STEFAN BRUGGEMANN'S NEW NEON AT THE SALA DE ARTE PUBLICO SIQUEIROS IN MEXICO CITY!

ELIETE AND KIKI CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS WHILE PREPARING TO GIVE BIRTH!

Tetine's tropical punk star Eliete Mejorado and curator Kiki Mazzucchelli, showing their pregnant bodies while awaiting for the arrival of Yoko Bethania Mejorado Verner and of Lula Obama Mazzucchelli Canonico. Proud father to be, Bruno Verner smiles in the back.

'MANIFESTO FOR THE AESTHETIC REVOLUTION IN BRASILIA', A MANIFESTO BY MATHIEU COPELAND AND PABLO LEON DE LA BARRA

BRASILIA:
Centro da revolução estética e intelectual
Centre of the aesthetic & intellectual revolution

The manifesto for a revolution, as this completes the journey into the revolution...
The revolution starts now!

In 1967, Helio Oiticica responded to Brasilia, (which was built in 41 months, from 1956 to April 1960, when it was officially inaugurated) by creating Tropicalia, the anti-utopia, the reality of the favelas against the dictatorship of rationality, order and concrete. Confronting these two realities, we shall call for a new vision of Utopia, a CONCRETE UTOPIA! An utopia made of reality, concrete & steel! Brasilia will again be the platform for the development of other modernities and new realities: in other words, Brasilia will embody the centre of the aesthetic & intellectual revolution!

Centro da revolução estética e intelectual is the recreation of the mythical centre of the intellectual revolution: a myth, yet a myth in which we trust!
The two evident trends seem to be that either a revolution concludes its course and becomes a new standard, or following a permanent circle becomes a permanent revolution. The creation of the centre in turns becomes the embodiment of both the playful environment it creates & the serious goal it affirms, and becomes a meeting point of ideas, a cross over of cultures within a third place, the museum.

The revolution within the institution becomes a call that embraces movements, living entities, and breaks for reflection. More than ever we shall rethink the institutions, and rethink the museums that the cities where we live have become. We shall call for the most radical levelling, not the kind that we experience in our everyday life through global similarity and standarisation, but indeed the levelling of our cities, to level everything to zero and start again. And this time, we shall seek no permanency, only new and ephemerals architectures.

The following shall be applied to our everyday life, to our common activities, and to all the institutions that surround us, to all the structures that define our experiences. A third of all museums will have to close for a year, as the other two third continue their activities, and as the year draws to an end, another third will close, and so forth & and so on. Let the dust settle, and from there a new harvest will breed again with more strength from these now fertile grounds.
We now must create an economy of cultural subversion, more than ever we shall create a community in our amnesiac society.

The revolution inhabits the city, and the city becomes the host & the primary resource for the revolution: both a shelter and an entity that digests its own constituting material: a cannibal that is sustained by the city, and that feeds itself from it: neo antropophagia!

The revolution uses the museum as a map, and envisages to use the Espaço Lúcio Costa (the museum of the creation of the city of Brasilia) as the plan, and the city as its operational field. The revolution uses the newspapers of the city as its own catalogue. Spreading the rumours and all worded artefacts only based on beliefs (Spoken Words to the World), the exhibition goes deep into the future, as we recover faith in a new modernism!

The Revolution is such a modernist form! Yet a formalist revolution, such a revolutionary idea!

The Centre is everywhere, omni present, as the centre is within us! Activating art, dance & celebration, the revolution becomes a popular invitation to celebrate art within society. Our belief in modernism does not become a quote or a citation, but to the contrary the means to create new work and non-work and to work with & within the originals – and among these create a circles of old masters as the bearers of Knowledge! We do not reproduce, we breed and we generate a new understanding of the past in inscribing in the present the seeds of the future!

The revolution is ultimately abstracted from the city, the structure of previous modernist models! The Centre Is Not Complete – The Centre Is Everywhere. The seeds of this revolution are within this affirmation, and affirms that all becomes the centres of the centre! The appraisal of humankind in this age of global chaos. Millions of people, arriving from everywhere, from other planets, arriving to the centre, to the centre of the revolution. The Centre Is Everywhere! The Revolution Is Everyvhere!

The centre is within us! The revolution generates life, reality, blood, breaths, and is akin to a mother giving birth: the revolution generates the future, and the future is NOW!

The manifesto for a revolution, as this completes the journey into the revolution...

Mathieu Copeland & Pablo Leon de la Barra
Summer 2008

'MANIFESTO MARATHON' BOOK OUT NOW!

