Art Without Form: Making Beyond the Postmodern Thought
‘(English students) Know things are bad but more than that they know they can’t do anything about it. But that 'knowledge', that reflexivity, is not a passive observation of an already existing state of affairs. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. And guess what? They probably know that too.’ (Fisher, 2006)
Ryoji Ikeda, spectra III (2019). Installation photo courtesy of La Biennale Di Venezia, The Artist and Audemars Puget © Ryoji Ikeda Studio
“Like lost children we live our unfinished adventures” (Debord, 1992). Like lost children we seek to find a way home, and if not a way home, a way to scream for help. We understand the utopia but are still viciously aware of the vacuous nature of fighting the unfightable. Understanding the unfathomable. This generalized feeling of impotence in the desire of this new generation of political left-wing artists and the search for a personal solution within my practice, even if partial, stands to me as my subject matter. The understanding of an apparently quieted renaissance, driven by the systemic social and political injustices of late industrial capitalism, that now seems to take the form of passive nihilism in today’s revolutionary youth. One of the sides of a dangerously counter-revolutionary coin that persists in finding itself in the left-wing sphere. A lack of understanding the effect the decrease in centralized ideological pursuit has for example, could very much be what quieted the ‘renaissance’ of Extinction Rebellion, Occupy Wall Street, and might impact those inspired by the Black Lives Matter protests movement in not just political action but also in the production of politically inclined cultural material,.
Much of the literature and art at focus in today’s globalized yet partially underground revolutionary discussion references many tokenized thinkers, but it seems like not much of their diverse ideological background is studied at depth and sometime is even intentionally ignored. In an aesthetically based society where the ‘revolutionary’ became marketable and political opinion may equal the share of an infographic on instagram, these authors and their pieces become representations of themselves focused mainly on their potential counter-cultural status and its potential marketability once in the public domain. The post-politicized nature of today's perception of art, where political opinion is instead of ignored, diluted, brings with reason a multitude of nihilistic tendencies to the production of politically committed art. But, although dilution of our political material is definitely a big worry, it acting as the spotlight concern for left-wing artists can be dangerous. The projective nature of such fear induces passiveness as it externalizes our worries into an unreachable myriad of policy-based bureaucratic capitalism where nothing changes yet everything is discussed. I argue our fear now should stand mainly in insecurity. In not being able to achieve a necessary collective change of mindset because of our lack of motivation for action. In not searching for a concise form of political art-making adapted to today's society. In being motivated but not seeing and making beyond the aesthetic of protest, the post-modern, and the object. Neither hyper-revolution nor hypo-evolution should be an option for truly committed left-wing artists. Art as politics becomes volatile and diluted in the wake of a late capitalist society and lack of ideological precision to it’s making only contributes.
In this essay I’ll attempt to search for cultural products that successfully achieve emancipatory practices within it’s medium, and attempt to idealize a piece of work that aims at finding tools of empowerment in breaking the boundary of the medium in order to inform my personal literary and artistic practice. The division of the subject in two main facets and a conclusion seemed necessary.
MARIGHELLA
Poster of ‘Marighella’ made by the Berlin Festival team (2019)
“(...)I will do everything for you to exalt yourself,
serenely, oblivious to its own luck.
(...) And that I for you, if tortured,
may happy, indifferent to pain,
die smiling and murmuring your name"
‘Marighella’ (Moura, 2019) , a 2019 action biopic about the posthumous Brazilian poet, rebel and revolutionary Carlos Marighella left me breathless. Produced and co written by Wagner Moura in a surprisingly small budget for an impeccable looking picture, it acts as a catalyst example of a successful historical political film. Based on the 2012 book ‘Marighella: O Guerrilheiro que Incendiou o Mundo’ (Magalhães, 2013), which roughly translates to ‘Marighella: The guerilla warrior that burned the world’, the film aims at depicting the life of Carlos Marighella in between his activist years fighting the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the 60’s and his tragic death in the hands of the army in November, 1969. Lasting for over two decades, the Brazilian Military Regime of 1964 till 1985 is seen as the bloodiest time in the history of the country with censorship, para-military groups, guerilla organizations, hyper-military power, haunting stories of disapearance, torture and a variety of different techniques of oppression and ideological manipulation surounding it. According to the book ‘Brazil: Never Again’ (Arns and Wright, 1985) around 2.000 people proved being tortured by the military in between 1964 and 1977 for political resons including artists, musicians, activists, journalists and many others. In their respect I thought I should include their names at the end of this dissertation. Please go look at Image Set 1 if interested. Marighella’s story is one like many others. And, as well as tortured, he was killed by the dictatorhip because of his attempts at reclaiming his ideological freedom.
