Tactile Dematerialization, Sensory Politics: Hélio Oiticica's Parangolés

Author(s): Anna Dezeuze

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Art Journal, Vol. 63, No. 2 (Summer, 2004), pp. 58-71
Published by: College Art Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4134521 .
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H61ioOiticica. ParangolBP16
Cape 12, Da adversidadevive-
mos, 1967, worn by Nildo of
Mangueira. Courtesy of
Projeto Helio Oiticica, Rio de
Janeiro. Photograph: Claudio
Oiticica.
Anna Dezeuze
Tactile
Dematerialization,
Sensory Politics:
H lio Oiticica's
Parangols
I. HelioOiticica,"Noteson the Parangol"'
(1965),in H'lioOiticica,exh. cat. (Riode Janeiro:
Centrode Arte H61lio Oiticica,1997),93.
2. Neal Benezra,"TheMisadventures of Beauty,"
in Regarding Beauty:A Viewof the LateTwentieth
Century, exh. cat. (Washington: Hirschhorn
MuseumandSculptureGarden,Smithsonian
Institution,1999), 17.
3. See, for example,CatherineDavid,"Helio
Oiticica:BrazilExperiment," in TheExperimental
Exercise of Freedom, exh. cat. (LosAngeles:
Museumof Contemporary Art, 1999), 169-201.
4. S6niaSaltzstein,"HelioOiticica:Autonomy
andthe Limitsof Subjectivity," ThirdText28/29
(Autumn/Winter1994):120.
5. See for example,TonyGodfrey,Conceptual Art
(London:Phaidon,1998);GlobalConceptualism:
Pointsof Origin,1950-1980, exh. cat. (New
York:Queens Museumof Art, 1999);andPeter
Osborne,ed., Conceptual Art(London:Phaidon,
2002).
6. H61ioOiticica,"PositionandProgram" (1966)
and"GeneralSchemefor the New Objectivity"
(1967),in ConceptualArt:A Critical
Anthology,ed.
AlexanderAlberroandBlakeStimson(Cambridge,
Mass.,andLondon:MITPress,1999),6, 42.
7. See MariCarmenRamirez,"Tactics for Thriving
on Adversity:Conceptualism in LatinAmerica,
1960-1980,"in GlobalConceptualism, 53-7 1;
AlexanderAlberro,"AMediaArt:Conceptualism
in LatinAmericainthe 1960s,"in Rewriting
ConceptualArt,ed. MichaelNewmanandJonBird
(London:ReaktionBooks,2000), 140-51;and
PeterOsborne,"Survey," in Conceptual Art,38-39.
Like the word parangole, a slang term from Rio de Janeiro that refers to a range of
events or states including idleness, a sudden agitation, an unexpected situation,
or a dance party, the more than thirty objects so titled by Brazilian artist Helio
Oiticica have an indeterminate status. Produced mainly between 1964 and 1968,
these flags, tents, and capes made out of jute and plastic bags, painted or printed
fabrics, and sometimes including painted or stenciled texts, are meant to be
used by the viewer. A Parangole cape on a hanger is not a Parangole:
its complex textures can only be revealed through the gestures
and movements of the person who wears it. As the artist explained
in a 1965 text, the spectator of these works becomes a participant
'
or "participator" (participador).
Hitherto little-known outside Brazil, Oiticica's work rose
to international prominence when it was featured in the 1997
Documenta X, joining a selection of works which, as one critic
explained, "featured a critical political sensibility at the expense
of aesthetics."'2Indeed, the director of Documenta, Catherine
David, who also cocurated the first touring retrospective of
Oiticica's work in 1992, has stressed the transgressive aims of his
practice in texts focusing on the artist's conceptual, rather than
formal, innovations.3 In contrast, Brazilian critic S6nia Salzstein
warned in i994 against readings privileging the social and political dimension of
Oiticica's work because they tend to "surreptitiously overwhelm his work with a
sociological argument," making one "lose sight of its aesthetic thought."4
Oiticica's texts have played an important role in reinforcing the perception
of his works as "conceptual" practices, as promoted by Documenta X as well
as in recent surveys, exhibitions, and anthologies.5 In the 2002 Conceptual Art:An
for
Anthology, example, Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson included texts in
which Oiticica defined the Parangole and discussed his
as "anti-art parexcellence"
aspirations "to create new experimental conditions where the artist takes on the
role of 'proposer,' 'impressario,' or even 'educator.'"'6In general, his works and
writings have become points of reference in discussions of the specificity of
LatinAmerican Conceptual art, which is described as more political in intent
than its European and North American counterparts.7
The main political aspect of the Parangolesseems to lie in their reference to
the favelas,the slums or shantytowns of Rio de Janeiro. Encouraged by Oiticica
himself, critics have emphasized the crucial role played by the artist's involve-
ment, from 1964, in the samba school of the Mangueira favela.Learning to dance
the samba, participating in the carnaval,and making friends in Mangueira, the
young man from a middle-class family discovered a whole new dimension of
experience that effected a radical turn in his work. Indeed, many of the Parangoles
were made for and sometimes in collaboration with his Mangueira friends: some
texts included in the Parangolecapes, for example, are known to have been sug-
gested by specific individuals. Moreover, Oiticica chose to display the Parangolks
publicly for the first time by inviting dancers from Mangueira to wear them at
the opening of the 1965 exhibition Opinfdo 65 at the Museum of Modern Art in
Rio. The irruption of the poor into the bourgeois atmosphere of the museum
caused such a scandal that the director had them evicted. As censorship worsened
in Brazil during the later i96os, Oiticica's association with Mangueira would
59 art journal
diI"

