My recent article, here in the magazine ARTE!BrasileirosOn The Brazilian Tosco in Philosophy and the Arts, was not received without criticism from Sabrina Sedlmayer, whom I thank for her reading and extensive development in her text. Speculative attack or the gambiarra versus the Brazilian rough:
“Perhaps because the psychoanalyst is grossly wrong in betting that “the fundamental method of Tosco Brasileiro” is the gambiarra, a term that originally refers to the irregular extension of a lighting line or a “fraudulent connection”, which is in any way precarious and ugly, improvised or made according to the circumstances, while archetypal style “Brazilian way". (Dunker, 2019, p.2)
If the etymology is partly correct, the thesis is false. I will try to point out, then, as in the experimentation of art, music and literature, the gambiarra is, also, a powerful creative device, with an impact on the history of contemporary Brazilian art, extrapolating the period (ironically) listed by the author.” (Sedlmayer, 2019)
Sabrina's text strives to show the noble and distinct origin and presence of the notion of gambiarra, bringing together interesting and fruitful references in the visual arts: Rivane Neuenschwander, Cabelo, Jarbas Lopes, Efrain de Almeida, Alexandre da Cunha, Marepe, Cao Guimarães, in addition to Bispo do Rosário. Gambiarras would be present in the vanguards since the object trouvé it's the ready made by Duchamp, until the use of collage and DIY. Gambiarra appears as modes of operandi in Giuliano's experimental music, in the literature of Kafka and his Odradeks. There are hack-lifes, hack-works, hack-studios, hack-materials and architectures that personify hacks, like Reverón's.
I broadly agree with Sabrina that “gambiarra is, also, a powerful creative device, with an impact on the history of contemporary Brazilian art, extrapolating the period (ironically) listed by the author. But I call the reader's attention to this "also” highlighted by Sabrina. That is, if my text had said something like “the gambiarra is a method invented by Tosco" or "the gambiarra is a method of exclusive and private use of Tosco” Your criticism would be pertinent, but this is not the case. The gambiarra remains and persists as “fundamental method of Tosco” although this method has been used more powerfully and creatively in other authors and in other aesthetic programs.
Everything happens, in the tone and in the qualifiers chosen by Sabrina, as if my text were discrediting the gambiarra method, since it is associated with the Brazilian rough. There is a logical error here, as it seems to be based on the following inference:
The. THE Brazilian rough uses the gambiarra as a method to give way to the return of the repressed, regressive in Brazilian culture (corruption of expressive forms, sexualized violence, anti-intellectualism).
B. THE gambiarra it is a relevant, creative and potent method in the history of arts and culture.
ç. then the gambiarra may not be used in service of the purposes of the coarseness.
The logical error consists in the simple inversion of the predicate, deducing that: “sand all rough is a gambiarra", soon "every gambiarra is rough”, which is grossly false. The paralogism contaminates the rest of the argument: "if Tosco= Gambiarra = Period (2010-2019)", soon "Gambiarra = Period (2010-2109)”. not only the Brazilian rough is not the exclusive owner, nor the first, nor the only one to use the gambiarra, as the gambiarra was not invented in this decade, as a “potent creative device”. Saying that the gambiarra is the fundamental method is different from saying that the gambiarra was invented by the Brazilian rough. But in criticizing my gross error, Sedlmayer provides the occasion for us to characterize how the logic of critical argumentation works, in which the Brazilian rough can lean on. Aesthetic criticism, according to the Brazilian rough is yet to be invented, but I don't know if this is where my interlocutor is inscribed.
So it is equally useless to subsequent criticism against the partial characterization I used in the etymology of the word “gambiarra”. It is true. It does not understand the entire semantic and historical field of the term. But this happens because my objective is to show the convergence and parity, and not the identity, between the predicate of the gambiarra and the Brazilian rough, as its subject. The “smart legs of the street vendor about to flee”, the “temporary Tupi camp”, the subversion of the purpose of use, the generic connotation of “transgression, fraud or tunga”, the affinity with nomadism, territorial improvisation, creative instrumentalization and use of contingency, that is, all the infinite historical or ontological characterization of the gambiarra will never immunize it or prevent it from being used with formal bad taste, at the same time uncreative mode or on ideological platforms. We can carry out the impeccable and rigorous archeology of a hammer, and it does not follow that it cannot be used to hit someone on the head. It will not prevent one who has a hammer in his hand from being tempted to see nails everywhere.
This is clearly pointed out in my text, for two reasons. first, the Tosco was presented as a non-dialectical inversion of the aesthetics of Precarity, so it is the precarious and not the gambiarra that conceptually characterizes the Tosco. Second, the gambiarra is presented literally as a method, that is, it is subordinated and must be appreciated or judged in its context of use and its aesthetic purpose:
"It is part of Brazilian rough practice a kind of absolutist relativism. As all opinions are equally valid and as all points of view are equalized according to a very simple difference, of the left or right type, the force of my enunciation is absolute as such. (Dunker, 2019)
Which is the sentence immediately before:
“Hence the fundamental method of Brazilian rough is the gambiarra, a term that originally refers to the irregular extension of a lighting line or a “fraudulent call”, which is in every way precarious and ugly, improvised or made according to the circumstances, in the archetypal style “bracelet jeitinho". (Dunker, 2019)
Ou seja, o Tosco Brazilian it is an aesthetic that inverts precariousness, without conserving its existential dignity. An epistemology based on absolutist relativism. An ethics of the simplification of subjects to predicates that are mutually inverted. THE Brazilian rough exemplifies, as a particular case, what Lagnado called it a concern with the (easy) aestheticization of the precarious. Only after that, and therefore, in a subordinate way to absolutist relativism, to the segregative use and to the pragmatic intention, that I place Tosco's method as a gambiarra.
