Eleonora Fabião. azul azul azul e azul, 2016. Photo: Jaime Acioli

To Produce Strangeness is to Care: azul, azul, azul e azul [blue, blue, blue and blue]

Eleonora Fabião

Prologue:

In October 2017, at the invitation of Izabela Pucu and Jessica Gogan, I had the pleasure of participating on the panel “How to Institute Care: Toward Other Conceptions of Art, Artists and Institutions”, part of the event “Care as Method # 2.” Held in the auditorium of the Centro Municipal de Arte Hélio Oiticica [Hélio Oiticica Municipal Art Center], the panel comprised three artists – Millena Lízia, Geo Britto and myself –, and was moderated by the artist Cristina Ribas and poet Rafael Zacca. Our objective was to discuss, or rather, to take care of the theme – to share our experiences, reflections, modes of production, and to dialogue about ways of doing and thinking art today, of being an artist in contemporary Brazil, of relating with institutions in our current context. My option was to start by presenting two works performed the year before in the city of Rio de Janeiro – actions designed by me and carried out with groups of collaborators in partnership with two different institutions. MOVIMENTO HO [HO MOVEMENT], curated by Izabela Pucu and Tania Rivera, was held at Centro Municipal de Arte Hélio Oiticica in November 2016.¹ azul azul azul e azul [blue, blue, blue and blue], featured in the exhibition Das virgens em cardumes e a cor das auras [On Virgins in Shoals and the Color of Auras] curated by Daniela Labra, was held at Museu Bispo do Rosário Arte Contemporânea [Bispo do Rosário Museum of Contemporary Art] in June 2016. Following the suggestion of the editors of this publication, I present here the text I wrote for the catalogue of the exhibition Das virgens em cardumes e a cor das auras about the creative process of azul azul azul e azul, a piece that was written shortly after the event.² We believe that by way of this narrative, engaging with the work of Arthur Bispo do Rosário, it might be possible to access some of the issues discussed in that panel – questions referring to modes of relation, creation and artistic and institutional production. That day, I remember well, I concluded my talk by saying: “This is how performance art takes care: by ‘stranging’ the ‘natural course of things.’ To produce strangeness is to care. Here, ‘to strange’ is method.”

*

Few things could be more meaningful to me than participating in an exhibition that proposes a direct dialogue with the work of Arthur Bispo do Rosário.

In the mid-90s, I offered body practice workshops for inmates at Colônia Juliano Moreira psychiatric asylum (now called Municipal Institute of Health Care Juliano Moreira, a mental health complex and community located at the former asylum’s site). I arrived as a volunteer after seeing Bispo’s work in an exhibition organized by the curator and critic Frederico Morais in Parque Lage [School of Visual Arts in Rio] in 1989, the year of his death. I was very young and the encounter with the “archive of everything that exists in the world” touched me deeply; or even, it formed me.³ I arrived to work in the Colônia attracted by Bispo’s treasures – as a bug attracted by light. I wanted to get to know the community, to somehow reciprocate the life force I had experienced at that first contact with the work, to continue learning. I wanted to experience the spaces that Bispo had opened up and lived in. The space of a creator – of someone who does not call himself an artist because he does not see himself as one. Of a world’s creator – who not only recycles materials but also transubstantiates matter and recreates circumstances. The space of a performer – someone who works with artisticity, politicity, and corporeality beyond any pre-established understandings of art, politics, and body. The work of a maker of meaning and space.

Later, at the beginning of the 2000s, as always trying to address the impact Bispo caused on me and the vibrancy of his work, I began to write about the creator and his creation – I needed the “WORDS . WRITTEN,”⁴ to quote one of his embroideries. I even wrote in his cell. I would go there with my notebooks and computer, sit on the floor and spend the day. Lots of heat, insect noise, smell of green, blue, and yellow. A substantive part of my doctoral dissertation is about the archive of everything that exists in the world and the energetics of the paradox.⁵ Subsequently, I published texts about Bispo and his work (curiously only in English). I wrote because I understood that this would be a way of making a pact, of honoring and caring – of spreading the feat, its effects, affects and spells throughout the world; a way of making people aware that this ex-sailor, ex-boxer, former employee of Light Electrical Company, Afro-descendant, mental health user, hospitalized for about 50 years, so poor and so rich, so delirious and so lucid, did what he did, did the impossible, turned fascist garbage into poetic-political treasure, injected aesthetic energy into a collective body brutally silenced. I wrote to spread his voice, his reality, his eye, his gravity, his grace, his life force. Such a striking and inspiring life force. I wrote to call attention to the fact that this radically precarious archive needs permanent care.

