Ângelo de Aquino, O nadador, aquele que sabe nadar, OJ, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Ângelo de Aquino, O nadador, aquele que sabe nadar, OJ, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Artur Barrio, A constelação da tartaruga, 1981/82, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Artur Barrio, A constelação da tartaruga, 1981/82, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Artur Barrio, Sit.....Cidade.....y.....Campo..., 1970	, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Artur Barrio, Sit.....Cidade.....y.....Campo..., 1970 , Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Ulises Carrión, To be or not to be, 1976, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Ulises Carrión, To be or not to be, 1976, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Dalibor Chatrny, Mirrors, O.J., Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Dalibor Chatrny, Mirrors, O.J., Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Fernando França Cocchiarale, Seqüela, 1974, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Fernando França Cocchiarale, Seqüela, 1974, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Attila Csernik, Experiments, 1974, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Attila Csernik, Experiments, 1974, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Attila Csernik, Experiments, 1974, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Attila Csernik, Experiments, 1974, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Jirí Kocman, The End, 1973,  Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Jirí Kocman, The End, 1973, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Gastão de Magalhães, Circulação Postal, 1976, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Gastão de Magalhães, Circulação Postal, 1976, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Gastão de Magalhães, Displacement of the Lawn from the Park, 1974, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Gastão de Magalhães, Displacement of the Lawn from the Park, 1974, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Gastão de Magalhães, This is Poem, 1975-2008, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Gastão de Magalhães, This is Poem, 1975-2008, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Clemente Padín, The Artist in the Service of the Community, 1974, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Clemente Padín, The Artist in the Service of the Community, 1974, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Júlio Plaza, Evolution/Revolution, 1971, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Júlio Plaza, Evolution/Revolution, 1971, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Féliks Podsiadly, Metamorphosis, 1977, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Féliks Podsiadly, Metamorphosis, 1977, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Petr Stembera, Comendo grãos durante alguns dias de ascetismo, 1973, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Petr Stembera, Comendo grãos durante alguns dias de ascetismo, 1973, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Petr Stembera, Flagellation, 1974, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Petr Stembera, Flagellation, 1974, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Regina Vater, PlayFEUilagen, 1974, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Regina Vater, PlayFEUilagen, 1974, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Krzysztof  Wodiczko, Vehicle, 1973, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Krzysztof Wodiczko, Vehicle, 1973, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Letícia Parente, Marca Registrada (Trade Mark), 1975, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo
Letícia Parente, Marca Registrada (Trade Mark), 1975, Courtesy: MAC-USP, São Paulo

Alternative Networks

Curator: Cristina Freire

Ângelo de Aquino, Artur Barrio, Ulises Carrión, Dalibor Chatrny, Fernando Cocchiarale, Attila Csernik, Roberto Evangelista, Paulo Herkenhoff, Jirí Kocman, Gastão de Magalhães, Clemente Padín, Letícia Parente, Júlio Plaza, Féliks Podsiadly, Petr Stembera, Regina Vater, Krzysztof Wodiczko

Back in the 1960s and 70s, alternative networks of exchange brought together artists from different countries. In those days the postal service was the privileged medium of communication in this extended circuit, unaware of the art market and the concerns of the hegemonic art centres. In Brazil, one of the destinations of this flow of artistic exchanges was a public university museum that, despite the military dictatorship that ruled the country in that period, became a meeting place for artists and an exhibition space for work from around the world. Of the many European artists who took part in its exhibitions and events, most were from Eastern Europe, and like their Latin American peers, they too were in search of strategies with which to get around the censorship imposed by a dictatorial regime. Photography as a record of performances, actions and situations was a significant presence in that network. Virtually anyone could set up a clandestine darkroom at home, and images of the art experience, often involving the artist’s own body, could be sent by post to any place in the world. In this flow of exchanges, the body and the actions of the artists present shared tactics of symbolic resistance, articulate art and life, and reveal, even today, a stimulating utopian potential.
(Cristina Freire)

