Brazilan Art and film - Helio Oiticica

My own picture of the police at the G8 protest, London, April 2009. The shock of the middle classes when the police fail to show respect. I had to use all my 'schoolmarm' powers on a police officer to escape the 'kettle tactics'. The orders were clearly based on a fear of a much more aggressive demonstration than was actually happening.

Event this week.

Dr Karl Posso
Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American StudiesUniversity of Manchester

Suspended Animation: Affect and Affection in Tropicalist Brazil

This paper will examine the central function of the affective image and object in a
selection of works by ‘Cinema Novo’ filmmaker Glauber Rocha (1939-1981) and the
neo-concrete artist Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980) produced during Brazil’s ‘Tropicalist’
period of cultural experimentation in the late 1960s. The concern with social and
political issues at the time of the military dictatorship led Rocha and Oiticica to
attempt to displace conventional knowledge and recognition in order to develop
artistic modes for intervening ethically in the world. Affection in their work becomes
less a question of what is represented – transcendent ideals – and more a case of
violent sensation, a means of interrupting action-reaction circuits: this shift towards
the affective suspension of representation, and of judgement, in/by their work, I
argue, functions as a timely event of ethical intensity.

A paper to be given on Thursday at Cambridge University, and which I would like to hear…

But I have 2 preliminary thoughts. One is that this particular combination of filmmaker and artist was featured at the Tate Modern in 2007, and one of my concerns then about the published work on Oiticica in particular was the arguement that as an artist he was a 'universalised' creative, and not influenced directly by thinking about the poverty problems around him until later in his career. He was not the only Brazilian in the late 1950s to change direction on this - and most important was the art critic, Ferreira Gullar, who had promoted Oiticica, but who became a poet, and went off to Recife to participate in Street Theatre and other direct action cultural work. But there was a French PHD student in Art History from Manchester University speaking at the Tate Modern seminar, who I hope has learned more about the sitituation in Brazil since then. Manchester has some good Brazilian academics in post. Oiticica's work is placed in the care of Texas University, which also has other Brazilian artists work. I am not sure it serves them well if it excludes the environment in which the work was created. Brazil needs this material in its own institutions.

The second point is that I feel by working from the artistic work, to the restrictive event (the didatura) to the change in focus as 'ethical' it ignores signs in the artistic production prior to 1964 - and Glauber Rocha was radical from the begining. My own work with the artistic influences on Joao Cabral de Melo Neto, who was critically interpreted as following an intellectual art appreciation of Miro - image - poem, rather than thinking what images and politics did Cabral instinctively use as a man from Recife, and place in his work. The phrase 'misleading ideas' is much more subtle when, even more than 'tropicalia', the idea of hiding radical truths about Brazilian society in learned cultural discourse of internationalised art is engaged. Of course Cabral had to be 'politically protected' in the Diplomatic Service. The colour idea is key - has Posso picked up on that I wonder. Well I don't mind if my own ideas turn out to be the same as everyone else. I am sure that as a professor, Karl will be much better able to express himself than I can.

I had another quotation that I have been keeping in reserve in thinking about aesthetics of poverty.


"..only what is repressed is symbolised; only what is repressed needs to be symbolised" .


This is apparently from Ernest Jones (1916) who was a contemporary of Freud in Vienna - I don't know the original source, this is in Freud for beginners (1979) p 173. I expect it relates to dreams, not politics.

One last Brazilian puzzle for today. The significance of the 'yellow mercedes' in Clarice Lispector's The hour of the star. Discuss in relation to the 'yellow mercedes' in Amarelo Mango.

A sign to keep going ! Glauber Rocha at the Tate Modern

I often find that when I am very worried about keeping going on this work that I get a 'signal' - something I see on TV or read in the paper is about Brazil. I know it is just a nonsense and I see it because I am 'looking' for it mentally, but it makes me feel heartened, because despite the last post I really love Brazil and its people.



And just as I was working on this tragic 'knowing' episode my nephew arrived home from work and brought up the mail - because I really had been on the computer all day - a progress from television ! And there was the brochure for the Tate - I can't afford to be a member this year, but they still send the programme. And the Helio Otiticica exhibition is on, which I knew, and along with it in June and July - all the Glauber Rocha films the 'novo cinema' of the 1960s I need to see ! I have seen only one of them - O deus e o diable , which was shown to me by my Portuguese language teacher (Newton) in Recife. It features the music of Vila-Lobos and I knew about the film before I ever saw it thanks to another very clever Brazilian friend. You can see some of these on DVD, but it is far nicer to go to the Tate and watch them with other interested Brazilanistas and Brazilians living in London, because they are very political and interesting films - although like all such films, too intellectual for popular appeal, and then banned by the dictatorship. So I need to be finished!! I need to see these films so I need money and I need to be in London !!!!

The Oiticica exhibition is having a seminar about his use of colour - which is deeply involved in the same ironic work of the same period - essentially anti-symbolic, which is explored in my Amarelo Manga film also. So I have been on the right track, just far too slow to write it all down.

Oh god, I feel better.

I meant to give you all some detail about Amarelo Manga. It seems appropriate to choose one in relation to public grief and anonymous grief over death. One of the more shocking episodes in the film is when a dead male body - or 'yellow ham' is supplied by a corrupt official for a character interested in necrophilia, to use for target practice as a private 'turn on '. In contrast when the owner of the 'Hotel Texas' dies, there is much shock and consternation while the money is found for a coffin and he is laid out in the hotel with the residents singing traditional dirges. Both scenes are replete with referencing to other films and cultures, but the contrast is intended to reflect the difference between a community that 'cares' for whatever reason - and one that does not. One who 'needs' a priest and a ceremony and one who does not.

This picture is from 1973, by A H Amaral, called Banana in green and is typical of the ironic use of colour and 'realism' - the bananas and rope. The yellow and green as the colours of the Brazilian flag marked the artistic attempts to circumvent the censorship of the dictatorship and show the real truth. Amaral was in New York.
If you have never been to the Tate Modern in London, can I urge you to visit ? It is one of my favourite parts of London, and has completely changed the old 'South Bank' image. Cross the Thames from St Paul's Cathedral on the Millenium Bridge. Fabulous.
There is a seminar on Helio Oiticica and 'The Body of Colour' which will be webcast on 2 nd June 2007. See
www.tate.org.uk/onlineevents

See you all there!