. As P'

%br~t, :*

i
Helio Oiticica. ParangoldPI I
Cape 7, Sexo e violIncia ...,
1966. Photographs:
Alessandra Santarelli.
8. Mario Pedrosa, "Arte ambiental, arte p6s-
moderna, H61ioOiticica," Correiodo Monhd,June
26, 1966, repr. in MdrioPedrosa,TextosEscolhidos
ill: Acad6micose Modernos,ed. Otilia Arantes (Sdo
Paulo: Editora da Universidade de Sdo Paulo,
1998), 355-60.
9. Ibid., 356, 355, and 356.
increasinglybe linked to a politicalresistanceto the dictatorshipthathad taken
over the countryin 1964.
Oiticica'sdiscoveryof Mangueirawas also singled out at the time in
BraziliancriticMarioPedrosa's1966article,"Arteambiental,artep6s-moderna,
Helio Oiticica."8In this importanttheorization,Pedrosadescribedthe new
"post-modern"phasein twentieth-centuryart as a move awayfrom "theher-
metic individualsubjectivism"(o subjetivismo individual
hermetico)of modern art,
dealing exclusivelywith "purelyplasticvalues"(valores and
plasticos),
propriamente
towardthe increasingprominenceof social and politicalconcerns.Accordingto
Pedrosa,Oiticica's"post-modern"turn correspondedpreciselyto the moment
when the artistabandonedthe "ivorytower"(torre demarfim) and discovered
Mangueira,an "initiation"thatwould forevertransformhis conceptionof the
role of artand artists.9
While it seems impossibleto dissociatethe Parangoles from the context in
which they were firstproduced,the exactnatureof their politicaldimensionis
difficultto describe.Moreover,Oiticica'sclaim,in his writings, thatthe Parangoles
can be worn by any viewer seems to be contradictednot only by his dedications
of some of these worksto specificindividualsbut also by the photographs,taken
in his lifetime,in which the capesareusuallyworn by his Mangueirafriends.
In this article,I will seek to disentanglethe Parangoles
from the complex web that
links the objectswith Oiticica'stexts, their originalcontext and reception,and
the photographsthathavebeen repeatedlyexhibitedand published.Todo so,
I will use as a startingpoint an experimentI conductedwith photographer
AlessandraSantarelliin Londonin December2002 and March2003. Without
showing her existing photographsof the Parangoles, I askedSantarellito takepho-
tographsof myselfwearingOiticica's1966Parangole PII Cape7. Drawingon my
of the
personalexperience wearing Parangole as well as the photographsthatwere
producedduring the two sessions-one in a studio, the other outdoorsin a
park-I will explorethe natureof the relationbetween the artist'sformalexperi-
mentationand his politicalobjectives.Insteadof rehearsingthe ratherreductive
opposition noted earlierbetween David's"anti-aesthetic" stanceand Salzstein's
praisefor his "aestheticthought,"I hope to demonstratenot only thatOiticica's
Parangolessucceedin uniting both of these apparentlyconflictingaspects,but that
the very articulation of this polarity constitutes their strength and their signifi-
cance within the history of I960s art.
Intimate Spectatorship
Any attemptto documentthe experienceof wearinga Parangolk stumbleson the
problemthata single photographis insufficientto capturethe temporalprocess
of discoverywhich it requires.Liftingthe cape,turningmy head, moving my
body,I can relish the contrastingbright colors, touch the rough green fabricand
the soft cotton cloth, and compareits two sides.I can pull out the long piece of
gauze from a pocketin the cape and readthe words on it, hold it up in front of
my face like a semitransparent mask,or use it as a kind of shroudto coverparts
of my body.
The temporaldimensionof the viewing experiencefiguredamong Oiticica's
earliestartisticconcernsand was intrinsicallylinked to his explorationof the
60 SUMMER 2004
.is
. . . . ..... .

0000

......

