Variable dimensions
4 glass vases and 36 flowers Photo Filipe Berndt Exiting the room toward the second floor of the gallery, there are works from the series Vanitas (2018). In this series, words that refer to the passage of time are written with the Vanitas writing system, in which each letter of the alphabet is designated by a certain number of flowers within vases. A vase with one flower corresponds to the letter A, a vase with two flowers to the letter B, and so on. The exhibition features two works from the Vanitas series: Vida, written with red anthuriums, and Tempo, written with white carnations. Here, real nature (flowers) and conventional nature (time) meet under a single perspective. This crossing still leaves the doubt: when is the right time to change the flowers in the vases?Dimensões variáveis [variable dimensions]
tiles Photo Filipe Berndt105 x 190 cm
Pigment print on kozo awagami paper 110g
Photo Filipe BerndtIn the series Clouds (2022), Detanico Lain created a set of 15 images of white clouds on a blue background. From a distance, the observer can, as in a game, look for shapes in the clouds, but when getting closer, he sees that, in fact, the clouds are made of letters that form words. The letters scattered across the images also require some investigation to uncover the word that is there.
101 x 79 cm
dress – suede wool, cotton tricoline, horsetail interlining and plastic
Photo Eduardo Ortega150 x 150 cm
Gold leaf glued on ultra MDF board Photo Edouard Fraipont Nar means sun in Mongolian. In the Radiant series, the word sun is written in different languages according to the Radiant writing system developed by the artists.60 x 60 cm
Pigmented mineral print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag matte paper 100% white cotton 308g Photo Ana Pigosso In the “Quanta cor” series, color names are described using a diagrammatic accumulation system. Color fields are drawn by crossing the positions of each letter in the color name and in alphabetical order. The color is formed as the letters combine. The word is completed as the layers of pigments overlap.80 x 60 cm each - polyptych composed of 24 pieces
Printing with mineral pigment ink on paper Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gr. Detanico and Lain Testimony: "It is a 24-frame version of the history of the universe, from its initial extremely dense and concentrated state to its end, where the particles will be so dispersed that there will be no more light or form. In the book of the universe the stars visible in the sky of the southern hemisphere are represented by Greek letters corresponding to their magnitude on the Bayer scale (alpha for the brightest, followed by beta, gamma, etc... to omega for the less bright). This set of elements turns the sky into a book, in which the combinations of the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet can write all the possible stories of the universe."7m x ø8m - approximately
Carbon steel, oxide red anti-corrosive background paint and matte black alkyd synthetic enamel, led lamps and resin Vizinhança [Neighborhood] is a 3-dimensional sculpture representing the 30 closest stars to Earth (scale 1 meter = 1 parsec (3.25 light years)).90 x 60 cm
Offset printing plate Utopia is a writing system whose character set is linked to the letters of the alphabet. The system comments on the clash between control and chaos in Brazilian cities. In capital letters, the characters aim at the formal conciseness of the iconic buildings designed by Oscar Niemeyer; in the lower cases, the confusion of power poles, wires, railings, dump containers, billboards, guardhouses, security cameras - images so present in Brazilian urban landscapes.43 x 233 cm
108 books stacked, "Words and Things" - Michel Foucault Photo Rafael Canas Ponto de equilíbrio Instituto Tomie Ohtake São Paulo, Brasil, 2010255 x 150 cm diameter
Electrostatic painting and adhesive vinyl on metal60 x 120 x 20 cm each (polyptych)
4 acrylic light boxes mounted on aluminum chassisDetanico and Lain adopts language as the subject and object of their work. A poetics that presents the world seen from its own codes of perception and understanding. Their largely conceptual works employ the use of sound, graphics, text, video, and other traditional art mediums within their installations. They represent a rigorous use of formalism and a refined use of visual and written poetry.
Their work reflects their joint fascination with the human ability to contemplate the world around them and beyond. Imbued with scientific, mathematical and literary references, their work applies themes of time, space, memory and the infinite beyond.
Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain have worked together since 1996. Semiologist and graphic designer, born in 1974 and 1973, respectively, in Caxias do Sul (RS), live and work in Paris. Their works, largely conceptual, mix graphics, text, sounds and videos, almost always imbued with scientific, mathematical and literary references.
In 2002, the duo participated in an artist residency in the French capital, at the Palais de Tokyo. Two years later, they won the Nam June Paik, one of the most prestigious international awards. In the same year, in 2004, Angela and Rafael participated in the Bienal de São Paulo, a feat that was repeated in the following two editions, in 2006 and 2008. In 2007, the duo represented Brazil at the 52nd Venice Art Biennale.
A selection of solo shows include Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (2019), The Club, Tokio; Archipel (2018), Musée de l’Abbaye Sainte-Croix, Les Sables-d’Olonne, Alfabeto Infinito (2013), Fundação Iberê Camargo, Porto Alegre, Um dado tempo um dado lugar (2008), Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte; Inverse Times (2007), Musée Zadkine, Paris; After Utopia (2006), Pharos Centre for Contemporary Art, Nicosia.
A selection of group shows includes: The Moon (2019), Grand Palais, Paris (France); Unpacking My Library (2018), National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (Greece); Paisagem Incompleta, Centro Cultural Usiminas (2010), Ipatinga (Brazil); Undefined borders for unlimited perceptions (2009), Blindarte Contemporanea, Naples (Italy); 10ª Bienal Habana – Integración y resistencia en la era global (2009), Havana (Cuba); MASH UP, Artspace (2009), Auckland, New Zeland; Volume V – I think I remember (2009), Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin (Ireland); Programme “Satellite” Terrains de jeux ¾ (2008), Jeu de Paume, Paris (France); Um dado tempo um dado lugar (2008), Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte (Brasil); Inverse Times (2007) Musée Zadkine, Paris (France); Detanico, Lain – Optica Centre d’Art Contemporain (2007) Montreal (Canada); 3rd Media City (2004), Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul (South Corea).
Their works are part of collections such as Musée du Louvre, Paris (France); FNAC (France); FMAC (France); FRAC île-de-france, Le Plateau, Paris, (France); Musée d’Art modern et Contemporain, Abbaye Sainte-Croix, Les Sables d’Olonne, (France); Taguchi Art Collection (Japan); Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Tokyo (Japan); Centro Calego de Arte Contemporânea, Santiago de Compostela (Spain); Cifo-Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (USA); Colección Isabel y Agustin Coppel, CDMX (Mexico); Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo (Brazil); MAMAM, Recife (Brazil); Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz, IFF, Ribeirão Preto (Brazil). Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte (Brazil).
Detanico and Lain adopts language as the subject and object of their work. A poetics that presents the world seen from its own codes of perception and understanding. Their largely conceptual works employ the use of sound, graphics, text, video, and other traditional art mediums within their installations. They represent a rigorous use of formalism and a refined use of visual and written poetry.
Their work reflects their joint fascination with the human ability to contemplate the world around them and beyond. Imbued with scientific, mathematical and literary references, their work applies themes of time, space, memory and the infinite beyond.
Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain have worked together since 1996. Semiologist and graphic designer, born in 1974 and 1973, respectively, in Caxias do Sul (RS), live and work in Paris. Their works, largely conceptual, mix graphics, text, sounds and videos, almost always imbued with scientific, mathematical and literary references.
In 2002, the duo participated in an artist residency in the French capital, at the Palais de Tokyo. Two years later, they won the Nam June Paik, one of the most prestigious international awards. In the same year, in 2004, Angela and Rafael participated in the Bienal de São Paulo, a feat that was repeated in the following two editions, in 2006 and 2008. In 2007, the duo represented Brazil at the 52nd Venice Art Biennale.
A selection of solo shows include Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (2019), The Club, Tokio; Archipel (2018), Musée de l’Abbaye Sainte-Croix, Les Sables-d’Olonne, Alfabeto Infinito (2013), Fundação Iberê Camargo, Porto Alegre, Um dado tempo um dado lugar (2008), Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte; Inverse Times (2007), Musée Zadkine, Paris; After Utopia (2006), Pharos Centre for Contemporary Art, Nicosia.
A selection of group shows includes: The Moon (2019), Grand Palais, Paris (France); Unpacking My Library (2018), National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (Greece); Paisagem Incompleta, Centro Cultural Usiminas (2010), Ipatinga (Brazil); Undefined borders for unlimited perceptions (2009), Blindarte Contemporanea, Naples (Italy); 10ª Bienal Habana – Integración y resistencia en la era global (2009), Havana (Cuba); MASH UP, Artspace (2009), Auckland, New Zeland; Volume V – I think I remember (2009), Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin (Ireland); Programme “Satellite” Terrains de jeux ¾ (2008), Jeu de Paume, Paris (France); Um dado tempo um dado lugar (2008), Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte (Brasil); Inverse Times (2007) Musée Zadkine, Paris (France); Detanico, Lain – Optica Centre d’Art Contemporain (2007) Montreal (Canada); 3rd Media City (2004), Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul (South Corea).
Their works are part of collections such as Musée du Louvre, Paris (France); FNAC (France); FMAC (France); FRAC île-de-france, Le Plateau, Paris, (France); Musée d’Art modern et Contemporain, Abbaye Sainte-Croix, Les Sables d’Olonne, (France); Taguchi Art Collection (Japan); Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Tokyo (Japan); Centro Calego de Arte Contemporânea, Santiago de Compostela (Spain); Cifo-Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (USA); Colección Isabel y Agustin Coppel, CDMX (Mexico); Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo (Brazil); MAMAM, Recife (Brazil); Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz, IFF, Ribeirão Preto (Brazil). Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte (Brazil).
Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain
1974. Angela Detanico, Caxias do Sul, Brazil
1973. Rafael Lain, Caxias do Sul, Brazil
Live and work in Paris, France
Solo Exhibitions
2022
– Detanico Lain. Two Voices – Rozenstraat – Amsterdam – The Netherlands
– Detanico Lain. Sobre a terra, sob o céu – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brazil
– Detanico Lain. Danaé – Église Sainte Cécile – Ceillac – France
– Detanico Lain. Lumière – MUCEM – Marselha – France
– Detanico Lain. Corpos Celestes – Vera Cortes – Lisbon – Portugal
– Detanico Lain. Persévérance LMNO – Brussels – Belgium
2021
– Detanico Lain: Perspective – Centre régional de la photographie Hauts-de-France (CRP) – Douchy-les-Mines – France
– Solution dúne question curieuse… – Martine Aboucaya – Paris – France
2019
– Detanico Lain. Between Yesterday and Tomorrow – The Club – Tokyo – Japan
– De Vermeer à Véronèse [instalação permanente/permanente exhibition] -Centre de Conservation du Louvre à Liévin – Liévin – France
– Detanico Lain. Meteorológica – Espaço Cultural Porto Seguro [ECPS] – São Paulo – Brazil
– Detanico Lain. Time Waves (capítulo II) – Sala Antonio – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brazil
– Metamorphoses – Martine Aboucaya – Paris – France
2018
– Detanico Lain: Estrutura – Galeria Vera Cortês – Lisboa – Portugal
– Detanico Lain: Archipel – Musée de l’Abbaye Sainte-Croix – Les Sables-d’Olonne – France
2017
– Ao mesmo tempo – Embaixada do Brasil em Tokyo – Japan
– Letter Works – Açik Ekran Gallery – Istanbul – Turkey
– Detanico Lain: Oceans – LMNO – Brussels – Belgium
– 27, rue de Fleurus – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brazil
2016
– Cascada de Silêncio – Proyecto Paralelo – Mexico City – Mexico
– 12 13 14 15, LMNO – Brussels – Belgium
– Letter Pieces (on the revolutions) – Martine Aboucaya – Paris – France
2015
– Sobre o Céu – Vera Cortes Art Agency – Lisbon – Portugal
– Una línea mil palabras – Casas Riegner – Bogotá – Colombia
2014
– Comme des gouttes de pluie sur la lune/Like raindrops on the moon – Martine Aboucaya – Paris – France
– Weightless Days (Rain Season) – La Gaite Lyrique – Paris – France
2013
– Alfabeto Infinito – Fundação Iberê Camargo – Porto Alegre – Brazil
– Weightless Days version Kyoto 2013 – Kyoto Art Center – Kyoto – Japan
– Amplitude – Museu Coleção Berardo – Lisbon – Portugal
2012
– Le jardin des heures – Les arts au mur – Pessac – France
– Rio Corrente – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brazil
– Two Voices – Martine Aboucaya – Paris – France
2011
– Lexico – Blindarte Contemporanea – Naples – Italy
– Formas de Dizer – Vera Cortês Art Agency – Lisbon – Portugal
– Sobre Cor – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brazil
2010
– 179 Canal Façade – 179 Canal, Univers – New York – USA
– Detanico y Lain – Galería Moro – Santiago – Chile
– Horizon Vague – Galerie Martine Aboucaya – Paris – France
– Léxico – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brazil
2009
– Espaços de Tempo – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brazil
– Wind Spelling – Galerie Martine Aboucaya – Paris – France
2008
– Il silenzio dell’eclissi – Blindarte Contemporânea – Naples – Italy
– Programme “Satellite” Terrains de jeux 3/4 – Jeu de Paume – Paris – France
– Um dado tempo um dado lugar – Museu de Arte da Pampulha – Belo Horizonte – Brazil
2007
– 52ª Biennale di Venezia – Padiglione Brasile – Venice – Italy
– Inverse Times – Musée Zadkine – Paris – France
– Detanico Lain – Óptica – Montreal – Canada
– Novas Utopias – Museu de Arte Moderna Aloísio Magalhães (MAMAM) – Recife – Brazil
– Camberwell College of Arts – London – England
– Ano Zero – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brazil
– Equation du temps – Martine Aboucaya – Paris – France
2006
– After Utopia – Pharos Centre for Contemporary Art – Nicosia – Cyprus
– Flow/Wolf – La BF15 – Lyon – France
2005
– About to say – Galerie Martine Aboucaya – Paris – France
Group Exhibitions
2023
– Casa no céu – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brazil
– Apaixonados – Galpão da Lapa (Coleção de Andrea e José Olympio Pereira) – São Paulo – Brazil
2022
– Ausente Manifesto. Ver e imaginar na arte contemporânea – Sesc Araraquara – Araraquara – Brazil
– Monument. 40 ans de photographie au CRP – Centre régional de photographie – Douchy-les-Mines – France
– 15 anos MACE – Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Elvas – Elvas – Portugal
– Lunar Maria – Le Silo – Marines – France
– Illusion. Bois de Fa – Grez Doiceau – Belgium
– Soundtrack for a Troubled Time – Huidenclub – Rotterdam – The Netherlands
– Missing – Galerie Martine Aboucaya – Paris – France
– À mains nues – MAC VAL – Vitry-sur-Seine – France
– Licenses libre – Musée de l’Hospice Saint-Roch – Issoudun – France
– Coleção Sartori – A arte contemporânea habita Antônio Prado – Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul (MARGS) – Porto Alegre – Brazil
– Offscreen – Hotel Salomon de Rothschild – Paris – France
2021
– Ausente Manifesto: ver e imaginar na arte contemporânea – Sesc Mogi – Mogi das Cruzes – Brazil
– Em Branco – Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz (IFF) Ribeirão Preto – Brazil
– Biennial of the Americas – Museo de las Americas – Denver – USA
– rosa rosa rosae rosae – Maison Pelgrims – Brussels – Belgium
– The Still Point – Kudan House – Tokyo – Japan
– Outras Habilidades – Museu Casa Kubitschek – Belo Horizonte – Brazil
– Perdidos. Em Medio. Juntos. 22a Bienal de Arte Paiz – Fundación Nacional para las Bellas Artes y la Cultura – Guatemala
– Les tiroirs du temps de Jacques Roubaud – Martine Aboucaya – Paris – France
2020
– Gráfico Grafia – Museu Histórico Abílio Barreto – Belo Horizonte – Brazil
– Unfolding Artist`s Mind – The Club – Tokyo – Japan
– En Mouvement – Villa Kujoyama – Kyoto – Japan
– Tomber em Amour – Maison des Arts – Brussels – Belgium
– Diálogos – Galeria Vera Cortês – Lisbon – Portugal
– From Translating to Transcoding – Société d’Élecricité – Brussels – Belgium
– Obras-Projeto – Museu Brasilerio da Escultura e Ecologia (MUBE) – São Paulo – Brazil
– Escrituras Ácratas – Centro Párrage – Murcia – Spain
– Playtime – Casa do Lago – Mexico City – Mexico
– Oblique Strategies – Martine Aboucaya – Paris – France
– La lenta exploson de uma semilla – OTR Espacio de Arte – Madrid – Spain
2019
– Rio dos Navegantes – Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR) – Rio de Janeiro – Brazil
– The Moon – Grand Palais – Paris – France
– One Minute, One Hour, One Month… One Million Years – The Island Club – Limassol – Cyprys
– Os olhos escutam – Galeria Fundação Amélia de Mello – Lisbon – Portugal
– Les títres courants – Collections Frac Normandie Caen – Saint-Germain la Blanche-Herbe – France
– D – collections du Frac Íle-de-France – Chateau de Rentilly – Rentilly – France
– La Rive D’en Face – L’Art Pu Gallery – Riyadh – Saudi Arabia
– The other side of the wind – Martine Aboucaya – Paris – France
– Marines – Le Silo – France
– Régénérations – LMNO – Brussels – Belgium
2018
– Multitudinous Seas – Fondation Hippocrène – Paris França
– Ready Made in Brasil – SESI Itapetininga – Itapetininga – Brasil
– One Thing Plus Another Thing or One Thing Minus Another Thing. That’s How Stories Begin – Tlön Projects – Amsterdam – The Netherlands
– Kyojitsu-Hiniku: Between the Skin and the Flesh of Japan -Pavilhão Japonês – Pq do Ibirapuera – São Paulo – Brasil
– Saudosa Maloca – Alameda Campinas, 737 – São Paulo – Brazil
– Tarefas Infinitas – Biblioteca Brasiliana Guita e José Mindlin – Cidade Universitária – São Paulo – Brazil
– Another visit with the sculpture – Arte Alameda/ National Institute of Fine Arts – México City – Mexico
– Oeuvres de la Collection Lambert – Collection Lambert en Avignon – Avignon – France
– Unpacking my library – National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST) – Athens – Greece
– Prologue #1 – Gallerie Martine Aboucaya – Paris – France
– Playlist – Gallerie Martine Aboucaya – Paris – France
– 14e Nuit des Musées – Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature – Paris – France
– #iff2018 – Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz (IFF) – Ribeirão Preto – Brazil
– Medio Acqua – La Base sous-marine – Bordeaux – France
– Dialogue – The Club – Tokyo – Japan
– À l’heure du dessin, 6ª temps, Tracé – Château de Serviéres – Marselha – France
2017
– Manipulate the World – Moderna Museet – Stockholm – Sweden
– Flatland / Abstractions narratives #2 – MUDAM Luxembourg – Luxembourg
– Nuit Blanche Kyoto – MTRL Kyoto – Kyoto – Japan
– Viva Villa! Festival – Cité Internationale des Arts – Paris – France
– Potência e Adversidade. Arte da América Latina nas coleções em Portugal – Museu de Lisboa – Lisbon – Portugal
– Modus Operandi – Societé – Brussels – Belgium
– Punto de Partida. Colección Isabel y Agustín Coppel – Sala de Arte Santander – Fundación Banco Santander – Madrid – Spain
– Le Silo — Marines — França
– Ready Made in Brasil – Galeria de Arte do Sesi/Centro Cultural FIESP – São Paulo; Sesc São José dos Campos- São José dos Campos; Sesc Rio Preto – São José do Rio Preto – Brasil
– Graphic Design Festival – Musée des Arts Décoratifs – Paris – France
– Private Choices – La centrale – Brussels – Belgium