Although the film was released in the 2019 Berlin Festival with a 10 minute ovation, it wasn't able to be released in Brazil until November 2021 because of direct opposition from the just elected Bolsonaro government department of culture. The significant response from Bolsonaro and his then minister of communications Mário Frias, it is worth noting, is a direct proof of Moura’s argument in favor of the perception of Brazilian Militarism as a long lasting movement. Another blatant proof of that concept is that Frias himself is related to Silvio Santos, an iconic populist public television channel owner. Silvio started his channel SBT, today the second biggest in Brazil, during the 1964 dictatorship by breaking ties with TV Globo in direct support of the military. The choice of releassing the film after Bolsonaro’s ellection, the current right-wing president of Brazil who is openly homophobic, sexist, racist and an avid supporter of the military regime, at times even inciting a fascist revolution seems to not just be in place to relate the fight of Marighella to the one against the ‘Neo Brazilian Militarism’ movement but also to act as a reminder of certain tools creatives can use in order to amplify the potential impact and ideological precision of their pieces. Marighella can be seen as ‘the first brazilian movie directly in ideological opposition to bolsonarism’ (Moura, 2019) both in it’s story and direction. As Wagner Moura said in his interview with Brasil de Fato and paraphrasing in translation: “It isn’t a coincidence that we are trying to release this film under the Bolsonaro administration. The film would adhere to a completely different meaning under Dilma; under Temer, or Lula.” (Brasil de Fato, 2022). Understanding ‘Marighella’ (Moura, 2019) is understanding the value of remembrance in art making and of such in transforming political speech. But, before we attempt to do that, I believe there are two important things that need mention, and I note, by no means I am putting them both in the same category of importance.
Firstly, is that because of the lack of terms identifying different branches of today’s Brazilian fascist movement it is important for me to create new terms that to a certain level intuitively help better explain such topics. Both Brazilian Militarism and Neo-Brazilian Militarism are terms that I have not found in any of the literature I have studied, yet they seem to linguistically explain the nature of what we now can see as a movement, not a reaction. In regards to it’s specificities, although I choose to maintain these terms open for peer development, I consider the core values of these ideological movements to be of the following nature: Brazilian Militarism was born most probably during the two governments of the populist dictator Getulio Vargas (1930-1945 and 1951-1954). It has it’s basis in nationalism, populism, extreme militarism, high-level corruption, the flirtation with fascism, reactionary politics, the ‘whitening’ and westernization of Brazilian traditions, aggressive suppressive techniques (like torture, exile, prison, and sometimes death) for opposing ideologues and activists, and an attempt to forcingly take Brazil through technological, industrial and overall state-capitalist development in order to amplify our international influence. Although I wouldn’t consider Vargas to be part of the Brazilian Militarism Movement per se and by the time of his death the military was already aiming at taking power, many of his policies were in direct connection with it’s ideals such as a spiritual, and many times practical approximation to fascism. The Neo Brazilian Militarism movement on the other hand, seems to stand in a diluted post-democratic version of the ‘original’ Brazilian Militarism. The flirtation not necessarily with a counter-revolutionary coup d'etat but with the authoritarian state-capitalist system the Military Regime created, together with it’s innate violence and censorship as seen in the case of ‘Marighella’ (Moura, 2019) and with various Brazilian comedians today openly being sued by politicians for ‘offending their honor’. Getulio’s last words were “I die to enter history” (Vargas, 1955) and indeed he and the ideologies of those times have long lasted.
The late Rio de Janeiro city councilwoman Marielle Franco speaks at a rally in August 2016. (Wikimedia Commons/Mídia NINJA)
Secondly, this time with optimal importance, is the resemblance of Carlos Marighella and Marielle Franco’s story. Marielle Franco, a politician from PSOL (Socialist Party), was responsible for the empowerment of many young people in Brazil because of her extensive attempts at representing, healing and teaching her own community (the Compléxo da Maré) and many others across the country. Like Marighella she was a reference not just to the anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarianism movements, but also for the Black Revolutionary Movement, with both having significant impact in that respect. “Marielle was every black woman, every lesbian, every periferic warrior.”; “She was one of the leaders that represented this new generation”; “(Marielle was) A figure that catalyzed many fights. She was a woman, she was black, and she was there fighting for people from communities around the country” These are just a couple examples of how she impacted people through her politics, her infectious personality, and above all love and care for all minorities. Marielle could have been the future face of Brazilian left-wing politics yet, just like Marighella and a vast list of proggressive leaders in Latin America, she was killed in order to silence her ideas. On the night of March the 14th, 2018, as Marielle was getting ready to leave a talk about empowerment for young black women in a community in Rio de Janeiro, she was shot several times. Her death sparked protests and funeral marches around the country and the world, but it was only two years after her death that a suspect was identified. The suspect, Adriano Da Nóbrega, part of a paramilitary organization, was killed by the police in an alleged resisted arrest attempt. Later in 2020, Globo, the biggest television channel in Brazil and openly not in favor of the Bolsonaro government, released a report linking Da Nobrega to Bolsonaro’s family. We feel the loss of Marielle every day and relating her fight with the one of Marighella is key. Understanding Carlos Marighella is understanding Marielle Franco.
