughts and his name became Paul, the small [humble], the evangelist his name  is transmitted to the  Christians_  historians consider him a mentor of Christianity. The pioneers of Protestantism, who wanted reforms in Christian behavior, chasing to bring it more and more  to the thoughts of Christ_ denied the authority of the Pope, preaching free interpretation of texts, each man and woman should do their own reading and interpretation of the sacred without being influenced by the the thought of another. Protestantism has spread through Europe and came to the Netherlands, which was Presbyterian and would colonize part of  the  northeastern of Brazil in the 17th century, making the  City of  Recife its capital;  tolerant  in the  colony, they allowed the immigration of Jews to the city, where would be created the first synagogue of Americas.  Manuel Miguel da Silva, my father, grandson of Italian immigrants, born in Galiléia, a small town of the  interior of Minas Gerais _ constant name in the sacred texts of Jews and Christians, when was born receives a new Christian surname.  By keeping the name of new Christian, my father had the right to an inheritance, result of the sale of lands inherited by her Italian grandmother; the same lands belonged by the krenaks and donated by the government to European immigrants. Inheritance which his Protestant brother wouldn’t have the right for having changed his surname after the death of his parents. In a prosperous period Santo Antonio das Figueiras, is elevated the category of city by the Governor of the State, which baptizes it with his own name and title: Governador Valadares. As an artist I carry the name of my mother’s mother, Nazareth Cassiano of Jesus, Candomblé practitioner who had in her name reference of the Christ’s city   and to the Christ himself. After many wars in the City of Recife, the Dutch were expelled and with them the Jews, who would be persecuted and thus emigrated to New Amsterdam, New York today and their Manhratã. On the Island of God I see foreigners missionaries wearing white shirts and black ties speaking of God and they say which religion to follow, on the outskirts of Pernambuco it is still necessary “to play” to make religion, a white-haired man told me he couldn’t say what is right; heads down looking at the interior I should ask, right, to God.  The Orthodox Jews don’t say God’s name they write but don’t read: הוהי. In Recife, I walk everywhere without the help of automotive vehicles or animals, I visit synagogues and mosques and terreiros of Maracatu, but I can not walk over the water. I learn a prayer a prayer in Hebrew and another in Arabic and I go to the Father Leo’s house to ask for the blessing. It is still difficult to hear and recognize names in Yoruba. Prosperous cities tend to receive migrants of many parts of the world. In different periods, Governador Valadares received investment and people from various places in the world; such as Americans for the exploration of mica and businesses with precious and semi-precious stones. Behind the business have appeared prostitutes. In prosperous periods passed through Governador Valadares women from France, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazilian with French names. In many Brazilian cities, with emphasis on the north and northeast, traffickers kidnap women to slave work as prostitutes in Spain, Italy, France and among others Portugal. My father didn’t preserve the heritage left by his Italian grandmother. Many relatives went to the United States of America walking through the desert of the New Mexico; others went to Europe through Portugal. My father never left the town where he grew up. Had my father lost his inheritance to a French prostitute?

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CONSÓRCIO / CONSORTIUM ART[E]

PROJETO: ANJO ABASTADO ( OU ANJO DA PROSPERIDADE)

UMA VIAGEM À EUROPA NO SUL DA AMÉRICA

[ PROJECT: RICH ANGEL (OR ANGEL OF PROSPERTY)

A journey to Europe in South America]

obra de Arte viagem [Traveling art, Journey art, Art voyage, art Journé]

PAULO NAZARETH-ARTE CONTEMPORÂNEA / LTDA, por meio deste torna público, para

conhecimento dos interessados (críticos, curadores, colecionadores, etc) que está aberto o processo de

aquisição de ações/cotas do consórcio de arte contemporânea segmento: Arte Viagem , Traveling Art, Art

Journé.

[Through this news PAULO NAZARETH-ARTE CONTEMPORÂNEA / LTDA notice for every body

that the process of acquisition of the contemporary art consortium´s shares Traveling Art, arte viagem or

Art Journé is open.]

PROCEDURE:                                                                                                                                                                   - Selling ​​77 shares (parts) consortium of contemporary work of art: Wealthy Angel [or Angel of Prosperity] A TRIP TO EUROPE IN THE SOUTH OF AMERICA.                                                                                                                                         - Purchase a BRASILIA AMARELA (YELLOW BRASILIA) in the value up to R $ 4,999.00 in the outskirts of Grande Belo Horizonte / MG - Brazil (Palmital Neighborhood-Santa Luzia, considered at the time of its foundation the largest housing development in Latin America).

- The buyer / collector / consorted of the artwork, receives an invoice and later a photograph of the vehicle parked beneath an Ipê Amarelo tree, which serves as the proof of ownership of the Art Travel (traveling art, art journey, or in French:  art Voyage, art journé); each note is part of a whole, but as a picture it works as a completed work.

- Amount R$100,00 for Brazil or the corresponding value for Latin America and other countries of the the Southern Hemisphere.100 euros to EU countries. U$100 for USA and Canada.

- Travelling with the Brasília to French Guiana in South America, the only territory in Continental South America that is part of the European Union.

Take the image of São Cristóvão (Saint Christopher), protector of mariners and drivers.

-Route: follow by the Brazilian countryside, through the hinterland of Minas Gerais and Goiás, go through Brasília proceed towards Belém,  cross the Oiapoque  by ferry and heading towards  Saint Georges first city after crossing the border of Guyana.

