[-empyre-] Empyre Digest, Vol 14, Issue 15
Dear members of Empyre
Now I read four messages from Lucio Agra, Jim Andrews, Regina Célia
Pinto, and Saul Ostrow.
First of all I woul like to welcome Lucio, Regina e Saul and thank for
so good comments. And then I will make a brief note about the four messages.
Message 1
Lucio Agra presented an important and brief note about the term
"concrete".
Even not using the computer techniques for making poetry, the
concretists made some tridimensioned poems, what they call poems-objects,
like a poem made as if were sculptures.
The emerging technologies inspired other poets, and also come concretist
ones, to use these technologies to make poetry: holopoetry, videopoetry,
infopoetry, and so on.
Jim said that "more particularly, in the sort of digital poetry I make,
where there is a synthesis of writing and visual and sound and interaction
for the Web, this is note even recognized as poetry among my peers."
The same happens with us in Brazil. Even when we talk about printed
visual peotry (words plus image), some people say it is visual arts. And
some people thinkg of digital poetry as a cool poetry, withouth feelings.
For Brazilian people, in a general sense, the good poetry is that one
whith rhyme, metro, a sonnet, like the ones the Parnassian Olavo Bilac made
in XIXth century.
Message 2
Thanks, Regina, for a very good survey on Neoconcrete.
First of all, I would like to let you know that Lucio is from Recife,
but lived in Rio for many years. His graduation was in UFRJ (Federal
Universidty of Rio de Janeiro) and postgraduations were made at PUC SP
(Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo).
It was good to emphasize Neoconcrete movement which was very important
for the development of art and poetry in Brazil, like the Concrete.
There is a slight difference between the two movement, almost
simultaneous. In São Paulo, if my memory doesn't play a trick, there was a
predominant Concrete Poetry, not Art. And the Neoconcrete was very important
in Arts.
Ferreira Gullar is a very important poet who adhered to Neoconcrete, but
he hasn't used the same technological resources as Concrete poets from São
Paulo.
But the Neoconcrete movement was extremely important for the development
of visual arts. Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, Helio Oiticica and others made, for
the arts in the relationship with technologies, what the Concrete poets from
São Paulo made for the poetry.
According a transcription in "Poesia Concreta e Visual" (Concrete and
Visual Poetry), by Philadelpho Menezes, the journalist Luiz Edgard de
Andrade, in the magazine "O Cruzeiro", made some distinctions between the
Neoconcrete and Concrete poetry: "the Noigrandes group defends the word, the
structure, the ideogram, foreign forerunners and seeks to establish a
linguistic philosophy; Ferreira Gullar admits the concrete poetry as
Brazilian only thing in the world and detaches the empirism and the emotion;
Wlademar Dias-Pino inaugurates the space codification, eliminates the
letters by geometrical spaces, forms and colors with his spational poems."
So it seems, to me, that Neoconcrete is the beginning of tridimensional
poetry in Brazil, much more than Concrete. The history of these movements
should be acurately studied, and at this moment, due and thanks to Regina, I
am having some good insights ...
Your comments were very important for the understanding of our history
of art and poetry nowadays. Thanks for your good addition, Regina.
Message 3
Thanks, Saul Ostrow, for your questions. Regina answered and right now I
don't recall any other name.
Message 4
Ferreira Gullar has good studies about art and poetry, but I don't they
are translated into English. Philadelpho Menezes has a book - Poetics and
Visuality: a Trajectory of Brazilian Contemporary Poetry - translated by
Harry Polkinhorn, which treats about Neoconcrete Poetry.
Jim, Regina, Lucio and Saul made our discussion become very brilliant
and interesting. It is much important to make questions, include other
movements and try to things more clearly.
Thanks for this good moment.
