'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