10.HelioOiticica,"October5, 1960,"in H6lio
Oiticica,33.
I I. HelioOiticica,"ATransigioda cor do quadro
parao espa?oe o sentidode constructividade"
(I962), inAspiroao grandelabirinto: textosde H6lio
Oiticica(1954-1969), ed. LucianoFigueiredo,
LygiaPape,andWalySalomdo(Riode Janeiro:
Rocco, 1986),53.
12.The Neoconcretemanifesto,writtenby
FerreiraGullar,cosignedby artistsAmilcarde
Castro,LygiaClark,LygiaPape,ReynaldoJardim,
TheonSpanudis,andFranzWeissmann,andpub-
lishedinthe Sundaysupplementof theJornaldo
Brasil,March22, 1959,hasbeen reproducedand
translatedinto Englishinvariousanthologies.For
the Portugueseoriginal,see Arteconstrutiva no
Leirner,ed. AracyAmaral
Brasil:Cole?oAdolpho
(SdoPaulo:DoreaBooksandArt, 1998),270-75.
13.Foraccountsof the relationbetweenMinimal-
ismandphenomenology, see RosalindKrauss,
PassagesinModernSculpture (Cambridge, Mass.,
andLondon:MITPress,1977)andAlex Potts,
TheSculptural Imagination: Modernist,
Figurative,
Minimalist (LondonandNew Haven:YaleUniver-
sityPress,2000). Fora comparisonbetween
Minimalism andNeoconcretism,see Paulo
Herkenhoff,"DivergentParallels: Towarda
ComparativeStudyof Neo-concretismand
Minimalism," in Geometric Abstraction:Latin
American Artfromthe Patricia Phelpsde Cisneros
Collection,exh. cat. (Cambridge, Mass.:Fogg
Art Museum,HarvardUniversityArt Museums,
2001): 104-31; andAnnaDezeuze,"The'Do-it-
yourselfArtwork':SpectatorParticipation and
the Dematerialisation of the Art Object,New
YorkandRiode Janeiro,1958-1967"(Ph.D.
thesis,Universityof London,CourtauldInstitute
of Art,2003), chap.4.
14.MauriceMerleau-Ponty, Ph6nom6nologie
de la perception(Paris:Gallimard, 1945), 154.
15.BrionyFer,"Judd's SpecificObjects,"in
OnAbstract Art(New HavenandLondon:Yale
UniversityPress,1997), 130-5I.
16.RobertMorris,"Noteson Sculpture,Part2"
(1966),inMinimal Art:A CriticalAnthology, ed.
GregoryBattcock(New York:E.P.Dutton,
1968),23 I. Fora detailedaccountof the differ-
ences betweenJuddandMorris,see JamesMeyer,
Minimalism: ArtandPolemics inthe Sixties(New
HavenandLondon:YaleUniversityPress,2001).
17.FredericoMorals,"Oiticica: a poesiaabriga-
da,"Didriode Noticias,October5, 1967 [H61lio
OiticicaArchives,Riode Janeiro,ProjetoH61lio
Oiticica].
18.FredericoMorais,"'Apurezandoexiste,'"
Didriode Noticias,October6, 1967[H6lioOiticica
Archives,Riode Janeiro,ProjetoH61ioOiticica].
19.Potts,4.
formal qualities of color. In i96o, he noted that "when ... color is no longer
subjected to the rectangle [of the canvas] or the forms represented on this rec-
tangle, it tends to become 'embodied' [se'corporificar']; it takes on a temporal
dimension, creates its own structure, and the work thus becomes the 'body of
color' [o corpodacor]."'~ In fact, the trajectory of Oiticica's works, from his
1959-60 hanging, brightly painted SpatialReliefsand Nucleito the later Parangoles,
can be read as an incessant search to convey this material, corporeal, and sensual
"body of color." Inviting viewers to move around or inside the work in order
to observe its structure and formal qualities, Oiticica sought to transform the
spectator into a "discoverer" (descobridor) of the work. " In order to achieve this,
Oiticica set up an intimate relation between the work and the viewer. Suspended
works are hung low enough for one to peer into the nooks of their folded planes
(as in the SpatialReliefs)or the numerous corners of their mazelike structures (in
the Nuclei),while in his B6lidesCaixas(BoxBolides,or BoxFireballs),started in 1963,
one is invited to open the hinged doors or drawers of painted boxes of varying
sizes to discover related hues of yellow, red, pink, and orange, and alternating
smooth and granular surfaces, as well as pigment and fabrics.
In the late i9gos Oiticica belonged to the Neoconcrete group in Rio de
Janeiro, whose 1959 manifesto referred to Maurice Merleau-Ponty's writings
as an alternative to the kind of Pavlovian, mechanicist model of perception
explored by the Concrete artists in Sdo Paulo.'2 Desiring to distinguish them-
selves from these Concrete artists, the Neoconcretists sought to emphasize the
temporal, bodily encounter of the viewer with the artwork. Although created
after the official end of the movement, Oiticica's BoxBolidesare direct extensions
of his painted Neoconcrete objects and are exemplary of Neoconcretism as a
whole. In their use of simple geometric volumes and their focus on the relation
between viewer and work, Neoconcrete works can be compared to works by
certain American Minimalists. Indeed, one of the most striking points of com-
parison between Neoconcretism and Minimalism is both movements' affinity
with phenomenology. 13 Both Oiticica's BoxBolidesand Donald Judd's boxlike
works, for example, dramatize the "dialogue between subject and object" that
lies at the heart of the phenomenological experience, according to Merleau-
Ponty.'4By setting up relations between inside and outside, between volume and
void, and between the object and the space in which it has been directly placed,
the box format in these works highlights some of the characteristics of percep-
tion described in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology its mobilization of
of Perception:
several senses rather than a disembodied gaze, its relation to movement, and its
privileging of the "primordial experience" of encountering objects in the world
directly, with a sense of wonder that precedes scientific distinctions among time,
space, form, structure, and color.
Within this similar exploration of phenomenological perception, however,
Oiticica's BoxBolidesand Donald Judd's works set up very different relations
between the work and the viewer: Oiticica's 1964 BoxBolide9 invites us to play
with the sliding panels and open the drawer filled with pigment, while we tend
to peer into and gaze through Judd's I965 steel and Plexiglas box. Indeed, if the
number of fingerprints found on Judd's works in museums across the world tes-
tify to the viewers' irrepressible desire to touch them, this invitation is frustrated
by the industrial dimension of both materials and production: their perfect
62 SUMMER 2004

