Chapter 6.
Poetry To And/Or Realize
Within the panorama of renovation and questioning of the
foundations of artistic activity that emerged at the end of the
1960s one should separate out this tendency of the Argentine
artist Edgardo Antonio Viga, called "poetry to and/or realize."
Vigo, outstanding recorder and an artist fully involved in
avant-garde activity, was preoccupied beyond measure with the
partipatory aspect of modern art. Commercial art imposes the
rules of contemplative consumption that reify, in spectators, the
attitudes of passivity and submissiveness so necessary to the
eternalization of the system. Thus, works are constrained to
satisfy the ideological imperatives of the regime to the effects of
pergueñar an ideal world, one without
contradictions, immutable, that hides social wounds beneath an
"veil of static signs." As the Mexican critic Adolfo Sánchez
Vázquez puts it, ". . . art thus commercialized comes to
consecrate the conception of art as production of unique objects,
like creative activity itself of exceptional individuals, but,
definitely, they only come to the spectator by passing necessarily
through the market in order to excite in it the passive,
contemplative characteristic of traditional art." (De la
crítica de arte a la crítica del arte)
Against this art that alienates individuals and separates them
from their kind-- an instrument of subjection that reproduces unjust
social relations--some, the few, who "generously donate their
work to humanity" and others, the many, who should "enjoy it
thankfully," is joined the work of Vigo that tries to rise above
the contradiction operating in its creation and consumption. In
his essay "From process/poetry to Poetry to and/or realize" (La
Plata, Argentina: Diagonal Cero, 1970), he analyzes
the great changes that are occurring in the consumption of the
work of art. First "conditioned participation:"
-
. . . In its beginning, participation was conditioned by a
ruler (the artist) who countered the traditional line of
contemplative stasis, looked for and found a reactivation of
the bases of the art work that were no longer presented as
an "untouchable object, full of admirable mysteries and
outside of the contact of our senses." We are then in the
stage of conditioned participation, full of
proposals but with "uncompleted intentionalities." The
consequences of these limitations were seen rapidly and, in
an accelerated form, the "artist" tried to concretize--via
technology--objects that for their formal and technical
characteristics would permit an expansion of the domain of
participation.
After analyzing diverse experiences around the phenomenon
of "reading" and "participation," he goes into the contribution
that, in its concept, developed "Process/poem:"
-
. . . one of the most activist and abrasive movements of
poetry, where we meet up with a taking of conscience
before this phenomenon, unleashing poetic images
mediated by codes (words, visual images, objects)
that permit the addition of other heterogeneous elements or
the removal of some of the same by an active
participant who passes from recreator (interpretation
of the thing) to creator (modifier of the image). A poetic
object of Wlademir Dias-Pino, Hugo Mund, Jr., Neide and
Alvaro de Sá basically counts on a series of elements
whose final disposition, with no previous scheme (generally
the elements come wrapped in a bag, jumbled up without
respect to any constructive composition whatsoever--sense
of freedom--respecting no established chronological or
compositional order--closed order--) should be "composed"
by the public who are incited to remove or add elements
not included--but yes computable in the final result--by the
poet.
The next formal step, "Poetry to arm," is defined as work
in which the "observer-participant" must realize the work but
following the "concept--somewhat tyrannical centerr
of the thing." When "poetry to arm" is mentioned. . . "we are
limiting the conduct of the participant. We should not forget that
he is conditioned in a certain way, from which he cannot escape.
There exists the construction of a poetic-object or of a
brand-new poem determined by a programmer
of process or of the poem to arm." Finally, as
fruit of all these successive advances, "Poetry To And/Or
Realize:"
-
Valid and accessible procedure that is based on the solution
of an active participation to arrive at the MOST
PROFOUND ACTIVATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL: the
REALIZATION FOR HIM OF THE POEM. The support
of the given elements (process/poem), the necessity of a
prior stage (poem to arm) gives way before the project of
an idea that creates the abrasive so that each one in turn on
receiving it constructs a poem that will arrive at
converting itself into "his" poem. This property
acquired by the free development then of the reception of
the abrasive-idea, puts us before a
"creator" and not a "consumer ". . . The
possibility of art is not already only in the participation
of the observer but in his constructive-
ACTIVATION, an ART TO REALIZE. And from this a
total art: "In it we arrive at the conquest in which the
CONSUMER passes over into the category of CREATOR."