– Invitation Without Exhibition – Martine Aboucaya – Paris – France
– Natura Plastica – Blindarte Contemporanea – Milan – Italy
– Manifesto gráfico – Espaço Cultural Porto Seguro – São Paulo – Brazil
2016
– Metamorphosis – Stavos Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center – Athens – Greece
– Os muitos e o um: a arte contemporânea brasileira na coleção de José Olympio e Andrea Pereira – Instituto Tomie Ohtake (ITO) – São Paulo – Brasil
– Nouvelles Vagues – Carré d’Art – Musée d’art contemporain Nîmes – Nîmes – France
– Lupa: Ensaios Audiovisuais – Museu de Artes e Ofícios – Belo Horizonte – Brazil
– Clube da Gravura: 30 anos – Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM) – São Paulo – Brazil
– OMIA – One Minute in art – Paris – France
– Crosswords – Hangar – Lisbon – Portugal
2015
– Imagine Brazil – DHC/Art Foundation for Contemporary Art – Montreal – Canada
– Fins i tot un paisatge tranquil… – Can Felipa – Barcelona – Spain
– Anozero’15. Um lance de dados – Bienal de Arte Contemporânea de Coimbra – Coimbra – Portugal
– THUOS/HTRON: the New Coordinates of America for Nuit Blanche – University of Toronto – Toronto – Canada
– Project 35: The Last Act – Garage Museum of Contemporary Art – Moscow – Russia
– Phenomenon (1): Anafi Festival for Contemporary Art – Anafi – Greece
– Le Silo – Marines – France
– Writing Diffraction – La Virreina Centre de la Image – Barcelona – Spain
– THUOS/HTRON: the New Coordinates of America for Nuit Blanche – Nuit Blanche – Toronto – Canadá
– Engagements – Musée Saint-Croix – Poitiers – France
– Outdoors 2015 – Cité de la Céramique Sèvres – Sèvres – France
– Conversations sur l’invisible – Galerie Martine Aboucaya – Paris – France
– El buen caligrama – The Goma – Madrid – Spain
– As the Earth Spins Beneath the Stars – Fundação Miguel Rios – Lisbon – Portugal
– Building Imaginery Bridges Across Hard Ground – Art Dubai Contemporary – Dubai – UAE
– Les Motifs du Savoi – Mains d’œuvres – Paris – France
2014
– Afetividades Eletivas – Centro Cultural Minas Tênis Clube – Belo Horizonte – Brazil
– Cidade Gráfica – Itaú Cultural – São Paulo – Brazil
– Há escolas que são gaiolas e há escolas que são asas – Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR) – Rio de Janeiro – Brazil
– Arte e Sociedade no Brasil 2 – Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR) – Rio de Janeiro – Brazil
– Imagine Brazil – MAC Lyon – Lyon – France
– PER/FORM – Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M) – Madrid – Spain
– Cruzamentos: Contemporary Brazilian Art – Wexner Center for the Arts – Columbus – USA
– Everytime you turn a page, it dies, a little – United Artists for Yvon Lambert – Paris – France
– Sssh! Del silencio un lenguaje – Galería Nuble – Santander – Spain
2013
– Escavar o Futuro – Palácio das Artes – Belo Horizonte – Brazil
– Amor e ódio a Lygia Clark – Zacheta National Gallery – Warzaw – Poland
– Imagine Brazil (Artist’s Books) – Astrup Fearnley Museet – Oslo – Norway
– Reinventando o Mundo – Museu Vale – Vila Velha – Brazil
– Tomie Ohtake Correspondências – Instituto Tomie Ohtake – São Paulo – Brazil
– Coletiva – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brazil
– Circuitos Cruzados: o Centre Pompidou encontra o MAM – Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM SP) – São Paulo – Brazil
2012
– Repeat to fade – Galeria Mendes Wood – São Paulo – Brazil
– Le chat est dans la forêt – L’Atelier – Ivry-sur-Seine – France
– Traits contemporains – École des Beaux-arts de Saint-Omer – Saint-Omer – France
– Tourne-toi – Galerie Martine Aboucaya – Paris – France
– Más allá de la xilografía – Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende – Santiago – Chile
– Explorateurs – Musée de l’Abbaye Sainte-Croix – Les Sables d’Olonne – France
– This & There – Fondation d’entreprise Ricard – Paris – France
– This is Brazil! 1990-2012 – Palexco – La Corogne – Spain
– Promenadologues #1- Centre National de l’edition et de l’art Imprimé (CNEAI) – Chatou – France
– Instante: experiência/acontecimento am Arte e Tecnologia – SESC Santo André – Santo André – Brazil
– In Other Words: The Black Market of Translations Negotiating Contemporary Cultures – Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst – Berlin – Germany
– A Rebours – Théâtre National de Chaillot – Paris – France
– Los impoliticos 2 – Espacio Arte Contemporanea – Montevideo – Uruguay
– The Spiral and the square – SKMU Sorlandets Kunstmuseum – Kristiansand – Norway
– The Spiral and the Square – Trondheim Art Museum – Trondheim – Norway
2011
– Contra a Parede – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brazil
– Os Primeiros Dez Anos – Instituto Tomie Ohtake – São Paulo – Brazil
– Telefone Sem Fio: Word-Things of Augusto de Campos Revisited – EFA Project Space – NwewYork – USA
– Instante: experiência /acontecimento – Sesc Campinas – Campinas – São Paulo – Brazil
– Ensaios de Geopoéticas – 8ª Bienal do Mercosul – Porto Alegre – Brazil
– The Spiral and the Square. Exercises on translatability – Bonnier Konsthall – Stockholm – Sweden
– Estratégias para Luzes Acidentais- Luciana Brito Galeria – São Paulo – Brazil
– Um Outro Lugar – Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM SP) – São Paulo – Brazil
– GSM Global Sound Map – Grand Café Centre d’Art Contemporain – Saint-Nazaire – Francea
– Harboring Tone and Place – CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art – Annandale-on-Hudson – USA
– Mappamundi – Museu Colecção Berardo – Lisbon – Portugal
– C’est l’amour à la plage – Musée Régional d’Art Contemporain Languedoc-Roussillon – Sérignan – France
– La Fabrique Sonore – Domaine Pommery – Reims – France
– Mr. Memory – Galerie Martine Aboucaya – Paris – France
2010
– De Frente al Sol – Galerie Martin Janda – Viena – Austria
– Livre Tradução – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Arte Pará 2010- Museu do Estado do Pará- Cidade Velha- Belém- Pará
– Paralela 2010/ A contemplação do mundo- Liceu de Artes e Ofício- São Paulo- Brasil
– Ponto de equilíbrio- Instituto Tomie Ohtake- São Paulo- Brasil
– Artes e novas espacialidades- Relações Contemporâneas- Oi Futuro- Belo Horizonte- Brasil
-Living under the same roof- CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art – Annandale-on-Hudson- USA
-Epílogo – Museo de Arte de Zapopan- Zapopan- México
-Drawing time -Le temps du dessin –Galeries Poirel – Nancy- França
-Les élixirs de Panacée- Palais Bénédictine – Fécamp- França
-Le temps des manifestes-Espace de l’Art Concret- Mouans-Sartoux- França
-Ponto de Equilíbrio-Instituto Tomie Ohtake -São Paulo- Brasil
-De frente al Sol –Galerie Martin Janda- Vienna- Áustria
-Vous êtes ici… -Musée des Beaux-arts de Dunkerque– Dunkerque- França
– Arte e novas espacialidades – Oi Futuro Belo Horizonte- Belo Horizonte- Brasil
– Sustentabilidade: e eu com isso?- Bienal Brasileira de Design 2010-Curitiba- Brasil
– Narcissa- Galerie Martine Aboucaya– Paris- França
– Plateforme Roven- Café au lit -Paris- France
– Undefined borders for unlimited perceptions –Blindarte Contemporanea- Nápoles- Itália
– 2 de Copas – Vera Cortez e Tijuana/Vermelho – Lisboa – Portugal
– Paisagem Incompleta – Centro Cultural Usiminas – Minas Gerais – Brasil
2009
– Undefined borders for unlimited perceptions – Blindarte Contemporanea – Nápoles – Itália
– 10ª Bienal Habana – Integración y resistencia en la era global – Havana – Cuba
– MASH UP – Artspace – Auckland – Nova Zelândia
– Volume V – I think I remember – Temple Bar Gallery – Dublin – Irlanda
-p.H Neutro – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
2008
– A sombra da Historia/Os contextos que veñen – Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea – Santiago de Compostela – Espanha
– 28ª Bienal de São Paulo – Fundação Bienal de São Paulo – Pavilhão Ciccillo Matarazzo – São Paulo – Brasil
– Trava Línguas/ tongue-twister – Vera Cortês Art Agency– Lisboa – Portugal
– Loop Diverse 2008 – International Festival & Fair for Videoart – Barcelona – Espanha
– Billboard Text Art – EMERGING WOR(L)DS – TINA B. Project – The Prague Contemporary Art Festival – Praga – República Tcheca
– Reação em Cadeia –Centro Cultural São Paulo [CCSP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– Initial – Galerie Olivari-Veys – Bruxelas – Bélgica
– Looks Conceptual ou Como Confundi um Carl André com uma Pilha de Tijolos – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
2007
– Traveling Without Moving – Oboro – Montreal – Canadá
– Recortar e Colar – CRTL_C + CRTL_V – Sesc Pompéia – São Paulo – Brasil
– Close up – Galerie Martine Aboucaya – Paris – França
– Nébuleuses – LIA – Lieu d’Images et d’Art – Grenoble – França
– Re-trait – Fondation d’entreprise Ricard – Paris – França
– Cart(ajena) – Cartagena – Colombia
– Accidents : a selection of recent Brazilian videos – Muzeul National de Arta Contemporana/Bucuresti [MNAC]– Bucareste – Romênia
– Encuentro Internacional Medellín 2007 – Casa del Encuentro – Medellín – Colombia
– Encontro entre dois mares – Bienal de São Paulo-Valência – Luz ao Sul – Museo del Carmen – Valencia – Espanha
– 16º Festival Internacional de Arte Eletrônica – Videobrasil 2007- SESC Paulista – São Paulo – Brasil
– All things said, in Motion – Randall Scott Gallery – Washington DC – EUA