H1lio Oiticica with his
Box Bolide 9, 1964. Painted
wood, painted glass, and
pigment. 19'%6x 13'/ x
19/8 in. (50 x 34 x 50.5 cm).
Courtesy of Projeto Helio
Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro.
Photograph: Claudio
Oiticica.
Donald Judd. Untitled, 1965.
Steel and Plexiglas.
26 x 34 x 48 in. (66 x 86.4 x
121.9 cm). Courtesy of
Paula Cooper Gallery,
NewYork. ? 2004 Judd
Foundation. Licensed by
VAGA, NewYork/DACS,
London.
sheen is in fact quite spoiled by a fingerprint. Thus, as Briony Fer has demon-
strated, Minimalist objects such as Judd's are articulated through a double bind
of anxiety and pleasure, unlike Neoconcrete works, which not only invite but
often require a tactile engagement in the process of their discovery.is
Although Judd's work was
very different from Robert Morris's
Minimalist objects, Morris's descrip-
tion of the relation between object
and spectator in Minimalist sculpture
in his 1966 "Notes on Sculpture" is
particularly relevant here. Morris
opposed what he called the "public"
mode of viewing set up by large
objects to the "intimate mode of
viewing" required by small objects,
which "is essentially closed, spaceless,
compressed, and exclusive."'6This
very "quality of intimacy" rejected by
Morris was, in fact, one of the defin-
ing features of Neoconcrete works.
According to the artist and critic
Frederico Morais, writing in 1967,
Oiticica's entire oeuvre could be seen
as a search for a "sheltered poetry"
(poesiaabrigada).17Morais associated
this kind of poetry with what the
French philosopher Gaston Bachelard
called "intimate spaces": spaces that
we possess, protect, and love. The
Bolides,wrote Morais, have the poetry
of small things which are "aconchegantes"
-a Portuguese word that evokes
physical proximity, shelter, warmth,
and coziness.'8
According to Alex Potts, the
Minimalist object's "inert thingness,
its impinging on the viewer's space"
was still capable, in the i96os, of
"getting in the way of normative
patterns of visual consumption."'9
Neoconcrete works such as Oiticica's
force viewers to physically encounter
their "thingness" not by "impinging"
on the spectators' space but by inviting them to handle nonanthropomorphic,
geometric objects, thereby encouraging an acute awareness of the spatio-
temporal experience of viewing. Thus Oiticica's and other Neoconcretists' appeal
to tactile participation was an effective means of exploring the bodily relation
between viewer and object suggested, yet warded off, by Minimalism; and this,
63 art journal