Mathieu Copeland and Pablo Leon de la Barra's Manifesto for a Revolution in Brasilia



http://www.buchhandlung-walther-koenig.de/verlag/empfehlungen/aesthetische_theorie/isbn_3865606946.aspx

CUAUHTEMOC MEDINA IN LONDON

Pre-Christmas dinner with curator Cuauhtemoc Medina in London.

Mr. Medina, from the Instituto de Investigationes Estéticas at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, is one of the foremost curators and scholars of contemporary in Latin American. His many exhibition projects include ‘20 Million Mexicans can’t be Wrong’ (South London Gallery, 2002), ‘The Age of Dissent: Art and Culture in Mexico 1968-1987’ (UNAM, 2007; Pinacoteca do Estado de Sao Paulo, 2008, MALBA, Buenos Aires, 2009) and most recently this year’s Mexican Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Teresa Margolles ‘What Else Could We Talk About?’ He has also curated and curated “Francis Alÿs. Diez cuadras alrededor del estudio,” Antiguo Palacio de San Ildefonso (2006). Medina has recently co-published books on Francis Alÿs (Phaidon Press, 2007) and on Melanie Smith, Ciudad Espiral y Otros Placeres Artificiales (A&R, 2006), among many others. Last January he was the director of 'Sur, Sur, Sur, Sur...' SITAC's 7th International Symposium on Contemporary Art Theory in Mexico City. From 2002-8 he was associate curator at Latin American Art at Tate Modern. His regular column 'El Ojo Breve' in one of Mexico’s leading newspapers, Reforma, has made him perhaps the best known critic in the region.

A VISIT TO MOCTEZUMA (NOT MONTEZUMA) AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM

model of the city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan


Codex Mendoza, from around 1540, (also known as the Codice Mendocino) which has been deposited at the Bodleian Library in Oxford since 1659 where it remained in obscurity until 1831, and which depicts the history of the Mexicas/Aztecs until 1521 when conquered by the Spanish.

http://www.britishmuseum.org

GEORGE AND DRAGON'S 7TH ANNIVERSARY!

Mythical London pub, The George and Dragon celebrated it's 7th anniversary yesterday!

BISTROTHEQUE'S CHRISTMAS RESTAURANT!

Patron Silver Reindeer
A series of communal Christmas Feasts by Bistrotheque with set designed by Gary Card

Mandarin & Pomegranate Patrón Tequila Cobbler
Spicy Patrón Silver Reindeer
***
Dressed crab, rye bread, mayonnaise, red salsa, taco chips
Calves liver parfait, Melba toasts
Mixed beets and orange salad, horseradish cream
***
Spiced, glazed Christmas ham
Skewered, drunken quails, maple syrup, pecans
Pheasant leg with honey
Celeriac and mushroom dauphinoise
Roast carrots & parsnips, Agave nectar
***
Patrón Tequila Moonrise Sorbet
***
Chocolate tart, salted caramel pistachios
Patrón Café XO Alexander
***
Dark chocolate & Patrón Tequila Reposado
***
Red wine and water available throughout, along with Patrón Tequila for sipping

http://www.bistrotheque.com/
http://www.patronsilverreindeer.com/

PANORAMA OF BRAZILIAN ART, CURATED BY ADRIANO PEDROSA AT MAM SAO PAULO

Claire Fontaine, 'Mamõyguara opá mamõ pupé'


Cerith Wyn Evans, chandelier winking in morse code Lina Bo Bardi's text 'Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo'; photo of the Sao Paulo biennale building by Luisa Lambri; unfinished painting of Lina Bo Bardi's Glass House by Juan Araujo



Jorge Macchi, cut out Sao Paulo newspaper and map



Damian Ortega, 'Modulo de Construccion con Tortillas', homage to Ligia Clark's 'Bichos' and Gabriel Orozco's 'Samurai Trees'


Gabriel Sierra, 'Soporte para Leccion de Matematicas'


Carlos Garaicoa's modernist city model




Mateo Lopez, project for an exhibition at the Brazilian Museum of Sculpture in Sao Paulo


Armando Andrade's collages, painting by Juan Araujo, photo by Luisa Lambri




hommages to Oscar Niemeyer's 'Casa Canoas': paintings by Juan Araujo, photos by Luisa Lambri



Mauricio Lupini, 'Repeat after Reading' (bada didi)







Armando Andrade, neo-neoconcrete collages


Jose Davila, collapsed glass


Jose Davila, Jorge Macchi


Jose Davila, bringing Oiticica back to two dimensions



Marjetica Potrc, 'Modernism takes Root'



Sean Snyder, 'Brasilia'


Allora y Calzadilla, 'Ruin', inspired by Franz Weissmann




Cerith Wyn Evans, 'Here Everything Looks Like It's Still in Construction but It's Already in Ruins', from Caetano Veloso's 'Fora de Ordem', taken from Levi Struass observation on Sao Paulo in Tristes Tropiques




Gabriel Sierra's 'Interrupted Shelves'


Luisa Lambri's photos of Brasilia's Palacio Itamarty



Alessandro Balteo's reconstruction of Eugenio Espinozas 'Untitled Series 1971-1981', donated to the MAM of Rio de Janeiro, the donation was not accepted and the whereabouts of the work are unknown...


