ERROR

arthoughts — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:51:00 +0000

ERROR é a primeira intervenção produzida pela organização cultural de Aveiro CREARE no edifício do antigo Cine-Teatro Avenida em Aveiro, com o apoio e co-produção do estúdio de artes performativas PerFormas.

Em ERROR as paredes internas do edifício são a ’folha de papel vazia’ de Tiago Margaça, jovem artista plástico de Aveiro. A ausência dos limites apela a um preenchimento arbitrário das paredes com os desenhos a tinta-da-china do artista. Os desenhos propagam-se pelas paredes do edifício numa sensatez do traço natural e espontâneo. O erro acontece por haver um controlo excessivo para que ele não aconteça.

arthoughts.wordpress.com to arthoughts.creare.pt

arthoughts — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:06:42 +0000

Informamos que o sítio http://arthoughts.wordpress.com está a mover-se para o sítio http://arthoughts.creare.pt.

Por isso, de forma, progressiva, os texto começaram a ser lançados pelo novo domínio. Desta forma estamos a enfatizar o facto deste projecto ser a estratégia da marca CREARE, que ainda não tem site, mas dentro em breve terá com toda a certeza.

Pedimos desculpa por qualquer inconveniente que isto possa causar, e pedimos também que guardem o link novo na esperança de manter-vos perto dos nossos pensamentos.

Um obrigado aos já mais de mil fãs que subscreveram a página de fãs do Arthoughts no Facebook e a todos os outros que vão acompanhando atentamente.

SABREPULSE no TMG

arthoughts — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 23:22:48 +0000

Este fim de semana o Teatro Municipal da Guarda apresenta um espectáculo inédito em Portugal. SÁBADO23 Área: Música Onde: Teatro Municipal da Guarda (POR) no pequeno auditório A que horas: 21h 30m Duração: 60M M/4 Bihetes: 5€

Sabrepulse é um músico britânico de 24 anos que utiliza Gameboys e outros aparelhos electrónicos que produzem som a 8 bits para criar música de dança, House e Breakbeat.

Sabrepulse integra o leque de artistas do chamado movimento Chiptune em Inglaterra, participando anualmente em digressões internacionais, com o Chiptune Alieance Tour, actuando nos EUA, Japão, e em vários países da Europa e da América do Sul.

O artista desde cedo se viu influenciado pela era dos videojogos, ou melhor, pelo som de 8 e 16 bit dos videojogos e começou a fazer música a partir de Gameboys em finais de 2003, com a ajuda de de uma mesa de mistura.

Maurizio Cattelan

arthoughts — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 23:03:45 +0000

Contemporary Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan (b. 1960) is known for his witty embrace of semantic shifts that result from imaginative plays with materials, objects, and actions. In his work, contradictions in the space between what the artist describes as softness and perversity wage a sarcastic critique on political power structures, from notions of nationalism or the authorities of organized religion to the conceit of the museum and art history. Like the traditions established by Dada and Surrealism, his uncanny juxtapositions uproot stable understandings of the world around us. For Cattelan ev

en the banal is absurd. As he has said, “Comedians manipulate and make fun of reality. Whereas I actually think that reality is far more provocative than my art.”

BR>
Maurizio Cattelan February 12 – August 15, 2010 The Menil Collection 1515 Sul Ross Street Houston, Texas 77006 Tel 713-525-9400 Fax 713-525-9470 http://www.menil.org Curated by Franklin Sirmans

Seeking Time, in Space (Scene four)

