Andrè Komatsu. La Estrela Escura do Ordem Casual
Brazilian Sociographies through Unbuilding Architectures
How “Estrela Escura” announced the actual political Brazilian situation? “Estrela Escura” is the title of my last solo show in Galeria Vermelho, opened during the last São Paulo Biennal. The concept was based on a paradox encompassed by the literal expression itself. For the astrophysicist, the concept of ”dark star” means a theoretical idea of estrela, composed by dark matter which, for its own existence, has to absorb energy from other celestial bodies. The exhibition tries to research this personal thought about a dystopian vision of negative times, when a neutral body has been deprived of its own function, in order to shine in a different form. Right now in Brazil, during our elections period, we are passing through and bearing troubled times, because of political and moral polarizations. On the one hand, people is becoming more interest in politic issues and is developing new strengths in order to raise their rights up, we are becoming more reactive, defending our ideologies. On the other hand, if someone starts to analyse deeply this situation, is possible to revise that even those elections are becoming another Control instrument. The polarization began when it was created an enemy, a negative pole, in this specific case the Workers Party (in others situations could be the terrorism, for example). Referring all of the economic-politic crisis responsibility to them. Affirming so, I’m not meaning to say that political parties aren’t corrupted and that they avoid to make mistakes, formulating any kind of agreement, in order to hold the power on and to run the country. We have to understand that there are certain mechanisms, as part of this system in force, for being, or acting as political dimensions, this is nothing special. The enemy-creation plans emerged in the rise of the Right Wing. Using massive communication systems like WhatsApp, Bolsonaro’s campaign was based on mostly fake news or half-truths. It produced an intolerance increasing based on difference hierarchies. Manipulating the population. However, I’m more interested in the panoramic view of the radical polarization phenomena about the political, moral, ethical and religions issues around the world.
Do you consider architecture as a form of colonization? How your practice of unbuilding could create a new ground for space appropriation? For me, architecture could represent a sort of a knowledge, an instrument for minds control. For example, during the renovation of Paris in the Nineteenth Century, G. Haussmann modified the understanding, the perception of the city, planning an old streets remodelling, expressways enlarged into long avenues. Thus he created an easily way to control any protest or deviation of the status quo. However, the architecture is not the only instrument processing a colonization approach. Meanwhile, we know that many kind of control instruments are persisting today. For example, when the Portuguese colonized Brazil, they Christianized the natives; enslaving Africans and displacing, shipping them to other country. Or in contemporary cases, we are attending to the manipulation of communications, with Cambridge Analytica case.
Talking about the unbuilding approach in my artistic practice, I could exemplify summarizing the concept throughout “Terra Plena” series, which I work on using concrete powder bags and arranging them symmetrically, on the floor, occupying an area with those units arranged neatly and at rest. Subsequently, I applied an incision with a cutter, generating a geometric format exposing the inner content. Usually, the concrete powder, once in contact with the air, petrifies in time. Solidifying the idea that the construction of human work is made by simple acts of unprotecting inner contents, of finally exposing the matter to the action of time and then to the eyes of the observers.
Could you please describe the work that you realized in China, at the Brazilian Embassy, while you were working in parallel at Ordem Casual? The installation composed by modules in iron, glass, steel grilles and mirror, conjugates different opposites as: containment and dispersion, passage and impediment, sight and opacity, public and private. Each module is fixed to the ground and positioned in the space to create a labyrinthine area. Composing a directed-flow situation and a loss of reference, obstructing the passage boundaries, the installation establishes an allegory about understanding the status quo. The limit to the vision field, the limits to the social layers understanding.
Often you highlight titles, words and photos and wipe out all the rest. Your work has often meant to emphasize divisions in the world today, whether physical or societal. What do you aim to emphasize this time? How would you describe the role of the media in the turmoil which society is going through?
As the story we know, print media comes as a vehicle of information, but through words or images you can highlight issues or even manipulate a fact, in my view nothing is impartial. We can analyse situations, but the judgment will always be composed of an interest (whether conscious or unconscious). Currently the media brings immediate information, but superficial. The use of fireworks repeat the same news indeed constantly trivializes the situation. For example, the first war to be televised live was the Gulf, where images circulated in the official media and the Internet, showing the bombings and attacks as it looked like a video game. The reality goes almost to be a virtual game, something fictional, yet things were happening almost in real time.
The media also plays an important role in the provision of information to society, although the official media exercise a power of manipulation and dissemination of value judgments, other parallel media through the internet for example, also serve as a source of information dispelling absolute powers and giving the possibility of other views on the same fact, as before, at the time of issue of these magazines and media that I appropriate it was a little harder.
You choose forms which question the way Man interacts with urban space and the powers that be. Do you see an echo between your work and the political crisis which Brazil is going through at the moment? The country had for many times political and economic crisis, that are always based in games of power, and
therefore trigger new paths of relating to the powers that be, but the system continues favouring a hierarchical structure, changes to some parts of the game but the structure keeps intact. In my work I try to create reflections about the environment that I living. Though some contradictions, errors, failures, bring one alternative vision of the real state.
You represented Brazil at the Venice Biennale in 2015 along with Berna Reale and Antonio Manuel. How did you choose the works to put on show? What memories do you have of this experience? The two projects, “O estado das coisas 2”/2011 and “Status quo”/2015, selected for the show, were choose on a discussion with me and the curators of the Brazilian Pavillion, Luiz Camillo Osório and Cauê Alves. My memories of this experience was to rethink what I was doing there, and to rethink my condition as an artist.
As far as you’re concerned, what’s the effect on the contemporary Brazilian art scene of the fresh impetus triggered by the new generation of artists to which you belong? What is so special, that you can’t find anywhere else? I do not think these specificities neither differentiations, perhaps the scene is the “new” market or the “new” artist, but try not to limit myself to these questions.