- On the way, park the BRASILIA beneath Ipês Amarelos trees found on the road, photograph and send a photo by email for each collector / consorted.
-Returning to the starting point by the Coast stopping in major cities in northern and northeastern of Brazil, with mandatory stops in the cities ”invaded” by the French during the Portuguese colonial period.

- The work will be documented in video, photography, audio, journal, pamphlet, xylography, metal engraving, lithography and other means that the artist seems appropriate.

Note: The artist doesn’t have driver’s license yet, but is committed to obtain the required license to drive the vehicle up to the date of the trip, otherwise shall contract a driver (personal driver or chauffer) for the same function. The consortium members will have purchase receipt that qualifies them as owners of the work. The edict will be published in gauge Portuguese and English on the website: www.artecontemporanealtda.blogspot.com , may participate in the consortium people from any part of the world who are interested in contemporary art.

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“All Faces, Minds and Bodies that have passed here ”is a project of archiving the world or any part of it; it is utopia. It is requested that visitors sit down and start typing their visiting, passage or transition form; this visitor should be public, but an integral part of the work. Thus the work is completed even if it is incomplete by essence. Because it is a work in progress (a work in process), this will not be ready even when completed, it is impossible to catalog all who have passed through here or who still will pass. But this is not the problem of or to the work; I think that what this work points to is the impossibility, the attempt of recording all actions of human in the world. Paulo Nazareth – Arte Contemporânea / LTDA deals of the inability of control.

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I think ”ABOUT THE DISPLACEMENT OF THINGS AND PEOPLE [on migration of people & things]“ deals with issues relating to displacement of the gaze, the displacement of bodies and thoughts. Handbags made of bags suggest travel of people and report about the transport of goods, Kombi, bus; airplane trails say both about objects as about bodies that change places. The displacement is also of concept that transforms ordinary objects into works of art, proposing a dialogue between space and time. Transforming the market of food (bananas) into the art market is dislocating things from their place of addiction, and also transforming the concepts.

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The displacement is also found in other projects, ”project: collection of boats that migrate to the north” it is a collection where the object remains in its place, but even thus it is displaced to the art space, it is moved when the PNAC / LTDA name them and assembled them in a collection composed of boats that were destroyed, boats that the artist doesn’t realize and boats that may be built. PNAC / LTDA appropriates the non-existent, and the nothing and dislocates to the world. It proposes to go beyond political borders, a collection of objects that don’t need to be present in the exhibition space, but are suggested in this place, PNAC / LTDA proposes the displacement of the spectator. The one, who surrenders before the work, needs to be displaced into their psychological time and is taken for places where their wandering operates.

The Objects of Art are any gaps that allow a distinctive gaze that provokes other thinking and wandering. To imagine that the bags / sacks are objects that have traveled the world is to move to allow in a historical, geographical and political contest ,. PNAC /LTDA appropriates legal and clandestine journeys by naming them such experiences as Objects of Art, both people and objects can move in the world and are prevented from moving.

PNAC / LTDA believes that objects have a greater capacity of displacement in political boundaries than people, but they can also be unable to leave or enter in case they assume too much personal characteristics of their owners. Objects of Art can deal with economic embargoes, such as the blockade imposed on Cuba where things (can’t enter) and also people who can’t leave, people who don’t want to leave and people who wants to leave because things (goods) can’t enter. They suggest something about the food crisis, the formation of the peoples of the Americas. PNAC / LTDA projects that an exhibition space dedicated to contemporary arts is full of hens from Angola, they stay there as in the Candomblé terreiro, to frighten death. PNAC / LTDA collects ”cases” of people constantly in displacement, and who are followed by several things, cases they have heard about the blacks slave trade, and as the hens were used to facilitate it. Remember also that the hens would have disappeared from Angola and had to be imported from Brazil. PNAC / LTDA believes that people and object Ddisplacement stimulates thoughts and, for good or for ill, it is permanent.