– Du sonore et du visuel 2 – In situ/Fabienne Leclerc – Paris – França
– Oeuvres de la collection Billarant – Dominique Perrault Architecture – Paris – França
– Weightless Days – Namura Art Meeting – Osaka – Japão
2006
– Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial – Echigo –Tsumari – Japão
– 27ª Bienal de São Paulo; Como viver Junto – Pavilhão da Bienal – São Paulo – Brasil
– All that is solid melts into air – FRAC des Pays de la Loire –Carquefou – França
– Sudden Impact – Le plateau/ FRAC Ile-de-France – Paris – França
– L’usage du monde – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Rijeka – Rijeka – Croácia
– Samuel Morse meets Brian Wilson – Pode Bal – Paris – França
– Antipodes – Frac Lorraine – Metz – França
– Le corps du paysage – Galerie de l’Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes – Valenciennes – França
– La Cabane – Palais de Tokyo – Paris – França
– Espaço Aberto/Espaço Fechado: sites for sculpture in modern Brazil – Henry Moore Institute – Leeds – Inglaterra
2005
– Open Nature – ICC – Tokyo – Japão
– Radiodays – De Appel – Amsterdam – Holanda
– On Difference #1 – Württembergischer Kunstverein – Stuttgart – Alemanha
– Equipée – Centre d’Art Passerelle – Brest – França
– Wharf – Centre d’Art Contemporain de Basse-Normandie – Saint-Clair – França
– Subversiones diarias – Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires [MALBA] – Buenos Aires – Argentina
– Neither Focus – Art Cologne – Cologne – Alemanha
2004
– 3rd Media_City_Seoul – Seoul Museum of Art – Seoul – Korea do Sul
– 9ª Mostra Internazionale di Architettura – Venice – Itália
– Nam June Paik Award – Dortmund – Alemanha
– 26ª Bienal de São Paulo – São Paulo – Brasil
– Em Tempo sem Tempo – Paço das Artes – São Paulo – Brasil
– Paralela – São Paulo – Brasil
– Derivas – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Bem-vindo – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Vol. – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Fachada – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
2003
– GNS/Le Pavillon – Palais de Tokyo – Paris – França
– Printemps de Septembre – Toulouse – França
– Cité Internacionale des Arts – Paris – França
– Intershop Südstattsüd – Karlsruhe – Alemanha
– Incomprehension – Palais de Tokyo – Paris – França
– Imagética – Curitiba – Brasil
– Modos de Usar – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
2002
– Graphic Shows Brazil – Ginza Graphic Gallery – Toquio – Japão
– Oo – Palais de Tokyo – Paris – França
2001
– São ou Não São Gravuras?– Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– Ruído do Silêncio – Instituto Itaú Cultural – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
Performances e Screenings
2018
– Fragments. National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), Atenas, Grécia
– Fragments – Santos Augusta – São Paulo – Brazil
– Silêncio Fragments, Paris, France
2017
– Un Autre Poème – MTRL — Quioto — Japão
– Monotonous Space – Villa Kujoyama — Quioto — Japão
2014
– Voice-Over — CA2M — Madri — Espanha
– Voice-Over — Martine Aboucaya — Paris — França
– Weightless Days (Rain Season) – La Gaîté Lyrique — Paris – França
– Weightless Days (Rain Season) FRAC Provence Alpes-Côte d’Azur – Marseille — França
– Weightless Days (Rain Season) Espace de l’Art Concret – Mouans-Sartoux — França
– Weightless Days — FRAC Lorraine — Metz — França
2013
– Host & Guest (Lexicon) — Tel Aviv Museum of Art — Israel
2012
– Lexique — Sorbonne, Amphithéâtre Gaston Bachelard — Paris — França
– Two Voices — Martine Aboucaya — Paris — França
– Lexique — La Maison de l’Amérique Latine — Paris — França
2009
– Denied Distances — Cine Humberto Mauro – Palácio das Artes — Belo Horizonte — Brazil
– Denied Distances — Cine Metrópolis — Vitória — Brasil
2007
– Ano zero – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Nom de pays : le pays – pointligneplan/La fémis – Paris – França
– Weightless Days – Namura Art Meeting – Osaka — Japão
– Imagem Pensamento – Cine Humberto Mauro – Palácio das Artes – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
2006
– Weightless Days/Flatland Extended – La Ferme du Buisson – Noisiel – França
– Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Two scenes in three acts – Teater 3 – Stockholm – Suécia
– Con los ojos del otro – Centro Cultural de España en Montevideo – Montevideo – Uruguay
– Videografias in(visibles) – Centro Atlantico de Arte Contemporaneo de Gran Canaria – Gran Canaria – Espanha
– Programme Tropico-Végétal/La dixième Nuit Tropicale – Palais de Tokyo – Paris – França
2005
– About to Say – Galerie Martine Aboucaya – Paris – França
– Sound Waves for Selected Landscapes – 15º Festival Internacional de Arte Eletrônica Videobrasil – São Paulo – Brasil
– Ink is out – Cité Internationale des Arts – Paris – França
– Fête de la musique – Centre Culturel Irlandais – Paris – França
– Le placard – Glassbox – Paris – França
– Videografías in(visibles) – Fundación Museo Patio Herreriano – Valladolid – Espanha
– Terras em Trânsito – Monkeytown – Nova York – EUA
– 7º Festival de Curtas de Belo Horizonte – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
– Experimenta Colombia 2005 – Bogotá – Colômbia
2004
– Dia em Osaka – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Terras em Transito – Museo Tamayo de Arte Contemporâneo – Cidade do México – México
2003
– Dobra – 14º Festival Internacional de Arte Eletrônica Videobrasil – São Paulo – Brasil
2002
– Lançamento Making Off Videobrasil – Sesc Pompéia – São Paulo – Brasil
– Festival Eletronika – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
– Marrom Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Panzer Túnel – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Festival de Música Experimental – São Carlos – Brasil
2001
– 13º Festival Internacional de Arte Eletrônica Videobrasil – São Paulo – Brasil
Grants and Residencies
2017
– Villa Kujoyama – Quioto – Japão
2006
– XXèmes Ateliers du Frac des Pays de la Loire – Carquefou – França
2005
– La Ferme du Buisson – Noisiel – França (in colaboration with the choreographers Megumi Matsumoto and Takeshi Yazaki)
2004-2005
– Cité Internationale des Arts – Paris – França
2004
– Centre National de la Danse – Pantin – Paris – França (in colaboration with the choreographer Takeshi Yazaki)
2002-2003
– Le Pavillon/Palais de Tokyo – Paris – França
– Cité Internationale des Arts – Paris – França
Awards
2004
– Nam June Paik Award 2004
Permanent installations (selection)
– La ceinture de feu – IPGP – Institut de Physique du Globe – Paris – France
– Vizinhança – Praça da Lua, Monterey – Caxias do Sul – Brazil
– x, y, z / 3 lignes sur plan – Parc Régional Naturel de la Lorraine – Creuë, Prény e Bouxières-sous-Froidmont – France
– Institut Français – Paris – France
– Les Pavillons – Collège Anatolole France – Les Pavillons-sous-Bois – France
– Roseta – Collège Alphonse Daudet – Alès – France
Public Collections
– Musée du Louvre – França
– Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo – São Paulo – Brasil
– Colección Isabel y Agustín Coppel – Cidade do México – México
– Taguchi Art Collection – Japão
– Musée des Sables d’Olonne – França
– Museu de Arte da Pampulha – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
– Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea – Santiago de Compostela – Espanha
– Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM SP) – São Paulo – Brazil
– FNAC – France
– Fundação Municipal de Arte Contemporânea (FMAC) – France
– FRAC Plateau – Paris – France
– Museu de Arte Moderna Aloísio Magalhães (MAMAM) – Recife – Brazil
Private Collections open to the public
– Cifo-Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation – USA
– Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR) – Rio de Janeiro – Brazil
– Le Silo (Collection Françoise et Jean-Philippe Billarant) – Marines – France
– Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz (IFF) – Ribeirão Preto – Brazil
Bibliography
– Arforum Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain, Simone Menegoi, 2012
– Mouvement 58 Angela Detanico et Rafael Lain, Paysages Conceptuels, Line Herbert-Arnaud, Paris, 2011
– Volume 02 Despoesia, Audrey Illouz, Blackjack, Paris, France, 2011
– Flash Art 278 Detanico Lain, Fabio Cypriano, Milan, Italy, 2011
– Archistorm 40 La tentation de l’architecture, Clément Dirié, Paris, France, 2010
– Angela Detanico et Rafael Lain: entre transposition et disparition – Line Herbert-Arnaud – 20/27 nº 2- Paris – France, 2008
– Ice Cream: Contemporary Art in Culture – 10 curators, 100 contemporary Artists, 10 source Artists. Phaidon. London. 2007
– Artforum September 2007, “Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain”, Marek Bartelik, New York, USA, 2007
– Frieze 108, “City Report: São Paulo”, James Trainor, Ana Paula Cohen, London, England, 2007
– Dardo 05, “What if suddenly nothing else moves?”, Joana Neves, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 2007
– Artpress 337, “Angela Detanico et Rafael Lain”, Anne Dagbert, Paris, France, 2007
– Mouvement 43, “Utopia”, Paris, France, 2007
– Le Journal des Arts, n. 259, “Angela Detanico et Rafael Lain. Ralentir le processus d’information”, Paris, France, 2007
– Folha de S. Paulo, Ilustrada 26.02.07, São Paulo, Brazil