Works
Courtesy for all works: Collection: Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
All texts unless otherwise noted: Cristina Freire

Ângelo de Aquino (*1945 in Brazil)
O nadador, aquele que sabe nadar (Swimmer, able to swim there), no date
Series of four photographs, bw, each 24 x 30,1 cm

Artur Barrio (*1945 in Portugal)

A constelação da tartaruga (The constellation of the turtel), 1981/82
Series of sixteen photographs, bw, variable dimensions

Sit.....Cidade.....y.....Campo...(Sit.....City.....and.....Country..), 1970           
Slide show
---
Commenced in 1969, the Situations were transitory actions, made of perishable, precarious materials and usually performed in public space. Sit.....City.....and.....Country... is the record of the Situation in which the artist anonymously placed bundles of loaves in very different places around Rio de Janeiro at the height of the political repression. The bound bundles of loaves provoked a sense of strangeness in passersby, and were described by the artist as "an ephemeral medium of condensed energy".

Ulises Carrión (*1941 in Mexiko, died 1989 in the Netherlands)
To Be or Not to Be, 1976   
Photo, bw, 29,1 x 20,8 cm
---
The work To Be or Not to Be is the photographic record of the performance together with the description of it. The performance took place in the Kontakt gallery in Antwerp, and the record of it was then sent to Brazil. In this work the artist read the soliloquy from Hamlet and as each word was uttered a little ball was dropped onto the floor.

Dalibor Chatrny (*1925 in Czechoslovakia)
Mirror relations at the opposite horizon, ca. 1973
Series of nine photographs, each 12,9 x 17,8 cm

Fernando Cocchiarale (*1951 in Brazil)
Seqüela (Aftermath), 1974
photograph, 23,5 x 14,5 cm

Attila Csernik  (*1941 in Yugoslavia)
Experiments, 1974
Series of eight photographs, each 29,8 x 21,1 or 21,1 x 29,8 cm

Roberto Evangelista (*1946 in Brazil)
Mater Dolorosa,
1979
Film, color, sound, 11’48”
---
In this poetic essay, filmed at Lake Arara on the Rio Negro (Amazon), the artist reflects on the "creation and survival of forms". The critic content of the video refers to the destruction of the environment and the economic exploitation of the local population. The concepts of "the country drowning" and "the shipwreck of culture", derived from Hélio Oiticica, are poetically materialized by the calabashes, a species of fruit typical of the region, which float in the river and are moulded by the water current.

Paulo Herkenhoff (*1949 in Brazil)

Estômago Embrulhado, Jejum
(Sickness, Fasting), 1975
Film, bw, without sound,  07’20”
Estômago Embrulhado, Sobremesa (Sickness, Desert), 1975
Film, bw, sound, 02’41”
---
In Fasting the artist chews a number of newspaper cuttings about censorship until he starts to gag, then swallows them, washed down with saliva and printer’s ink, finally absorbing the content of the news reports in his body.
Dessert is a proposition of eating an artwork. The work chosen was one of the Clandestine Headlines (Painter Teaches God to Paint), by Antônio Manoel printed in the newspaper O Dia on May 29, 1973.
According to the artist, the decision to use videotape for Sickness, was ideological: he wanted to simultaneously tackle two of the most important mass media of the day: television and the press.

Jirí Kocman (*1947 in Czechoslovakia)
The End,
1973
Series of two photographs, each 18 x 13,2 cm

Gastão de Magalhães (*1953 in Brazil)

Circulação Postal
(Postal circuit), 1976
Series of four photographs, each 24 x 18 cm

Deslocamento do Gramado do Parque (Displacement of the Lawn from the Park), 1974
Series of eight photographs, each 18,2 x 24  cm
---
The photographs are records of an action performed by the artist during the 6th Young Contemporary Art show (1972) in the University of São Paulo’s Contemporary Art Museum. In the action, which the artist recorded himself, lawn from the garden of the Museum was taken inside the exhibition gallery, thus isolating and focusing attention on an everyday activity and critically evoking the tension between the inside and outside of the art system.