arthoughts — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 00:05:49 +0000

Guava, Mango and Mulberry Trees

Break! There’s nothing better than having a free period! And the best scenario is when the very last class of the day is cancelled, allowing all of us to leave school early. For me, this usually meant a free hour to explore new places. I loved going into the western section of Ain Shams with my neighbourhood friends—I lived in the eastern part of Ain Shams, which is closer to the city centre and which I’d grown bored of by then. The western section, however, bore a much stronger resemblance to the countryside: Many of its houses were built of clay, and there were more fields and vegetation there. On other days, I would head north towards Izbat An-Nakhl or Al-Marg. One day when we got out of school early I went off with my friend Mohammad, whose father was a poet (at the time I did not know what being a poet meant, or where exactly the poets all worked). We went to a small villa near the school which had a little garden with a few trees. Guava fruits hung like shining yellow lamps amidst the dark green leaves, and their enchanting smell entered our nostrils. We put down our schoolbags just outside the fence of the villa, knowing that the owner of the house was an old woman who didn’t come out very much. We climbed onto the iron gate, then onto the fence, and from there to the tree. We devoured all the guavas our stomachs could hold and also picked a few to eat on the road, and perhaps also to serve as proof of our courageous raid to our schoolmates. Moments before we were about to climb down, we saw the old woman who owned the villa open the door. We held our breath. She came out of the house calmly, without once lifting her head to the tree, then opened the gate, picked up our two bags, walked back inside the house and closed the door behind her. My stomach was suddenly thrown into disorder, and the taste of guava suddenly grew bitter. We no longer had a heroic story to tell our friends, but rather one of failure and impending doom. Mohammad and I climbed down the same way we’d come up. We stood nervously outside the gate a while, not knowing what to do. It seemed as if fate had struck us down: We were caught red-handed stealing fruit, and could not go home without our bags. Finally, the woman opened the gate and told us to come inside. We hesitated, but there was nothing for it. The good woman gently reproached us, then said that she was familiar with our school, and even knew my father Eltayeb and Mohammad’s father Mukhaymar. In our anxiety, we really thought that she would tell them what we had been up to. We promised to never steal again, and in turn she promised to say nothing to either the school principal or our parents. She gave us our two bags, but before we could make our escape out the gate she told us to stop, and then went inside the villa. She returned with a few guava seeds for each of us, and gave us a warm smile that I’ll never forget. ***** It was as if an angelic—or perhaps satanic—force in the trees drove us to the guavas. I was quite overwhelmed whenever I looked at trees like those, for they always tempted me to stretch out my hand and pluck a fruit, then smell it, and finally eat and enjoy it, and only after all of this might I perhaps consider whether I should have first asked the owner’s permission. There was a large mango garden not too far from our home, just across the railroad tracks that divide the district of Izbat An-Nakhl from Ain Shams. The secret fruit of this garden lured us children in from all over; we swarmed towards it like wasps, and once there we’d throw small bricks at the unripe mangoes. To justify these sorties, we claimed that we were learning our lessons in that garden. And so it was that we embarked upon that new study method called “memorizing while walking.” It was a silly method and I didn’t think much of it, yet we found that some of the older schoolchildren did in fact study this way; and though they seemed to resemble oxen tied to waterwheels, still we followed their lead, repeating the words of the schoolbooks out loud in order to memorize them. It was a strange method, and I only adopted it to get close to the mangoes—and certainly not for the sake of my studies. The owner of the garden later became aware of this trickery that greatly reduced the yield by ruining so many of his mangoes. The strange thing is that we used to eat those tart fruits with great satisfaction, without giving any thought to the damage we inflicted on their poor owner, whose garden we were wrecking with our mischievous, childish stupidity. We even used to laud ourselves for our courage and heroism in that garden! ***** The mulberry trees that grew near the Farouq village were safe from neither our hands nor our stomachs. Those trees have all vanished now, without leaving the slightest trace behind—tall towers were built in their place, and quickly filled up with large masses of residents. Yet back then, we used to attack those trees in ravaging swarms. We climbed up them with the dexterity of apes, then, much like the silkworm that devours the mulberry leaves, we devoured the mulberries themselves. We stayed up there a long time, hidden among the branches, and did not come down until indigestion overcame us. If our presence was discovered, we would make a hasty escape. Yet we always came back to carry out our delightful raids in that great forest of mulberry trees. ***** Several years later we conducted a similar raid on some of the farms in the district of Izbat An-Nakhl. It was the first time I had ever seen tomato bushes, and until then I had thought that tomatoes grew on trees like mangoes or oranges. May God have mercy on the gardening teacher who used to herd us into the school courtyard to clean it up and gather leaves, and who never once taught us something useful about gardening, such as the difference between cultivating potatoes and strawberries. That day, as I went with my brother Khaled and our friend Mahir to Izbat An-Nakhl, it seemed as if we were unknowingly following in the footsteps of those ancient European explorers who sought out gold. Our eyes were dazzled by the alluring glow of the tomatoes (and I suddenly understood why the vegetable sellers always called out that their tomatoes were “jewels” and “sweeter than pomegranates”). We went down into the field at the quiet time around noon on a hot summer day, and began devouring the plentiful tomatoes in delight. No more than a few moments had gone by when we heard yelling: “Catch them! Stop them! Cut them off!” Several farmers were heading in our direction. I was a fast runner, and I took off and did not stop until I was near the eastern border of Ain Shams, my safe haven. I sat panting in the shade, by the wall of a clinic. In my mind, I could see the farmers with Khaled and Mahir: They had surely been caught, and were now undergoing their torture and interrogation, and soon the farmers would come to our home and there’d be a huge scandal. Or perhaps the farmers had beaten them severely or even killed them—and what was there to stop them, for were we any better than common thieves? These thoughts accosted me as I waited for Mahir and Khaled, unable to pry my eyes from the direction of the crime. I could not go home, and I stayed there a long time, squatting like a tired old man or a fugitive without shelter. I suddenly realized that I was still holding a stolen tomato in my hands—it was warm and its distinctive smell climbed to my nose, causing hints of former pleasures to mix with my premonitions of doom. Yet I could not eat it, and it was as if the tomato in my hand had suddenly gone bad. I remembered how my family had taught me to behave well and avoid disgrace, how my school teachers had shown us wrong from right, and I thought about the warnings of the religious men and their distinction between halal and haram5. Yet I could not toss away the tomato either, for I had also learned that throwing away God’s bounty is also haram. I finally set it down beside the wall and asked the Lord for forgiveness for my evil deeds. I stood up with tears in my eyes, still thinking about the disappearance of Mahir and my brother. The pain in my stomach was intense, as was my desire to return home, and the way back seemed much longer than usual. When I got home, I walked in expecting a question about my absent brother, and then a detailed interrogation that would force me to confess. Yet my brother met me with a smiling face as if nothing had happened. He must have come home some other way, perhaps taking the bus that ran that route. He told me that those farmers were kind and even generous to them. They didn’t do anything to the two of them after they caught them, but rather asked where they were from and said that if they wanted some tomatoes they only had to ask the owner, and he would certainly give them all they wanted. The farmers then proclaimed, “Our Lord’s bounty is great!”, and finally gave them even more tomatoes to take with them.