20. HalFoster,"TheCruxof Minimalism"
(1986),
in The Returnof the Real:TheAvant-Gardeat the
End of the Century(Cambridge, Mass., and
London:MITPress,1996),43.
21. Lucy Lippard,Six Years:The Dematerialization
of the Art Object, I966-1972 (London: Studio
Vista,1973).
22. FerreiraGullar,Culturaposta em questeo;
Vanguardae subdesenvolvimento:ensaios sobre arte
(Riode Janeiro:Jos6OlympoEditora,2002), 154.
23. Oiticica,"GeneralSchemefor the New
Objectivity,"40, 42.
I would argue, allowed their participatory works to resist somewhat better being
assimilated as yet other kinds of art objects to be passively consumed.
One of the problems that Neoconcretism did share with Minimalism, how-
ever, was phenomenology's appeal to a "generic" spectator, described by Hal
Foster "as somehow before or outside history, language, sexuality, and power."20
Just as subsequent art practices in the United States were described by Foster as
having expanded upon and critiqued Minimalism's phenomenological approach,
so Oiticica's works in the i96os can be read both as extensions of the Neoconcrete
project and attempts to overcome its shortcomings. Taking as a starting point the
Neoconcrete exploration of a new type of intimate spectatorship allowed Oiticica
to develop two crucial aspects of the Parangole to which I shall now turn: an explo-
ration of identity as a self-reflexive, performative process, on the one hand, and,
on the other hand, the so-called dematerialization of the art object described by
Lucy Lippardas one of the key features of Conceptual art.2'
Identity as Performance
The failures of Neoconcretism were formulated most vocally by none other than
the spokesman of the group itself, the poet and critic FerreiraGullar.In a radical
change of position that precipitated the break-up of the group in 1962, Gullar
rejected Neoconcretism when he aligned himself with the Communist Centros
populares decultura(Popular Centers for Culture, or CPCs), in particular that of the
National Student Union, which conceived all art as "bourgeois" and elitist and
set out to promote Brazilian popular culture instead. In his book A Cultura posta
emquestdo (QuestioningCulture),written in 1963 and first published in 1965, Gullar
developed a ruthless self-analysis of his own Neoconcrete poetry and an impas-
sioned critique of all artworks that valued "formal and stylistic factors over issues
of content" dosfatores sobreos decontefido).22
formaise estilisticos Gullar
(supervalorizag•o
called for artists to acknowledge that their apparent neutrality was in fact embed-
ded in the ideological position of an oppressive bourgeoisie that praised and
bought their works. Instead, artists should assume responsibility as citizens
and communicate with "the people" in order to deal with the real problems
plaguing Brazil. Deeply influenced by Gullar'sposition, Oiticica would increasing-
ly emphasize the ethical responsibility of the artist, starting in his writings about
the Parangolesand culminating with his 1967 manifesto on the "New Brazilian
Objectivity,"in which he stressed the importance of the artist'sengagement with
sociopolitical concerns, and explained that artists' "communications" should not
be directed to "an elite reduced to 'experts,'" but orchestrated "againstthis elite."23
Oiticica's highly politicized discourse should not, however, obscure the
artist's other, more formal, preoccupations reflected in the Parangoles. At the time
when Oiticica signaled his distance from Neoconcretism by shifting away from
man-made, painted objects to found materials and sprayed or predyed fabrics,
one of the recurrent motifs of his writings was his desire to differentiate his
works from the Duchampian readymade. His Parangoles, he pointed out, evoke
tents, capes, or banners withoutbeing direct appropriations of existing objects.
While the "poor" materials and the way they have been roughly stitched together
may evoke the precarious, rapidly built shelters of the Mangueira favela,Oiticica
explained that what appealed to him most in them was what he called their
64 SUMMER 2004