– Zéro Deux, “Si A = B en art comme en sciences, alors vers quels mondes allons-nous?”, Claire Jacquet, Paris, France, 2007
– Archistorm 25, “La tentation de l’architecture”, Clément Dirié, Paris, France, 2007
– Le Monde, 09.08.06, Paris, France
– Parachute 118, “Angela Detanico et Rafael Lain. Du language partout”, Lisette Lagnado, Montréal, Canada, 2005
– Mouvement 36-37, “Portfolio Angela Detanico et Rafael Lain”, Paris, France, 2005
– Mouvement 35, “Eclaits du documentaire”, Chantal Pontbriand, Paris, France, 2005
– “All Access”, Gloucester, USA, 2004
– Folha de S. Paulo, Ilustrada 24.09.04, São Paulo, Brazil
– Libération, “Métissages brésiliens”, Paris, France, 2004
– Folha de S. Paulo, “Ladrões de Sombras”, São Paulo, Brazil, 2004
– Videobrasil, “FF>>Dossier Angela Detanico e Rafael Lain”, São Paulo, Brazil, 2004
– Folha de S. Paulo, “31 Artistas + 1 Metrópole”, São Paulo, Brazil, 2004
– Étapes, “A la Découverte de Dobra”, Paris, France, 2004
– Le Journal #3, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France, 2003
– “O Livro Depois do Livro”, Giselle Beiguelman, São Paulo, Brazil, 2003
– Étapes, “Fêmur”, Paris, France, 2003
– Le Journal #2, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France, 2002
– Wire, Londres, England, 2002
– Trópico, São Paulo, Brazil, 2002
– Leonardo, Mit, Massachussets, USA, 2002
– Trip, São Paulo, Brazil, 2002
– Play, São Paulo, Brazil, 2002
– Projeto, São Paulo, Brazil, 1997
– Design Gráfico, São Paulo, Brazil, 1997
Mapping, Coding, Translating: Concrete Legacies in the Work of Detanico Lain
Pedro Erber, Waseda University
Abstract: The text explores the work of the Brazilian artists Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain in their multifarious relationship with the legacies of translation theory, poetic concretism, and the visual poetry of Kitasono Katue. In conversation with Detanico Lain and the Paris-based art critic and theorist Federico Nicolao, we wonder through their recent body of work and through the constellation of artists, literary authors, and scientists whose poetic paths approached and intersected with their own.
Keywords: Translation, poetry, art, Federico Nicolao, Kitasono Katue
“A sign are we, senseless (Ein Zeichen sind wir, deutungslos),” wrote Friedrich Hölderlin in 1803, in the poem “Mnemosyne.”1 The Swabian poet’s persistent experience of the limits of language and signification heralds, in more than one way, the ethos of modern poetics. The unrelenting struggle for sense as an operation that must always recommence, repeatedly revealing the fundamental senselessness of human existence, returns in a peremptory fashion in this muchdiscussed passage of Hölderlin’s “In Lovely Blue” (1808): “Is there a measure on earth? There is none (Gibt es auf Erden ein Maß? Es gibt keines).” Much could be said about the resonance of these verses throughout the history of modern poetry, in its multiple attempts at a thorough renewal of language. The same radical motivation illuminates the trajectories of Charles Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé, Ezra Pound and E. E. Cummings, all the way through to the “verbivocovisual” poetics of the Noigandres group and the myriad ramifications of their work.2 This same impetus informs and shapes the artistic trajectory of Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain, in their continuous search for the origin of signification, their incessant creation of coding systems that map, decipher, and re-cipher our encounters with nature, and their theoretical and material exploration of the manifold relationships between the earth and its all-too-human measures, norms, and patterns. Drawing from their respective backgrounds in design and semiotics, Detanico and Lain work across multiple media and techniques combining digital and video art with sculpture, drawing, and even traditional techniques such as Japanese gold leaf painting. The poetic experience materialized in their work constitutes itself as an effort of translation—translation from the language of nature into the language of humans, translation of existing human languages into an expanding variety of invented codes—as if each of their works strove to confer material shape on the translating impetus that animates the modern poetic experience, thus adding to it yet another layer of translation; namely, the translation from the realm of poetry to that of contemporary art. The pages that follow endeavor to render this fundamentally visual experience back into the verbal and conceptual realm. 3 They originate in a conversation, a public dialogue on the occasion of Detanico Lain’s 2017 exhibition at the Brazilian Embassy in Tokyo.4 But it might be more accurate to situate their actual starting point in another conversation, which took place half a century earlier, between Haroldo de Campos, the Japanese poet Kitasono Katue, and the poet and musician L. C. Vinholes.5 Kitasono’s visual poetics was a constant source of inspiration during Detanico and Lain’s residence at Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto and resonated throughout the 2017 exhibition in Tokyo. Then and now, the question of poetic translation and the relationship between the visual and verbal realms are at the center of the conversation. True translation, in contrast to its common representation6 , does not take place between two previously existing, ready-made linguistic realms. On the contrary, each time, translation must establish the boundaries of a new linguistic territory, demarcating the limits between languages, so that a relationship of correspondence can first be created. As such, translation’s relationship to language is, at its very core, like a mapping practice that traces form, limits, and order onto nature. Only on the basis of this essential mapping function of translation, this drawing of boundaries between linguistic territories, can one speak of its fidelity; only on this basis can a translation be said to be exact, literal, or free in relation to an “original,” which is in turn repeatedly remapped, recreated or, as Haroldo de Campos would put it, “transcreated.”7 Detanico Lain bring this mapping endeavor to center stage. In their 2019 exhibition at Tokyo’s The Club, Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (Figure 1; Plates 1, 2, and 3), the viewer lands on an imaginary island, crossed by the International Date Line, divided between the bright of day and a starry night, between East and West—a space that holds the secret to our human measurement of earthly time, and thus to the arbitrary origin of the mapping of time onto space. The environment brings to mind the “postutopianism” of Liam Gillick’s Discussion Island, while simultaneously echoing Italo Calvino’s quasialgorithmic compositions in Invisible Cities. An artificial island, architecturally planned and constructed: as such, a site for contemplation. Can we ever learn to inhabit it?
Imposing itself at the center of the island, the Date Line appears as a paradigmatic site of translation, an imaginary border that constitutes the very condition of its possibility. And as a site of the encounter and fusion of separate temporalities in a single poetic instant, the secret it holds is also that of radical contemporaneity. Taking cues from semiotics and the natural sciences, Detanico Lain’s approach to mapping and coding is nonetheless never simply scientific. Their rigor is of an entirely different order than that of Jorge Luis Borges’s cartographers, who managed to draw the map of an entire empire on a 1-to-1 scale, so that each sign coincided exactly with the actual geographic place it represented, as if in an utopic communion between the real and the imaginary. What we find in Detanico Lain is, instead, a problematization of the arbitrary nature of our very representations of the universe, works that promote a conscious liberation of the creative signifying impulse from the conventional borders of time and space. Between the rocky waves of a Zen garden, what their works present to us is not a peaceful image of nature but the always-evasive object of both our science and our poetry: sense (Figure 2; Plate 4).
Figure 2. Sense (2019)
This search for sense spills over from the material and the poetic to the conceptual and critical. Here, material and concept, art and criticism, science and art, are not opposed, but find themselves instead in a constant, open dialogue spanning the whole globe, regardless of conventional east-west, north-south cartographic divisions. The Earth itself appears (and at times conceals itself) from myriad perspectives that reflect its relative position in cosmic space. Our initial conversation was joined by the Paris-based writer, critic, and translator Federico Nicolao, one of the most original voices in European art criticism today and a long-time admirer of Brazilian poetry and art. In a kind of e-mail-based-renga-in-prose, Detanico Lain’s works lead our conversation from the concrete movement and visual poetry to mathematics and the Oulipo, Paul Valéry, James Joyce, Copernicus and Galileo, all the way to the Moon and back. This transcontinental, originally multilingual exchange is what follows below, in English translation.