Porque é que nunca houve mulheres artistas que conseguissem chegar a ser grandes artistas?

arthoughts — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 23:49:22 +0000

Porque é que na História da Arte, nunca houve um grande artista que fosse mulher? O que teria acontecido se Picasso fosse uma mulher? Se fosse mulher seria aceite da mesma maneira que Pablo Picasso (homem) o foi? Existem hoje grandes artistas? O que define um grande artista?

O falso mercado das coisas

arthoughts — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:53:39 +0000

As palavras “Indústria” e “Criativa”, nunca antes tinham sido utilizadas uma imediatamente a seguir à outra para explicar um fenómeno social que foi percebido nos anos 40 por Theodoro W. Adorno. Isto permitiu estreitar a ilusão sobre as práticas puramente comerciais de um grosso das instituições criativas como a rádio e a televisão, por exemplo. “Os segmentos que constituem hoje o fenómeno Indústrias Criativas são segmentos do sector criativo da Publicidade, Arquitectura, Artes e Antiquários, Artesanato, Design, Design de Moda, Cinema, Vídeo, Software Interactivo de Entretenimento, Música e outras Artes Performativas, Edição, Software, Serviços de Informática, Televisão e Rádio. Havendo relações económicas com outros domínios, tais como o Turismo, Museus e Galerias, Património e Desporto.” A evolução destes segmentos e o aparecimento de alguns desde os anos 40 até hoje, ao contrário do que dizem, não foi nem é tecnológica, isso é apenas uma forma pomposamente artificial que as indústrias têm de enganar o comprador/consumidor e iludi-lo a comprar para se fazer sentir parte de um grupo de pessoas, que são mostradas pelas mesmas indústrias de forma artificial com sendo “o grupo ideal ao qual tu também deves fazer parte!” (esta geralmente é a mensagem que se encontra nas publicidades). Esta é a política de hoje! O que hoje é produzido, só pelo simples facto de ter sido hoje criado, não será necessariamente sempre melhor do que o que foi produzido antes. Na verdade, muitas das coisas que são feitas hoje, são sempre piores que as que foram feitas antes, só que apelam ao interesse através do seu aspecto estético porque foram trabalhados para esse fim. Não é por acaso que o tempo de vida de um objecto ao longo dos tempos tende a vir a ser cada vez menor, para acelerar o processo cíclico de compra em jeito de reiteração do mercado. É um pouco como ser crente numa religião. Nada é concreto, nem mesmo as palavras, e tudo é aceite como se fosse realmente a coisa mais verdadeira do mundo, mas na verdade não o é. Porque é que se acha que a bíblia, por exemplo, é o livro mais lido em todo o mundo? Não será porque quando é lida, é lida para vários grupos de forma padronizada e ritualizada?...

