TAGS

artist, mabe-bethonico, museumuseu, ibirapuera-cultural-union, plan-of-readings, arquivo-historico-wanda-svevo.

BIOGRAPHY

Mabe Bethônico was born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 1966. Lives in Belo Horizonte 2007 Encuentro Internacional de Medellín 07, Colômbia 2006 27th Bienal de São Paulo 2005 Subversiones Diarias, Fundación Costantini / Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires – MALBA 2003 O Colecionador, Centro Universitário MariAntonia; e Biblioteca Monteiro Lobato, São Paulo 2002 Mabe Bethônico e o Colecionador, Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte Selected Bibliography CAMPOS, Elisa; MOURA, Rodrigo & PEDROSA, Adriano, “On Mabe Bethônico e o Colecionador” IN: Coleções/ Apropriações (cat.), Porto Alegre, Santander Cultural, 2002; LIND, Maria, “Telling Histories” IN: Kunstverein München Newsletters, Fall 2003 – Spring 2004; MOURA, Rodrigo, "Mabe Bethônico", Flash Art International, Milan, November-December, 2003.

INTERVIEW

Inés Katzenstein: Beyond its final format, which at this point of the process is not yet defined, your project for the 28th Bienal de São Paulo consists of researching preexisting archives of several institutions related to (or located in) Ibirapuera Park. But it is important to say that beyond this specific project, archives – their format, and their philosophy – have been at the center of your work. For example, in The Collector (since 1998) you have created the concept of an archive of newspaper images, you have selected the materials, and worked as an archivist, creating fictional categories to classify the images as historical documents. What is compelling for you about archives? Are you attracted by the aura of historical documents? Are you interested in creating a pseudoscientific artistic language?

Mabe Bethônico: I am interested in the fictional potential of documents, displacing their importance, recontextualizing them. The projects are narratives, built through appropriated or constructed images and texts. I am interested in looking for gaps, lacks, sometimes through what may be hidden, forgotten, focusing on commenting on the institution, its relationship with the public for instance, as was the case for the 27th Bienal de São Paulo.

Inés Katzenstein: While producing this kind of work, do you think artistic perspective is capable of tracing an alternative history not detected or speculated by scientific approaches?

Mabe Bethônico: Yes, even if based in the invention of characters, facts, or materials. The works are often speculations from history, revealing through storytelling an imbedded or fictional reality. The pieces explore tensions, slipped stories, searching to dialogue with the institution itself. As the work points to an alternative memory of the institution, it proposes a discussion. Thus, one of the challenges is negotiating the actions and content of the projects, while often dealing with the institutions’ expectations about truth. In this sense, it is not about tracing an alternative history, but commenting on given symptoms.

Inés Katzenstein: Could you explain how the Ibirapuera project began?

Mabe Bethônico: I came across a three-page document in the files of the 6th Bienal, of 1961. This undated document refers to the creation / foundation of the União Cultural Ibirapuera [Ibirapuera Cultural Union].

Inés Katzenstein: Regarding this document, it is interesting to think about the grandiloquence, even the megalomaniac tone of the text as a historical, specifically dated project – a tone that today one would think impossible to find / perform. How do you relate to this?

Mabe Bethônico: The document is assumed here as a fragment about a fictional institution. It presents itself as an autonomous document, giving relevance to organizing the park’s cultural venues into one União, but real improvements, advantages, or outcomes are not yet clear, not making clear its aims as economical or political moves, for example. There is a formal tone to it, although it is a proposition announcing the importance of establishing something, without detailing proceedings or developments, which gives it a narrative potential. In reading it, the idea of control comes to mind, but what is appealing is to speculate a possible encounter of such different fields of thinking.

Inés Katzenstein: Is it part of the project to imagine what a hypothetical encounter between those institutions could have generated? And if so, how do you plan to “inscribe” or “represent” it?

Mabe Bethônico: The hypothetical encounter proposed in the document is used as a geographic guide, which means that the project’s limit is the park, framed by the institutions named in the document. That information is used as a starting point; it lays out a moment when perhaps there was an intended collectivity within the park. The “inscription” of the findings will only take form after the visits to the archives of those institutions, but maps, wall texts, photographs, even archival materials may be used and / or altered.


Inés Katzenstein is a critic and curator of contemporary art. She is presently the director of the Art Department of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires.

PROJECTS - 28TH SAO PAULO BIENAL

Projects with updated content