And today, 27 years after the first time I saw that body of work, what brought me closer to Bispo and his archive were not workshops, writings, or public talks. It was an invitation from the curator Daniela Labra to participate in the exhibition Das virgens em cardumes e a cor das auras whom I thank immensely. From this invitation I created azul azul azul e azul, a series of 5 collective actions designed for the streets of Colônia Juliano Moreira. The project featured, in addition to materials such as bamboo sticks, shiny tapes, sisal rope, tungsten lamps, a truck battery, and electric cables, three very important works from Bispo do Rosário’s inventory that were to be presented at specific times of the day with low light levels: the Manto da Apresentação [Presentation Mantle], the Jaquetão EU VIM [I CAME Jacket] and one of his boats, Vela Roxa [Purple Sail]. With all due care, these pieces were taken out of the hospital, of the museum, of the gallery; they were carried in palanquins and covered with acrylic domes into the streets of Colônia Juliano Moreira for the first time since Bispo’s death. After participating in exhibitions in several Brazilian cities and abroad – Paris, Buenos Aires, New York and Venice just to cite some –, on June 4, 2016, the opening day of the exhibition, a new moon day on which the sun rose at 6:43 a.m. and set at 5:30 p.m. in the city of Rio de Janeiro, these works re-encountered their surroundings. The 5 actions, which I will describe later, occurred throughout the day every 3 hours – at 6:00 a.m., 9:00 a.m., 12:00 p.m., 3:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m..

azul azul azul e azul was held in the year of the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. A year marked by a tremendous blow to Brazilian democracy that had ousted President Dilma Rousseff, democratically elected with 51.64% of the votes, out of office. A fact that adds to the reactionary wave currently growing not only in Brazil but also throughout the world. Not to mention the general advance of the environmental crisis from which Colônia Juliano Moreira has not escaped. The deforestation necessary for the construction of the Trans-Olympic highway caused irreparable ecological damage.⁶ It also caused serious harm to the local culture and population: the highway cut the neighborhood literally separating the Museu Bispo do Rosário from the Colônia’s Historic Center and the Polo Experimental (an art studio space and cultural community center for mental health users and families administered by the museum).⁷ For in this abusive context, it is urgent to join forces with movements capable of transforming biopower into biopotency, of transforming power over life into life potency. I repeat: Arthur Bispo do Rosário transformed fascist garbage into poetic-political treasure. To the horror vacui and the asylum’s terrors he responded with archivism and aesthetics. His work was shield and remedy. Today, as always and more than ever, it is time to engage with its transformative potency. Bispo, the fantastic fanatic, the lucid lunatic, someone who in a superhuman effort was able to resist and modify the necropolitical world in which he lived. Someone able to inspire and instigate so many of us to resist and transform. Hopefully, without the suffering of compulsion and the oppression of obsession. But, if needs be, facing any pain.

Suddenly I felt like crying. Yesterday a friend told me that she and her son have been having conversations about how many kinds of crying there are. What types of crying have you cried? The same boy asked: “Mom, when we die, we die a lot don’t we?” “Yes, my son, we die a lot, all at once.” On his death Bispo said: “I will die because there will be nothing left to be lived.”⁸ On madness he explained: “The sick are alive led by a dead spirit. […] Jesus son is the father who guides me.”⁹ And, famously, he only let into his cell those who correctly answered the question, “What is the color of my aura?” If they did not say “blue,” they did not enter. Blue. Blue like the hospital uniforms and sheets that Bispo used to unravel to get the threads he needed to make the embroideries. Blue. Blue as the 7 angels he saw on the day of his apparition at the Leone Family home in Botafogo, a Rio de Janeiro neighborhood, where he worked as a housekeeper. As written with needle and thread on one of his banners:

22 DE DEZEMBRO 1938 MEIA NOITE—ACOMPANHADO POR SETE ANJOS EM NUVENS ESPECIAIS FORMA ESTEIRA—MIM DEIXARAM NA CASA NOS FUNDOS MURADO—RUA SAO CLEMENTE 301 BOTAFOGO […] EU COM A LANÇA NA MAO NESTA NUVES ESPIRITO MALISIMO NAO PENETRARA

[22 DECEMBER 1938 MIDNIGHT—ACCOMPAINED BY SEVEN ANGELS IN SPECIAL CLOUDS SHAPE MAT—MYSELF LEFT IN THE HOUSE IN THE WALLED BACK—SAO CLEMENTE STREET 301 BOTAFOGO […] I WITH A SPEAR IN HAND IN THIS CLOUS VEY BAD SPIRIT WILL NOT PENETRATE]¹⁰