Back to the analysis of the film, although it highly focuses in Carlos Marighella’s personal history and issues (e.g. his relationship with his son, his poetry writing, and personal relationships with fellow comrades), certain aesthetic and conceptual choices resemble those of Soviet Filmmakers and of Soviet Montage Theory (e.g. Sergei Eisenstein, Andrei Tarkovski, Lev Kulechov) under an umbrella of action entertainment. In particular the inconspicuous spiritual approximation of these real-life characters to their respective classes seems to strike a chord similar to the Soviet Montage ideals of reclaiming characters as metaphorical yet practical representation of class. Counterintuitively this concept seems even more effective in a historical biopic film. Take Seu Jorge’s emotional yet aerated interpretation of Carlos Marighella or the incredible performance given by Bruno Galiasso as he plays ‘Lúcio’, an openly racist police officer that acts as a villainous hunter in search of Marighella. A particular scene strikes me as powerful. A cut-in cut-out montage of Marighella being interviewed by a French journalist on the behalf of Jean Paul Satre and ‘Lúcio’ as he meets United States Representatives and presents Marighella to them as a potential scapegoat. It is worth mentioning that many argue the United States had a direct impact in the consolidation of the dictatorship, justifying it mainly as Brasil becoming a potential communist threat after João Goulart took office in 1961 as a left-wing politician. The immediate impact of the scene is of presenting the rivalry between the two characters, the hero/villain cliché, but it ends up also presenting to us a different perception of the relationship between both: The percepcion of such as a spiritual representation of the white police officer versus the black man. It immediately, even if unconsciously, rellates marighellas fight to the myriad of police violence that exists in Brazil today as a residue of systems put in place by the Brazilian Militarism Movement and is still unfortunately perpetuated by Bolsonaro and he’s minions. It takes us to a world of haunting systems of oppression where time is mentioned, yet all the boundaries of it are shattered by the clear establishment of intersections with today.
The indirect influence of Soviet Film and the hauntological/atemporal nature of Wagner Moura’s depiction typical of the ‘Cinema Novo’, although certainly important in the transposition of Carlos Marighella’s views and life-story into today’s audience, might not be the only reason why the biopic has been effective in its main goal. Although it helped shedding light to Brazilian revolutionary history and relating it to today’s Brazilian ‘antifascista’ fight, the position where the audience is put in this film ends up being key for the total effectiveness of the film. Wagner Moura’s specific choice of working mostly with close ups in a ‘shaky’ hand-held camera style introduces the audience to the lives of one of the most successful revolutionary groups of it’s time not as spectators but as ‘first hand’ viewers of the organization of such a group, it’s actions, worries, ideology and most importantly the innate humanitarian mindset Marighella and many of his peers had. With the multitude of anti-left propaganda that exists to this day in popular and alternative media the humanization of revolutionaries once seen as terrorists is an increddibly effective tool for the demistification of such practices through art. Marighella’s revolution was one of democratic socialism, not of ‘soviet style’ communist dictatorship noticeably being affiliated to PCB, the Brazilian Comunist Party where, at it’s time, there was an impressive myriad of ideologies. The fight against the Military Regime has been put into an ‘extreme-left terrorism’ container that was never the case. For many, still today, active rebellion against the regime means you were exploding cars, robbing banks and having gunfights with the military for the sake of rebellion. A notable unimportance is given for the reason behind such acts. Marighella, just like the many thousands of people fighting the dictatorship of 64, believed that if they hadn’t done what they’ve done, Brazil might have never seen democracy again, much less a forward thinking public discussion of ideological pursuits. Carlos Marighella’s poem ‘One note country’ for example, exemplifies the desperation in the revolutionary movement at the time. In itself a powerful tool for the understanding of the value of political poetry:
“I want nothing,/ no flowers, no praise, no triumphs./ nothing at all./
Only a protest,/ a crack in the wall,/ and make it echo,/ with a deaf voice,/ and with no other value,/ what's hidden in the breast/ in the depth of the soul/ of millions of suffocated people./ (...)
All pity,/ all pity,/ all pity.../ And all over the country/ resonates the tone/ of a single note.../ of a single note…”
Marighella was never fighting for the sake of anarchy, he was fighting for democracy and the end of a one party regime. Let’s remind ourselves he spent all his life protesting in lawful ways as a politician and he only began his armed guerrilla once the military stated he was a terrorist and shot him just one year before his death. The film helps us understand that perhaps it is very simplistic to think both of Marighella that way and the regime as an extreme method of reactionary politics.
