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Reading time 3 min

An invitation to mediation

Equipe de mediadores

There have been countless efforts to define the word mediation, which is used in several different ways by different sectors of society.  It can relate to the solution of conflict, the interpretation of works of art and, yet, it can be used to facilitate a process.  

 

Since the beginning of its activities, Inhotim’s Department of Education has developed strategies to promote discussions on the Institute’s collections.  This work happens through mediation, a practice that supports dialog, autonomy and, most of all, visitors’ experiences.  

 

Mediation is a powerful tool to build knowledge.  It helps visitors and mediators recognize themselves as active participants in the most important discussions related to contemporaneity.  At Inhotim, the purpose of mediation is to create a safe space for dialog, questioning and discovery.  These meetings go beyond the first impression in search of that which makes us think, find the sparkle that leads to a reaction on our part.

 

What awakens or critical eye and compels us to (re)build?  We understand that the construction of knowledge happens through exposure to new images, new dilemmas.  This alchemy results in a powerful tension in our rational boundaries, which we seek to expand.

 

Taking part in a guided tour, or mediated tour, at Inhotim is taking yourself to an unknown place and making this place fertile soil to risk, speak up, improvise and perceive how you feel in this context.  

 

You are invited to take a closer look, to ask, and get to places, create memories and have encounters that will take your breath away!

 

 

Written by Lília Dantas, Art and Education Supervisor at Inhotim

Reading time 4 min

Contemporary Music Miniseries

Redação Inhotim

This coming Sunday, May 25, guitars, flutes, percussions and musical sculptures will take over Inhotim to comprise a Contemporary Music Miniseries.  Starting at 3 PM, groups from Minas, Corda Nova, Flutuar Orquestra de Flauta, UFMG Percussion Group and Quarteto Cretinos e Plásticas will perform in the Institute’s gardens, a setting the mixes nature and art in a unique way.  To invite you to experience all this, Inhotim’s Blog has asked each group to tell you what makes their music contemporary.  Check it out!

 

“Percussion might be the most emblematic instrument in Contemporary Music.  This is so because it encompasses a diversified range of sounds and instruments, incorporating everyday objects and other ones invented by the musicians themselves, generating an almost infinite sound material for the composer of contemporary music. But contemporary percussionists are not limited to sound.  Their willingness to experiment allows their music to incorporate materials found in other areas, such as drama, literature, circus, dance, technology. Thus, maybe the most contemporary thing about the work performed by UFMG Percussion Group is the absence of prejudice and the group’s constant interest in expanding the musical language.”  Fernando Rocha, member of the UFMG Percussion Group

 

“Corda Nova has established itself as a representative of its time.  With contemporaneity in our DNA, the group has focused on working with living composers, and so far has taken to stage only works requested specifically for its concerts.  Fresh ink on paper alone does not define the synch of the group with its time:  Corda Nova’s members are immersed and synched with musical production as well as with current thinking, whether by means of extreme artistic proposals or through their academic and humanity background.  This ranges from the group’s insertion into community cultural life in their homeland to experiences with communities which are not well integrated with the Western world.  All of this has been reflected on the group’s production, culminating in creations that often extrapolate the strictly sonorous world towards the plastic and scenic worlds, as well as concepts and poetics that are a possible portrait, a facet of contemporary Brazil.  – Stanley Levi, member of Corda Nova.

 

“Freedom guides the work and aesthetical orientation of Flutuar Orquestra de Flautas, a group that refuses to be attached to a specific artistic current which might limit their spontaneous expression.  This is what grants this group artistic contemporaneity and originality:  boldness in experiencing and creating.  Everything at Flutuar is freedom: the choice of repertoire, the structuring of the arrangements, the action on stage, the easiness of its members, and especially, the joy of playing as a group. ” – Alberto Sampaio, member of Fluturar Orquestra de Flauta.

