Re: Re: <eyebeam><blast> localization carnival

["Luiz Camillo Osorio" <lcosorio@openlink.com.br>]

Carlos,
Well lets try to answer your questions. Why the 'fascination' with the
US? In a way, we are all living under the cultural influence of the US,
we are a bit americanizados as they acused carmen miranda when she came
from america. 
The ideal of a "new civilization" a "new world"  I think belongs to
these two continental countries.  
Eugenio d'Ors in his marvellous book Lo Barroco says that Greece and
Portugal are the only two examples of civilizatorial movement in the
west tradition. Why? I answer: they exported otherness, they were both
destroyed by its desire to be Other. " O que jaz no abismo sob o mar que
se ergue?/ Nós, Portugal, o poder ser..."(Fernando Pessoa) [ What lies
in the abyss under the sea that grows?/ We, Portugal, the will be]. From
that point of view I start to distinguish these three continents in
America: the anglo-north-america, the spanish-america, Brasil. I really
don't feel Brasil belonging to the rest of south america, apart from its
political and economical desorganization, it looks similar.
Culturally/spitritually we are different.
North-america, US, because of its hegemony (we are all writing in
english aren't we), challenges our imagination, our desire to be
something different. It is something that is almost imposed to us (not
US). Nonetheless, this fascination isn't a resignation. The other day I
was talking with a brasilian artist (Waltercio Caldas) and he said that
during an interview after a show in an americam gallery, the critic was
trying to link his work with minimalism; and he said that no, there was
no direct influence of it, that when he was a kid he used to play with
the maquete of Brasilia, that was his background, that our tradition
didn't start yesterday, we had our own modern tradition. And I
complement his story saying: we don't have only modern art in brasil we
have a brasilian modern art. I told this just to mention that our
fascination is actually an ambition to be something different.
Well, I don't think that the national reinscription is romantic and out
of place happening in the net. "as nações todas são mistérios. Cada uma
é todo o mundo a sós" (F.Pessoa) [ all the nations are mystery. Each is
all the world alone].  When I said that Oiticica's work has in itself
the experience of the favela and that favela is an un-translatable word
and experience, I didn't say that it is impossible to a foreigner to
experience the work. Thats exactly what makes it a work of art, it
translated the un-translatable. I couldn't say that its experience is
stricly brasilian because one of the critics who really understood its
importance is Guy Brett who is an englishman. Nonetheless, it is a work
that only could be made by a brasilian artist, that mixed the order of
Mondrian with Mangueira, and took Mondrian's experience of color in a
direction unimaginable before, and also gave a measure to Mangueira's
life-energy.
The challenge is exactly to think nationality in a world that disqualies
identity in essentialist terms. Can we think nationality out of
traditional categories? Can we think nationality in a globalized world?
Can what is proper fortifies without bringing back its conservative
sublimated memory? I give you this questions back. Um abraço, Luiz
Camillo   





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