This atemporal sense to Marighella’s fight was explored by Moura not just in his stylistic, performance and editing choices but also in the screening of the picture. Apart from the 2019 Berlin screening, in 2021 once the film was allowed to release in Brazil, the director, together with Guilherme Boulos, one of the main figures of the left-wing sphere in Brazil and leader of the MST (Movement of People Without Land) held screenings for the film with MST and MTST (a large branch of MST). Both groups are extremely abused by the right-wing and are put under the category of ‘terrorists’ today just like Marighella. Moura’s practical relating of the movement to the history of Marighella is one more example of how action in the creation and establishment of cultural practices overcomes nihilistic passivity. The innate difference lies in between a director that makes such a movie and does actions of integration of his piece to today's society through both stylistic/conceptual choices and personal engagement, and the one that falls into the passivity of ‘simply’ telling a story of a revolutionary. It lies in the painter that imagines something beyond the dystopic and the one that lies in nihilistic realism. It lies in an artist that aims at making beyond the form and the one that conforms to the medium (more about that to be explored in the next chapter and the conclusion).
“Wagner Moura talks to the audience after the screening of the film Marighella.” MST. (2021). “Marighella met his audience,” says Wagner Moura to MST in Bahia. [online] Available at: https://mst.org.br/2021/11/13/marighella-met-his-audience-says-wagner-moura-to-mst-in-bahia/ [Accessed 17 Jan. 2022]
Wagner Moura’s biopic reminds us of what is possible through the reinscription and remembrance of history. Both the film and Marighella’s poetry are of great value for the fight against neo-fascism not just in Brazil but in Latin America and ultimately the entire globalized world as it encapsulates empowerment to the alternative heroes that once fought the winning side of history. Reaching into the story’s intersection with decolonial theory, then, becomes key to the societal success of this picture. ”To decolonize is to remember” Understanding ourselves requires us to be in constant search for our ideological ancestors in an erased and diluted history. Perhaps the main appeal of ‘Marighella’ (Moura, 2019) is that it presents to us the life of an utopian. It gives us hope that he might have been right and that we might be able to achieve something alike; the belief that the utopia can be reachable if there is a lot of work and reeducation aiming at the right sections of society; that artistry is key for a revolution/transition like this if we want it without violence, and we do. Although Marighella as we have seen is an exemplary piece of creative activism, it stands to me in a limbo in between the postmodern, the modern and the non-modern thought. The hauntological approach to its directing and performances versus its innate temporal nature (for it simply being a biopic) is just one example of that contradiction. Another more serious issue is that, even though there are many attempts to state the relation between the fight of Marighella and today (and they are successful to a part), its temporality in reality is so far removed from today that it doesn’t really allow us to adapt the revolutionary thought of Marighella to today’s fight of democratic socialism without a violent or direct revolution. Although Moura clearly aimed at making a movie that does not ‘simply tell a story’, it seems like today, a popular historical movie that aims at telling the story of a successful non-capitalist estate and its heroes should be more effective in its mobilization. I usually find that a lot of this duality and lack of attempts at describing the utopian vs the enormity of pieces about the ‘utopies’ has to do not with lack of ideological precision but with the non recognition of the ‘spiritual’ influence postmodernism and its many ‘demons’ have in us.
MAKING BEYOND THE POSTMODERN THOUGHT (RE-INSCRIBING THE UTOPIA)
The 2008 burst of the United States housing bubble, the COVID-19 pandemic, the financial/social crisis that proceeded and the many movement’s against the maintenance of a clearly abeling state like Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion exemplified to the mass population the dangers and instability of the society we live in, yet there seems to be no effective and long-lived mobilization. Although it is difficult to pinpoint exactly why these movements have seen a clear exponential decrease in it’s action, we can certainly blame the lack of media acceptance of such a crisis as a residue of our economical post-colonial system at least to a certain extent. Although there is a variety of left-wing journalists and writers, their medium aches with limitations and bureaucracy, leaving most of the conceptual relevance to emancipatory artistic and literary practices. But, in conformity, the value of the political creative in a post-democratic neo-liberal state seems to lie simply in shock entertainment and carefully watered down ‘spectacles’ of a political or activist nature . The search for the audience’s conformity in non conformity. Either pathetic attempts to legitimize or negate the resurgence of neo-facism in the global scale from the neo-right, or whatever ‘cause’ is the most ‘fashionable’ for the liberal-left. All moved in and out of style based on the faulty correlation of corporate interest to artistic quality by the media and therefore the masses, perpetuated by the titans of the art industry such as Barbican, Tate, Sotheby’s, etcetera. “Capitalism could appropriate even the most radical ideas and return them safely in the form of harmless ideologies.” (Debord, 1992) Although I do believe that for a part these nihilistic tendencies are justifiable and it’s concerns are undeniably important, the potential effect of nihilistic thoughts over the left-wing as we have seen is one that might stray us away from empowerment and mobilization and closer to confusion and impotence. In part, the emergence of postmodernism is to blame. As Terry Eagleton said:
“It is as though postmodernism represents the cynical belated revenge wreaked by bourgeois culture upon its revolutionary antagonists, whose utopian desire for a fusion of art and social praxis is seized, distorted and jeeringly turned back upon them as dystopian reality. Postmodernism, from this perspective, mimes the formal resolution of art and social life attempted by the avant garde, while remorselessly emptying it of its political content.” (Eagleton, 1985)
We are the product of the mass fetishisation of a culture counter to itself, once based on instability, shock value, diluted politics and the spectacularization of absurdity yet most don't seem to understand how a 2020 with the fascist-modernisms of Bolsonaro, Trump, and Boris Johnson is possible or how the ‘dystopia’ became a default inspiration for multibillionaires in the search for a new modernity of rapid technological development. Facebook becoming Meta and it’s new product the metaverse; Space-X’s and Blue Origin’s pathetic private space race; Ellon Musk’s plan to have his own colony in Mars or simply the continuous absurdity that is our political system only proves today to be a natural reaction to post-modernist ideals in our society.
