https://ilmanifesto.it/andre-komatsu-dal-controllo-sociale-allautosorveglianza
1 – Can you explain the title of this exhibition, Abyss? Is your abyss an unknowable place or an alternative world to the real one?
The Abyss can be a way of deconstructing reality. We can analyze and understand it as a place or even a state in which we live during the pandemic period and even here in Brazil, the experiment of a government that used necropolitics to manipulate, convert and control the population. But at the same time abyss can be a state of cloudiness, in constant movement. Something to come. When I thought of the title of the exhibition, it was to bring this duality that the same word could represent.
2 -In this exhibition, the image is often denied, erased, trapped or chained. Are those works a metaphor for power, surveillance and control practices?
Yes. I think that part of the works in the exhibition use these metaphors to bring a dialogue to the state of reality that we live in.Power practices have always been ways of establishing control over the other. Being through an urban restructuring as Georges-Eugène Haussmann did in the 19th century in Paris. Or even in the school, family structure.The reformulation of the Champs Elysées created a star of 12 wide and extensive avenues in a straight line, with the Arc de Triomphe at its center. This is a large monument that praised the victories of Napoleon Bonaparte. This new military-style urban grid created a new strategy to contain any manifesto that diverged from the government, as long-range cannons could be installed there. In addition, because they are wide and straight roads, the possibility of creating leaks or friction would be almost impossible. The axis created by the roads made it possible to access and control any manifest quickly, from all directions. However, I think that these practices are currently being improved and changed. With less physicality, matter, body. Today the control ends up being our own, self-surveillance and self-punishment. Since the “invention” of the entrepreneur under the neoliberal mantle, we have become our own executioners.
3 – Why do you use newspapers as a vehicle to obscure and censor thoughts?
In Social Contract (2018), I establish a duality in relation to the representation of the object and its metaphor as used.
The newspaper as a means of forwarding everyday information, therefore one of the structural bases for understanding reality. At the same time, the newspaper has a brand, a name. The information contained is forwarded according to the private interest of each one. On the other hand, the lead sheet, which surrounds and insulates the newspaper like an origami (Japanese folding technique), protects it like a shield. The duality in both materials, the reality in establishing security x isolation, protection x poisoning, information x disinformation, the real fact x invention.
4 – The pandemic has forever changed our perception of the world. Has it also changed the way of making art or the goals of an artist (like you)?
The pandemic has intensified our social isolation, as well as the socio-economic abyss of the population here in Brazil. It made us more segregated and more susceptible to being manipulated. Before the pandemic, it had already been working on other fronts, in order to expand and amplify actions and questions regarding the field of art, socio-political. Since we had Dilma Rousseff’s coup in 2016, I started to be part of some artistic, political, and socio-educational collectives. Understanding that only the work of art as thought and production would not go beyond the bubble of the established.
Since then, with Aparelhamento (2016), we have carried out several actions against the coup, and one of the most lasting actions was the creation of a collective kitchen within the Ocupação 9 de Julho (9th of July occupation) – today it already has its independence – and the Galeria Reocupa (Reocupa Gallery), an independent gallery of art,non profit, also within the same building. The creation of a commercial art space in a building occupied and managed by the MSTC – Movimento dos sem teto do centro (Movement without a roof in the center), emerged as a support against the State’s attempt to re-appropriate the occupied area. The works of art, in a possible reappropriation, would serve as a legal barrier. Since in this action the State would have to care for and create insurance for those works, generating exorbitant costs for the administration. Using the art market and system to protect a housing movement.
In addition to these actions, during the pandemic and even the Bolsonaro government managed, in these groups we collect and distribute basic food and cleaning baskets to other vulnerable groups (artistics, indigenous, peripheral), such as carrying out public actions denouncing the genocidal policy of the former president.
Through the, Ali:leste (2018), a group created by artists with the aim of creating a network of connections between the artistic-commercial center and the far eastern edge of São Paulo and of which I am part too, we promoting courses, accompaniments, conversation circles and links between peripheral people and art institutions.
5 – What do you think of Brazil’s new political course?
If we had 4 more years of the Bolsonaro government we would be dead. The new course started this year with Lula, propitiated the resumption of democracy in the country. Despite understanding that its governability was due to numerous support from different political, economic and social interests.
Lula has dedicated himself to several national and international issues. However, much of the focus has been on repairing the terrible damage caused by Bolsonaro’s genocidal government, whether through investigations into facilitating the entry of prospectors into the Yanomami indigenous preserve area, the complete disregard for helping them, the use of the machine publishes in particular interests in order to favor the family and supporters (agribusiness, the army and evangelists). As well as restoring ministries (the Bolsonaro’s government extinguished the ministry of culture, for example, and in the Lula administration it is being rebuilt), and intervening in the fake news dissemination system.
6 – You are a third-generation Brazilian of Japanese descent. How does the intersection of cultures affect your artistic practice?
Until last year, I understood the reference to Japanese culture only as a family heritage. Last year on account of the Aichi Triennial in Nagoya, I had the opportunity to go to the country for the first time for a few weeks.The first impression seemed to be a completely different place from Brazil, from São Paulo. Order in the flow of people, cleanliness of the streets, silence and respect for others. However, despite presenting these differences, I began to diagnose a similarity even through different mechanisms: structural violence.
Japanese society is established by honor, hierarchy as the regulatory form of society. Which at the same time breaks down physical barriers by establishing a standard for social behavior. In Brazil, despite not having these standards, we live in constant violence, be it visual through security architectures, socio-economic inequalities. The order here is still mostly established by physical force.