Vigo arrived at this conclusion from the previous stage
(around 1968) of the "Signs," with which it was proposed,
according to his own words:
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. . . not to construct more alienating images but TO
SIGNAL those which, not having aesthetic intentionality as
a goal, make it possible. An abrasion so that the
"depersonalized" individual who constructed it becomes
"personalized" by this construction being signaled. A turn
to daily life as activation of society towards the aesthetic
process. It is proclaimed: street as refuge of the object as
sign presents to humanity's regular aesthetic structures the
possibility of being present in our daily transit and not
being protected. . . The collectivity of their life, the
demographic is a factor that art must not leave out of the
reckoning. They are signs that mark an epoch. However,
these should not "REPRESENT" but rather "PRESENT" . . .
In consequence, people must arrive at mental communication
through the weighty baggage of the possessive concept of
the thing to be an active participant-observer of a daily and
collective signaled element.
("MANOJO DE SEMAFOROS," proposal to "observe" a street
light at a crossing of five streets in La Plata, Argentina, October
19, 1968, with the goal of discovering the aesthetic possibilities
of this urban object buried by habit and its apparent lack of
meaning.)
These "public poems" as Néstor García Canclini
calls them return to artists the "real" space of life; that is to say,
they take art out of its "security zone," the galleries and
museums, and return it to its primary meaning, making it burst
with significations in the space of social life. Thus, then from
this long development, Vigo sets forth his "Projects to Realize,"
of which we shall see two examples: "A VISUAL STROLL TO
RUBEN DARIO PLAZA" was realized in Buenos Aires in 1970.
"A large card indicating a MINIMUM CODE and an element
(that can be substituted) invites us to realize an act that we can
simply modify for another. Based on his reading, the realization
of our OWN ACT. Let us explain: to take a chalk, to mark a
cross (or whatever other geometric center or not), within this
center, or around it, to make a turn of 360 degrees (that can be
lesser or greater), to sum up a variable respecting the horizon that
we can vary on placing ourselves on tiptoe or squatting (why not
descend and support our body literally on the floor?), with
whatever of these possibilities and its exercising you have
realized A VISUAL STROLL TO RUBEN DARIO PLAZA."
("LA CALLE: scene of current art," E. A. Vigo, OVUM
10, #6(March, 1971), Montevideo, Uruguay).
"DEMAGOGIC POEM" was realized in the framework of
the Exhibition of Avant-garde Publications, Hall of the University
of the Republic, Montevideo, September 30, 1970:
"MATERIALS: a ballot box, or similar, with circular opening (3
cm. in diameter) and a circular with the following instructions:
'Locate, maintaining its anonymity, a phrase, phoneme, symbol,
or visual sign (etc.) which is indispensable for you in a poem,
in the white space of the present. Make a tube and introduce it
into BALLOT BOX number 1. You will receive the certification
of your vote in the form of a large card that must be hanged on
the lapel. Thanks.' Beneath this text there will be a rectangle
about 15 x 10 cm. where the 'creator' will leave his work. Then
the participant must INTRODUCE HIS VOTE INTO THE
BALLOT BOX, RECEIVING A VOUCHER OF HIS ACT."
("The New Poetry III," Clemente Padin, OVUM 10, #6
(March, 1971)
The multifaceted contribution of Vigo to the Latin
American avant-garde has still not been completely valorized.
Although one may not be in agreement with his particular claims,
above all his interpretation of Process/poem, there is no doubt
that his ideas and realizations have been a dynamizer of multiple
tendencies in contemporary art, from the visual poetry he
cultivated with special delicacy, to the "signalings" with which
he tried to recuperate the "urban-aesthetic," to the "project to
realize" that turned us into creators, to mail art of which he was
one of the most important practitioners, etc. without failing to
credit the promotion of his ideas through his publications
Diagnal Cero or Hexágono 70 or the
organization of one of the strongest exhibitions realized in Latin
America: "INTERNATIONAL EXPO OF PROPOSITIONS TO
REALIZE," in the Center of Art and Communication of Buenos
Aires in June, 1971. The most representative artists were invited
to this exhibition, complemented with the realization of round
tables on themes of Latin American avant-garde art which were
attended, among others, by Wlademir Dias-Pino and Joao Felicio
dos Santos from Brazil, Guillermo Deisler from Chile, Elena
Pelli, Luis Pazos, and Vigo from Argentina, and Daniel Accame
and Clemente Padin from Uruguay.
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Art and People.
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Copyright © 1997 by Clemente Padin.
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