The same information can be found on the Jaquetão EU VIM. “EU VIM 22 12 1938 MEIA NOITE” [I CAME 22 12 1938 MIDNIGHT] says the sentence embroidered vertically, along the opening of the coat, interspersed with the leaves and branches of a plant that flowers stars – not coincidentally, 7 stars. Another sentence, embroidered horizontally along the hem in the front part of the jacket, says: “CLEMENTE 301 BOTAFOGO NOS FUNDOS MURRADO” [CLEMENTE 301 BOTAFOGO ON THE BACK WALLLED]. As I see it, this garment represents the space-time coordinate of the event-apparition – the horizontal axis is spatial, the time axis is vertical. Or even, the jacket-coordinate is the representational actualization of an event to be constantly remembered and embodied. On that day, hour, place, Bispo do Rosário CAME accompanied by 7 angels. Arthur Bispo do Rosário arrived where he was. And from there, he claimed for himself his own birth. As he replied countless times when asked about his origin, “One day I simply appeared.”¹¹ Bispo simply appeared on that blue December night. Bispo-apparition. “Apparition” – manifestation, revelation, haunting – is therefore a nexus, a mode, a current, an electricity in the Bispo do Rosário work-body-life. The inventory vibes-shines apparition.

From the initial conception of azul azul azul e azul it was clear to me that the work could only be carried out if understood as a co-presentation with the museum. The conversations with the curator of the collection, Ricardo Resende, and the museologist, Ana Carvalho, were numerous and crucial. From the beginning we agreed that the museological apparatus would be part of the performance; without such museological equipment the works could not cross the door of the museum’s art storage. All decisions were taken minutely and dialogically. I calculated the schedule of actions according to light levels. I defined each course and its duration. I studied how to carry the palanquins. The museologist determined the materials of the palanquins, the positioning of the works, and checked every detail of the routes that I proposed. Acrylic domes already in the museum were recycled and the palanquins were designed by Jabal El Murbach and built by him and Aline Baiana, a key contribution. At the end of each action, in keeping with curatorial design, the works were positioned in the exhibition space. And remained displayed in the palanquins, outside of traditional pedestals, bases or showcases, throughout the exhibition.

In a similar manner, the conversations and negotiations with the producers – Jocelino Pessoa, executive manager, and Bernardo Marques, production coordinator – were numerous and crucial. Day after day, with each visit I made to the museum, the project took shape and staff agreed to the unusual idea of opening an exhibition before sunrise, at 5:30 a.m.. They even arranged for transport to bring visitors the day before. Via an on-line enrollment, they organized a bus leaving the Museum of Modern Art in Rio’s city center on Friday night, to bring those interested in spending the night in the Colônia. The production staff organized rooms, bedrooms and bathrooms at the Polo Experimental so that we all could sleep there, project team and visitors. For dinner they offered a nice spread of hotdogs and also provided breakfast. My understanding: if Bispo’s work does not profoundly transform ways of creating, producing, exhibiting, spectating, and acting institutionally, if this work does not transform modes of human relationship and relations to all sorts of objective and subjective matters, what else can do it? An extra-ordinary logic had to be at least minimally experienced. And it was.

In addition to working with the exhibition and museum teams, I had the greatest pleasure in forming an absolutely extraordinary group of 18 collaborators. We formed a heart. Mariah Valeiras worked as an assistant starting the month prior to, André Lepecki was a consultant to the project as an experienced dramaturg, and Elisa Peixoto tested materials with us so that we could explore possibilities. Jaime Acioli photographed and Fernando Salis filmed the actions. On the Wednesday before the opening of the exhibition, the group met in Colônia Juliano Moreira to familiarize themselves with the routes and materials. We were performers, dancers, writers, anthropologists, psychologists, photographers, theater, dance and film artists, students and teachers – people with very different relationships to Bispo’s work, but all very close to me. We were: Adriana Schneider, André Lepecki, André Telles, Dieymes Pechincha, Dominique Arantes, Eleonora Fabião, Elilson, Elisa Peixoto, Fernando Salis, Gabriel Martins, Gunnar Borges, Jaime Acioli, Luar Maria, Lucas Canavarro, Mariah Valeiras, Miro Spinelli, Rubia Rodrigues, Thiago Florêncio and Viniciús Arneiro. Some already knew each other, others not. The ages ranged from the twenties to the fifties. We were gays, lesbians, trans, bis, cis, queers, black, white, mixed. We were blue, blue, blue and blue. An extreme sense of group developed. We all knew precisely what we were doing there. We all wanted to be there. But it must be said, to have Arthur Bispo do Rosário and his work as a reference is brutal. And carrying the pieces on our shoulders, in structures of about 85 kilos, is, let’s say, a unique way of connecting.