“Postmodernism is among other things a sick joke at the expense of... revolutionary avant-gardism.” (Eagleton, 1986) Although I feel like the necessity to make beyond the barriers that postmodernism poses has already been brought to attention by a variety of thinkers and artists that now breed in popular culture and media it still stands to me as an important discussion to have especially in relation to the conclusion of this dissertation. Marighella was a great example of a truly committed and effective piece of political film that in order to emancipate us from the past, it remembered, yet instead of giving us hope for the future it gives us the pain of the past. Although I fell in love with the film it left me aching for a continuation: A film that inspires the left leaning audience into understanding their own utopic dreams. As we have seen there is already a variety of right-wing populist politicians tapping into this ache for ideological certainty. The lack of direction left-wing artists have been giving to their own utopias is particularly staggering to me and inspired me to search for cultural material that aims at breaking the mold of postmodernism.
In the following part of this chapter we are going to go through a variety of cultural objects that help us think beyond the logic of postmodernism either through the reinscription of the leftist utopia or the approximation of political art to society through social interventions. Within these works there will be a variety of film mentioned and although science fiction usually has a direct relationship to stories of dystopias, utopias and neutopias, I chose to limit myself to works of science fiction that don’t reach into the physically impossible as sensibility can be lost in the attempt of creating cinematic novelty through CGI and special effects. The only exception to that will be the analysis of “Once there was Brasilia”. But, before we continue two main aspects of postmodernism need better explaining.
letterboxd.com. (n.d.). Once There Was Brasília (2017). [online] Available at: https://letterboxd.com/film/once-there-was-brasilia/ [Accessed 17 Jan. 2022].
“If the modern sensibility was characterized by a demand for certainty, order, domination and progress, the postmodern one is characterized by feelings of insecurity, anxiety, uncertainty and sublimity.” (Yuk Hui, 2021) Although I do believe that, yes, many sensibilities of today’s world seem to have come in direct relationship to the emergence of postmodernism and contrary to what Jameson said, I do not believe it constrains late-stage capitalism as it’s logic, in order to understand Yuk Hui’s claim we need to identify the postmodernist concept of meta-narratives. Postmodernism identifies all ideologies, theoretical schools, and theory that considers its sources, beliefs, or morality objectively true as ‘meta-narratives’ influenced by the emergence of the faulty intellectual certainties of modernism. Although I agree with this concept to a certain extent, it is impossible for me not to think that apart from there being an objective truth to certain aspects of the morality of a chosen society, the conceptualisation of postmodernism is naturally hypocritical. Postmodernism came in direct opposition to meta-narratives, yet, the creation of it-self through the formation of a school of thought proves that in reality, it is impossible to affect true intellectual development without the formation of strong lines of thought when the work or theory is meant to be in the public domain and available for peer-discussion. The other, more simple concept to be explained is the bad relationship between postmodernism and the utopia. Postmodernism is a post WWII theory that, influenced by the atrocities of national fascism and dictatorial communism, chose to believe the creation of utopias are immoral and many times required blood and constant repression to maintain itself, but, as a counterpart, it essentially ignores the existence of democratic utopias. That relationship to me is key to understanding the lack of acceptance movements that claim to have a concise view of the world like the Femminist, the LBTQ+, or the Anti-racist movements has in media and broad society for example.
Having that said, I thought I should start with the analysis of the previously mentioned ‘Once there was Brasilia’ (Queirós, 2017) and chronologically begin it with a small explanation of what seems to me as a main influence to the movie: The Brazilian movement ‘Cinema Novo’. Just like most of the revolutionary cultural productions made in Brazil, the Cinema Novo or ‘New Cinema’ was made during the time of the military regime, having it’s second and best known phase in between the years of 1964 and 1968, soon coming to an end with the institution of the censorship department. In ‘Terra em Transe’ (Rocha, 1967) for example ,typical of the ‘Cinema Novo’, we see a clear establishment of a marxist utopian cry contrasting with the chaotic setting of El Dourado. Like ‘Once there was Brasilia’ (Queirós, 2017), ‘Terra em Transe’ (Rocha, 1967) puts it’s current system at check constantly through the slow increase of revolutionary speech and imageryin contrast to an immediately chaotic fascist setting. Although ‘Terra em Transe’ (Rocha, 1967) just like many other films part of ‘Cinema Novo’ are good examples of political artmaking, ‘Once there was Brasilia’ (Queirós, 2017) extrapolated my expectations in so many levels that I thought it deserved to be analyzed instead.