Jorge Luiz Antonio
Brazilian Digital Art and Poetry on the Web
http://www.vispo.com/misc/BrazilianDigitalPoetry.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: <empyre-request@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
To: <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2004 10:01 PM
Subject: empyre Digest, Vol 14, Issue 15
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Today's Topics:
1. RE: aLe --> Jorge Luiz Antonio (Jim Andrews)
2. Neoconcrete (arteonline)
3. Re: Neoconcrete (saul ostrow)
4. Re: Neoconcrete (arteonline)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 02:21:36 -0800
From: "Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com>
Subject: RE: [-empyre-] aLe --> Jorge Luiz Antonio
To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Message-ID: <DCEIJDHNAAEEKPKFBEALAEJODGAA.jim@vispo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> Dear Jim
> Another possible meaning to concrete - in the sense the term concrete
> poetry has been coined in Brazil - is stated in the mouvement manifestoes
> and conceives the task of poetry to look for the essence of the
> word. Kind
> of economic principle. Assuming that abstraction is the normal
> procedure of
> signifcation in words ("lamp" "is" a lamp, no matter which one)
> in Western
> civilization, concrete poetry tries to encompass the Eastern traditions,
> where words are connected visually and formally to its meanings. It is a
> "verbivocovisual" unity, to use Joyce's idea which is very akin to Campos
> and Pignatari arguments.
> The poet and composer Caetano Veloso has a song about Sao Paulo where he
> speaks about "a dura poesia concreta de tuas esquinas"(something
> like: "the
> heavy concrete poetry of your corners") where corners are the ones of the
> city of SP and "concrete" explores the ambiguity between the construction
> material and the poetry itself.
> So, you are pretty right when you say, quoting Jorge:
> "What Jorge says, above, reminds
> me that concrete was also about looking at language as
> multi-dimensioned or
> "pluridimensional," as Jorge says."
>
> Best
> Lucio Agra
Hi Lucio,
Yes, that sounds right. I remember reading, perhaps in 'From Religion to
Philosophy' by F.M. Cornford, that the basis of 'sympathetic magic' is
'confusion' of 'the thing' and its symbolic representation. Even as in the
western esoteric 'tradition', in which writing into the neoplatonic
'empyrean' is thought to have the power to 'make it so' in this world, our
world, as in the thought of Giordano Bruno, etc. Or as in voodoo, where
change of the doll, the representation, is supposed to cause corresponding
change in the person whom the doll stands for, ie, in both cases there is a
supposed 'essence' and to manipulate or change the 'essence' is supposed to
change the corporeal manifestation, which is a shadow of the 'more real,
more existant' essence. Of course, the 'incantation' or 'spell' in 'magic',
often a verbal or written thing, is associated with 'magic', often
associated with poetry; concrete does not deal so much in that sort of
'magical' written or spoken 'incantation' as in this other sort of
'essentialist' 'magic' that nonetheless also involves a blurring between the
thing and the representation of the thing via contact with or invocation of
a supposed 'essence' that transcends and supercedes the quotidian in its
existence.
I get confused just thinking about it, of course.
But yes, there's a kind of poetical ambition to fuse the abstract and the
concrete, isn't there, to see the infinite going on before our eyes, as it
were, and I presume that is part of the ambition of concrete as it is, in
some sense, an ambition of most illusionistic art, and most art is
illusionistic.
Or are you referring to something else, Lucio? You refer to an "economic
principle".
By the way, as you probably know,
http://search.freefind.com/find.html?id=17493&pageid=r&mode=ALL&query=concre
te has all sorts of historical material on concrete, including manifestos,
in English--well you would probably instead have links to many of these
documents in Portuguese, or have them on your shelf additionally.
People generally associate 'magic' and 'mumbo jumbo', and there's a lot of
that, for sure, in heavy duty essentialism of any kind, whether it's Bruno's
neoplatonism or whatever, but I sense that it is a peripheral, um, component
of concrete, an inessential component, as it were. I mean concrete can also
be approached as a synthesis of the visual and the written, or as a literary
movement with significant political ramifications concerning powerful mass
communication, or as a movement toward sense and clarity and focus in
writing, towards simplicity and elegance in communication, however
deceptively simple the simplicity, as in interface design. And also, to me,
or us, involved in the digital as we are, where the word and image and sound
and action become transformed into each other, or are in different relations
with one another than previously was common, we see concrete as an important
'precursor' to our own experimentation with materials and cursors.
Still, it is quite common these days for people to profess a rationalism in
which confusion of the thing and its representation supposedly has no place,
in which such confusion is relegated to superstition, but I wonder how
thorough-going that rationalism is. We are not very rational creatures, it
seems to me, and mumbo jumbo almost inevitably enters through the back door
of our rationalizations to ourselves. It doesn't help that there is a kind
of essentialism almost built into language itself, whereby we are very
nearly forced to suppose that words have meaning apart from any meaning we
might assign them, independent of what anybody thinks. never medium message
raven, as you say in http://www.geocities.com/agraryk/agrippseng.htm , which
I enjoyed very much!
