Lisette Lagnado "The Intricacies of Hélio Oiticica's Conceptualism in his "Programa Ambiental""
Channel: Rethinking Conceptualism
Date: 2021-03-05

Lisette Lagnado "The Intricacies of Hélio Oiticica's Conceptualism in his "Programa Ambiental""

From 1999 to 2002, thanks to a partnership between Itaú Cultural and Projeto Hélio Oiticica, I designed the website "Programa Helio Oiticica" and coordinated an extensive research with the aim of making available a digital archive of over 5,000 manuscripts to scholars interested in the work by this artist. To this work I added a conceptual mesh of more than 200 terms, composed by a specific vocabulary created by the artist. Since Oiticica operated within the concepts of duration and intuition (Henri Bergson), I proposed a cartography that could present itself as a great rhizome, and ensure a labyrinthine navigation free from chronological evolutions. 

There is a whole specificity in Hélio Oiticica's writings that I would like to begin with. It was quite rare to find in Brazil an artist, who described his own creative experience so thoroughly. Oiticica (who lived from 1937 to 1980) did this in such a systematic way, that he has been considered a "conceptualist" artist. In my presentation, I problematize this interpretation, mainly under the assumption of the "dematerialization of art". 

The understanding of his "Programa ambiental" happened, even for him, as a kind of après coup, as a delay. As an open program, the artist tirelessly named and renamed each experience, while seeking to define and redefine his practice and insert propositions within a dimension that needed to reach a broader audience, beyond the elitist and specialized one.

This lecture is part of the programme of the online symposium “Rethinking Conceptualism: Avant-Garde, Activism and Politics in Latin American Art (1960s-1980s)” 

Panel discussion: Conceptualism in Hélio Oiticica and Gloria Gómez-Sánchez
Q & A session with Lisette Lagnado and Emilio Tarazona via Zoom: 12 March 2021, 18.00 h (GMT +1)

Website: https://rethinkingconceptualism.com/​​ 

Twitter: @RConceptualism 
Instagram: @rconceptualism 
Facebook: /rethinkingconceptualism

Credits: 
Video: Lisette Lagnado and Katerina Valdivia Bruch
Video editing: Katerina Valdivia Bruch 
Subtitles: Gladys Quintero Torres
Portrait photo of Lisette Lagnado: © Pedro Agilson
Graphic: Katerina Valdivia Bruch 
Acknowledgements: Andreas Valentin, Ariane Figueiredo (Projeto Hélio Oiticica)

CC Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International 

Rethinking Conceptualism: Avant-Garde, Activism and Politics in Latin American Art (1960s-1980s) 
A project by Katerina Valdivia Bruch  

In collaboration with Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, Instituto Cervantes Berlin 
Funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen 
Supported by Embassy of Uruguay in Germany, Embassy of Chile in Germany 



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