IV.4.6 DIGITAL ARCHIVE 1065137
IN THE CONTEXT OF THE SÃO PAULO BIENNIAL, Etsedrón is like a great arrow pointing backwards that brings the visitor up short and disorients him, whether he is a member of the general public or an artist. This inverted anagram marks a right-about-face towards the search for and finding of meanings that so seldom occurs in contemporary art. It was no accident that the jury of the Thirteenth Biennial, as they themselves proclaim, refused to enter the exhibit (for fear of dirtying their feet). For my own part, I maintain a systematically open attitude towards all expressions of art, but even so I had to transgress my own routine of behavior and my own conditioned—in spite of all my efforts—response, to overcome what [Alvin] Toffler calls the “shock” of change.
Etsedrón’s presence at the Biennial was important, both as a challenge and as an urgent call for attention to the problems of our continent. What we saw was Etsedrón’s Project III; the group had already presented Project I at the previous Twelfth Biennial. Thus, their exhibit was not an isolated choice, but part of an organic and systematic process. The emergence of such experiences as Etsedrón is linked to a general process, observable at every level that demonstrates our increasingly clear and mature awareness of the need to accept our own role as [Latin] Americans.
For the first time, the São Paulo Biennial has begun to abandon its traditional framework as a showcase for European and United States artists, moving timidly, as yet, towards the local product. Although the Grand Prize (12,000 U.S. dollars) was won by Yagoda Buick, a Yugoslav artist, and the Mexican painter [Manuel] Felguérez won only an Honorary Grand Prize, the optical approach adopted by Latin American critics and artists, which is, after all the most important thing, showed evidence of a radical change in course from its former shamefully submissive approach. Biennial authorities place special emphasis on the presentation of special rooms devoted to the works of living twentieth-century Latin American artists, and it was announced that the next Biennial would accent the art of this continent.
In such a propitious climate, Etsedrón may be seen as spring that nurtures and enriches the energetic current of Latin American art. Although Aracy A. Amaral finds in Etsedrón only “one of the paths that Brazilian art might follow,” it actually represents an overflowing [SEE DOCUMENT IV.4.4]. In our efforts to express our own identity, we must not let ourselves be confused by false mirages. But neither do I share the opinion that the work of the Etsedrón group is based on a minimum of information and limited only to an environmental approach. The Northeastern group knows all about happenings, audiovisual shows, etc. The fact that it is a team—which is the very fact that Amaral seems to forget—proves beyond a doubt that it is conversant with the most modern forms of interdisciplinary activity.
According to the exhibition catalogue, the participants in Etsedrón III come from seven different sectors: THE VISUAL ARTS: Creation and Implementation of the Project, Edison de la Luz; Implementation, Joel Estácio, Carlos Francisco Sampaio (Chico Diabo), Lygia Milton, Milton Sampaio, Lourival Miranda; ARCHITECTURE, Antônio Luiz M. Andrade (Alma); ART CRITICISM, Matilde Matos; SCIENCES: Tropical Medicine, Fernando Carvalho Luz, Geraldo Milton da Silveira; Jungle Hospital and Outservices (Itautuba-PSESP), Durbai Benício da Luz, José Maria Maia; ARCHEOLOGY, Valentín Calderón; ANTHROPOLOGY, Museu Emilio Goeldi [de Belém]; DANCE, Clyde Morgan, Maria Célia Mella, and Grimaldi Bonfim; COMMUNICATION, Carlos Ramón Sánchez; CINEMA, Fernando Pereira da Silva; PHOTOGRAPHY, Hamilton Luz and José Olavo de Assis; MUSIC, Djalma Silva Luz. All this kind of interdisciplinary work was first introduce in the modern world of the visual arts by the E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology), founded by [Robert] Rauschenberg in New York some fifteen years ago. Rauschenberg himself was present at the São Paulo Biennial, where Pop works were shown, and he gave lectures that I attended with Amaral herself. The consequences of E.A.T. were felt at CAyC [Center for Art and Communication], in Buenos Aires, which maintains a widespread international information service based on the catalogues and other publications it sends out.
Etsedrón, which originated in Salvador, [State of Bahia,] and was organized as a working group representing the most civilized centers of the world, is above all devoted to questioning such common applications of terminology as “closed area” and “open area.”1 Like other classifications such as “Third World,” when sociologists and economists now speak of a fourth and even fifth world, the term closed areas has become far less definitive in this industrial era we live in. It might be more appropriate, nowadays, to speak of them as personalized and de-personalized areas. This allows for the possibility of change that, despite all opposition, is invading present-day and future society and softening the image of a complete blockade that is presented by the term “closed area.” Nevertheless, the Etsedrón proposal might feasibly be described as falling midway between the poles of alienation and folklorism, and any attempt to ascribe it to either of those alone would be far too simplistic.
The [Brazilian] magazine Realidade2 presented a forceful article on the Northeast’s intrepid efforts to overcome underdevelopment and become a part of the technological world. The Etsedrón group clearly reflects that phenomenon. Certain anthropologists advance the territoriality theory as an explanation for man’s continual tendency to establish a “sacred territory” for himself. The path to achieving our own identity as [Latin] Americans will lie in using the wealth of tradition we have at our disposal to enrich technology without rejecting the advantages it offers. Brazil and most of Latin America have fabulously rich potential bases for establishing such sacred places. The Etsedrón group has already discovered its territoriality; it has raised the standard of the Northeast, and this is a perfectly legitimate action. But the authors must now prove themselves capable of raising the implicit contents of that crusade to the level of symbols.
Etsedrón concerns itself to an excessive degree with recreating the environment—and predominating animist atmosphere—of Northeast, but forgets to exploit the psychology of its inhabitants in their collective unconsciousness. It should be pointed out that there are certain basic elements lacking in the membership of the group, such as a psychologist or, even better, a psychoanalyst, and a historian. The studies they have made to date have been too formal. In placing too much emphasis on external aspects and too little on the processes of creation, the Etsedrón group makes use of photography, cinema, music, dance, the visual arts, architecture, and even medicine, and thus inevitably ends by producing environmental art itself the richest and ripest fruit of advanced industrial societies that are true instant product factories. They consume at a dizzying rate: instant soups, instant news flashes, speed courses in new languages, and finally discover an art as perishable as environmental art, with its continuous bombardment of symbols directed at doped senses. Although Etsedrón was right in choosing to work as a team, it is mistaken in the meaning its search should have undertaken. The impression it leaves is one of a show based on effects, though full of violent and aggressive touches.
As a happening, it is not fully successful, since the essence of the latter lies in directly confronting the coarseness of ones’ surroundings, while what we have in this case barely amounts to a bit of transplanted reality and its effect is therefore weakened and impoverished, particularly when it is set in the midst of the gigantic spectacle of the Biennial itself.
Etsedrón definitively lacks even a minimum dose of that libidinous interest in reality that we find occurring over and over again in all artistic expressions based on contact with the outer-world, whatever their version may be. If we agree that the artist’s principal function is to recapture the lost intensity of our experiences by reactivating their most deep-rooted symbolical ties, we can safely say that Etsedrón went only halfway. They worked along the same lines as the blacks in the United States did in creating the blues and jazz. The Etsedrón group erred in making instrumental the Northeast instead of presenting a hedonist statement, and they tossed their product into the Biennial like a bomb that fizzled out. The pathway leading to the recovery of myths still lies open.
1
This terminology was created by Argentinean-born, Colombian art critic Marta Traba.—Ed.
2
“Etsedrón,” Realidade, no. 80, Rio de Janeiro (November 1972).