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Manual de sobrevivência dos artistas! (galerias comerciais)

arthoughts — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:29:11 +0000

O manual de sobrevivência dos artistas, nesta primeira edição sobre as galerias comerciais, é uma muleta essencial para artistas em início de carreira e que pretendem ser representados por uma galeria. Neste manual são apresentadas as problemáticas e as soluções. É um alerta à cautela e um apelo à contenção para que nada corra de mal num contracto com uma galeria. O que deve o artista ter em conta e como deve proceder para ser bem sucedido na sua representação.

THE PORTFOLIO PROJECT | thinking photography differently

arthoughts — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:17:22 +0000

Como pensar a fotografia de forma diferente? “Reunindo na mesma plataforma on-line três conceitos-base – a de uma publicação mensal sobre fotografia, a de um espaço de formação contínua à distância orientado por profissionais e a de um portal associativo onde se divulgam projectos fotográficos individuais ou colectivos”, afirma Susana Paiva, coordenadora do The Portfolio Project, uma iniciativa pioneira em Portugal.

Fundado no princípio deste ano, o projecto tem, no entanto, um currículo excepcional, tendo realizado parcerias com diversas entidades para promover um discurso coerente sobre a fotografia. Actualmente, os contactos desenvolvidos com a associação cultural Casa da Esquina permitirão, já no próximo ano, a organização de oficinas de fotografia e exposições fotográficas, bem como a realização de residências artísticas para fotógrafos e editores fotográficos na cidade de Coimbra.

As galerias dos fotógrafos que integram a plataforma estão disponíveis no site do projecto, em www.theportfolioproject.org.

O trabalho fotográfico de Susana Paiva assume um cariz documental, no qual o imaginário se cruza com a realidade, como se de uma narrativa ficcional se tratasse. Depois de 15 anos a colaborar com diversas publicações nacionais, foi agenciada pela prestigiada agência de fotógrafos austríaca, Anzenberger. Em Janeiro 2009, fundou o The Portfolio Project.

folhas, páginas e outros desenhos…

arthoughts — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:43:55 +0000

As obras apresentadas servem-se do desenho como forma privilegiada de investigação e inventariação de si na sua condição de jovem mulher. Logo aí, o manuseamento da tesoura, da agulha, da linha e a mancha vermelha no tecido, investigam códigos de separação dos sexos, sobretudo os que socialmente determinam o feminino. Depois, assumida plenamente a condição adulta, ainda que não abandonando o recorte e a colagem, é sobre o papel bidimensional que o lápis, o aparo ou o pincel, se impõem como meios de exteriorização de um mundo improvável, fantástico, terno e terrível, em que a maravilha da fábula se confronta com a crueldade e o medo, e em que o sonho é sempre perturbado pela crua realidade.

Na Artadentro, Isabel Baraona apresentará um vídeo e desenhos originais, destinados a publicação, integrando a série “os Livros de cores”, que compreende os títulos: “grafite”, “vermelho”, “negro”, “azul” e o desdobrável “is this me?”. Logo após a inauguração desta mostra na Artadentro, a autora fará uma apresentação da sua obra, ás 22h00, no Pátio de Letras, onde os seus “livros de artista” estarão à disposição do público.

Artadentro, Vasco Vidigal