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I_think_ in_ America_ and_ in_ Haiti_ and_ about_ me_ slaves_ of_ gain_ fruit_ vendors_ of Tropicais_fruits_ tropical_fruits._Much_of_ the_ Brazilian_slums_ are_ located_ on_ hills_ slopes_ and_ ravines._With_the_tropical_ rains_the_cleared_land_ without_vegetation_ suffers_ erosion_ and_ slides_ down_the_hill_ and_may_ carry_ the_shack_along._For_ the_ ravine_ don’t_fall_ people_ build_  wall_ of_ support_ which_ turns_ the_ shack_ more_ expensive._ A individual_who_supports_the_family_is_a_breadwinner:_ the_ individual_ (child_ nephew_, grandchild)­_who_ lives_ with_their_family_and_ not_let_them_ give_in;_all_ are_ supported._ A_ shack_ can_ be_ a_ support_to_ another_ shack._ In_ the_slums_ made_of_ ceramic_ bricks_ without_ plaster_ when_the_ rains_come_, turn_  the__fences_into_clay. _In _Brazil _when_you_declare__to_ be_”breadwinner“_ it_ _is _a _way_to _avoid _mandatory_military_service. _For_lack _of _perspective _many _young_men_enlist_ as_ volunteers _a _promoting_career ._ As _a_volunteer_ I_was_discharged_from excess_of_ contingent._If _there_is_ war_I_ should_ present_ myself_ immediately. _Brazil_has_a _”peaceful _tradition”._ A_soldier _can _not _live_ in _carioca _slums_ they_are_ impeded_ by_the_drug_trade._ There_are_suspicions_ that_ weapons_ of _trafficking_ may_be_ provided_ by_members_ of_ the_army. _In_emergency_situations _the _army_ is _convened _to _occupy _the _slums. _Since _2004_the_Brazilian_army_ occupies_ _the_ streets_ of_ Haiti. As_ part_ of_ UN_peacekeeping_ forces_ have_arrived _to_ occupy _the _place_ of_ Americans_ and_ Canadians_ they_have _greater_ approval _among_the_population_ than_their _predecessors.­_ A _Brazilian _soldier_ in _Haiti_ can _earn _a _salary_ three_ times_ higher_ than_ in _Brazil;_and _its_housing_ may_be_ more  _comfortable _than_their _houses. _Some _soldiers _who _work _in _Haiti _often _keep _what _they_earn _over_ to _buy _their_own_house._ In _countries _where _war _is _civil _or _military_ it _is _difficult_ to _maintain_ agricultural_activities. _The _plants_ have_ the _capacity_ to _take _their _nutrients_ from _the _soil;_ animals_ and_ humans_ not_ so_much. _Creationism _believes _that _the _first_ man _was _made ​​_by _God _from _the _clay _[earth _and _water] _many _African _slaves_ in _the_ Americas_ to _be _free ’_ stifled_ themselves_ by _eating_ earth _they _believed _that _their _spirits _would _return _to _Africa. _Children _with _worms_ and _undernourished _eat_earth_ by_ instinct. _Haitians _hungry_ the_lack _of_ other_foods _eat _earth_,salt _and _fat._ In _three _days _of _fasting_ I_ imagine_ the_ taste _of  _buttery _biscuits _made _of _earth._ By _fasting _Guilherme _a _Jew_ from_ the_ _countryside_ of _the _State_ of_ Minas _Gerais_  asked _me_ if _I _was _asking_ forgiveness _for_anything_ like_ the_ hunger_ for_ example. _ My _mother_ taught _me _not to_ leave_ food _on_ the _plate _and _I _can _eat_ while_ I_ am _hungry _but_ not _for_ greediness. _Haiti _was_ a _French _colony_ one_ of _the _first _countries_ to _become_independent_. In _its_ constitution_ it_is _declared_ that_ thereafter_ all _Haitians _would _be _considered _black. _As _a _soldier_  from _the _Brazilian_ army  _I_ could _be _here _today _among _the _troops_ in _Haiti. _What _is _the _color_ of_ my _skin? _As _foreign _soldier_ in_ Haiti _would _ I _be _a _black man?_ Military_ approach_ me _when _I _am _on _the _outskirts. _Why_ men_ of_ wavy _hair_ can _not _have _them_  long?_ Why _dark-skinned_ men_ are always _suspect?

