Join the Club: Julian Gallo

13th March 2008.

I found this blog when checking on my artist friend Cesar Cornejo (www.cesarcornejo.com) .

He seems to be an Iberian friendly New York fiction writer who blogs to shift writer's block, like me.


http://www.juliangallo.net/blog.cfm?showmonth=8&showyear=2006&showall=1

Welcome To The Club
Have you ever felt that obtaining just a little peace of mind was a Sisyphian effort? Just when you think you're getting there, the boulder just rolls right over you again and you have to start over? Have you ever been accused of being "selfish" by those who always want it their way? Have you ever been accused of being "angry" just because you have an opinion? Have you ever had anyone get angry with you and then not tell you what their angry about? They just stop talking to you and expect you to coddle them and ask them "what's wrong" when it is obvious that it is they who have the problem? Have you ever been criticized for not living up to the expectations others have of you? Expectations that they have defined and not yourself? Have you ever been accused of being "rebellious" and "anti-social" just because you live your life not doing everything that you're told? Is blind obedience to other's standards preferable to thinking and living for yourself? Have you ever been the source of other people's amusement merely because you aren't just like them? In other words, if you don't think, act and/or behave like them, then there's something wrong with you? If you have, welcome to the club. As a grown man, I am tired of all this but yet this is the sort of thing I seem to meet on a daily basis. Maybe it's a cultural thing, I don't know. All I know is there are a hell of a lot of people out there who seem to think if you don't conform to their personal view of the world, then you are either "angry", "anti-social", "rebellious", etc etc. Well...sorry folks. Sorry to disappoint you. Sorry that I am not you. I guess that's a good enough reason to hold it against me. Just think of all the energy you are expending to let me know this. Meanwhile, in the grand scheme of things, I really could care less what you think. So go ahead and expend all that energy. What harm are you really doing to me?

Cesar Cornejo - Education and Peru and Colour in Culture

Siempre la misma historia (The same old story), Cesar Cornejo, 2004.

I am off to to London to see the third Glauber Rocha film at the Tate tonight - Terra em Transe. It is so sad that the curator of this film series, who I have spoken to, did not organize a 'talk' session of some kind, to go with the series. It would be great to have a discussion with some of the other people who are coming to see these films.

But I did enjoy the discussions at the day symposium the Tate held on the work of Helio Oiticica on 2nd June. It was an interesting mixture of academics, art curators, conservators, journalists and artists so the talks varied greatly in detail and in approach. And I was brave enough to spend time talking to some of the audience and speakers, in particular an artist called Cesar Cornejo, who is from Peru. He trained originally as an architect, did his sculptural training and PHD in Japan during the Fujimori years, and now does some installation work which he calls anti-architecture. In some ways his career is like Helio's travelling from 'concrete organizational purity' to work much more socially concerned.

La Cantuta - a grief for a Peruvian tragedy - Cesar Cornejo

2005

The symposium was on 'colour' in Helio Oiticica's work, but it was more about the artistic technicalities than the political issues about 'coded' and 'countercultural symbolism' - the latter is a very 'walking on eggs' area, and led to some quite impassioned (for academics) discussions !!! He does use a lot of yellow, but well before 1964, in his 'concrete period'. But as my Recife intellectuals of the 1950s and 1960s were quite plugged into this as well, I think the cultural debates within Brazil are more interesting and a more fruitful area of research than worrying about whether it is part of international trends of the time (Yves Klein etc). that is because it can be traced in poetry of the period in Recife, and possibly elsewhere. The literary writer I have been considering in relation to this is Carlos Pena Filho and his Soneto do Desmantelo Azul. This was the subject of an earlier film by Claudio Assis ( Amarelo Manga) made in 1993 and called in deference to internationalism Soneto do Desmantelo Blue.

Soneto do Desmantelo Azul

Então, pintei de azul

os meus sapatos

por não poder de azul pintar as ruas,

depois, vesti meus gestos insensatose colori,

as minhas mãos e as tuas...

Carlos Pena Filho(1929-1960)

Actually those who make claims about international influences (ie Western) as dominant are easily revealed as 'Euro-centric' First World cultural snobs. Same problem popped up over the discussions about Helio Oiticica's own post 1959 work, after he worked inthe Mangueira favela in Rio and discovered the structural realities of temporary housing. (It is very damp !.)Contemporary European work (on building materials and structures ) in the same area is derivative of activity in marginalized places, which it then 'universalizes' as a world concern which needs artistic expression, but in the process of course, further marginalizes the very cultural expression which told the story in the first place.



To see the work of Cesar Cornejo - see http://www.cesarcornejo.com/
To see information about Helio Oiticia exhibition - see http://www.tate.org.uk/