Dialogue: Pedro Erber, Federico Nicolao, Angela Detanico, Rafael Lain Pedro Erber: I want to return to the conversation that we started at the occasion of your 2017 exhibition at the Brazilian Embassy in Tokyo. If I were to describe in few words what impressed me the most in your work at that point, I would say it was the subtlety and simplicity in the way those pieces materialize concepts, translating them into a visual language that expresses something comparable to mathematical beauty. I recall an old quarrel between the Brazilian poets Ferreira Gullar and the brothers Haroldo and Augusto de Campos about the idea of mathematical poetry.8 Until the end of his life Gullar came back to it from time to time in his column in the daily “Folha de São Paulo.” He claimed that his initial break with the group of concrete poets of São Paulo came from his disagreement with their project of applying mathematical rules to poetry. And Gullar added that, in fact, the paulistas ended up never composing such mathematical poems, which led him to decide that he would no longer agree to publish a manifesto spelling out rules for a poetry still to be written. Each time I thought of this controversy I wondered what those mathematical poems could have looked like, and what Décio Pignatari and the brothers Haroldo and Augusto de Campos were seeking in this rapprochement between poetry and mathematics that, if Gullar is to be believed, they never carried out. In your recent works, in which an intimate dialogue with concrete poetry seems to set the tone, I feel as if, for the first time, I could get a glimpse of what this mathematical poetry may look like. I am thinking of Vague (2010), for instance, and of White Square (2017; Figure 3; Plate 5) in particular. The mathematical element emerges here not so much as calculation or the mere application of rules—although those aspects are also present in many of those works—but mainly as a creative method. Each of those works proposes new rules, new principles, and, in a way, a new experimental poetic language, which drives forward the project of a verbivocovisual poetry, while simultaneously recalling a crucial aspect of mathematics itself, which is expressed in the ancient Greek word μάθημα, meaning “subject of instruction,” or perhaps more to the point: that which can be learned.
Figure 3. White Square (2017)
This apprenticeship, this action of learning is, in my view, where the driving force for each of these works can be found: learning a code, a new formula and a new form of poetic writing: writing that, beyond verbivocovisual expression, also exists as a tridimensional object, pursuing the path opened by the neo-concrete proposals of Gullar, Lygia Pape, and others. Detanico Lain: Art is the invention of new languages to express reality and to elaborate new concepts to deal with reality, to contain it. It is a creative movement that paves the way to sublimate the understanding of the world and, ultimately, to enable its construction. Every one of our works creates its own language to a certain extent—as if, in order to express each new sentence, one would need an entirely new language. Each work is an expression of this process, and simultaneously its culmination.
Meanwhile, taking the opposite path—thus going from work to language— presupposes, as you said, a commitment, an experience beyond contemplation. This is the path that interests us, from work towards code, from hypothesis towards problem, from answer to question. It is a return to the time of invention and discovery that spans learning and understanding. We tap into a poetic force in this movement and, in it, we glimpse the fusion of form and concept to which we aspire in our works. This reminds us that, in order to speak of things, names and definitions were created, that the phenomena of nature have been synthetized in physical formulas, that forms, rhythms and harmonies have tended toward complete abstraction in mathematics. This movement makes us remember that the sun and the moon are celestial bodies we contemplate in the sky but also symbolic, mathematical and mythical objects intertwined with the many facets of the system of knowledge constructed to accommodate the pace of a finite existence at the perpetual rhythm of days and nights, to reconcile experience on the human scale with the consciousness of the infinite. Turning the concrete reality of the world into language is a process of invention, in which desires, poetry and ideologies are articulated. Looking at it in this way, we can have a glimpse of the rationality, curiosity and fantasy of human nature. Today, languages and codes overlap, organizing and complexifying reality through different levels of abstraction. Language is spoken, then written, then codified, transmitted, and translated. We can explore this complexity by using different “materials” such as sounds, words and intervals, or by being inspired by other research fields such as mathematics, thanks to the legacy of all those who dared to mix, combine, and transgress different genres and disciplines. Like the latin palindrome SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS that inspired Anton Webern for the 12-tone series. This is indeed a very curious and exciting moment in the history of art.
Federico Nicolao: Here we should also not forget our dearest European visual poet, Jean-Luc Godard, who, having dreamt in his youth of pursuing the route of mathematics, later chose as the title for a much misunderstood exhibition “Voyage(s) in Utopia, 1946-2006, Searching for a Lost Theorem.” Following in the footsteps of Évariste Galois and Niels Abel, two mathematicians, his dream was clearly to reach, through the art of cinema, the theorem that would have enabled him to rethink the word/image relationship. But this is another story.
D/L: Eisenstein, too, spoke of the word/image relation in his essay “The cinematographic principle and the ideogram,” when discussing the art of editing as a form of writing akin to the ideogram, in which a sign, he argued, is composed of different “scenes.” In the same essay, he also spoke of Japanese poetry as a form of composed images, just like in cinema.
Nicolao: In this same direction, which grazes the impalpable but is nonetheless very concrete, you worked with Takeshi Yasaki, the choreographer, in Kyoto to render a poem by Kitasono Katue in gestures and images—Monotonous Space (performed at Villa Kujoyama, 2017)—where performance functioned as a cinema of ideas that enabled ideograms to become once again a kind of plastic form.
D/L: Our goal was to approach plastic forms as transforming bodies that evolve in space and time. Weightless Days, a performance we did in 2006 with Takeshi Yasaki and Megumi Matsumoto, was our first experience in this direction. We designed a space in transformation for dancers, a kind of playing field, with animations projected in black and white on the stage, constructing the space with zones of shade and light. These abstract forms in movement, inhabited by two dancers, bring up dualities like night and day, presence and absence, masculine and feminine.
D/L: In Monotonous Space, Kitasono’s text adds a new vector; the poem provides the subject of the piece and the rhythm of the images. It also led us to deal with language as both writing and speaking: that is, as a graphic element in the animations and as voice in the sound composition. These performances are moments of convergence, where visual forms, sound, poetry, and gesture are mixed; they contaminate each other, overflow into each other. An intersection of disciplines where delimitations no longer make sense, a machine in which multiple pieces come together as a complex whole, where the image can provide rhythm, gesture can be graphic, sound is embodied and the word duplicates itself in sound and image.
After Monotonous Space, we created a suite with two other poems by Kitasono, presented at Kyoto’s Nuit Blanche by Megumi Matsumoto. And we are working on a third part with the duo Takeshi and Megumi (Plate 6).
Erber: Your interest in the Japanese poet Kitasono Katue (1902-1978) can be said to recuperate a central thematic of concrete poetry and resume a longstanding dialogue between Brazilian and Japanese avant-garde poetry. Towards the end of the 1950s, Haroldo de Campos got in contact with Kitasono through Ezra Pound. Pound knew of the Brazilian poet’s interest in ideographic writing and sensed a mutual affinity. Campos and Kitasono started a sporadic correspondence, exchanging poems and translations. Albeit courteous and fed by mutual interest in each other’s work, their relationship cannot be said to have deeply impacted the trajectory of either of them. In part, perhaps, because Kitasono’s poetry was not particularly ideographic; but also because he was never completely convinced by the principles of concretism, even though he went as far as translating the Noigandres’ Pilot Plan for Concrete Poetry, which he published in 1964 in his avant-garde poetry journal VOU. Many of the pieces in Archipel (2018; Plates 7 and 8) were conceived during your residence at the Villa Kujoyama, in Kyoto, where you delved more deeply into your research on Kitasono and into a dialogue with Japanese art and aesthetics—both traditional and contemporary. One crucial aspect in your work on this dialogue, which differentiates it from the earlier concretist moment, is that your interest in Kitasono does not stem from a general curiosity and fascination about ideographic writing, but rather from a specific interest in his experimental project of constructing a plastic-poetic language. I think the Archipel (Setting Stones) (Plate 7) installation nicely embodies this bifurcated dialogue: on the one hand, with the zen tradition, through its reference to the stone garden of the Daitokuji temple, and, on the other hand, with Kitasono’s avant-garde project—not to mention its striking visual resonances with the work of Suga Kishio.
D/L: Kitasono understood how important it was to take the text as image, as forms on paper. Writing is not only a vector of concepts or mental images; it is also, literally, an image. That explains the interest of Brazilian concrete poets in his work. And naturally ours. Our very first project, Font Delta (2002), was an attempt to show the natural evolution of languages through the visual transformation of letters. Kitasono was a master of rhythm and patterns. In certain poems he created impressive visual, sound and conceptual patterns, arranging repetitions and voids. We see the strong visual rhythm he creates with the arrangment of the letters as musical scores. These are the aspects of his poetry, and particularly his poem Tanchō-na Kūkan (1949-1978), which inspired us to make White Square (2017), an installation created upon our return from our artists’ residence in Kyoto. The first lines of the poem—that are repeated at the end—are transcoded in Pilha-Kana (2006; Figure 4), a writing/sculpture that links hiragana characters to ordered groups of objects, a version for Japanese of our piled-up writing system. In the installation, the piled-up words are formed by rejoinders of blocks of white plaster on which Malevich painted his black square, and they themselves delimit, by their positioning, the angles of a square: a play of oppositions, presence/absence.
With great visual talent, Kitasono transcended verbal language in his Plastic Poems (1960s-1970s). His avant-garde poetry shifts away from traditional poetic forms, which is why his work has remained relatively unknown, even in Japan. We are deeply involved with his economic use of words, the use of repetitions, a certain theatricality, as ritual, not in the evocative or mystical sense but as the systematization of a gesture, of certain ways of doing. We think of the periodic reconstruction of the temples of Ise: from the same plans, with the same tools and the same gestures, in 20-year cycles repeated for centuries. We think of dry garden patterns, the complexity of their mineral arrangements, which aim at perfection through repetition; and of the relationship to nature that informs the conception of these gardens, imagined like miniature landscapes that refer to wide open spaces.
The work Archipel (Setting Stones) integrates this ritual aspect because it implies a gesture, a codified gesture. It draws inspiration from the Sakuteiki, an eleventh-century Japanese garden book. It defines the creation of a garden as the art of placing stones (Ishi wo taten koto). In Setting Stones, the stones/letters are distributed in space by the pace of human steps in a sequence of twenty-six positions based on the letters of the alphabet. Each word made of stones is a word-landscape, or more accurately, a word-garden, a micro-landscape composed of few elements in which the void or the silence—the alphabetical organization of the letters is implicit in the spatial distribution of the stones— signifies as much as the presence of the objects. It is a kind of contemplative writing.