Juan Araujo's paintings of Geraldo de Barros 'Fotoformas'


Juan Araujo, Alessandro Balteo, Tove Storch


Sandra Gamarra's paintings of a catalogue of Iran do Espirito Santo's work, Tove Storch sculptures, Luisa Lambri photograph


Tove Storch's sculptures


Tamar Guimaraes 'A Man Called Love', slide show about Chico Xavier, Brazil's greatest psycohographer


Pedro Reyes collective hat, inspired in Ligia Pape's 'Divisor' and Tunga's work on Documenta X






Runo Lagomarsino, 'When we walk at night, it's daytime'





Juan Araujo's 'Brazil Builds' paintings and book-sculpture





Nicolas Guagnini's 'Curatorial Machine', with works by Carla Zaccagnini, Nicolas Robbio, Pablo Siquier and Valdirlei Dias Nunes. (Agustin Perez Rubio moving the walls of the curatorial machine!)


Claire Fontaine, 'Foreigners Everywhere'


Panorama da Arte Brasileira
MAMÕYGUARA OPÁ MAMÕ PUPÉ
Museu de Arte Moderna de Sao Paulo
curated by Adriano Pedrosa

One of the most important exhibitions in Brazil, the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art’s 'Panorama da Arte Brasileira' (Panorama of Brazilian Art) celebrates its 40th birthday. The controversial edition entitled 'Mamõyguara Opá Mamõ Pupé' is curated by Adriano Pedrosa. Instead of exhibiting Brazilian artists as it has been the norm in the Panorama exhibition, Pedrosa has decided to exhibit foreign artists whose work has been influenced by Brazilian art and culture.

The decision to hold a Panorama da Arte Brasileira without local artists is not arbitrary. Over the last few decades, Brazil has come to occupy a place of reference internationally in several creative areas of art and architecture, especially from the 1950s, with Oscar Niemeyer’s modernism and Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, and Helio Oiticica’s neoconcretism. The idea is to question the idea of a territorial view of art that classifies artists and art production according to the country and region in which it is produced. In a globalized world, where physical frontiers are becoming less and less determinant in the cultural evolution of nations, as information channels multiply and become more accessible, emblematic artistic manifestations from a wide range of places serve as inspiration for new creators, regardless of their origins.

According to Pedrosa, Brazil’s exhibition agenda is already overwhelmingly focused on Brazilian artists. The curator believes there is a bigger need for international exhibitions in Brazil; and because the Panorama is a biennial exhibition, it would be difficult to propose a significant new view of Brazilian work, given the short interval of time for substantial changes in the country’s artistic panorama.

The name of this edition, 'MAMÕYGUARA OPÁ MAMÕ PUPÉ', echoes this proposal. It means 'FOREIGNERS EVERYWHERE' in Tupi (the now extinct language of Brazil before the arrival of the Europeans), and comes from a work by Claire Fontaine presented in the form of a neon. The Portuguese translation, 'ESTRANGEIROS POR TODA PARTE' will also be displayed. The original expression is taken by the artists from the name of a group of Italian anarchists who struggle against xenophobia. The translation in Tupi, by Professor Eduardo Navarro, specialist in Tupi at the Universidade de São Paulo, keeps the double meaning that a) there are foreigners everywhere and that b) no matter where they go artists are foreigners.

There are two categories of artists in the exhibition. The first and most numerous is of artists who already have a career recognizably influenced by aspects of Brazilian culture. In this case, there was a curatorial concern with exploring careers in which Brazil’s influence can clearly be seen, as opposed to artists who occasionally use more obvious aspects, like a foreign visitor who only absorbs the culture superficially. The second category consists on Panorama’s artists-in-residence initiative, which provided younger artists with an interest in Brazilian culture and art with up to eight weeks of immersion in São Paulo. The greatest concern wasn’t the work to be exhibited, but the process of mediation with Brazilian Culture and its possible influence in the artists work. The artists-in-residence are: Adrián Villar Rojas, Alessandro Balteo Yazbek, Claire Fontaine (James Tennant Thornhill and Fulvia Carnevale), Jose Dávila, Juan Pérez Aguirregoicoa, Mateo López, Runo Lagomarsino, and Tove Storch.