Very objectively the series consisted of 5 walks of different routes, at different times and involving different materials. Visitors to the exhibition, neighborhood residents, passers-by, all were invited to join us. Pamphlets with the schedule and the description of the actions’ programs were delivered to those who arrived at Museu Bispo do Rosário throughout the day. Those who walked with us were also invited to work with the materials – with the bamboos or the rope, but not with the palanquins that demanded specific choreographic training and special care. We all moved and were moved according to the rhythm of each action and according to rhythmic variations throughout the day. In addition to the collaborators, some people participated in all 5 actions. Many people participated in at least 3. The start and end points were always the same: Museu Bispo do Rosário Arte Contemporânea (mBrac). The halls and gardens of the museum became a kind of abode for us all. Just as important as the moments of the walks themselves, was the time in between them, and everything that was shared there. Actions are like this; they open a field of exchange and complicity that extrapolates the realization of the programs themselves. They are a kind of ground, sky and horizon.

azul 6

6:00 a.m., dawn. With Arthur Bispo do Rosário’s Manto da Apresentação on a palanquin and under a dome, walk around the mBrac. Make a ring around the building. On our return, position the mantle in the exhibition space.

Fig 1. Eleonora Fabião. “azul 6” – azul azul azul e azul, 2016. Photo: Jaime Acioli

azul 9

9:00 a.m.. With the vessel Vela Roxa by Arthur Bispo do Rosário shaded with blue cloth and under a dome on a palanquin, cross and connect two portals: the entrance to the Colônia Juliano Moreira and the entrance to the Juliano Moreira Municipal School. Make fleet, make shoal, make sea. On our return, position the boat in the exhibition space.

Fig 2. Eleonora Fabião. “azul 9” – azul azul azul e azul, 2016. Photo: Jaime Acioli

azul 12

12: 00 p.m., sun in the middle of the sky. A 30-meter sisal rope was covered with several blues – it had been customized two weeks earlier at Praça do Anil [Anil Square], Jacarepaguá, during a demonstration commemorating the National Anti-Asylum Day with the help of event participants (doctors, nurses, users, family members; and also passers-by, street dwellers, children playing in the square and their parents). Along the Colônia Juliano Moreira main avenue and in the construction site of the Trans-Olympic route, walk with the customized rope always held in tension. Do not let the rope touch the ground. Do not let the ground touch the rope. Form geometries of flocks of birds. On our return, position the rope in the exhibition space.

Fig 3. Eleonora Fabião. “azul 12” – azul azul azul e azul, 2016. Photo: Jaime Acioli

azul 15

3:00 p.m. [15:00]. 7 bamboo sticks of 3.4 meters high, 12 meters of cotton thread and dozens and dozens of strips of blue metal tape. The strips are tied up like a kite tail on the cotton thread that, in turn, connects the bamboos like a clothesline. Walk with the blues from the museum to the Ulisses Viana Nucleus treatment center where the cell where Arthur Bispo do Rosário used to live is located. Surround the wall of the locality. Stop in front of the entrance gate and let the fringe of thread and tape glow, glisten, resonate. On our return, position the composition in the exhibition space.

Fig 4. Eleonora Fabião. “azul 15” – azul azul azul e azul, 2016. Photo: Jaime Acioli

azul 18

6:00 p.m. [18:00], sunset. Walk from the museum to the Historical Center of Colônia Juliano Moreira. The path is illuminated by 7 tungsten lamps in 7 different shades of blue, tied onto 7 bamboo sticks of 3.4 meters each, and connected by 45 meters of wire to a reverser which, in turn, is connected to a truck battery pulled in a cart. In the middle of the center of the Historic Nucleus, the Jaquetão EU VIM is waiting, suspended on a palanquin and protected under a dome. We walk back together to the museum. The route is illuminated by 7 blue angels.

Fig 5. Eleonora Fabião. “azul 18” – azul azul azul e azul, 2016. Photo: Jaime Acioli

As I understand it, azul azul azul e azul is part of the endless apparitional process of Arthur Bispo do Rosário. Seeing those forms of life on the streets of Colônia Juliano Moreira, so heavy and so floating, visible in a way never seen before, attracting new materials and so many different people, is part of this movement-apparition, part of the apparitional current Arthur Bispo do Rosário. Every time we entered the hall of the museum after the walks and set the palanquins on the floor, circles of people formed around the pieces and the applause was endless. The building was totally filled by that sound mass. Everyone vibrating, everything vibrated. Bispo-vibration-apparition. New ways of seeing and of making visible this radically alive work will always continue appearing. There are voices in the archive and the call is deafening. One day it simply appeared.