Directed by Adirley Queirós the film aims at exploring questions of heritage and political speech through the idealization of a sci-fi pastiche ideological wasteland, where clear elements of the real world, a fascist civil-war-like scenario, and the reality of a ‘space murderer’ in search of Jucelino Kubitcheck cross rapidly. The chaotic nature and development of the story in contrast with the abandoned scenarios, slow-moving scenes, and an improvisational tone set the image quickly for what is about to come. The contrasts present between the different characters in the movie and the film’s ideological pursuit, although not yet ideologically clear, also stand immodestly in the introduction. The first four scenes strikes me as particularly effective: The first, a long monotonous conversation between a man and a woman at a bridge takes place for a couple of minutes as you see them getting closer and more open to each other. They open up about family, they tell life stories, and even a story related to sexual abuse. Suddenly it cuts to a man smoking a cigarette in front of the parliament. He holds a gun up, shoots in the direction of the building and runs. Black-screen as the real speech Dilma Rouseff gave as she was being impeached in 2016 soundscape over the initial credits. Sudden cut to our introduction to the space murderer that accidentaly landed in a ‘dystopic’ 2016 Brazil… Although not necessarily the sci-fi action movie with the most ‘action’ you will see, the confusing yet enormously entertaining silliness in the tools Queiroz uses in order to convey political speech and ‘spiritually’ critique a postmodernist dystopia remain to me incredibly creative, entertaining, and effective.
letterboxd.com. (n.d.). Don’t Look Up (2021). [online] Available at: https://letterboxd.com/film/dont-look-up-2021/ [Accessed 17 Jan. 2022]
In contrast, ‘Don’t Look Up’ (McKay, 2021) for example, acts as a clear representation of a seemingly effective political movie that ends up losing impact as it follows the typical norms of a political movie done through the protest aesthetics of postmodernity. The premise stands mainly in building a parodic scenario where the exploitations of the uber-rich on the expense of the poor result in the extinction of humanity saving only himself and a select group in a phallic spaceship. Although the movie chooses to criticize so many of the problems we as left-leaning political creatives see on a daily basis the movie falls into many of the traps that it criticizes. Both in the final product and in the making, the piece shows itself as hypocritical by adhering to either a commercial entertainment format above its true necessary form of comedic realism or simply being an anti-capitalist movie produced by Netflix. It is also worth noting that although some argue ‘Don’t look Up’ (McKay, 2021) is a sci-fi movie and I said “Once There was Brasilia'' (Queirós, 2017) was the only I would analyze, I chose to consider it as a failed attempt at a comedic post-internet realism. ‘Don’t Look Up’ (McKay, 2021), together with audience giants like ‘Squid Game’ (Dong-hyuk, 2021), directly represents both Netflix’s watered-down anti-capitalist PR campaign and one of the many faults within postmodernist political art-making: The institution of diluted political material as a method of corporate self-preservation. The film loses it’s goal by miles to a watered-down postmodernist entertainment structure.
www.ryojiikeda.com. (n.d.). ryoji ikeda | spectra. [online] Available at: https://www.ryojiikeda.com/project/spectra/ [Accessed 17 Jan. 2022].
Riojy Ikeda’s series of public 2014 piece ‘Hack’ (Ikeda, 2014) and “Spectra” (Ikeda, 2000 >), although also commercial art and not necessarily of a political nature, Ikeda takes a different approach in the dismantling of postmodern traditions which makes it stand to me as a great inspiration in the writing of this dissertation. Even if clearly made to be spectacularized, the installations tap into the possibility of art breaking the boundaries of its medium by using the natural spectacle of public installation against itself. Just like many of the other pieces we have discussed, these pieces had their ultimate artistic capability removed from it’s ‘form’ and transferred to it’s public reaction. The effect of “Spectra'' (Ikeda, 2000 >) in particular stood only to a small part in the beauty, artistic quality, or performatic/spectacularized nature of the work, instead, it chose to focus on the effect of the piece on people unaware of it’s artistic nature. The results are staggering. As Ikeda said in an interview with The Guardian in 2014: "any kind of context is suddenly gone. From a distance, it looks monumental and solid, but when you are in it, it is entirely meditative. People stare up in wonder. It causes necks to strain. The experience is so pure and direct, they can take it with them into their own life.” He continues: "They were convinced it was a UFO landing. (...) or a light from heaven." (Ikeda, 2014) Riojy attempts to break the mold of his art through the spectacle of interactive public installations, yet he finds this nature from his own kind of utopic classism and avant-garde art, comparing his art to mathematics, engineering and classical music in order to make a point. Although this clinging to modernist ideals is something I disagree with and find counterproductive in nature, it feels to me like he’s relationship with such areas comes from a necessity to apply his version of disruptive modernist art as a method of remembrance of once forgotten ideals. Two problems still stand: Firstly, Ikeda chooses to have media coverage about he’s installations before the event , which ultimately dilutes the effect of people reaching into the unknown and taking their own conclusions. Secondly, It feels to me like the only thing in the way of his piece's total emancipation from it’s medium is he’s necessity of working within the visual.