 

“More than being identified with the modes of production of an era, being contemporary means to be detached from this era, so as to question it in the way you act, play, think, and, in our case, make music.  We, from Cretinos e Plásticas, investigate, explore and interrogate the musical and artistic work at the same time we make our music.  From preparing and producing the instruments, to the poetic construction of the sonorous space by way of improvisation, getting close to other forms of art expressed in the instrument itself, taking ownership of this instrument’s plasticity, what we do is explore and get detached from the way music is made and thought of today.” – Marco Scarassatti, member of Quarteto Cretinos e Plásticas.

Reading time 3 min

Marilá Dardot and Work

Redação Inhotim

“During the Pampulha Scholarship program, Sara Ramo, Matheus Rocha Pitta and I, and, later, Rodrigo Matheus used to live together at Rua Apodi, 69.   It was July or August 2003 and finally Cinthia Marcelle and I were in Belo Horizonte at the same time during the trumpet tree blooming.  It was our chance to make Irmãs (Sisters), a work we had thought about a long time before and were waiting for the opportunity to make happen.  Matheus was traveling during those days. It was Sunday, and Sara, Rodrigo and I sat down to make the flowers that would be used to color the ground under the trumpet trees whose colors would be switched.  Rodrigo wanted to test a safety camera for his work, and because of that we positioned it in front of the sofa.  In the middle of the process, we began to reflect on the nature of our work, and I remembered some panels with old didactic writings I had bought at the Exchange-it flea market in Rio, when I worked with Rosângela Rennó.  WE ARE USEFUL. USEFUL.  WE WORK. WE NEED IT TO LIVE.  That is how Selvagens Nocivos (Harmful Savages) came about, together with its first video, A cada dia (Each Day).”

 

Marilá Dardot on her relationship with the word work.

 

 

Born in Belo Horizonte, the artist is one of the participants in the Space, Work and History Seminar, which will take place on May 23 and 24 at Museu Histórico Abílio Barreto.  It is a free event that is part of the activities on the 2014 Inhotim Escola program. Check out the detailed program for the event here.

Reading time 6 min

Inhotim or Shangri-La

Ignácio de Loyola Brandão

When I saw that gigantic machine, strangling a tree with its dinosaur-like claws, placed by Mathew Barney in the middle of a dome, I had two insights.  The first one was: here is the cover for my novel And Still the Earth, one of my most successful books, which shows Brazil without trees, without water, heated and increasingly getting warmer, São Paulo paralyzed by massive traffic jams, violence reigning.  One day I will ask for permission to use this work, Lama Lamina (2009), in the next editions. It is a symbol of present times.  

 

It was one of the (many) things that impressed me when I went to Inhotim.  Our time is reflected there. And when I looked up and saw the machine, I saw myself, I saw the dense vegetation that surrounds each pavilion and I saw everything reflected a thousand times by the geodesic dome.  I remembered an interesting period in my life, when I was the editor for the Planeta magazine. Back then, the publication broke boundaries by talking about the future, extraterrestrial worlds, parallel universes, the power of thought, primitive civilizations that were more developed than current ones, unusual scientific findings.  Planeta was the first non-specialized magazine to mention Buckminster Fuller’s Geodesic Dome, intended to “protect” houses or cities.  Today, we might need geodesic domes to protect ourselves from the polluted atmosphere, which we have deconstructed.

 

I thought: Is this art? What is art? My answer to that is deeply personal.  Everything which is beautiful (or terrible), which impresses me, makes me think, changes me.  Is Munch’s The Scream by any chance beautiful, soft? No. And yet, we are enchanted by it because that is us screaming; we understand the reason for it, the affliction present.  Thus, with a completely open mind, I strolled around Inhotim.  Actually, the very first question I asked was the reason for this undefinable name. In the old days, when this land was still a farm, there was an American man called Timothy here.  A hard name for farm workers to pronounce, they shortened it to Tim, and added our very Brazilian “Nhô” (sir).  Nhô Tim. From that to Inhotim was a short leap.