That page has very interesting remarks such as "If Ezra Pound sometime
insisted that poetry had to do more with music and plastic arts, instead of
literature, from now on, these predictions are confirmed by the facts."
Also, you say
"A certain Brazilian artist called Helio Oiticica, now progressively getting
an international renown, years after his death, once made an statement about
the singular reality that is lived by countries like mine, where technology
is always something seen in a future horizon. He used to say: "We live from
the adversity" Seems to be a very contradictional affirmation, but it
reflects very accurately the reality which surrounds us in countries like
Brazil. The creativity is something that derives precisely from the limits
imposed to it. And it is just because these limits are exactly what pushes
this same creativity forward."
This is quite remarkable, and I agree wholeheartedly. I have thought
something similar but different, ie, that whatever makes art so improbable
in a particular place usually is in strong relation to what makes it
possible there. Where I live, what makes it so improbable, in part, is the
peripheral nature of art to the society, so that the consequence of art in
the society seems like it could only be, at most, minute, small. And, more
particularly, in the sort of digital poetry I make, where there is a
synthesis of writing and visual and sound and interaction for the Web, this
is not even recognized as poetry among my peers. But, as you and Oiticica
say, "we live from the adversity", ie, the energy of the edges we traverse
give us life or reward. As Clemente and Blake said earlier, "Expect nothing
but poison from stagnant waters." The energies of language seem currently
involved strongly in the transformations of the sign we experience in the
digital brew.
So it is different and the same in Brazil as in Canada this way, it seems,
Lucio.
It is exciting to hear from you and Clemente and Jorge, Regina, and aLe on
digital poetry, Lucio. I look forward to hearing more from you and the
others on this, our exploration of 'the phenomenological and fantastic in
Brazilian new media'.
ja
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 15:07:42 -0300
From: "arteonline" <arteonline@arteonline.arq.br>
Subject: [-empyre-] Neoconcrete
To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Message-ID: <002901c409ef$4f42ad20$e062cac8@NOMEAmigotec>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
The Neoconcrete
I would like to say that I am carioca. It means that I was born in Rio de
Janeiro. Jorge and Lucio are paulistas. They were born in São Paulo. I never
met Jorge or Lucio out of web. Rio de Janeiro is more less six hours far
from São Paulo, by bus. I am telling this because it is interesting to know
that Brazilian Concrete Art and Poetry was created and developed in São
Paulo.
Here in Rio de Janeiro we had the Neoconcrete:
At the end of the decade of fifty, the cariocas launched the Manifesto
Neoconcrete.It was launched in the Sunday Supplement of the Periodical of
Brazil of 23 of March of 1959. The Manifesto Neoconcrete, was based in
Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy. Its intention were to recover the human,
rehabilitating the sensitive disqualified since Plato and try to found a
real knowledge. The idea was to revitalize the relationship of the subject
(Artist / Poet) with her/ his work. It denied that their association
constituted a formally organized group. They called for a revitalization of
art practice, expressive form and individual experience and an intuitive
response to the creative act and the work of art.
The first I Exposition of Neoconcrete Art had the participation of Lygia
Clark, Lygia Pape, Amílcar de Castro, Franz Weissmann, Reynaldo Jardim,
Sergio Camargo, Theon Spanudis and Ferreira Gullar. They were the founders
of the moviment but Aluísio Carvão, Carlos Fernando Fortes de Almeida,
Cláudio Melo e Souza, Décio Vieira, Hélio Oiticica, Hércules Barsotti, Osmar
Dillon, Roberto Pontual and Willys de Castro participated of the moviment
too.
Mário Pedrosa (Brazilian critic of Art) observed, with his habitual acuity,
that the art neoconcrete
was "the pre-history of Brazilian art". Such definition can not be
understood in terms of literal, it underlines the radical character of the
neoconcrete action: prehistoric in the measure that questions the beddings
of the existing artistic language and considers a return to the "start" of
the art.
