To mark a new stage in the life of La Maudite – our installation in a new space rue Jouye-Rouve – the association issued a call for proposals. The aim behind this approach was to leave the beaten paths and discover independent artists who would participate in the appropriation of this new venue. The works were selected by Beatriz Toledo and Wagner Morales, artists and managers of the gallery, with the help of guest artist Renata Lucas and curator Estelle Nabeyrat.

 

Unconstrained by any subject, apart from an established link with Brazil, the chosen works show nevertheless some common themes. The selection of works resulted in a group exhibition built around the concept of wider communication, deployed in different ways: from the total permeability of the social fabric by information to the fragmentation of globalized society, through the evolving role of the media and the human body in the apprehension of the world.

 

The work of Marcos Kaiser Mori, Pulpito, a tiny copy of a pedestal located in Chandigarh, India, a kind of stand for a speaker, serves as an introduction to the exhibition. The reversal of the relationship between body and space transforms the potential for speech and prevents it from being thrown freely. Referring to the city entirely designed by Le Corbusier in the 1950s, this inverted copy, devoid of its original function, highlights the disenchantment of modernist utopias and the frustration of present society.

 

Another peculiarity of this society, surveillance, is addressed by Pedro Victor Brandão. The photograph of a facade of HADOPI (High Authority for the Distribution of Works and Copyright Protection on the Internet) headquarters, with an unfixed negative, fades off during the exhibition, as a metaphor for resistance and awareness against the expansion and facilitation of monitoring. Essay for a surveillance video by Arthur Tuoto echoes this work not only by its title, but also by the scrutiny of authority. The anarchist discourse suggesting destruction in response to submission evokes characters and literary works: from the legend of Erostrate to the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky.

 

The fragmentation of contemporary world is at the heart of João Vieira Torres' work. In the form of an anthropological movie, the artist reveals the confrontation of different cultures in the globalized world, as well as the entrenchment of cultural stereotypes. As a climax to this fragmented mixture, Tchaikovsky's music playing on TV in his video Tore turns into tribal chants. Like an anthropologist of the global society, Pedro Gallego addresses the clichés of relationships, social conflicts and cultural identities shown in Brazilian TV series. Do these stereotypes include "behavior patterns" or, rather, provide models imposed by the media?

 

The back-and-forth between behavior and vision, between knowledge and perception is put into play by Magda Gebhardt, Maya Da-Rin and Felipe Vaz. Each in its own way, these artists explore photography and film as a representation medium to question perspectival vision. Beyond human vision, new technologies blur our usual markers and places us in a sensory maze.

 

The body is increasingly confronted with this game of evolved perception and put to test by direct action. Memory activation and its documentation are confronted during the Ventriloquist's belly performance by Sofia Caesar, in which instructions to the performer and the public intermingle with the artist's observations. Senses and intentions are also suggested by Associação massa Falida (a.m.f.) to reveal a tension between the mechanical and the intentional.

 

Direct action as a means of communication is addressed in Romain Vicari's site-specific intervention. Creating an interaction between body and work, Bruno Kurru and Traplev encourage direct contact with the public by distributing posters, a communication support less and less present in the digital society. The body's commitment in an artistic practice is also part of the process of Vivian Caccuri. A paradoxical communication is implemented in the Pagode series, in which she presents objects found and transformed during a "silent walk" – an eight-hour crossing of the city in a group where each participant vowed not to utter a word.

 

More than a body, communication can activate basic physical forces. The artists Ohira and Bonilha, in ゲ ル マ ニ ウ ム ダ イ オ ー ド (germanium diode, Japanese), transform electromagnetic waves into sound. Radio waves, being the foundation of today's communication, lose their usefulness here to give voice to the intangible matter that penetrates all living beings (the Japanese title thus creates a link to Shinto) and make an invisible information perceptible.

 

 

Text: Olga Ogorodova

Translated by Julia Vidile