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About the peoples of the Americas is told that: in a period of great coldness on the land, ancestors of the people who “we know” as Indians came from Asia and drifting they reached the Americas. Walking on the waters of the Bering Strait _extreme point between the Asia and the Americas, more specifically between Alaska and Siberia _the ancestors of Amerindians started the cycle of migration to the Americas. Archaeologists who know that Luzia [a woman fossil that is 11 thousand years old, the oldest ever recorded, found in Lagoa Santa, Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte / MG] say that the first migrants to arrive on this continent were the ancestors of Australian Aborigines and black people from Africa, later they were joined by the Asians, of whom descend the people who Colombo called Indians, for believing that he was coming to the extreme of the India. It is believed that Arab merchants have ”spread” the banana for a large part of Africa, from trips taken to the extreme of Asia. The Aimorés, so named by the Portuguese, or Tapuias _as were called by the Tupi-guaranis_ from the Portuguese invasion they withdrew from the southern coast of Bahia and entered the country towards the valley of Rio Doce and Jequitinhonha being established between the states of Minas Gerais _ and Espírito Santo_ that had  their forests preserved  by the Portuguese metropolis to serve as a natural shield against other invaders. The Tapuias by ”economic” and security issues were divided into subgroups that received the name of their leader. The krenaks are one of those subgroups. The collector, hunter and fishermen Krenak people, are nomadic by nature. The early merchants were also nomads. The peddler, traveling salesman, is a vestige of those not so distant times. My father_ descent of Italian northeastern _ is a peddler he sells perfumes and hangers from door to door, a native of Galiléia/MG lives in the Governador Valadares city and don’t change it for New York, even with his relatives migrating to the United States of America . The banana grown and marketed in practically all tropical countries of the world, synonymous of Tropicália and Brazilianness, has its origins in the Southeast of Asia. After the Arab traders spread the banana on the African continent. The Portuguese brought it to the Americas along with the black slaves. In mid XVI century, the Portuguese began to “plant” the first banana crops in Brazil and in the Portuguese Africa when the project of Portuguese colonization was started. The banana, with a variety of cultivation is the alimentary base of many people in the tropics. The United States and European Union are the biggest buyers of the world, yet only 10% or 15% of the world production is destined for exportation. Shipping is done with bananas still green, because if it is ripe it wouldn’t support the journey, so some say that the banana in the tropics is sweeter and has a more vivid taste. When migrants leave their lands they are still young, it’s hard to settle in a foreign land when you have already strong roots in your native land. Next to rice, wheat and corn, banana is among the food products most produced in the world. Banana rises in bunches that are formed at the top of the banana trees that are the pseudo stems, the true stem is a rhizome that lies beneath the ground from which the seedlings can be taken. A migrant is like a banana tree they can leave in their homeland a real rhizome of memories, if it hasn’t part of this rhizome it dies without producing fruit. Whenever a bunch of bananas ripens and is harvested the banana tree dies to raise another from it in a cycle of life and death that lasts about 20 years. Bananas usually grows in groups of about 20 per hand and each bunch can have from 7 to 25 bunches, weighing 50 kilos. A banana can have up to 200 grams or more depending on the species. Rich in vitamin A, C, fiber and potassium in its composition there is approximately 75% of water. In Jakarta, Indonesia was the first time I met seeds in a banana. In Jakarta many have asked me if I was maluko, natural from Maluka Island, a land colonized by the Portuguese where they grow bananas long before the arrival of the invaders. When I heard Indonesian I can recognize the familiar words of Portuguese, my first language. The word banana is repeated in several languages,​originated in the Sierra Leonean and Liberian (Africa) languages; it was adopted by the Portuguese and Spanish that transmitted to the British and these spread it to other languages. In Indonesian the word is pisang / piSang /, however everyone knows “banana”. My mother’s mother was the daughter of krenaks Indians, she was forced to stop being what she used to be to survive among the so-called “civilized”, and she couldn’t adapt herself. The mother of my mother spent about 20 years in a psychiatric hospital in Barbacena, which in its period of operation provided cadavers to medical schools throughout Brazil. Since then there is no news of my mother’s mother. Archaeologists suggest that the banana cultivation has started in Asia, for over 5000 years BC, where even today is possible to find several species of wild bananas _as in New Guinea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, etc.. The banana sold at public fairs in Indonesia is considered one of the main ancestors of hybrid banana found in the world. In Italy bananas don’t grow. Getting married or having children with men or women from foreign lands is one way to have the right to stay on such lands. Anthony Paraiba, great grandmother of my father left the Brazilian northeast towards Italy, where he got married to a local woman and had children, returned home bringing family and taking possession of Indian lands, transferred by the dictatorial government to leaseholders ready to “cultivate” with sickles and hoes the dense forest of Vale do Rio Doce in Minas Gerais _the krenaks, botocuto people feared during the Portuguese colonial period had been decreed extinct. The father of my mother _ mestizo that memory doesn’t tell what, but that dark brown skin and curly hair  denounces _ didn’t ”own” the land where he lived, planting  rice  and  beans  as a sharecropper  with a hoe and raised pigs feeding them with corn, vegetable peelings and fruit. In his backyard bananas grew in abundance without much care. The banana peel is currently used by specialized firms to produce animal feed. In Governador Valadares region the Indians are looked down for drinking cachaça and for avoiding works of “whites”. On days off, as entertainment, the father of my mother rode on horseback in the town of Fazenda Suaçuí district of Governador Valadares, drinking cachaça and scratching his knife on the floor because he was a man who worked the land, he had the respect of his colleagues and local guard. Because it is fruitful at any time of the year, the banana is the ideal culture to combat hunger; it will always be unacceptable to declare their scarcity in tropical countries. Well known for coca production, Colombians are among the largest banana exporters in the world. Identified as a refuge for drug dealers  the Brazilian slums have in any space between one shack  and  another  a banana tree, which by retaining enough water in their stems often cause landslides from ravines. The banana is the second most consumed fruit in Brazil, where most of our production is concentrated in the northeast responsible for about 35% of what is produced in the country _one of the largest producers of the world. Countries where there is a high index of corruption, impunity and / or oppression are called Banana Republic, the term arose in the early 20^th century referring to Honduras due to the presence and strong political influence in local business of the United Fruit Company and Standard Fruit that monopolized the important banana export sector and corrupted local politicians. Later the term has expanded along with all forms of dictatorships spread throughout Latin America that relied on the endorsement of U.S. Politicians. Throughout the history of the arts different artists drank from the same straw of paradisiacal muse.

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By Kiki Mazzucchelli, curator.

Existing in Portugal in the XV century, the necessary conditions – the economic structure and, hence, the mastery of technique and material resources – for the venture that characterizes, at that stage, the mercantile outbreak, overseas expansion will be mainly driven by the kingdom to be anticipated in the national formation. It corresponds, exactly, to the economic, social and political development of Europe, and will be the enterprise of rigorous method, carefully planned and meticulously developed, that meets the expansionist needs of Commercial Revolution.

What should be read to know Brazil, Nelson Werneck Sodré

My experience of cultural funding in New York is that experimental projects rarely receive support, while private sponsorship encourages self-censorship and the triumph of market imperatives. But deference to big business is explicitly being encouraged in the UK: another of the Arts Council’s stated new targets is to pay heed to the Foreign Office’s emerging power priorities (China, India, Brazil, Gulf States, Russia, Japan). The message seems to be that there’s funding for Chinese art (which paves the way for international commerce), but not for local history. And the latter will have to be looked after by the local populace, rather than valued as national patrimony.