 

I went all over the world as a journalist and writer.  I have never been to any place like this. I have never read about anything similar to this place.  I have to admit that, from a distance, it is hard to fully grasp what Inhotim is.  It is pioneering, audacious, utopic.  Is it a museum? It is and it is not. Is it a gallery? It is and it is not. So, what is it then:  a park for the contemporary arts.  What about those who do not like contemporary art? Visit it. It might reaffirm your opinion, it might change it.  But there is not the slightest chance you will be immune to it. I almost wrote unpunished instead. You will question yourself, surrender to a lot, repel.  There is a trick (I wonder if it is subliminal).  The moment you leave one of the many spaces, you make peace with the world, with life, with everything, involved by the vegetation of one of the most beautiful parks known to us. If all the feelings (shock, joy, disgust, whatever it might be) a certain work of art awakens in you are kept, be happy, you have been changed, metamorphosed.  And you will take Inhotim with you forever.  

 

Get organized when you arrive there. Talk to the monitors (I don’t even know if this is how they call them there), get the brochures.  What do I want to see? Helio Oiticica, Chris Burden, Adriana Varejão, Miguel Rio Branco (I insist, don’t miss out on Miguel), Cildo Meireles (ask yourself: what does he want with this red?), Tunga, and so on, for there are many creators.

 

I advise you to walk, the air is fresh, there is sunlight and shaded areas, time is paralyzed.  As you get tired, look for one of the tree-trunk benches made from Pequi Vinagreiro, sit down, let the vibes brought by a century-old tree involve you.   In the air, multicolored butterflies.  And the lakes, water mirrors, all blue, where the park reflects itself, for it is Narcissus.  Final word of advice, one day there is good. But why not take two days to see everything, revisit some things, isolate yourself from this senseless world?  Just like Swift imagined Lilliput, James Hilton idealized Shangri-La, J.M Brarie founded Neverland (Peter Pan) and L. Frank Baum found Oz, Monteiro Lobato built the Sítio do Pica Pau Amarelo, Bernardo Paz created Inhotim, our exacerbated imagination. 

Reading time 3 min

Contrasts of time

Equipe de mediadores

How long does an invitation, a proposal, last?  During the month of May, the art guided tours at Inhotim address still life and its relationship with time.  The acknowledgment of time as a necessary condition for the existence of life has motivated several artists to risk the possibility of putting a stop to it.  They tend to capture the instant, or even make time go by as if it were in slow motion, in which case it is possible to observe details of the transformation of something new based on what had existed, but no longer does.  

 

One of the videos in the Natureza-Morta exhibit, at Galeria Fonte, is 10:51 (2009), by Argentinean artist Jorge Macchi.   In this work, a clock projected onto the line between the wall and the ceiling causes us to observe how the experience with space conditions and is conditioned by our relationship with the passage of time.  Have you stopped to think about how you get organized and is controlled by a clock hanging on your wall at home, on the street, at work or even attached to your wrist?

 

Another piece of work that establishes a deep dialog with the idea of time (de)composing is Ahora juguemos a desaparecer II (2002), by Cuban artist Carlos Garaicoa. In this work, the video-installation shows an ongoing experiment, in which famous pieces of architecture are set on fire, trigging a number of possible discussions that range from the emergence of new social orders to the suffering of ancient cultures.  Often the social condition of different times and cultures builds unique perceptions of time, which happens through the observation of nature or is materialized in artifacts, from the sun clock to the work of art, for instance.

Detalhe da obra "Ahora juguemos a desaparecer II" (2002), do artista Carlos Garaicoa. Foto: Daniela Paoliello
Detail of the work “Ahora juguemos a desaparecer II” (2002), by Carlos Garaicoa. Photo: Daniela Paoliello

What does being part of time, belonging to time, mean?

 

Written by Alison Loureiro, art-educator at Inhotim