24. Oiticica,"Fundamental Basesfor the Defini-
tion of the Porangol6" (1964),inH6lioOiticica, 87.
25. Cf.CarlosBasualdo,"Quelquesannotations
suppl6mentaires surle Parangold,"
in L'Artou corps,
exh. cat. (Marseilles:
Mus6ed'artcontemporain,
1996). '
26. Cf.CarlosZilio,"DaAntropofagia
Tropicalia," in 0 Nacionale o Popular,Eligia
ChiappiniMoraesLeiteet al. (SdoPaulo:Editores
Brasiliense,1982),38.
27. AlthoughOiticicamadeit clearthatthe
Parangolds couldbe worn by anyone,performing
for the cameracertainlyestablishedan implicit
comparisonwiththe existingimagesof Oiticica's
Mangueira friends.Ina differentsetting,andworn
by someoneforeignto Oiticica'scircleof friends,
the close relationbetweenthe Porangol6s and
Mangueira disappearsfromthe photograph's field
of signifieds.Thefullimplicationsof thisshiftand
the ambiguities of my personalpositionrequirea
close analysisthatexceedsthe scope of thisessay.
28. Oiticica,"Noteson the Parangol6,"
93.
29. HarryLaus,"Oiticica: Marginal da arte,"Jornal
do Brasil,July20, 1966[H6lioOiticicaArchives,
Riode Janeiro,ProjetoHelioOiticica].
30. HelioOiticica,untitledtext (1969),in H6lio
Oiticica,25.
Most importantfor him were the structuralrelations
"structuralorganicity."24
between the heterogeneouselements,in which the propertiesof each part
contributeto the sensoryexperienceof the work as a whole.Thus, as Carlos
Basualdohas demonstrated,Oiticicastartedfrom a formalconcern-how to
"embodycolor"in structuralforms thatwould be discoveredin ever-more-
complex participatoryexperiences-and found a logical solution to this problem
in the vocabulary of the local culture of the favelas.25
If the Parangoles
span the repertories of erudite and popular cultures, they do
not, however, iron out the tensions between the two.26 For just as the Mangueira
dancers provoked a disruption by leaving the context of the carnaval to enter that
of the museum in 1965, I, a white, European, middle-class art historian, can only
feel uneasy about the distance that separates me from the culture of the favela
when I put on a Parangole.27 If part of the experience of the Parangole lies in discov-
ering the object by one's self, its other dimension consists in revealing these
hidden elements to others through one's own movements. After all, the bright
colors and shiny fabrics are the same as those worn by samba dancers in the
spectacular Rio carnaval,and the short texts included in the Parangoles act like
speech bubbles transforming the wearer into an enunciator as well as a reader.
Oiticica described this double experience of the individual-at once private and
collective, intimate and spectacular-as the ciclo"vestir-assistir"(wearing-watching
cycle) of the Parangole,
which includes the experiences of wearing, watching, and
looking while being looked at.28
In 1966, the Brazilian critic Harry Laus described Oiticica as the "the
marginal man of art" because he lived at the margins of both the bourgeois
sphere that he had left behind and the favelaculture to which he would never
fully belong.29 Oiticica's personal situation led him to maintain an ambivalent,
marginal position in relation to both cultures, and the Parangoles seem to invite
to
participants experience this ambivalence by making them self-conscious of
their appearances and their relations to the objects being worn. My own self-
consciousness increased as I wore the Parangole outdoors and a woman walking in
the park came over and asked me what was stenciled in white capital letters on
my banner. "Sex and violence, this is what I like," I replied. Seeing the appalled
look on her face, I felt suddenly uncomfortably aware of the statement that I was
making to others, as if I were carrying a political banner in a demonstration.
That Oiticica meant this statement sincerely is supported by his anarchist
celebration of certain forms of violence. His 1966 BoxBolide18 Homage to Carade
Cavalois an emotional work that includes photographs of and a poem to Carade
Cavalo, a friend of Oiticica's and a criminal who was shot down by the police.
For the oppressed, Oiticica explained in a 1969 text, crime is often "a desperate
search for happiness," violence as a means for revolt may be justified, and figures
like Cara de Cavalo should be celebrated as heroes or martyrs.30 Yet the Parangole
is more than a political banner: it also functions as a kind of costume capable of
encouraging playacting.Although Oticica's friend Nildo coined the wording for
the 1967 Parangole
that reads "Estoupossuido"(I am possessed), for example, I would
argue that he is no more "authentic" or "sincere" a wearer of the Parangole than I
am. I could easily reassure the woman in the park that claiming I liked violence
was, in my case, ironic; but, in retrospect, I realize that I had in fact enjoyed
the opportunity of mischievously shocking a potential audience: the anxiety of
65 art journal
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411
H6lio Oiticica. ParangolB being misunderstood and the pleasure of taking on another persona seemed inex-
PI 7 Cape 13, Estou Possuido,
1967, worn by Nildo of tricably,and ambivalently, paired. Nildo may also have taken delight in playing at
Mangueira. Courtesy of being "possessed" in order to make his friends laugh and possibly scare bourgeois
Projeto Helio Oiticica, Rio
de Janeiro. Photograph: passers-by."You can never presume what will be a person's 'acting' in social life:
EduardoViveiros de Castro. there is a difference of levels between his way of being in himself and the way he
acts as a social man." This comment by Oiticica in his text about Cara de Cavalo
was triggered by the contrast between his own perception of his friend and soci-
ety's vilification of him as "public enemy number one."3' Favoring anarchism
over Communist policies, Oiticica opened an alternative path to thinking about
popular culture and Brazilian identity beyond binary polarities that would have
served to "primitivize" his Mangueira friends. Instead of embracing popular cul-
ture like Gullar and the CPCs,Oiticica explored class differences, through the
Parangoles, by shifting the key question from "Who am I?" to "Who am I in the
gaze of the other?" And this question, of course, poses the issue of power. On the
one hand, the texts in the Parangoles give a voice to the unheard: a carnaval
dancer
accusingly saying "We are hungry," for example, would no doubt disturb the
feel-good spectacle expected by eager tourists. On the other hand, these texts
also ask me, the wearer, to reflect on who decides what I am-who actually
possesses or owns me.

Guerrilla Tactics, the "Suprasensorial," and the "Constructive Will"