Con-Demmed[ii] to the Bleakest of Futures: Report from the UK, Claire Bishop

As proposed by the present issue of Tatuí, in this short article I wish to explore the idea of displacement as a value, articulated from a personal perspective: my experience as an independent Brazilian curator who has been living in London for over ten years and working in different contexts. I begin with the assumption that, precisely in this decade, there has been an expansion of the flows, changes and exchanges in the context of contemporary art to regions beyond the  Europe-USA axis – as well as their intensification in the countries where they already existed – which led leading to a greater insertion of Brazilian art in the international circuit. In the same period, Brazil also saw  the acceleration of an internal process of the expansion of the contemporary art circuit, with not only the emergence of new commercial galleries – especially those representing young artists –, but also the regional expansion of the circuit, now including other national urban centers besides Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. In spite of being the product of different situations whose analysis would require a more extensive investigation, these two movements suggest both an intensification of flows and a process of decentralization that takes place both nationally and internationally.

Under these circumstances, what interests me here is precisely the impact that these processes of decentralization had on how Brazilian contemporary art is presented, exposed, and interpreted in the European context – and particularly the British context – in the same period. As early as 2001, at the beginning of the decade, contemporary Brazilian art already appears in the exhibition Century City, presented by the Tate Modern – international arm of the old Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain), inaugurated in 2000 – whose purpose was “to explore the relationship between cultural creativity and the metropolis, by focusing on nine cities from around the world at specific moments over the previous hundred years”.[iii]

Besides Rio de Janeiro [iv], the exhibition featured the cities of Mumbai, Lagos, London, Moscow, New York, Paris, Tokyo and Vienna[v]. Not surprisingly, the period chosen to represent Brazilian art was 1950-64, with  Neoconcretism and the architecture of Niemeyer and Reidy, as well as Burle Marx’s landscape design. We observe, thus, since the dawn of the decade, a certain interest in Brazilian art, although it seems, at this point, to be an interest in its historical aspect, showing Brazilian art as the product of a vanguard of the past[vi].

It is from the mid 2000s, when Brazil starts to increasingly become the focus of international media due to a stable and growing economy (having paid off its debt with the IMF a year ahead of schedule in 2005), that Brazilian contemporary art acquires an unprecedented representation in some of the most renowned British mainstream institutions, definitely coming to occupy a prominent place in relation to other countries with equally fecund art productions.

In 2006, the Barbican hosted the traveling exhibition Tropicália[vii], curated by Carlos Basualdo; Tate Modern, on its turn, held solo shows by Hélio Oiticica (2007) and Cildo Meireles (2008-09); in 2010 it was Ernesto Neto’s turn at the Hayward. It was also during the same period (2006-10) that the Arts Council, in partnership with the British Council, launched the second edition of the Artist Links programme, which promoted artistic residencies in Brazil and the UK (the pilot project was with China, from 2002-06), with an investment of 450,000 pounds. Moreover, Brazilian artists featured in numerous smaller scale exhibition projects both in public institutions and in commercial galleries – usually with a more sophisticated approach than the shows presented by large institutions - as well as in artist residency programmes independent from the Artist Links [viii].

Today, Brazilian art’s diverse participation in the international circuit is starting to create spaces beyond the mere reproduction of clichés and the formatting of projects that are more palatable to foreign audiences, reaffirming a discourse that promotes one single Neoconcrete root for all contemporary Brazilian art. Still, the cliché prevails: see, for instance, the “Festival Brazil” (2010) promoted by South Bank Centre (which included Neto’s exhibition at the Hayward) or the festival “Brazil Contemporary”, promoted by the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, in Amsterdam (2009)[ix]. In both cases, the curators  opted, once again, to retrace the Neoconcrete path in order to discuss Brazilian art, either by selecting a established artist who  drinks from the same straw (Neto at the Hayward) or by explicitly taking Oiticica as the main contemporary influence  (and showing, besides him, the works of Ricardo Basbaum, Cao Guimarães, Rivane Neuenschwander and, of course, Ernesto Neto).

It is important to emphasize here that this is not to say that the works of these artists are clichés. What bothers me are the mechanisms of co-opting these artists’ works employed by some large foreign institutions, which end up restricting their potentialities, erasing their peculiarities and putting them in one and the same basic category – the Neoconcrete atavism –, that any art consumer in the world today can absorb with relative ease. Thus, from a relatively incipient representation at the beginning of the decade, Brazil starts to gain more space in the international circuit, without generating significant opportunities to reflect and produce knowledge on Brazilian art.

Therefore, I return to the quotations that precede this text, not with the intention to reach a conclusion, but to raise a few questions regarding the current situation and future possibilities. These quotations have been included not only to state the obvious (that the interest in Brazilian art largely reflects a commercial interest and favorable economic conditions, just as the work of the traveling painters was possible due to the success of the overseas enterprise), but also to suggest a reflection on what kind of knowledge the blockbuster exhibitions are producing about Brazilian art.  Events such as ”Festival Brazil” or ”Contemporary Brazil” do not make any contribution to the understanding of its object, over-simplifying  an extremely complex production and always presenting the work of the same artists.

Meanwhile, in Brazil we have an overheated domestic market, with commercial galleries and art fairs in clear expansion. Paradoxically, most public institutions are still in precarious conditions, often unable to properly care for their own collections, let alone developing a coherent program. There lays the risk: how to protect the role of public institutions - which should be driven by public interests – in a scenario increasingly dominated by private interests? How to produce knowledge on the Brazilian art beyond the marketable stereotype? For whom are these large international exhibitions, being produced and with what purpose?

[i] Title borrowed from a work by Alexandre da Cunha presented at the San Juan Triennial Print Works (Trienal Poligráfica de San Juan), in 2009, which recreates the famous flag of Oiticica modifying the original slogan.

