04/07/2020 Arte e Crítica / Jornal da abca NOTÍCIAS SOBRE A ABCA EDIÇÃO ATUAL EDIÇÕES ANTERIORES JORNAL DA ABCA AICA – INTERNATIONAL n° 31 - Ano XII - Setembro de 2014 → VOLTAR Artigos Art for what? XLVII AICA International Congress Korea 2014. Art and art criticism in a divided society. Sylvia Werneck Human sciences, as the designation implies, are a field of knowledge particularly affected by the way people think, and therefore, are subject to changes in the values or main concerns of the specific time in which they emerge. The way people plan their lives, organize their careers, or raise their children are deeply guided by the dominant way of thinking and its immediate developments. Nowadays, systemic thinking is beginning to permeate the activities of several sectors; companies invest in the integration between their areas, educational institutions plan their programs to promote interdisciplinarity, and cultural initiatives increasingly develop programs to engage the public by providing them various levels of interaction. This is the result of the way we think nowadays, mostly in the Western world and in many places in the Far East. Current buzzwords are integration, inclusion, sustainability, ethics, equal rights, and the awareness of the interconnections between actions in different areas. In this scenario, it is inevitable that much of creative thinking begins to start taking those principles into account. Or at least it should. It is impossible to separate art from real life, which provides the context from where ideas and creative drive emerge from. What aspects of the reality will trigger artistic creation vary from person to person, from context to context and, ultimately, from culture to culture. We are affected by the most pressing issues of our immediate surroundings. For some those might be the environment, for others, human relationships, human rights, the role of technology or politics, or even many or all of those at the same time. Whatever they are, artists, being a kind of “antenna” of the real world, tend to be naturally attentive to them. One of these aspects is the functioning of society. Particularly in developing countries, there is a significant number of artists who are inspired by and address social issues in their work. After all, one can only create a repertoire amidst his/her own context. In Brazil, for instance, that means a society extremely divided into two worlds: one of international economic projection and another of vast social discrepancies. Since 2013, protests throughout the country have showed that a large number of people are dissatisfied with this. While it is true that lower classes have reached higher purchasing power, on the other hand, basic needs such as good education, public health or efficient transportation remain at a deplorable level. We have become consumers, much more than citizens. What is the role of art (and art criticism) in such a dire reality? This paper aims to address the role of the art critic as a mediator between the audience and art’s potential as “food for thought”. We all know and have experienced the shrinkage of the space where art critics can act – less and less space on regular newspapers and magazines has www.f2mvirtual.com.br/abca/n31/12werneck.html 1/6 04/07/2020 Arte e Crítica / Jornal da abca pushed us to specialized media and academic events like this very one we are at now, a niche that is only known and accessed by a very restricted public. We have been isolated in an Ivory Tower without contact with the real world, the real people to whom art has so much to say. In order to truly exercise its potential of making people think and even, hopefully, be inspired to take action, the message of art must be understood. This cannot happen without mediation, especially in countries with poor education, and, consequently, poor critical thinking. Only by becoming mediators instead of judges, critics can effectively reach the general public and establish a dialogue with them. Otherwise, the message will only reach the meager portion of society that is equipped with the necessary background to decipher the language of contemporary art. Working in partnership with artists to develop ways of engaging the general public might be an exciting and fruitful way to put our critical knowledge at the service of the people. This might imply shifting the focus of our work a little, like developing a review of an exhibition or a wall text with an educational approach in order to turn it into a comprehension aid to the potential viewer, doing curatorial work having the public in mind, or proposing projects to engage visitors in different levels. In any way, we should put ourselves in the position of a facilitator, a liaison between the artwork and the public, instead of remaining as specialists that can only be fully understood by a very restricted group of connoisseurs. At this point, I would like to give some examples of initiatives that address pressing issues, and that establish connections between different areas. The first example is the project of urban interventions called Artecidade (Artcity), organized by Nelson Brissac Peixoto in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, between the years of 1994 and 2006. It was a pioneer at a time where this modality of art was in its beginnings. The purpose was to call attention to critical areas directly related to restructuring processes and redevelopment projects, in order to identify their agents, and raise the awareness about the history, diversity and context of those places. Arte/cidade gathered Brazilian and international artists and architects to develop unconventional artistic practices. The first edition, “City without Windows” (1994), occupied the old Municipal Slaughterhouse, which, at the time, was a construction that had been abandoned for 60 years and was starting a process of reconversion into a cultural space. Four years later, it was reopened as the Brazilian Cinematheque, and nowadays, fully remodeled, hosts the biggest collection of films in Latin America, as well as a permanent program of movie sessions and events about the seventh art. In 1994, part of the structure was in ruins within high walls that isolated it from the rest of the city. The heavy structure received artists that created site-specific works that explored the matter, the inertia and the weight of things. Carmela Gross conceived her installation as if it was an “archeological” investigation of the many layers of the ground of the old municipal slaughterhouse, calling