Lygia Pape, interviewed by me in the beginning of the decade of 90, told:
"We separate from the group concrete of São Paulo because they wanted to
create a ten years project of work to the future. The group of Rio thought
that it was excessive rationalism . We wanted to work with intuition, more
untied. We changed much information; we had a certain impregnation in the
measure that one talked with the other. Neoconcreto did not appear by
chance, also it was not a thing that we elaborate and later we start to work
in it. We work experimentally before and when we thought that the works
were ready, Gullar that was poet, "Copy-desk" of Jornal do Brasil,
wrote/write very well and studied the theory of art, was in charge of
writing a text that had with the work of everybody _ a posterior text to the
Art works. It had one total freedom, nothing was a dogma. Everybody
invented. We do not work with conventional categories. In the sculpture,
the idea was to destroy the base _ to make an object that thus was called
but that it could be rank in any position. The painting also would not be
more involved for a frame, would advance in the space. I invented a book,
call "Book of Creation", it tell the creation of the world without words,
only with plastic arts, half poetry. This direction of invention, of
creation was what really characterized the movement. At that time the
thought that a picture existed to be a painting in the wall, for mere
contemplation was true yet . It did not have the sense of direct
participation, the use of different materials was still unknow; then
everything gave a great direction of freedom. At that time it was not
easy, we had the world in opposition to us."
(By the way Jim, Lygia Pape was one of the best friends of Helio Oiticica,
the creator of Tropicália which had a philosophical approach After this
Caetano Veloso created the very well known Tropicalism.)
Theon Spanudis wrote about the Poetry Neoconcrete
"If we compare a poem neoconcrete with a poem concrete, we will have to
evidence that the poem neoconcreto is less structural, less material, less
verbal, less rational and, in a certain direction less static . The poem
neoconcrete abandons the structure and is much more dynamic. It is less
verbal, because in the poem concrete, the verbal elements not only qualify
each other, but they create, also the dynamic tensions of attraction and
repulse to each other. This dynamic and unstable set is, at the same time,
in spite of its dynamism and instability, something of static as joint. The
tensions are inside of it, but the set is something static. For the same
reason the poem neoconcrete is less rational than the concrete. The poem
neoconcrete communicates more for the interior time, for the existential
time, it is materialized more spacial expressivity than verbal one. That
kind of communication is also the reason of being less rational than the
poem concrete."
I would like to translate the complete text, but it is very difficult. If
one of you want the text in Portuguse I can send. In fact what I would like
to say is that we had here in Rio de Janeiro the Neoconcrete . Theon
Spanudis and Ferreira Gullar can be considered at that time Neoconcrete
Poets. Perhaps the difference between the two kind of poetry styles is just
the difference between Cariocas and Paulistas. However the Poetry Concrete
is much more known than the Poetry Neoconcrete, but the Art Neoconcrete
(paintings, sculptures, engravers, etc) is very well considered and studied.
Urls:
Helio Oiticica:
http://www.universes-in-universe.de/doc/oiticica/e_oitic1.htm
http://www.universes-in-universe.de/doc/oiticica/e_oitic4.htm
http://www1.uol.com.br/bienal/24bienal/nuh/inuhoiticic02a.htm
I did not found any URL about Neoconcrete in English.
If you do not understand my English, please ask me your doubts.
Regina
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 17:25:00 -0500
From: saul ostrow <sostrow@gate.cia.edu>
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Neoconcrete
To: arteonline@arteonline.arq.br, empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
Message-ID: <4054DBBC.9ED690B2@gate.cia.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Regina -- I read with interest your text about the neoconcrete --
Might I ask who where the most important critics and theorist in Brazil
during the 50s and 60s and how did they align themselves --
Saul Ostrow
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 20:18:54 -0300
From: "arteonline" <arteonline@arteonline.arq.br>
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Neoconcrete
To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Message-ID: <00b801c40a1a$ced24250$9ca105c9@NOMEAmigotec>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Hi Saul,
Thanks for your interest. I think that the most important critics and
theorists in Brazil
during the 50s and 60s were Mario Pedrosa, Mario Schenberg, Ferreira Gullar
and Frederico Moraes later 60s). Perhaps Jorge can remember other names.
What do you mean with "how did they align themselves" ? I did not understand
very well.
Regina
----- Original Message -----
From: "saul ostrow" <sostrow@gate.cia.edu>
To: <arteonline@arteonline.arq.br>; <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2004 7:25 PM
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Neoconcrete
>
> Regina -- I read with interest your text about the neoconcrete --
> Might I ask who where the most important critics and theorist in Brazil
> during the 50s and 60s and how did they align themselves --
> Saul Ostrow
>
>
------------------------------
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