[ii] http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/209. NA: The term ”Con-Dem ’is a neologism describing the current UK government, formed by the coalition between the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties. It is also a pun on the word ’condemn’, which refers to large budget cuts to basic public services (education, culture, health) made ​​by the coalition since its takeover in May, 2010.

[iii] Text of the exhibition at the Tate Modern site: http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/centurycity/, access in December 15, 2010.

[iv]The curatorship of the module Rio de Janeiro was in charge of Paulo Venancio Filho.

[v] Curiously, the show included two other cities in the BRIC group of countries, also an acronym forged in 2001 (11/30/2001) by Jim O’Neil in a paper published by Goldman Sachs entitled ”Building Better Economic BRICs”, whose presentation includes the following points:

- In 2001 and 2002, real GDP growth in large emerging economies will exceed that of the G7.

- In late 2000, GDP in dollars based on PPP in Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) was approximately 23% of world GDP. According to the current base of GDP, the BRIC countries hold 8% of world’s GDP.

- According to current GDP, China’s GDP is larger than that of Italy.

- Over the next 10 years, the BRIC countries, especially China, will have more weight on the world’s GDP, raising important questions about the global economic impact of fiscal and monetary policies of the BRICs.

- According to these previsions, the global forums of policies formulations should be reorganized and the G7, in particular, should be adjusted to incorporate representatives of the BRIC countries.

[vi] Remember that at the end of the 1990s, Brazilian art already had some international projection, and the 24^th São Paulo  Biennial, in 1998, had a strong international repercussion.

[vii] ‘Tropicália: A Revolution in Brazilian Culture’ was also presented in Chicago, Lisbon and New York.

[viii] Examples include Rivane Neuenschwander’s solo show at the South London Gallery (2008), London-based Brazilian artist Alexandre da Cunha’s exhibition at the Camden Arts Centre (2009) and Erika Verzutti’s solo exhibition at  the commercial space Swallow Street  (2009).

[ix] http://www.brazilcontemporary.nl/en/#contemporary-kunst

TATUÍ_ It is clear that the displacements of agents in the field of art occupy the relevant part in the economy of the culture and in its strategies of sociability. Until what point, however, the (mere) mobility wouldn’t be also a way of speculation of value in this field?

HARUM _ If we will mention the cultural capital, I try to discuss the issue with a very particular vision to the way of speculation of what we agree to name here in this conversation as “mobility in the art world”. There is a negative aspect, in my view, that falls directly on the discussion of art, which I throw a question at last: do you leave pleased to see so many artists rooms in mega exhibitions (many of them were in residence throughout the curatorial process, such as the Biennial of São Paulo, just to name the 29th as the last of them) that always deal with those local clichés to foreigner see? Yes, those several works that could better fit in a colloquium of boring presentations in the format of investigative panels and based on personal sociological laboratories, obviously with all properly well documented. You know very well how is the disappointment feeling of replay when faced with another work like these out there.

MICHELINE _ Sitting in my rented apartment’s office-room in Rio de Janeiro, I find it difficult to concentrate with the noise of the building in construction that rises almost in front of my window, covering my already nostalgic view of the forest park across the street. Under these conditions and with the fact that the rent will certainly increase in the next turn of the contract, after all the Olympics and World Cup are coming to the Wonderful City and the coconut in Ipanema now costs R$ 4.00; facing this framework I can’t go any further on this issue than just wanting to write here the term “(un)real states speculation in broad senses”.

For I find myself thinking of territories and in a voracious and angry advance over them, as well as the fact that more and more the capitalist-economic-speculative-cumulative vocabulary advances in each and every aspect of our lives. Vocabulary is not just words; they are ways of dealing with people, facts and processes. This, in terms of art also means disabling some infinity of “other possible” (expression of the geographer Milton Santos).

Of course it is not about ”escaping from the capitalist  world  because it is evil and profiteer”, or making ”the art world” something separate, clear, pure, perfect and magical. Nope, we’re adults, we pay our bills and rent, produce art and several consumer demands, we all know that the spheres influenced and molded. It’s all in the same world, “everythingmixedand altogether” (tudojuntoemisturado), as in the funk music. It is rather to reflect (and experience) about ways of being, transiting, absorbing and be absorbed (inevitably) by mobility, ours and those ones that we conclude.

How to engender other ways to collaborate, to affect and be affected, share, and within the conversation we are having here, not only accumulate stamps in passports  or  miles  on the card or territories ”explored “ to a greater or lesser degree of depth?

It is as if the question ”mobility in contemporary art” was just a ground to be taken by assault and build upon, just a speculative effort of (un) real states: built, occupied, sold, let’s move to another territory to be conquered. It could also be ”art and politics “ or ”the impact of economic practices in the production of contemporary art”. Yes, occupy, fill with armed concepts of concrete and so to fade …

But ok, nothing of nihilism here and hitting the head on the wall on the conceptual and speculative constructions, but I still want to ask the question: how to engender other paths, other ways to produce, other views about what is done? Paths that are less strangled and daring by resolutions and more interested in answers-work or, rather, work-questions.

And I finish here feeling that this exciting and inciting conversation between us scratched me as the theater director Cacá Carvalho has defined the impact on him of the writings of the Polish director Jerzy Grotowski: “words that serve more to work than to define”.