 

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Eleonora Fabião
Is a performer and performance theorist. She performs actions in the streets, presents lectures, conducts workshops and publishes internationally. In 2011 she received the Brazilian National Art Foundation (Funarte) Art in the Streets Award and, in 2014, a grant from the Rumos Itaú Cultural Program that resulted in the publication Ações/Actions (Rio de Janeiro: Tamanduá Arte, 2015). Professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro – Graduate Program in Arts of the Scene* and Undergraduate Program in Theatre Direction –, she holds a PhD in Performance Studies (New York University), a Master’s Degree in Performance Studies (New York University) and a Master’s Degree in Social History of Culture (PUC-RJ).
*T.N. Scene (Portuguese cena) here is understood as a staging of situations, events and performances and is not specific to the technical scenic arts or scenography.

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¹ For more information on MOVIMENTO HO see: “Call me text, just text” In: Studies in Gender and Sexuality Vol. 19, Núm. 1 (2018) [English] or “Lámmame texto, solamente texto” In: Efímera Revista Vol. 8, Núm. 9 (2017) [Spanish]. Link: http://www.efimerarevista.es/efimerarevista/index.php/efimera/article/view/65/96 [Editor’s note E.N.: For a brief interview with Eleonora Fabião on this project see part 4 of the video compilation Care as Method featured in this magazine: http://institutomesa.org/revistamesa/edicoes/5/portfolio/cuidado-como-metodo-arte-politica-e-clinica-em-4-territorios-no-rio-de-janeiro/

² Daniela Labra ed, Das virgens em cardumes e a cor das auras (São Paulo: WMF Martins Fontes 2017).

³ This title is from a text I wrote on the work of Arthur Bispo do Rosário focusing, amongst other ideas, on thing theory and the new materialisms. See: Eleonora Fabião. “The Archive of Everything that Exists in the World” in: Karmenlara Ely and Maria Magdalena Schwaegermann eds. Infinite Record: Archive, Memory, Performance (New York: Brooklyn Arts Press, 2016).

⁴Specifically on this banner known as “EU PRECISO DESTAS PALAVRAS . ESCRITA” (I NEED THESE WORDS . WRITTEN]. See: Eleonora Fabião, “History and Precariousness: in search of a performative historiography” in: Amelia Jones and Adrian Heathfield eds. Perform, Repeat, Record: Live Art in History (Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2012).

⁵ Eleonora Fabião, Precarios, Precarious, Precarious: Performative Historiography and the Energetics of the Paradox—Arthur Bispo do Rosário’s and Lygia Clark’s Works in Rio de Janeiro, PhD dissertation (Performance Studies, New York University, 2006).

⁶ [E.N.: The TransOlympic Avenue was constructed for the Olympics and Paralympic Games of 2016. Its construction caused the destruction of 200,000m² of Atlantic Forest at the limits of the State Park of Pedra Branca, the second largest urban forest in the world. It cost about 270 million dollars and in a violent and arbitrary way divided the territory of Colônia Juliano Moreira into two parts. Under the avenue, today, a small tunnel is the only link between mBrac and the Polo Experimental.]

⁷ [E.N.: Administered by mBrac, the Polo Experimental is a community, educational and cultural center, that via the idea of togetherness, integrates cultural actions in the Colônia in an old remodeled Pavilion transformed to house: the activities of Escola Livre de Artes (Free School of the Arts – ELA), Casa B (Home B – artistic residency), Atelier Gaia, the income generation project Art and Garden Company, and the leisure program Pedra Branca (White Stone). Note translated from mBrac website].

⁸ Arthur Bispo do Rosário as cited by Pedro Maciel in the article “Bispo criou objetos para adoração e abominação” in: Estado de Minas (Minas Gerais, 30/07/1996).

⁹ Interview with Hugo Denizart from his film O prisioneiro da passagem (1980).

¹⁰ Taken from the banner “EU PRECISO DESTAS PALAVRAS . ESCRITA” already mentioned in endnote v. All translations into English of Bispo’s writings were made by me. As I have written elsewhere: “It is not an easy task to translate Bispo’s writings. Some letters are missing, some words are not spelled according to the standard Portuguese grammar. I tried to keep the misspellings, the linguistic gaps, and his singular rhythm in my translation into English.”

¹¹ Arthur Bispo do Rosário as cited by Luciana Hidalgo in Arthur Bispo do Rosario: o Senhor do Labirinto (Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 1996) 35.