Page 52 - Studio International - March 1969

Cape No. 1 1964.
HELLO OITICICA RETROSPECTIVE AT THE
Cloth structure to be worn and changed
WHITECHAPEL GALLERY, UNTIL APRIL 6 with body movements.
OITICICA TALKS TO GUY BRETT

This retrospective exhibition, the first outside diversions or pastimes, socially controlled in
Brazil, of the work Helio Oiticica has been clubs and so on, where they have lost most of
doing in Rio for the past ten years, includes their power. . . . People are always looking for
his Nuclei (colour-labyrinths to walk through) ; a result. In modern art, the evolution has been
his Bolides (`fireballs' of elemental and com- to find each time more the process of creation,
monplace substances) ; his Capes (which trans- to go back to it. For the process of appre-
late internal emotions into fantastic and meta- hending the work of art had become too
phorical clothing) ; and his Penetrables (cabins detached from the process of creation. The
for the spectator to enter, sometimes to pass participation itself should be something impli-
through and sometimes to remain). cit, apprehending a process and not a result.
For his London exhibition Oiticica has made In fact in Eden what you take out of the work
a complete environment, a garden of solitary depends.on what you bring to it. It is not a kind
and communal places, enclosed by a fence of of behaviour that can become stereotyped,
mattress-cells at the end of the gallery. In like the forms of participation in rituals. I
this conversation, recorded in London, Febru- wanted a kind of participation that would be
ary 1969, he talked to GUY BRETT about the different from rituals because it would arise
spectator's participation in Eden. directly out of your daily behaviour, so the
things created should be submitted to change
I began with a kind of participation which even as you apprehend them, and not pre-
focused on the specific senses, the sense of sented as a solution to problems. It should
touch, the visual sense. Though they inter- never be seen as a solution. You see, I think it
penetrated, you could separate them. But in should be seen as a necessity, an immediate
the new Penetrables, in the environment I call necessity. As if it were a corporal necessity.
Eden, you cannot, because now you have no A direct pleasure. In the water-Penetrable:
structure adapted to a specific participation, it's as if you were taking off your shoes and
but a kind of proposition for behaviour. going into the sea or into a lake. You only do
One of the Penetrables in Eden is a bed en- that when you desire profoundly to do it.
closed in sacking which the spectator crawls These Penetrables are related to kinds of people are eager to participate to divert
inside and lies down in. I remember a friend necessary desires. Not diverting, or out of the themselves.
of mine who lay in the bed. At first he went in ordinary, but very commonplace. That's The idea for the Penetrables originated partly
for curiosity. Then he stayed for a long time really the sense in which they are formed, a in my feeling for two rooms in the house
and afterwards he wanted to make one for means of releasing certain fundamental de- where I grew up. They were bathrooms. One
himself. But he never could explain. Perhaps sires. People go near a fire to warm them- was painted all orange, and the other blue.
he didn't know why he wanted one because selves—but before the necessity of getting To go into the water in these rooms was some-
in the objective sense it is completely useless. warm is the immediate desire, the pleasure thing very pleasant. It is pathetic that in
It didn't free in him specific images, just a the fire gives them. modern houses the bathroom is the only place
general leisure feeling. It wasn't the bed itself The Penetrables in Eden are different from set aside, where the individual may feel re-
that he wanted but the feeling of being himself one another. Do they originate in your own leased from oppression. I am sure primitive
that it gave him. In that sense it acted like a experience ? people are more conscious of the necessity of
mirror, an instrument for reflection—though Earlier, before I made those new cabins, I privacy. The Australian Aborigines have an
not optical reflection. had the idea to 'appropriate' places I liked, activity which they call `dreamtime', when
Images are so often used for oppressing. They real places, where I felt alive. In fact the they leave the village and wander off alone
can also be taken out and repeated without Tropicalia penetrable, with its multitude into the desert. They don't know where
thought. I think that many artists, even when of tropical images, is a kind of condensation they're going....
they have people participating directly in of real places. Tropicalia is a kind of map. Do you think Eden resembles a primitive
things, only want to distract them. Movies are It's a map of Rio and it's a map of my village ?
the most used for this. They are leisure events, imagination. It's a map that you go into. The cabins are very general, they don't
but they condition people to a specific idea of But I think more important now the idea that objectify anything so clearly. In fact in their
leisure, a state of suspension really, so that they people should make their own environment. external forms they are not like primitive
will go to work again. The leisure is not used In Eden I translated personal experiences things. I used materials of all kinds that are
for its own sake, but to make work more bear- into something open. In fact those cabins are acceptable to me, they are directly acceptable
able. In Eden you should lose the idea of all quite alike. They are all based on a to me. Some are primitive, some are modern
work and leisure hours. leisure feeling—a place to lie down, to think. and sophisticated. They all take the same
I think the act of lying down is the easiest The sand, the straw, you lie on or stand on, sense; though the materials are all different
means to free the imagination, because it's the are just accessories to something that always they all relate to something very generalized,
least used for distractive entertainment. You relates to a condensation of perceptions; to be indefinite, bare. The idea of direct feelings
only lie down if you want to sleep or to rest—to in a situation where you can release inside could be called primitive, but that's our fault,
regain your powers, which can be related to yourself some essential things. I could only really they are fundamental. I don't make a
regaining powers to bear work, but also to make them this way because I felt it myself, distinction between them and living in the
something else, to dreaming. I don't want to and yet I hate it when experiences are shown technological world. I think the desires of a
call it meditating, because oriental forms of in great detail, as if the artist was saying 'look primitive man in a tribe in Africa and a very
meditation have already been turned into what I found', 'look at my new idea', and refined man should be the same. q