SHIMA _ The mere mobility is already a way of speculation in value. It is strange to see that a passage anywhere varnish the artist with a false aura of someone who has had a constructive experience, whether consciously or not. Obviously it varies from artist to artist, there are others who begin to develop ideas and  readings already  at the counter  boarding, other develop projects from what was collected during the trip, but not all necessarily produce something. Time will reveal who is and who is not working. This type of varnish doesn’t last long, falls to earth as the king’s invisible clothes. It is for each one complies with the commitment established and this has to do with an ethic that is not in literature but with a lifetime conduct.

I believe that the conduct of a production, or a poetic work, is not necessarily linear but radial, exploding in all directions and possible voids. In this regard, I also conclude that there were other non-space mobilities, other movements that aren’t physical, other practices that don’t require a literal displacement.

Recently, I was invited to carry out performances at two different locations, in which I couldn’t be physically present. They proposed to perform the work in ’telepresence’. Somehow, I would be present in Salvador, and two days later in Paris or London, without leaving home. But I don’t agree with telepresence, so I had to decline the invitation. It was signed so that when I go to the city, something would be presented personally, and not ’virtually’. There is an urgency about the immediate, which often causes us to pass over what we believe to “be there”. Lately I’ve been very careful with this kind of procedure. I have to remind me to do one thing at a time, each thing in its time.

HARUM _ I could see up close in 2010 an international program for residences based in the island of Itaparica in Bahia, the Sacatar (www.sacatar.org). The most striking feature from there is the simple fact that the group of residents has to learn how to live with the ’immobility’. That is: it is a great distance place, but once you choose to be temporarily as a resident, there are no alternatives, but to work very isolated on a tropical island, far away from the urban appeals. And that rises all time in the world for their own labor practices and / or then surplus energy to take one’s chance through the mangroves, hills and beach expeditions on horseback, bicycles and boats riding. It may occur or not, with the absolute distance from their place of origin, a breeding season in an address that works as a generator of ideas. It is undeniable that there are many people who often need to go far away from their places of origin in order to achieve some new mentality. From what I know, Sacatar has the precedence of such distinction in the country. The counterpoint is the hype residence model, located in major centers by excellence, specific cities where the events bomb; almost every night opens an interesting exhibition, the social life is intense and too tiring, and of course, the work is little. It is the typical situation where everything ends up looking like that every day comes down to only those who will want to visit you and / or introduces you to who and / or you want to be introduced all the time. On the other hand, the reporting that caught my attention recently, was of a curator in São Paulo who anonymously rented a micro studio on another continent, as the possible starting point for her newest research.

MICHELINE _ Wait a moment.

We experience a lot of mobilities: informational, imagetics, narratives, sonorous, sensory… Both from here to there, taking ’here’ as wherever I am - which allows me to know(limitedly) other places and what happens in these places -, and from there to here: things that come up to me, from places,  people, images, information. It is clear that the mobilities don’t appear so neat and clear in their senses. They are two-way and full of noises halfway (even if a virtual path). They are like the traffic in Peru: no signal, just horn. The horn serves to signal a move done or what not to do or what is being done; everything all the way and at the same time, coming from many directions. The phrase that came to my mind, since being there, watching dollar changers selling U.S. dollars in the pavement, was: ”Come to the world of Marlboro”.

Wait here.

I always think about those who cannot travel, cannot move. What about places that do not move, even if they are virtually, imagetically, narratively “loaded”. Do not underestimate the importance of the place, even towards the ground and what comes over it: the people and their relationships, homes, steps that separate an area / context from another and the time it takes to go through it, added to that we meet unexpectedly in the middle of the path, the physical spaces and their division of power and functions. Making, from a school, a point of culture in the middle of Paraiba is a change in the environment in propagating waves, even if it is as small as a pebble thrown into a weir. And also not underestimate the work of the spot in time and just being there. Realizing the temperatures, velocities, and concentration points. And how much you change that place, whether you like it or not. Whether you realize it or not.

TATUI _ And the idea of drift proposed by Guy Debord?

MICHELINE_ I realize and backrest to the quotation from Debord in his piece about ”… rejecting the reasons to move and act … to surrender to the requests of the land and people they may encounter”.

I try to dig time and empty space in my wanderings out there. Space and time for nothing, just to be there. But I know that ”drifting is more expensive”. Because demands more time, requiring more money to be, to stop, ”to do nothing productive”.

Also ”it is more expensive” because attention, perception requires involvement, something that sometimes we are unaccustomed to engage. Or, even worse, when we are hooked by a mobility-visibility-productivity system. Read up: one week residence program with the REQUIREMENT of a final product, whatever it is, presents a product then! For me, this scheme is fast artistic food that nauseated stomach and trap seen from space; such is the size of the trap.

I remembered Francis Alÿs in his book: In any given situation: Drift Lessons -

First: no mud no text

Second: no landscape no tale

Third: no soil no dream

SHIMA _ Assuming that I am a contemporary to a universe of values ​​and situations, it is impossible to ignore the idea of drifting in the construction of my work. I deal with the environment in which I am inserted all the time: the flow of people, traffic jams in rush hour, the crowded buses during the rain and the empty trains heading to the country side. I have new ideas all the time; I can not chase just an ideal, which makes me refer to blogs, diaries and many notebooks that I feed constantly and simultaneously. The fear of losing some idea makes me to document just about everything, in apparently meaningless photographs, videos, scribbles, notes and records. I keep some infinity of papers at home: flyers, folders, catalogs, napkins and prospects, collected in the course of everyday life. Frequently I look everything that is nearest and separate some to throw away, but these are still reserved for a possible reuse. Sometimes I regret of something that I have eliminated. I avoid walking always on the same streets; despite I really want to pass through certain locations, depending on the day and the hour. Everyday objects can migrate to the arts field, as well as contents of fantastic literature or a childhood trauma. The choices are not necessarily conscious. Suddenly an everyday experience can become a work of art, causing certain sensations and feelings which the artist is already aware, but the public doesn’t. (I think the drift can be found somewhere in this paragraph)

TATUÍ_ How do you conceive the idea of nomadism nowadays? Do you believe to live it?