In Pedrosa's words, “While with anthropophagy, Brazilian modernist intellectuals appropriated European culture to digest it and produce something of their own, now it is Brazilian culture that is being cannibalized by foreigners.”

LIST OF ARTISTS:
• Adrián Villar Rojas (Rosario, Argentina, 1980)
• Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck (Caracas, Venezuela, 1972) – with Eugenio Espinoza (San Juan de los Morros, Venezuela, 1950)
• Armando Andrade Tudela (Lima, Peru, 1975)
• Carlos Garaicoa (Havana, Cuba, 1967)
• Cerith Wyn Evans (Llanelli, Wales, 1958)
• Claire Fontaine (Fulvia Carnevale and James Thornhill), (Paris, France, 2004)
• Damián Ortega (Mexico City, Mexico, 1967)
• Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster (Strasbourg, France, 1965)
• Franz Ackermann (Neumarkt-Sankt-Veit, Germany, 1963)
• Gabriel Sierra (San Juan Nepomuceno, Colombia, 1975)
• Jennifer Allora (Philadelphia, USA, 1974) & Guillermo Calzadilla (Havana, Cuba, 1971)
• Jorge Macchi (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1963)
• Jorge Pedro Núñez (Caracas, Venezuela, 1976)
• Jose Dávila (Guadalajara, Mexico, 1974)
• Juan Araujo (Caracas, Venezuela, 1971)
• Juan Pérez Aguirregoikoa (San Sebastian, Spain, 1963)
• Julião Sarmento (Lisbon, Portugal, 1948)
• Luisa Lambri (Como, Italy, 1969)
• Mateo López (Bogota, Colombia, 1978)
• Marjetica Potrc (Liubliana, Slovenia, 1953)
• Mauricio Lupini (Caracas, Venezuela, 1963)
• Nicolás Guagnini (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1966) – with Carla Zaccagnini (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1973), Nicolás Robbio (Mar Del Plata, Argentina, 1975), Pablo Siquier (Argentina, 1961) and Valdirlei Dias Nunes (Bom Sucesso, Brazil, 1969)
• Pedro Reyes (Mexico City, Mexico, 1972)
• Runo Lagomarsino (Lund, Sweden, 1977)
• Sandra Gamarra (Lima, Peru, 1972)
• Sean Snyder (Virginia Beach, USA, 1972)
• Simon Evans (London, Great Britain, 1972)
• Superflex (Copenhagen, Denmark, 1993)
• Tamar Guimarães (Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 1967)
• Tove Storch (Arhus, Denmark, 1981)

ADRIANO PEDROSA:
Adriano Pedrosa is a curator, writer and editor and lives in São Paulo. Pedrosa grew up in Brasília during the 1970s, where he studied in the Escola Paroquial Santo Antônio. He has published in Artforum (New York), Art Nexus (Bogota), Art+Text (Sydney), Bomb (New York), Exit (Madrid), Flash Art (Milan), Frieze (London), and Lapiz (Madrid), among others. He was adjunct curator of the 24th Bienal de São Paulo (1998), curator of the Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte (2001-2003), co-curator of the 27th Bienal de São Paulo (2006), and artistic director of the 2nd Trienal Poli/Gráfica de San Juan (2009). His other curatorial projects include: F[r]icciones (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, 2000-2001, with Ivo Mesquita), Farsites: Urban crisis and domestic symptoms (InSite_05, San Diego Museum of Art, Centro Cultural Tijuana, 2005) and Panorama da Arte Brasileira (Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, 2009). He is currently director-interlocutor of the Programa Independente da Escola São Paulo—PIESP.

About PANORAMA da arte brasileira:
Panorama da Arte Brasileira was conceived by Diná Lopes Coelho in 1969, when the Museu de Arte Moderna was going through a period of reconstruction of its collection (donated in full by its founder, Ciccillo Matarazzo, to the University of São Paulo, in 1963, which gave origin to the Museu de Arte Contemporânea) and came to occupy the Bahia Pavilion, a building designed by Lina Bo Bardi for the 5th Bienal Internacional de Arte de São Paulo, where it remains to this day. A rare example of continuity in institutional practices in Brazil, the exhibition has been held every two years, without interruptions, since 1995 (prior to that it was held annually and divided into categories such as painting, sculpture, etc.).

Panorama da Arte Brasileira 2009
'MAMÕYGUARA OPÁ MAMÕ PUPÉ'
Curated by Adriano Pedrosa
MAM Sao Paulo
Opening: October 3, 2009 (Saturday) from 6pm
Exhibition open from: October 4 to December 20, 2009
Address: Parque do Ibirapuera (Av. Pedro Álvares Cabral, s/nº - Portão 3)
Tel. (11) 5085-1300

http://www.mam.org.br