EWe are experiencing yet another cultural change, specifically in the field of the arts, which compares the changes at the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century, with the rupture of the concept of classical aesthetics proposed by modernism and the advent of a contemporary aesthetic, which led to the avant-gardes until the 90s.
Among many philosophers and art critics, the Argentinian Reinaldo Laddaga highlighted in emergency aesthetics, in 2006, there was a “decisive process in recent years in the universe of the arts, the formation of a culture different from the modern one and its postmodern derivations. A particularly eloquent sign of this process is the proliferation of artist initiatives aimed at the participation of large groups of diverse people, in projects where the creation of fictions or images is associated with the occupation of local spaces and the exploration of experimental forms of socialization. We are facing new Cultural Ecologies”.
This “new culture” is inevitably linked to changes in forms of activism and participation in social, political and economic areas that appeared with the exhaustion of the neoliberal model..
These were the first findings of a process that opened the debate to reflect on the role of museums – such as the concept of the Living Museum, where the public, in addition to watching, could participate in the projects presented, and artists to engage in projects. Precursors such as Lygia Clark were duly remembered in these pages, on the occasion of its centenary.
without going too far, arte!brasileiros In recent years, it has accompanied the international awarding of projects such as the Jamac/Autoria Compartilhada, created in 2004 and headed by the Brazilian artist Mônica Nador, who designed an entire work of painting workshops, stencils and printing with the Jardim Miriam community, on the outskirts of the city of São Paulo, which participated in the exhibition We are Muit+s: experiments on collectivity, at the Pinacoteca de São Paulo, in 2019.
In this edition, the report by Giulia Garcia brings the award of the PIPA 2021 which, as of this year, will feature annual virtual exhibitions. For Luiz Camillo Osorio, curator of PIPA, the choice of Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro, Denilson Baniwa (whose work illustrates our cover), Ilê Sartuzi, Marcela Bonfim and Ventura Profana, this year, demonstrates the moment of great political turmoil and strong development of experimental poetics that we witness in Brazil today. Each of them shows works in process, in which the performative, new technologies, ancestry, experimentation and gender policies are all shuffled, fertilely mixed, pointing to the unknown and with a lot of poetic force.
One of the five winners, Castiel confirms: “What I do are invitations and reminders that we can live another story than this racial and gender one”, explains in video recorded to PIPA. Visual artist, writer and psychologist, Castiel builds his productions from the dialogues between knowledge of art, macumba, psychology, witchcraft, healerism and more “whatever he deems necessary to produce survival”. Not defining yourself in a specific artistic technique.
Along with this movement, and this Laddaga could not have foreseen, we experience today as never before the presence of virtual reality as a fundamental element to relate, to know and to get information. The power of the image gained other dimensions, among them that of becoming another mediator between the work and the spectator.
If at the beginning of the 20th century some artists traveled to France and equipped themselves with new theories and visualities, since the year 2000 and specifically since 2010, with the appearance of communication networks, any and all experiences have been exacerbated. For good and for bad.
With the pandemic then – which has lasted almost two long years! -, the presence of the image has become desperately relevant, sometimes trivialized. See, see, see on the screen: news, friends, surroundings from the windows. See fake news, real images of deforestation and the killing of Indians to ensure the occupation of mining companies, memes, works in exhibitions in virtual environments, see yourself in national and international virtual seminars. Watch movies, documentaries and series on digital platforms.
In this edition, several texts converge to document this moment, analyzing this phenomenon, which should impact us and impact the production of the coming years. Among them, the text by the architect and researcher Mateus Nunes about the new book by Giselle Beiguelman, image policies – Surveillance and resistance in the dataosphere, and our new column Olho Crítico, by professor, researcher and photography critic Simonetta Persichetti, which analyzes the effects of the images of the attack on the Twin Towers in the USA, in 2001.
The history of art will be different after the – increasing – adhesion of artists to collaborative projects and their sensitivity to the environment, digital communication and the pandemic, because this has nothing to do with computers or technologies, it has to do with the subjects who produce and subjects who look.