SHIMA _ Yes! In my case, working more with performance, I believe in the presence of the creator at work act. I need to be the author and protagonist of my performances, for having control of the situation and being able to make small changes during the work, due to internal and / or external factors. I think that only someone who knows the work at heart can do it, or even change it. Soon, I’ve been to at least 100 cities throughout these three years of artistic journey, from Priotrkow Trybunalski, Poland and Rio Branco, Acre, going through Okinawa, Japan and Lisbon, Portugal. Each year that goes by, after I left Recife (where I lived from 2004 to 2007), I spend less time at my home in São Paulo (at my parent’s house). I do not know if I think I’m a nomad: I’m at a nomad ‘moment’. At the same time, I don’t know if I will return to São Paulo. It’s a cycle: I displace to feed myself; however, I need a place to stay, and digest.

HARUM _ I would dare to think that nomadism is currently the conscious exercise as a result of movements and exercises that the individual has to do to survive between languages ​​and cultures, between states and religions, between geography and history – perhaps armed with dual citizenship or a miserable victim  of persecution to the clandestinely, as we see happening in recent times in Sarkozy’s France  with the gypsies, in Colombia with IDPs and those kidnapped by FARC, the Cubans  ‘balseros’  thrown to their fate in the Caribbean Sea or the U.S. against Latin American immigrants trying to enter illegally through Mexican border.

MICHELINE _ “European citizens are those who live or work in Europe, and someone who lives or works in Europe only for a certain period of time, which has a temporary citizenship. Nationality not as a matter of space - linked to the territory in which we are born - but a matter of time - linked to the place in which, at present, we produce trade and establish AFFECTIVE relationships. This proposal would have the interesting side effect of recognizing that ”personal relationships” such as friendship, sex, companionship, cooperation, are as important as marriage and may have the same social value. Replace dead clichés for living necessities”. (Quote from Toni Negri I collected I don’t remember where)

SHIMA _ How to deal with the situation of being a nomad? How to live in nomadism?

MICHELINE _ About nomadism, I always think in immigration, emigration, underground, passports, visas, rights, queues at airports or police, ”sans papiers”, comings and goings, how much it costs, Bolivians, the questions they asked me at the small room  to enter  in Mexico, luggage and ripped bags ,  the amazing people I met  and their places.

Here, and about nomadism, I wanted to set up a photo sequence of a march that ”I filmed” photographing frame by frame in Paris, summer 2010. It is a march of the “sans papiers”, the “undocumented” immigrant workers who work in France, pay taxes, but still are awaiting the acceptance and legalization of their status as non-French, they expect their documents.

(on his shirt it is written: “pass this message”)

Here’s another picture that I think about nomadism (or the impossibility of it?). I saw at an exhibition of artists from Eastern Europe. It is of the artist Mladen Stilinović, Belgrade.

Mladen Stilinović. An artist who cannot speak English is no artist, 1992.

TATUÍ _ There aren’t few Western myths and utopias of understanding by the language, from Babel to the failed project of Esperanto. In these, the homogeneity of language is seen as equality among men, like fraternal aspects of Christian character obviously … The current “homogeneity”, of the English language that serves as mediator in the globalized world seems to have taken the instrumentality of that once was placed in such a utopian way-  strategic and commercial equality  (free market). To what extent do we criticize, to what extent do we feed all this? Could we also expect from art other forms of language in face of so much conditioning of a language? Does art become, for sure, dialogue and mediation?

MICHELINE _ If we still can expect from art other forms of language face to so much conditioning to a language …  I can only say that this is almost EVERYTHING that I expect from art: other forms of language or other bends of the same language …  I say this even though my sentence covers me with a redeemer desperation, but that is not, it is belief in the same artistic language, with all its contradictions, trailers, identification wills and inevitable differentiation of detonations.

SHIMA_ I don’t know if I establish a critic or feed the linguistic hegemony: the work I do needs the context in order to develop. Therefore it is impossible to escape this structure, but letting be part of this structure is not the only solution. In the work with the oral and written language that often I access to write / transcribe /reveal, I try to adapt them to the reality in which it is found: works in Nederland in the Netherlands, in Nihongo in Japan, in Portuguese in Brazil, and in Vlaams and French in Belgium (Brussels), and, ironically, translating everything into English for my portfolio on the internet. The same happens with the titles of works, most are in Portuguese, a good part in the native language of the place where I developed the project and all ’translated’ to a more comprehensive understanding. I don’t know if it is useless to flee of this structure, I see as a necessary evil, and also like a challenge, to develop other forms of language that are not necessarily linked to language, nor of language, neither of art.

SHIMA _ Did we go back to the time of collecting?

MICHELINE _ About ”back to the time of collecting”, I think I’ve already scattered all around, as well as I don’t know where I took, stole, borrowed, got things. Shared authorship,whether you like it or not.

HARUM_ Let’s go Portuñol or Mandarin next time!?

Translated by Denise Pierrotti