Erber: But beyond concrete poetry, literature is omnipresent in your work and of course in this exhibition. For example, Ulysses by James Joyce who, of course was another inventor of language.
D/L: We scanned the 732 pages of Joyce’s novel and literally animated them. A man walks, endlessly, borrowing his steps and contours from Étienne-Jules Marey’s deconstruction of movement (Plate 8). Nicolao: There is also that large work, very slight and almost invisible. I am referring to Horizon.
D/L: Upon our return from Japan, we left for the Sables d’Olonne to think about the exhibition’s content. We wanted to attain a sense of immersion in that landscape, in that expanse of tide-measured sea, that fluid landscape that plays hide and seek with the sky. It was under this contemplative state that the idea of Horizon (Figure 5) came to us. We searched for the word horizon in several books and retained from them only each line containing this word. We aligned these pages to form a word horizon line on the wall. We began with Georges Perec’s novel A Void, assuming we would find it there, since the word horizon does not contain the letter “e”! Then followed horizons found in novels, poems, but also in philosophy and aesthetics, so as to let our horizon emerge at the edge of concepts and consciousness. It’s an exquisite corpse joining Roubaud, Mallarmé, Foucault, Blanchot, Lautréamont, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Huysmans, and a few others. The final piece is a collection of 360 pages coming from twentysix books, a long line of horizon coming from our personal library.
Figure 5. Horizon (2018)
Nicolao: This reminds me of an observation by another expert mathematician, Paul Valéry, who wrote in his Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci: “He who has never completed—be it but in dream—the sketch for some project that he is free to abandon; who has never felt the sense of adventure in working on some composition which he knows finished when others only see it commencing; who has not known the enthusiasm that burns away a minute of his very self; or the poison of conception, the scruple, the cold breath of objection coming from within; and the struggle with alternative ideas when the strongest and most universal should naturally triumph over both what is normal and what is novel; he who has not seen the image on the whiteness of his paper distorted by other possible images, by his regret for all the images that will not be chosen; or seen in limpid air a building that is not there; he who is not haunted by fear of the giddiness caused by the receding of the goal before him; by anxiety as to means; by foreknowledge of delays and despairs, calculation of progressive phases, reasoning about the future—even about things that should not, when the time comes, be reasoned about—that man does not know either—and it does not matter how much he knows besides—the riches and resources, the domains of the spirit, that are illuminated by the conscious act of construction. The gods have received from the human mind the gift of the power to create because that mind, being cyclical and abstract, may aggrandize what it has imagined to such a point that it is no longer capable of imagining it” (101). The calculation of progressive phases: this necessarily approximative science, which questions the future, comes close to the future, but lets it go. Maybe this is the place to search for one of the few non-exotic bridges between different traditions in poetry. Perhaps this is also what Pound sought in his own hermetic manner: the capacity of poetry to think in images.
D/L: We took great pleasure in exploring one of Valéry’s manuscripts in the Conscience (2016) animation. But as you say, that is another story. Valéry was well aware of this human being formed by the cogito, by abstraction, by the flow of ideas more or less anchored in the possible and the experience of reality: an idealization with its contradictions, its ups and downs. Our walking man, Ulysses, is this being, this more-or-less fluid syntax at the intersection of experience, research, memory and folly. It is a being-language. A body made of text, a referenced interior monologue, a sort of echo of the novel where Joyce has one body organ corresponding to each chapter.
Erber: Cosmic space is another recurrent element in the works gathered for the 2017 exhibition at the Brazilian Embassy, as well as in the monographic project in Sables d’Olonne, and again more recently in the 2019 exhibition at The Club. I am thinking here of your observation of space from Earth—the horizon, the phases of the moon, the International Date Line—and your interpretation of nature through language, as in the establishment of geographic maps—of both the Earth and the sky. The references to Copernicus, with 365 Suns (Plate 9), to Galileo with 28 Moons (Plate 10), and to the astronomer and mathematician Nathaniel Bowditch with Timezonetype, speak to your affinities between scientific activity and poetic, artistic practice.
D/L: I would rather say that it is the relation between cosmic time and human time, between the world and the experience of the world that is mediated by science. Like subjectivity meeting its extreme in the idea of infinity. In works such as Star Names, 365 Suns, 28 Moons, etc. science is brought back to daily experience, posed as the erudite explanation of daily phenomena. The sun is a star, an apparent movement, the succession of days and the cycle that defines the year. But the sun is also an image that wakes us up each day, that calls us. In explaining the world, science also explains the human condition. We see extreme beauty—and why not a beautiful illusion—in all these science-created systems, explanations, and codes. An enormous energy… It makes me think of the quote by Valéry you mentioned…
Nicolao: Somewhat, perhaps, like Willys de Castro’s poems from 1953, the dimensions of cosmic space and that of earthly time speak to each other. Let me end by just quoting two of his poems:
geometria viva
fixa no extremo do traço
eclode vagarosa do centro
a vaga explode rosa
onde amo a côr
e a forma que expressa
o perfume no tempo
and this one:
tento
ide
ponto
no céu
a adaga
Works Cited
and this one: tento ide ponto no céu a adaga Works Cited Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities. Translated by William Weaver, Harcourt, 1974. Campos, Haroldo de. Novas: Selected Writings. Edited by Antonio Sergio Bessa and Odile Cisneros. Northwestern UP, 2007. Erber, Pedro. Breaching the Frame: The Rise of Contemporary Art in Brazil and Japan. U of California P, 2015. Gullar, José Ribamar Ferreira. Experiência neoconcreta: momento limite da arte. Cosac Naify, 2007. Hölderlin, Friedrich. Werke Briefe Dokumente. Winkler Verlag, 1990. Sakai, Naoki. Translation and Subjectivity. On Japan and Cultural Nationalism. U of Minnesota P, 1993. Valéry, Paul. “Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci” Selected Writings. Translated by Denis Devlin, New Directions, 1964, pp. 89-107.
Published in the Catalogue of the 26º Bienal de São Paulo.
They create typographical fonts and invent alphabets. They see space as
points and lines. They probe cities horizontally and vertically. They alter
distances, rhythms and proportions. They compress and expand sound
waves. Nothing is fixed, not a single matrix. Pixel by pixel they extend
landscapes right up to the edges of the monitor. They subvert the bellicose
objectives of the videogame. They have the power to realign the geopolitical
map in a minute. Here come the hackers who are operating within the
legality of art.
Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain interrogate signs as a system capable of
representing reality. Although this is a practice dating back to the
philosophy of Plato, it is as if each new work by the pair had come into
existence to suggest that much has yet to be said about language, science
and the city. While the problem of representation has existed throughout
history, we must also acknowledge that time has modified its modulation.
Writing in their own creation of a font also called Utopia (2001) generates
unprecedented yet virtually real crossing-points between the projects of
Niemeyer and metropolitan chaos: modernism neither succumbs to fences
and sentry boxes, nor do these excrescences ignore their foundations. The
user constructs his or her own plot, following the presets of the ceaseless
contradictory movement of urban life.
The world is presented as one vast text, permanently being deciphered.
Camouflaged under the pilling up of identical objects, words and ideas
reveal themselves only to those whiling to learn their codes – Pilha (2003)
is a form of writing, a bad habit, a virus releasing the contagious energy of
its interpretative quest. Using the technology of the digital and
entertainment industries, the artists insert the instance of simulation
between the traditional categories of phenomenon and copy. In
Seoul/Killing Time (2003), which they call “the video of a desertion”, our
expectation of fight scenes is thwarted by a harmless flight over a ghost city
later translated into an architectural model. Suddenly, disobeying
commands is within our grasp. What if the crowds were to learn of the
accidental opening that this game provides? What if “if…” became real?
Vire o monitor. (não tenha medo)
Esqueça a janela. (qualquer janela)
Negue todas as molduras. (inclusive os frames)
Ignore a fonética. (sim, você pode falar sem ela)
Desfigure as imagens. (é possível enxergar, sabia?)
Experimente desenquadrar, empilhar, mover (o mundo, o globo, seus olhos).
Pronto?
Não responda sim. Diga sempre não. (nunca pós, nem pré, nem anti, muito menos pró…)
Fale somente assim. Veja assim (e também assado). Pense assim (pense, pense, pense
muito): Não-vídeo, não-imagem,
não-web, não-arte, não-CD-ROM, não-arquitetura, não-game, não-quem, não-não.
Pronto?
Plaf!
Entre.
Angela Detanico e Rafael Lain operam por desconstrução. Elaboram universos
temporários que desafiam as formas de identificação dos limites entre visível e invisível e
dos horizontes de legibilidade, independentemente da plataforma e/ou interface que
escolham.
Tipografia, design gráfico, vídeo, arquitetura, internet, CD-ROM são alguns dos formatos já
contemplados pela dupla que não usa suportes, mas transforma artefatos e dispositivos
midiáticos em modalidades discursivas de diagramas instáveis.
Enunciam uma cultura de apropriação que se faz na contramão da sampleagem. Em seus
projetos tipográficos, por exemplo, instauram uma dinâmica na qual o paradigma do
remix torna-se um movimento de entrega.
Afinal, para que servem fontes senão para serem usadas por outros, em textos de autores
diversos, que apagam a mão do criador original da letra em novos tecidos discursivos?
Exercício de generosidade intelectual, copyleft sem bandeira, várias de suas criações na
área de tipografia foram reunidas em um curioso CD-ROM. “Entre” (2001) é o seu nome e
traz embutido no título algumas das suas chaves de leitura.
Entre, no caso, é mais que um comando. É um convite e um desafio. Convite porque nos
chama a não pensar em mais nada além de incursionar no seu universo particular. Um
desafio porque nos faz, a todo momento, titubear ao tentar defini-lo.