This is Poem, 1975-2008
Series of four photographs, each 29,7 x 21,1 cm

Clemente Padín (*1939 in Uruguay)
O artista a serviço da comunidade (The Artist in the Service of the Community), 1974
Series of four photographs, each 26 x 107 cm
---
A photographic record of the project submitted to the exhibition Visual Poetics in the Contemporary Art Museum at the University of São Paulo. This consisted in having an artist guide the visitors around the exhibition and comment on the works on show. At the time, Clement Padín had been imprisoned by the military dictatorship in Uruguay, and the piece was carried out by Francisco Iñarra, a Spanish artist living in exile in Brazil. We see here the application of the concept of Non-objectual Poetry developed by the artist, an art without an object, a "poem" that is made concrete by action.  

Letícia Parente (1930 - 1991, Brazil) 
Marca Registrada
(Trademark), 1975
Film, bw, Sound, 11’44”
---
The works of the first Brazilian video artists are characterized by their radicalism in the use of images of a social and political body, in contrast to a self-referential narcissism. Here the artist stitches the inscription "Made in Brazil", focused in close-up, on the sole of her foot with a needle.

Júlio Plaza (*1938 in Spain, died 2003 in Brazil)
Evolução/ Revolução (Evolution/Revolution), 1971
Series of ten photographs, each 24 x 18 cm

Féliks Podsiadly (*1936 in Poland)
Metamorfose (Metamorphosis), 1977
Series of twelve photographs, each, 24 x 18,2 cm
---
The experience of transculturality, issues raised by anthropology and the limits of the artist's own identity are all present in this series of photographs by the Polish artist Feliks Podsiadly, in which the European transforms himself into an African, in a metamorphosis that generates an intense expressive charge. The portraits of the artist have an aura that is made explicit in the accompanying letter, in which he writes: "The inspiration for this work came from living for four years in Africa. The form of the work does not interest me. What I am interested in is the change in a man in the course of his mental development."

Petr Stembera (*1945 in Czechoslovakia)

Eating seads during some days of asceticism, 1973
Series of 2 photographs, each 24,2 x 18,2 cm

Flagellation, 1974
Series of two photographs, each, je 24 x 18 cm
---
About this work, the artist wrote:
"Danger and violence are essential elements of the world we live in (...) I want people to understand that these elements are not just negative but also positive, so that only by confronting them it is possible to glimpse the limits and the possibility of overcoming them. I use my own body in dangerous actions because it is always my body that collides head on with the world."


Regina Vater (*1943 in Brazil)
PlayFEUilagen, 1974
Series of 12 photographs, each 16,7 x 22,6 cm
---
This work is a photographic storyboard for a film in black and white. Antonio Pitanga, an actor who appears in a number of films by Glauber Rocha, and a very important figure in Brazilian Cinema Novo, marks out on the pavement of a walk in the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris the framework for the filming of a dance of light and shadow, in a clear reference to the precarious and transient nature of art and life.

Krzysztof Wodiczko (*1943 in Poland)
Vehicle, 1973
Series of 3 photographs, variable dimensions
---
As the artist wrote of this work: "The vehicle moves in a uniform motion in a straight line and in one direction only. The artist, walking up and down the tilting platform, causes the seesaw movement, the energy thus generated is transmitted by a system of cables and gears to the wheels which, as a consequence, the vehicle moves forward. The vehicle is for the exclusive use of the artist (...)
'On the road of progress', picking up speed on the 'highway to a better future', the intelligentsia was to contribute to the rational progress. Progress was guaranteed, on the condition that everyone, including artists and intellectuals, devote themselves to that machine and accept it as a given. Within the machine, it was they who would revive and inspire it…"
(in: Krzysztof Wodiczko, Critical Vehicles. Writings, Projects, Interviews, MIT Press, 1999, p. 76)

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