ART WITHOUT FORM
Although the concept of political art as we’ve seen is abstract, versatile, and specially in today’s world fragile, the lack of attempts to objectively try to find solutions is, to me, staggering. Art historians and critics a lot of times take the part of descriptive historians not of critical thinkers, downplaying the value and impact of such practices and are many times ignorant to the potential impact of art and entertainment generally in the ideological formation of the audience. Throughout this dissertation we have seen a variety of art, film, tv, literature and many other cultural products that attempted to overcome the limits of their cultural and commodity spheres but that are not necessarily aware of the innate appropriation and dilution caused by today's entertainment industry and its commercialization. A lot of these pieces have the conceptualiser behind it aiming at reaching as many people as they can, sometimes falling into popular culture clichés and aesthetics in order to achieve ‘maximum’ reach and interest. This rebellious nature of art that aims at breaking the commercial system that contains it or at least it’s inscriptions through the use of already commercialized mediums is precisely what I aim to explore in this conclusion.
Throughout our analysis of “Marighella'' (Moura, 2019) we looked at how the reinscription of memory and the revision of history is a necessary method of political art making but the multitude of actions that surrounded the release of the movie ended up being it’s ultimate weapon of emancipation. Either because of the effect the initial censorship of the movie had on the audience, because of Moura’s integration of the piece within marginalized groups inside Brazilian society, or because of both, the film extrapolated the barriers of the medium of film to become a movement. This social characteristic within the arts, part of ‘Cinema Novo’, many other utopian cultural products as we have also seen, and especially a part of Rijoy ikeda’s 2014 series of creative interventions seems to have always been imprisoned by the barriers of the ‘form’ and therefore, of potentially commerciable aesthetics. These works have the nature of it’s power not necessarily in the artistic product but in it’s ‘effect’. Attempting to unify the product and the effect through the making of a purely conceptual practice seems to me necessary in order to create political art that aims at fast mobilization and at the same time is immune to the innate dilution of political content through it’s commercialization.
In many ways the simple fact that art can only exist in a material form, and I include digital art and film in it’s own sort of digital materiality, is the main obstacle for art that aims at being revolutionary both in its message and in it’s production. Although many can argue that performance art in many instances has done exactly that, it only does it in its own diluted version. It is important to note that by no means I am downplaying the value of performance art, but for a moment it appears to me as the Shrodinger’s cat dilemma. If you are performing in a movie or recording a piece of performance art, does it still exist as a performance once finished? Or, if all there is left of it is a video or a picture does it simply exist in it’s secondary materiality? Yoko Ono’s performances aren’t performances to me anymore, they are commercially successful videos and pieces that you might see being exhibited at the White Chappel Gallery. What if there was art that instead of justifying their message through its mediatic materiality, it ignores all and identifies itself truly to the lack of aesthetics, the nonexistence of it’s materiality, it’s necessity to be public and finite. To me, it became clear that in order to achieve something that truly accepts it’s momentaneous aspect and aims at the exponential growth of political interest without having to worry about the dilution of my work being self-inflicted it might be necessary to make beyond the usual ‘form’, the aesthetics, and above all the physical.
Years ago by the end of my Foundation Diploma at Kingston I attempted to do a project that by all means (not economical of course) seemed successful. Bare with me while I explain this honestly absurd project. The idea was to objectify the history of humanity and send it to space in order to save it from ourselves. I spent all my last fourth months of the course emailing people from NASA to the European Space Program to Space X in order to be able to effectively send it to space, but obviously the only responses I got were the ones telling me to stop emailing them. I subsequently spent my time attempting to do a list of the most important discoveries and actions humanity had taken until then and tried to send it to space with helium balloons. Of course today I see that the concept was flawed in many ways: One is that even if I was aware of the absurdity of making my own version of the history of humanity, and I was, that concept only shows my sources and views, making it not truly sociable in an experience that was meant to embody humanity even if slightly parodical in it’s method. But, what still stands to me as a great boundary within my work is that by the end of the piece all that stood from it was the footage of the ‘launch’ and a small installation of the plans and emails on my work desk. A couple years later I started realizing that perhaps the reason why it is impossible to have an action that reverberates through time without losing it’s edges is because it was never meant to be objectified by the artist. That realization, maybe even unconsciously, brought me to the making of this dissertation and today makes me want to amplify this clearly momentaneous aspect of my art and it’s goal of political impact without first party object-full commercialisation.