Whereas in the studio photographs, the careful control of lighting and contrast
between the black background and the bright colors emphasized the formal
as an object, the outdoor session was less staged and
qualities of the Parangole
more spontaneous. Caught in a dynamic process, the undulating shapes of the
cape were transformed into wings, and the long piece of gauze extended my
body into a kind of tail, as I ran, jumped, and climbed trees-activities in which
I do not usually indulge when taking a walk in a park. Instead of being burden-
some and shroudlike, the Parangole seemed to mingle freely with the kites being
flown on Hampstead Heath.
According to Mario Pedrosa, "It was during [Oiticica's] initiation into
samba that the artist shifted from a visual experience . . . to an experience based
on touch, movement, and the sensual enjoyment of materials."32 In addition to
the materials and the structure of favelaarchitecture, Mangueira's most important
31. Ibid. revelation for Oiticica was the experience of dancing itself: according to the
32. Foidurantea inicicaodo ao sambaqueo artista artist's account, dance freed him from what he called the "excessive intellectual-
passoudo experiencia visual... paraumaexperien-
cia do tato,do movimento, do fruigiosensualdos ization" that was threatening his work and encouraged him to explore the per-
materiais... Pedrosa,357. formative aspect of the objects by inviting people to wear them.33The aerial
33. HelioOiticica,"A na minhaexperiencia,
danca dimension of samba could only have struck Oiticica as he learned dance steps
12de novembrode 1965,"inAspiroao grande
73.
labirinto, such as the parafuso,or "screw,"which, as Waly Salomao described it, consists in
34. WalySalomdo,"HOmmage," inH6lioOiticica,
241. "jumping from the floor and spinning in the air like a screw."34Significantly, as
35. PaulaBragahasdiscussedthisstate in relation Salomio remarked, the Brazilian expression entraremparafuso means to "get into
to the "Dionysian intoxication" celebratedby a state."This "state" of trancelike immersion or absorption, achieved through the
Nietzsche,whose writingswere influential for
Oiticica.Cf. PaulaBraga,"HelioOiticicaandthe body's movements, is what struck Oiticica most.35
Parangol6s: (Ad)dressing Nietzsche'sUbermensch," When the Brazilianpoet Haraldo de Campos described the Parangole as a "hang-
ThirdText17,no. 1:43-52.
36. Haraldode Campos,"Hang-Glider of glider for ecstasy" (asa-delta he
parao Extase), not only aptly emphasized the aerial or
Ecstasy," in H6lioOiticica,
217. ecstatic characteristics of this immersion, but also pointed to status
the Parangole's

67 art journal

H1lio Oiticica. Parangold PI I
Cape 7, Sexo e violencia...,
1966. Photographs:
Alessandra Santarelli.
37. Helio Oiticica, "Appearance of the Supra-
sensorial" (1967), in H6lio Oiticica, 128.
38. Michel de Certeau, L'Invention du quotidien,
vol. I, Arts de faire (1980; Paris:Gallimard, 1990),
59ff.
39. Jerry Rubin, Do It! Scenariosof the Revolution
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1970). Oiticica owned a
copy of this book.
as a tool or vehicle to reach this state.36For Oiticica, writing in 1967, the aim
was not to simply create "tactile works," but rather to produce "propositions" or
"exercises." These exercises were meant to lead participants to experience what
Oiticica called "suprasensation"-an expansion of the senses that facilitates the
discovery of one's "internal creative center" and the "expressive spontaneity"
usually repressed in everyday life. 7 For Oiticica, the Parangolks,samba, carnoval,
and hallucinogenic drugs were all means to an end: to create a "suprasensory
state, a space where people can feel liberated from the rules and
(suprasensorial)
regulations a repressive regime and thus discover their capacity for revolt.
of
The process of creating a space of dissent within everyday life is precisely
what Michel de Certeau described when he celebrated "tactics" over "strategy"
in his 1980 'Invention duquotidien.38
Strategy is a means of calculation and manipu-
lation in order to gain power over another, where the distinction between one's
own space and the other's is clear-cut. Where this distinction is impossible, tac-
tics are the only ways to act within the "other's space." Oiticica shared this kind
of "tactical"processes withYippie leader Jerry Rubin, whose 1970 Do It! Scenarios
of theRevolutionencouraged all young Americans to rebel against the status quo.39
Modeling themselves on guerrilleros
rather than organized parties, both Oiticica
68 SUMMER 2004
 and Rubin emphasized action over theoretical projections and elaborate systems,
and the local rather than the universal as the starting point for a political pro-
gram. Like Rubin's "scenarios of the revolution," works such as Oiticica's
Parangolescan be used in more than one context.
Mari Carmen Ramirez has described Oiticica's and other LatinAmerican
artists' works in the 196os as "tactics for thriving on adversity,"thus highlighting
the relation between de Certeau's definition of "tactical" actions and Oiticica's
motto "on adversity we live" (daadversidade vivemos),which he included in one
of his Parangolesand as the concluding sentence of his text on the "New Brazilian
Objectivity."'4Oiticica repeatedly celebrated the transformation of precarious-
ness into strength, a process nowhere more visible than in the architecture of
the favelas,which embodies human creativity and invention arising from the
most dire of circumstances. Brazilians, according to Oiticica, should face the fact
that they live in a Third World country and "shoulder and swallow the positive
40. Ramirez, 53. values given by this condition."4' In this context artists should be driven by a
41. Hi1io Oiticica, "BrazilDiarrheia"(1970), in "constructive will" as well as a sense of rebellion, simultaneously encouraging
H6lioOiticica,19.
Brazilians to reject their underdeveloped condition and guiding them in the
42. Cf. Oiticica, "General Scheme for the New
Objectivity,"40. creation, out of chaos, of a new cultural and national identity.42

