Displacement and a diary as creative process. Living Theatre in Brazil, Helio Oiticica in NYC (1971)

• In Event: Teatro en diálogo con otros géneros

Abstract

In the Living Theatre trajectory, the trip to Brazil in 1970-71 provided, through extreme experience of oppression, such as imprisonment, the discovery of new strategies of aesthetic activism. Focusing a creative process that did not happen as a show, but sparked a spectacular self-exposure of the regime’s repression, this research analyses diaries of Julian Beck and Judith Malina of this year, faced as a planned ficcional performance, because they were parcially published. Sincerity is suspended; instead of that, a rethoric process subjectivates a character which is an auto-etnographic investigation and as well, a resistance tecnique. In jail, showing to the world that unique repression scene, Living Theatre artists represented a much more serious problem to the brazilian dictatorship, than free and acting.
Facing in life and art a similar context of displacement on the other side of the continent and of temporary impotence, in the same year (1971) the Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica was living in NYC and used to record his artistic processes, failing realizing them, in diaries and projects later on sended to some brazilian friends and art curator, such as Mario Pedrosa. The intermidia format and auto-ficcional writing used by these artists-researchers suggest to entend the diary as an artistic process and the art work (in this case, not realized) as a residue or, in other view, the diary as creative dispositive (without object) that infinites others will play. Images will be shown and a possible practical workshop is possible.

Author

• Alessandra Vannucci