Although the creation of the ‘form-less’ stands to me as a life-time project, I thought that in order to finish this dissertation I should at least share with you a early example of what I might consider ‘form-less art’: Imagine an art project for example, where through the use of random number generators and internet phone calling, one would automatically call all the possibility of numbers in the UK and play a recorded message. Although it would take an extremely long time to prepare and a huge amount of money to pull it off (see the calculation below), to me the art in that situation wouldn’t stand in the action of recording and planning, it immediately only stands in the relationship between the recording and the people as object-less social intervention as art brings the cultural object directly to the audience without previous explanation. And, the goal of this work can't just be to spark a nation wide discussion about whatever the message may be, it has to be a clear emancipation from preconceived notion of modernism, postmodernism and art under capitalism as it doesn’t exist in the material sphere. My proposition of ‘art without form’, of course, it may be just absurd to some, to me stands as what I believe I am going to spend a lot of my future years exploring in conjunction with my material work, and I hope it may have been useful to whomever might read this.
FOLLOW UPS
Marighella’s poems:
Poem Set 1:Liberdade by Carlos Marighella
Carlos Marighella. (n.d.). Liberdade. [online] Available at: https://www.marxists.org/portugues/marighella/1939/mes/liberdade.htm [Accessed 17 Jan. 2022].
“Não ficarei tão só no campo da arte,/e, ânimo firme, sobranceiro e forte,/tudo farei por ti para exaltar-te,/serenamente, alheio à própria sorte./Para que eu possa um dia contemplar-te/dominadora, em férvido transporte,/direi que és bela e pura em toda parte,/por maior risco em que essa audácia importe./Queira-te eu tanto, e de tal modo em suma,/que não exista força humana alguma/que esta paixão embriagadora dome./E que eu por ti, se torturado for,/possa feliz, indiferente à dor,/morrer sorrindo a murmurar teu nome”
“I will not remain so alone in the field of art,/ and, with a firm, lofty and strong spirit,/ I will do everything for you to exalt you,/ serenely, oblivious to my own luck./ So that one day I can contemplate you/ domineering , in fervent transport, / I will say that you are beautiful and pure everywhere, / no matter how much risk this audacity may be. / I love you so much, and in such a way, in short, / that there is no human strength / that this intoxicating passion dome./And may I for you, if tortured,/may happy, indifferent to pain,/die smiling while whispering your name”
Poem Set 2: Poema de uma Nota Só by Carlos Marighella (date unknown)
Carlos Marighella (n.d.). O País de Uma Nota Só. [online] Available at: https://www.marxists.org/portugues/marighella/ano/mes/nota.htm [Accessed 17 Jan. 2022].
”Não pretendo nada,/nem flores, louvores, triunfos./nada de nada./Somente um protesto,/uma brecha no muro,/e fazer ecoar,/com voz surda que seja,/e sem outro valor,/o que se esconde no peito,/ no fundo da alma/ de milhões de sufocados./Algo por onde possa filtrar o pensamento,/a ideia que puseram no cárcere. /A passagem subiu,/o leite acabou,/a criança morreu,/a carne sumiu,/o IPM prendeu,/o DOPS torturou,/o deputado cedeu,/a linha dura vetou,/a censura proibiu,/o governo entregou,/o desemprego cresceu,/a carestia aumentou,/o Nordeste encolheu,/o país resvalou./Tudo dó,/tudo dó,/tudo dó.../E em todo o país/repercute o tom/de uma nota só.../de uma nota só…”
“I want nothing,/ no flowers, no praise, no triumphs./ nothing at all./ Only a protest,/ a crack in the wall,/ and make it echo,/ with a deaf voice,/ and with no other value,/ what's hidden in the breast/ in the depth of the soul/ of millions of suffocated people./ Something through which the thought can filter,/ the idea that they put in prison. / The ticket has gone up,/ the milk has run out,/ the child died,/ the meat is gone,/ the IPM arrested,/ the DOPS tortured,/ the deputy gave in,/ the hard-line vetoed,/ censorship prohibited,/ the government handed over,/ unemployment grew,/ the cost of living increased,/ the Northeast shrank,/ the country slipped./ All pity,/ all pity,/ all pity.../ And all over the country/ resonates the tone/ of a single note.../ of a single note…”
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“Don’t Look Up”. (2021). [Film] Adam McKay.
“Once There was Brasilia”. (2021). [Film] Adirley Queirós
“Marighella”. (2019), [Film] Wagner Moura
“Tropa de Elite”. (2007). [Film] José Padilha
“Nomadland”. (2020). [Film] Clhoé Zhao
“Terra em Transe”. (1967). [Film] Glauber Rocha
“Squid Game”. (2021). [TV] Huang Dong-hyuk
”America: Imagine the World Without Her”. (2016) [Film] Dinesh D’Souza
“Spectra”. (2000 >). [Installation] Ryoji Ikeda
‘Hack’. (2014). [Installation] Ryoji Ikeda