Trata-se de um projeto que fica entre a escrita e a fala, entre a música e o desenho, entre
a letra e o dígito. Sem explicações, dá-se ao leitor por meio de duas possibilidades: tocar
imagens, desenhando com sons, utilizando aleatoriamente o teclado do computador, ou
instalar uma série de 26 fontes.
Na primeira situação, escolhe-se um fragmento de um dos desenhos dos autores, que vêm
encartados como miniposteres junto com o CD, e, ao iniciar a digitação, começa-se a
processar novas formas, ao mesmo tempo em que se compõe uma trilha sonora, dando
cor ao áudio e som aos traços.
Mas não é só esse campo entre o áudio e a visão que interessa. As fontes também sofrem
um tratamento rigoroso para que se posicionem nesse universo de fronteiras fluidas em
que se interceptam tipografia, imagem e som, num processo de recombinação de
linguagens que assume um perfil deleuziano, evidente na própria epígrafe do CD, que cita
uma passagem de “Mille Plateaux”:“Há ritmo desde que haja passagem transcodificada de
um para outro meio”.
Um axioma que é levado ao limite na fonte “Utopia”, criada a convite da revista “Big” para
compor um número especial dedicado a Oscar Niemeyer, feita com miniaturas de projetos
do arquiteto, como o Memorial da América Latina (SP) e o Palácio da Alvorada (Brasília), e
ícones dos resultados da falta de planejamento que prevalece nas grandes metrópoles
brasileiras.
Às letras maiúsculas ficaram reservadas as belas linhas que tornaram a arquitetura de
Niemeyer internacionalmente conhecida. Às minúsculas, placas que remetem a
congestionamentos sem fim, grades que pretendem impedir a ocupação dos viadutos
pelos sem-teto, entre outros signos de nosso horror urbano…
Propositadamente, as letras minúsculas foram construídas em quadros mais largos do que
as maiúsculas e, por isso, quando digitadas em conjunto, seguindo as regras básicas da
ortografia, fazem com que as minúsculas (os dejetos urbanos) subam, literalmente, em
cima das maiúsculas (as formas da arquitetura modernista).
Emerge daí um texto que aparece como um tecido social sujo, em que o impasse entre o
rigor e a beleza modernista e sua fragilidade para enfrentar o descontrole do crescimento
urbano torna-se a chave de leitura de parte de nossa história recente, imprimindo tensões
urbanas às frases, sem apelar a qualquer recurso vernacular.
Misturando referências diversificadas, que vão de zuzana licko (tipógrafa do famoso
estúdio californiano Emigre) ao traçado revolucionário de El Lissitzky, “Entre” é um CD que
desincumbe o design de qualquer função suplementar.
Não se desenha aqui apenas o que não se pode dizer com palavras. Tampouco dá-se à
escrita uma função de mediação entre a natureza e a razão. As relações não são de
convenção.
Antes, fazem pensar, lembrando Derrida, que a conjunção das práticas da informação, da
cibernética e das ciências humanas conduz a uma profunda subversão, em que a escritura
aparece como “uma partilha sem simetria que desenha de um lado o fechamento do livro
e, do outro, a abertura do texto”.
Texto que não é revelação de mensagem, mas processo de interrogação da possibilidade
de mensagem, inquietação gramatológica que percorre todos os projetos de Angela e
Lain, mas que ocupa “Pilha” (2003) de ponta a ponta.
Aqui, um sistema de escritura por objetos (re)traduz o que nos circunda em enunciados
visuais que implodem a letra para dar volume à quebra da horizontalidade da linha.
Funciona, basicamente, a partir de empilhamentos de objetos idênticos que, numa escala
de 1 a 26, relacionam quantidades a valores fonéticos. Assim, 1 batata = a, 2 batatas = b,
26 batatas = z.
O espaço se dilui em possibilidades combinatórias, entre frases de cubos de açúcar, de
livros, de vasos, soprando Deleuze, mais uma vez, entre diferenças e repetições,
produzindo uma vertigem essencial que se efetua pela desestabilização da forma
(relativizada pelo número) que se transforma em letra, desaparece no objeto e se apaga
na sua especificidade para voltar como interrogação sobre não mais a possibilidade de
mensagem, mas os possíveis da linguagem.
Algo que o vídeo “Flatland” (2003) expande e extrapola, fatiando pixels, pervertendo a
lógica do quadro – do frame – para criar cores que não pertencem à palheta videográfica,
viabilizando a visualização de tons pastel que não estão lá.
Documentário líquido, dilui a imagem em movimento em stills, transformando terras
planas do delta do rio Mekong em múltiplos arco-íris animados pelo som murmurante das
suas margens.
Margens do rio e da imagem. Bordas. Mais que isso. Dobras. Outra vez Deleuze…
A técnica (ferramenta) usada é simples. A tecnologia (produção de repertório cognitivo),
complexa. A seqüência captada com uma mini-DV é decupada em fotos isoladas. Recurso
banal do próprio programa de edição. As fotos, horizontais, são então recortadas
verticalmente. Cada recorte é esticado até a largura do quadro original. Nascem os arcoíris improváveis que triangulam a visão como queria ver (e nos ensinou a enxergar)
Merleau-Ponty.
Como ver “Flatland” e não lembrar do mestre do visível (Merleau-Ponty, é preciso
dizer?!), que nos ensinou a perceber a magia das figurações do “instante do mundo” que
Cézanne queria pintar?
Aquele instante louco que há muito já passou, não volta, mas nunca passa, porque se faz e
refaz em todas as rochas que estão e não estão nas montanhas de Santa Vitória que esse
poeta da luz, Cézanne, pintou para desequilibrar tudo aquilo que entendíamos como cor,
luz, sombra, figuração.
Gesto nobre e desdenhoso que volta – com tudo – nas cores, na paciência, na luz, no
desdém de “Flatland”. A terra plana que se ergue em relevo do pixel esculpido em cor que
não tem e não retrata.
Um movimento se anuncia aí. Para voltar impiedoso no gesto agressivo, sutil e inóspito
que se impõe em “Seoul/Killig Time” (2003). Fina ironia. Macabra. Arrogante. O retrato do
mundo dos games. Balelas. Chatices. Falcatruas.
Uma cidade desterrada – pelas corporações do entretenimento fashion. Palco de uma
cena insólita. Aviões aterrissando no território de uma cidade que se transforma em mero
espaço de ação de jogadores estúpidos. Ali acontece a quebra da regra: o jogo idiota vira
história de uma deserção.
Contra a norma da babaquice e do paradigma da clicagem burra. De quem acha – ainda –
que o mais interessante na cultura digital é reconhecer regras, atacar e vencer.
Contra a retórica fetichista de levar os games a sério, Angela e Lain nos obrigam a tratar os
games com são. Cenários – ideológicos – de uma motivação vulgar: matar, morrer ou
ganhar.
Novamente a técnica é simples e a tecnologia, complexa. O jogo (belicista, machista,
wasp) tem seu stage capturado por uma câmera de vídeo ligada ao computador. O stage é
remodelado em 3-D – bem ao gosto do cliente burro/cego e se transforma em maquete do
espetáculo da ignorância, onde temos suas premissas mais banais: Uma cidade sem escala
e sem ninguém.
Fina ironia. Só ri dela quem é capaz de driblar o movimento do mundo. Digitalizar suas
coordenadas, fazer um exercício de “world align” (2003)… Brincar com coordenadas.
Mover o mapa – afinal somos globais, não? – para lá e para cá…
Está tudo na tela e não está…. Por isso é possível abstrair a topologia e redesenhar a
geografia. Trabalhar com as linhas de um desenho, em vez de ceder à dureza dos
territórios. Num gesto simples e preciso, o mapa-múndi é dividido em linhas paralelas
como se fosse uma página em branco, aberta à nossa conquista.
Tratado dessa forma, é possível submetê-lo às regras da edição do texto, deixando que os
continentes se alinhem – à direita, no centro, à esquerda – seguindo as beiradas do
monitor, sem nunca parar, sempre em loop, fugindo à regra orbital e a todas,
comportando-se como matéria arquitetônica pronta a ser modificada pelos acidentes e
pela história.
Fazer da arquitetura plano de mudança (não a ação da mudança) é também um dos
pressupostos recorrentes de Angela e Lain, e que se evidenciam em projetos como “5
Times 10 Steps” (2003) e “Plaf!” (2004).
No primeiro caso, cinco escadas de tamanhos variados foram espalhadas pelo espaço
expositivo do Palais de Tokyo, interagindo com o ambiente, tendo suas alturas
determinadas por alguma característica do lugar em que se apóiam e os espaçamentos
dos degraus definidos pelas suas respectivas alturas.
Diferença e Repetição, outra vez. Arquitetura relacional, da desconstrução e do acaso…
Como em “Plaf!”, intervenção realizada na fachada da Galeria Vermelho em São Paulo,
que invertia a posição do chão e da parede.
Ali também a técnica usada era simples e a tecnologia, complexa. Raspou-se a fachada
branca até a revelação do concreto e projetou-se o que antes ocupava aquela mancha no
chão, pondo em questão o papel da estrutura no processo de orientação do observador e
dos cheios e vazios no funcionamento da máquina-casa. Desmanche de estruturas,
perversão do olhar, empilhamentos, realinhamentos, interferência, apropriação,
desconfiguração da fonética e umas poucas perguntas sem fim: O que é que você vê
quando você vê? Como é que você lê o que você vê? Você lê?
Grifos Nossos. Grifos Deles.
fonte: Associação Cultural Videobrasil. “FF>>Dossier 001>>Angela Detanico e Rafael Lain”.
Disponível em: <http://www.videobrasil.org.br/ffdossier/ffdossier001/portugues.htm>.
São Paulo, abril de 2004.