BIOGRAPHY
João Modé was born in Resende, Brazil, 1961. Lives in Rio de Janeiro
2007 A cabeça, A Gentil Carioca, Rio de Janeiro;
Musica para los Animales y las Cosas, Casa Tres Patios, Medellín, Colombia;
Contraditório - Panorama da Arte Brasileira, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo – MAM-SP;
Futuro do Presente, Itaú Cultural, São Paulo
2006 Stopover, Kunsthalle Fribourg, Switzerland
2003 Rede, Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro – MAMRIO
Selected Bibliography BRUM, José Thomaz, Rede, Rio de Janeiro, Sesc-RJ, 2003; ZACCAGNINI, Carla, “João Modé/Espacio Agora”,
ArtNexus, nº 47, Feburary, 2003; BASBAUM, Ricardo, “De Fuera Hacia Adentro/ De Dentro Hacia Afuera”,
Revista Lapiz, nº 134/ 135, July-September, 1997.
INTERVIEW
Regina Melim: Could you tell us a little about the project you’re working on for the 28th Bienal de São Paulo?
João Modé: Normally it’s hard to talk about what I’m going to do so far in advance. My projects grow out of a familiarization with the place and the experiment proposed. The Bienal has been quite a new experience for me since everything has to be decided way in advance. My work is very processual and often I make decisions as I go, while I’m working, and in some cases I keep working even after the opening of the event. My work has an inner pace.
What I can say for now is that we are working with five small projects that will be grouped in an area on the third floor. They are very small, subtle, discreet interventions, almost invisible, considering the dimensions of the building. Some make reference to the transitory nature of things, the passage of time, others, the relationship of the work to the space.
Regina Melim: When I started your interview, I actually thought about that kind of situation, of works that “decide” themselves during the exhibition. There is always a performative coefficient in the constructive order of your works, whose previous time presents only indications, schematics laid out by a matrix that generates unpredictable procedures. You speak of very small interventions, so subtle and discreet that they are almost invisible on the scale of the Bienal Building. Within this kind of proposition, how do you see the relationship of the audience with your work?
João Modé: In a way, my proposal flies in the face of what one would expect of a work for a large exhibition. It is interesting that you should bring up the issue of the audience. I don’t think of it pragmatically. Each work takes place within an internal dynamic that somehow determines this relationship. Some of my projects are, by nature, for a large audience –
Rede [Net] and
Constelações [Constellations] depend on the participation of the audience in order to exist; others are more intimist, and require a certain amount of time, approximation, and attention in order to be understood. The work proposes is a “temporal” experience. Someone might go to the Bienal wanting to see everything very quickly and not even notice it. It doesn’t matter. In one of the projects a flower wilts in front of an object. Each person will see the flower in a different stage of wilting. Everything happens at a slow pace. The observer has to enter the rhythm of the work. It is precisely about the impossibility of apprehending time and, on the other hand, the accelerated time we are always trying to get a grip on amidst an avalanche of information.
Regina Melim: You say that in a way, your proposal flies in the face of what one would expect of a work for a large exhibition. But isn’t the “invisibility” of the things around us – as a result of accelerated time and the avalanche of information – proposed in your work operating in the vicinity of this perspective of conceiving the Bienal itself in another format? That is, involving other ways of relating to the works, information, and exhibition spaces?
João Modé: I think so. My work’s field of operation is quite vast. I think it kind of seeks other forms of contact. There is a play of internal articulations in the relationship between works, between my works and the spaces they inhabit (and I’m not just talking about this particular group of works), which is directly connected to a complex set of personal, institutional, and political relationships. I think this is a very opportune discussion proposed by the curators. This reflexive gaze that not only “looks back” but also all around.
Regina Melim is a professor and researcher at the Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina – Florianópolis. She lives in Florianópolis.
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