A method serves an end and it does not guarantee or prescribe the quality of its realization. Can I use the method sfumato to paint mediocre canvases or Renaissance masterpieces. In both cases, by reducing the contours, I produce a humanizing effect on the image, which can be applied to both a beautiful Madonna and a tacky Beelzebub. I can employ the surrealists' method of automatic writing to create confusion on social media or to invent a new love. I can employ the method expounded by Poe in "Philosophy of Composition” to produce a poem like “The Raven” or a forró lambada like “Suck that is from Grape" or "It feels like mint".
So I cannot agree that the Brazilian rough have a structural or historical affinity with circuit bending, hardware hacking, cracked media, sound art/media art, arte povera, ready made, object found, Merz, Dadaist, recycling, cyberpunk, post punk, or in the Cuban architecture of necessity. In all these cases you will find the gambiarra, but not the rough. Tosco, to be really crude, requires the feeling of self-pretentiousness (absent in arte povera), of purifying salvation (certainly not punk), of national reconstruction (never Dadaist) and of programmatic imposition of hegemony (inadequate for the technological branches of gambiarra, always attentive to the context or site specific).
Sedlmayer does not agree as to the link between the Brazilian rough and the corrupting use of the gambiarra: “(…) distinctly what Dunker reinforces, the gambiarra would not resemble the repressed corruption that returns, with force, in the discourse of the Brazilian coarse.” Perhaps, this can be understood by the fact that the gambiarra is a negative notion: inappropriate use, misuse of function, material impertinence. When a negation is negated, what we have is not always an affirmation. If I criticize the Tosco, and if the rough is identified with the gambiarra (which we have already seen to be an equivocal reasoning) I always criticize the gambiarra, much less I am defending the rectitude or the good proper use of things. But it is precisely this kind of non-dialectical inversion, of simple and polar opposition, that I am describing as a procedure. Tosco ...
For this we can also resort to the beautiful example of Odradek, brought from Kafka by Sedlmayer. She says that Odradek is a positive case of gambiarra. I assert, without disagreeing with her, that Odradek is paradigmatic of the anti-rough. It represents the dark part of us, the universal exile in what cannot be recognized, the object without specularity, (although it may be the object of a speculative attack). What Lacan called object the cause of desire quality object to enjoy it is precisely the object of repressed fantasy. Fantasy that returns in the unrecognizable form of what we cannot admit to ourselves. Fantasy that acquires and conditions aesthetic and ideological forms. It comes back as a chase and attack on the other. Like justice done in the name of injustice, like a desire for cleanliness done in the name of dirt, like violence exercised to end violence. The return of segregation and prejudice as a way of punishing the other that we do not control in ourselves can be elevated to the status of an aesthetic program. That's why I maintain my thesis that the gambiarra is a fundamental method of Tosco Brasileiro. Method at the service of the return of what, in Brazil, was denied, before being elaborated and symbolized. It is the return, for example, of the real of torture, which, in addition to being an ethical impiety, is an aesthetic allusion to the crooked form, that is, to a type of deformation.
What the Brazilian rough wants to do is to eliminate the Odradek that exists in each of us, to deny this “thing, stuff, garbage”, typically invested with excess of sexuality projected on the other. By making the killable lives, the quasi-people, those who are interfering with traffic and the functioning of good order invisible, he wants good shape through the gambiarra in human rights. This is the point of phantasmagoric enunciation of the "what is it for?” What is education or culture, arts or philosophy, criticism or environmental preservation for?
So when Sabrina rejects my criticism of the rough use of the gambiarra, as if I were repudiating the possible creation in a state of scarcity, we are led into a false problem. As if we had to join or leave the practices “the Brazilian way”, the misuse of lighting, “cats and other urban constructions”. As if there was only light and dark. As if we were facing the return of a historically known enunciation: “Brazil: love it or leave it”. But now it'sGambiarra, love her or leave her”, be it an aesthetic, legal or political gambiarra. After all, there are judgments made hastily, whether they are of taste or of right. Such judgments are quick, quick, because after all: “what is a judgment for?”, but to punish the wicked? Such crude judgments put the ends at the service of the means, both legal and illegal gambiarra at the service of the Brazilian rough.
“This artist, who today embodies the national imagination of Venezuela, comes out of nowhere against Dunker's thesis that the rough method is operated by gambiarra. Perhaps the psychoanalyst was “destined to see the illuminated, not the light”, as Goethe's famous line says. Because light, that of the cat or other improvised creations, has a powerful luminosity. And it's an instigator modus operandi that makes this present not so dark.” (Sedlmayer, 2019)
No, Sabrina, the scarce art of the Venezuelan imagination does not testify against the thesis that the crude method operates through the gambiarra. It only confirms that the gambiarra is a method and not an aesthetic program per se. Perhaps the psychoanalyst just wanted more light, Mehr Licht! as Goethe would say, to look more precisely at the chiaroscuro that presents itself in front of us.