attention to the story of the place in the development of the city. www.f2mvirtual.com.br/abca/n31/12werneck.html 2/6 04/07/2020 Arte e Crítica / Jornal da abca Holes, 1994. Carmela Gross Intervention, 18m x 18m “The city and its flows” (1995) occupied the top of three buildings in downtown São Paulo, an area without clear limits, with works that explored movement, light, and the gigantic scale of the megalopolis. Periscope, 1995. Guto Lacaz Installation, mixed media, 32m high. Guto Lacaz promoted the integration between the passers-by on the street and those visiting the exhibition on the second floor of the building. Through the periscope, people on the street could see the inside of the building, whereas those inside were able to see the movement on the street. “The city and its stories” (1997) focused on shedding light on the invisibility of degraded areas where in the past there was a vivid manufacturing activity. Visitors boarded a train at the historical Luz Train Station to see works disposed along significant places of the old manufacturing period, by then practically invisible to observation and apart from the city’s activities. www.f2mvirtual.com.br/abca/n31/12werneck.html 3/6 04/07/2020 Arte e Crítica / Jornal da abca Untitled. Cildo Meirelles, 1997 Installation with 7000 syringes Cildo Meirelles devised an intensive artwork about drug addicts who used abandoned buildings to inject themselves with drugs. The walls of the room were covered with 700 syringes, preserving the multiple graffiti writings made by anonymous people throughout the years. Arte/Cidade – East Zone took place in 2002, in an area of approximately 10 km2 in Eastern São Paulo, the first region to receive immigrants and the industrialization of the city. It is the megalopolis’ most populated region, and one with high contrasts that result from a long period of divestment. In large abandoned areas there are huge favelas, informal commerce and illegal occupation. Intervention in Largo do Glicério, 2002. Vito Acconci. Vito Acconci’s proposal for this central area famous for the great amount of homeless people was not to change it nor hide it, but rather to “accept” their situation and create adjustments to make their temporary stay a little more comfortable and promote opportunities of interaction. Nowadays, Artecidade continues to exist, but as a group that studies urban planning situations. There have also been some proposals in other cities. Artist Eduardo Srur makes large-scale urban interventions, frequently aimed at social issues or the environment. One example is the work PETS (2008), composed of giant inflatable PET bottles disposed along the banks of Tietê River, known for being a dead, incredibly polluted river. The bottles were lit at night, making them visible for drivers at the rush hour and, after they were removed, the plastic material of the bottles was transformed into backpacks www.f2mvirtual.com.br/abca/n31/12werneck.html 4/6 04/07/2020 Arte e Crítica / Jornal da abca designed by artist Jum Nakao and donated to students of the public schools who visited the installation. PETS, 2008. Eduardo Srur/ Backpacks Apexart Franchise Program is an initiative that makes open calls for art exhibitions based on ideas, which can take place anywhere in the world, except for New York City, where the organization is based. Due to the focus on ideas, applicants are able to address any issue, spreading the reach of contemporary art around the world. One of the three proposals selected for this year is Beauty Salons and the Beast, held in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. Curated by Rehema Chachage and Jan van Esch, its goal is to bring art to the general population, who doesn’t have the habit of visiting exhibitions, added to the fact that there aren’t many cultural spaces available. One-day “pop up” exhibitions by artists working with new and experimental media, followed by discussions, take place at barber shops and beauty salons, where people from all social classes spend a large amount of their free time. Back to Brazil, Marcone Moreira is an artist who gets inspired by the environment and historical and current events of his region, the Amazon. His hometown, Marabá, is one of the most violent cities in the country, ranking 3rd in murder rates and 2nd in youth proneness to crime. One of the ways of making the streets safer is to create opportunities for people to make use of public spaces, taking ownership of them and turning them into places of staying and being together, rather than simply passing by. In 2010, the artist disposed his installation Banzeiro on the riverfront of the Tocantins River. The work is composed by wooden bows that form the structure of canoes, a very common means of transportation in the region. The area doesn’t have appropriate urban furniture to attract citizens to stay there. During this one-day intervention, not only children, but also adults interacted with the “sculpture”, activating the work and making the area, even if temporarily, a nice place for being together. Banzeiro, 2010. Marcone Moreira Wood, variable dimensions www.f2mvirtual.com.br/abca/n31/12werneck.html 5/6 04/07/2020 Arte e Crítica / Jornal da abca These are a few examples of ways to insert art into the real context and pressing issues of everyday life. Developing ways to work in cooperation with artists in a more proactive way, rather than just analyzing works after they have been concluded might be both challenging and rewarding. Other fruitful relationships could be with art educators via museums, cultural institutions or publishing houses in order to get involved in projects to spread the reach of the knowledge about art to a broader audience. Maybe where the contemporary art critic will work is not so important as how they are going to work, or who the target public is. Sometimes we – professionals of the art system - are so involved in our thinking, knowledge and analyses that we end up losing track of the fact that art is communication (otherwise it wouldn’t need to be seen or experienced by anyone rather than the artist), and thus needs to have the viewer in mind and work on ways to assure that the message is received and understood. In today’s world, in order to reach the interlocutor, it is necessary to engage them, to make them feel they can relate to art. That can only be possible if we come down from our Ivory Tower and approach the real people in the real world. n° 31 - Ano XII - Setembro de 2014 → VOLTAR www.f2mvirtual.com.br/abca/n31/12werneck.html 6/6