69 art journal

43. Pedrosa's often quoted expression o exercicio
experimentaldo liberdadedoes not seem to
appear in his published writings until 1970, but
both Oiticica and another artist close to Pedrosa,
LygiaClark, cite it much earlier. Oiticica quoted
this expression in "Appearance of the Supra-
sensorial," 127. Clark quoted the related term
"the spiritualexercise of freedom" in her 1965
"A prop6sito da magia do objeto," repr. in Lygia
Clark,exh. cat. (Marseilles:Musee d'art contem-
porain, 1998), 153.
44. Potts, 210.
45. Michael Newman, "The MaterialTurn in the
Art of Western Europe and North America in
the 1960s," in BeyondPreconceptions:The Sixties
Experiment,exh. cat. (New York: Independent
Curators International,2000), 73.
While the hovering shapes of Oiticica's Bilaterals or SpatialReliefs,inspired
by the floating forms of Kazimir Malevich's Suprematist paintings and the hang-
ing reliefs of Vladimir Tatlin and Aleksandr Rodchenko, seem to embody the
Neoconcrete references to the "constructive will" of early twentieth-century
utopias, the aerial Parangolesevoke flight as a more urgent kind of escape from the
oppression of misery. Although I was far from the favelasand the long period of
dictatorship Brazil, this initial spark of the Parangole's
in utopian aspiration came
through in my own experience of the work as I defied, for a few seconds, the
laws of gravity and "flew" over Parliament Hill, on Hampstead Heath in London.
Thus, rather than being an illustration of a strict political program, Oiticica's
guerrilla type of artwork operates as what Pedrosa called "the experimental exer-
cise of freedom": as a means both of becoming aware of one's own freedom and
of preparing, of practicing, for another kind of freer society.43
In TheSculptural Alex Potts makes a convincing case for a return to
Imagination,
phenomenology as an alternative to art-historical approaches that "exclude
any close consideration of the visual and perceptual dimensions" involved in
viewing works of art.44As we saw, Oiticica's Neoconcrete works shared with
the Minimalist sculpture discussed by Potts a focus on the phenomenological
dimensions of the viewing experience. Yet, unlike Minimalism, which set up a
kind of confrontation between the human body and the autonomous art object,
Neoconcrete works acknowledged the possibility of an intimate phenomenolog-
ical relation between the viewer and the artwork in a way more in tune, in fact,
with Merleau-Ponty's writings. This Neoconcretist innovation provided a starting
point for Oiticica's shift from autonomous objects to works such as the Parangoles,
which can only exist when used, and act as extensions of the participant's body.
It was thus through an interrogation of formal elements that Oiticica
was able to contribute to the "rethinking of materiality,"which, as Michael
Newman points out, is a more suitable term than "dematerialization" to describe
Conceptual art's collective attack on "the fetishization of the handmade object."45
By making objects to be used, Oiticica was able to successfully free his works
from this fetishization by recasting the materiality of his works as performances
instead of commodified objects. Moreover, the "experimental exercise of free-
dom" of the Parangole is based on each viewer's unique and often ambivalent
experience, which no photograph can capture.Whether taken in the artist's life-
time or in the recent collaboration between Alessandra Santarelli and myself,
photographs of people wearing the Parangoles can only ever serve as comple-
ments-not replacements-for the experience of the work itself. Once this is
clarified, Oiticica's work emerges as a rare exception amongst the dematerializ-
ing conceptual practices whose "rethinking of materiality" did not prevent them
from being refetishized, in a sense, by the commodification of documentary
materials, the increased dependence on the artist's own body as a stamp of
authenticity, or both. Hence, paradoxically, the tactility and sensuality involved
in the experience of the Parangoles-which cannot be replaced by a photograph
acting as a commodity object, and which are not mediated by the artist's body
since they are to be worn by the viewer-are precisely what makes the works
lose their materiality as fetishized art objects.
70 SUMMER 2004
Helio Oiticica. Parangol6
P17 Cape 13, Estou Possuido,
1967, worn by Nildo of
Mangueira. Courtesy of
Projeto Helio Oiticica, Rio
de Janeiro. Photograph:
Claudio Oiticica.
The contingent and precarious Parangoles can be conceived as conceptual tools
that mobilize sensual participation in order to achieve contrasting yet comple-
mentary goals. On the one hand, by radically challenging conventions of muse-
um display that have traditionally discouraged any form of tactile participation,
the Parangolesexist in a social space in which viewers become aware of identity as
a shifting, ambivalent term constructed in a performative process involving self-
presentation and the gaze of others, and exploring issues of authenticity, play-
acting, and power. On the other hand, the Parangoles encourage a "suprasensory
state of absorption, bordering on headiness, which can act as an effective trigger
for contestation because it celebrates freedom and pleasure in the face of adver-
sity, conformism, and repression. Beyond oppositions between guerrilla tactics
and sensory pleasure, intimacy and political activism, Oiticica's Parangoles thus
opened the path for a kind of postmodernism in which the aesthetic and the
anti-aesthetic, rather than being mutually exclusive, are sewn together like two
sides of the same whirling fabric.
AnnaDezeuzeis a researchfellowat the AHRBResearchCentrefor Studiesof Surrealism
andIts
Legacies,Universityof Manchester.
71 art journal