Hello Jim and all,
Jim wrote:
> Concrete, Neoconcrete...both of these apparently inform the poetics of
> Brazil rather influentially.
>
> The extent of this influence in Brazilian letters is something I'm curious
> about.
>
> For instance, how many publishers do you have who would touch a book of
> poetry that wasn't a book of verse? Publishers here publish books of verse
> and it seems difficult for them, for some reason, to depart from that
> formula. You know, they get their printing done by x and x can do a and b
> and that's it, or whatever, god forbid you should present them with a
> challenge. So that publishing here is somewhat dull--and this dullness in
> the publishers of course impacts on the art in that mostly what is
published
> is verse or, in any case, the usual suspects, rather than there being much
> effort to transform the book. Of course economics play a part in this,
too,
> ie, generally the more the book departs from the standard in its form, the
> more expensive it will be to produce it, and publishers have big economic
> problems these days.
>
> One would hope that part of the heritage of neo/concrete would be an
impact
> on the publishing industry whereby the form and nature of the book is
> energetically and continually re-thought. Is that ongoing and vital in
> Brazilian publishing? If so, is this part of the heritage of neo/concrete?
To publish in Brazil is not very easy. The most part of academic
publications are paid by the authors of them.
The most part of publications of Art, because of the price, needs a sponsor
and it is not easy to get. Nowadays we have very interesting and well
thought (design, creativity, etc) publications about Visual/Fine Arts or
Poetry. I think that it is a consequence of neo/concrete. Some of them you
can find in the library of the Museum of the Essential and Beyond That.
(http://arteonline.arq.br , click first floor on the building / map and
them click books). There you can find the beautiful book and CD ROM by Ana
Maria Uribe, click the letter U. It is interesting to say too that the new
books of poetry (visual/eletronic) are being sold accompanied by CD ROMs, so
they show at the same time visual poetry and eletronic poetry.
Another kind of get a book printed is to do it yourself. It is the
cultivation of experimentation, the basis of neoconcrete moviment. In this
case I am speaking about artist's books. Here in Brazil we have a tradition
of creating artist's book. My own work is just this. At first I built my
books of paper or other materials, nowadays I build it to web, so I am
creating eletronic artist's books . However some of my books have the two
versions: web and print (http://arteonline.arq.br/virtualidade , pop up
windows available). If you want to know more about artists's books, browser
at: http://arteonline.arq.br/museu/interviews/reginavaterenglish.htm .
About this last link, an interview with Regina Vater, a brazilian artist and
poet, who created many artist's books, I would like that Jorge comments this
portion of the interview:
RV> Art for me is the supreme territory of freedom therefore everything is
possible in it. For me it is always the artist who invents his/hers own
rules. But it is also important that we leave room in the experimental for
the flowering of the intelligence of the content. Without content,
everything is reduced to gratuitous gestures. The cultivation of
Experimentation and the cultivated Content must come side by side.
RCP>And about your own work, the installation Camões' Feast, it also came
from your intention of allowing the American public a better contact not
only with our language but also with our culture?
Then why Camões if the show was about Brazilian poetry?
RV> When the Americans pay reverence to Shakespeare they are not making a
distinction between American and English culture. "My language is my
continent's".
RCP> Why an installation if it was a poetry show?
RV> For me there are many ways to register poetry. If people today use
digital / visual methods, why not use an installation? This actually is
nothing new. Augusto de Campos already had done it and probably other before
him. In art there is no rules. The artist makes his/hers own rules.
Jorge, If possible say anything about the difficulty of translate poetry,
specially poetry in Portuguese language.
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