Download-DOWNLOAD-Download-DOWNLOAD ... - Gambiólogos

loop”, “Eyewriter”), but without abandoning
the aesthetic and functional component of
the low-tech.
More than a mere praise to the precariousness,
Kludgeology promotes a confluence between the
appreciation of the craftsman’s sensitivity
- the handling, the tacit knowledge, the
materials - the reuse even as a way to
reduce the environmental impact, the media
activism and the creative experimentation.
As it can be heard and felt in the
exhibition, Kludgeology dialogues with the
worlds of design and art, as a reminder of
the creative impulse that unfolds in the
noise, improvisation, and exploration in the
cacophony of indeterminacy - the perennial
attempt to master and overcome the machine’s
program, as suggested by Flusser. What, in
the “real world”, away from art exhibitions,
is instinctive - the creative adaptation to
circumstances - becomes here a conscious
aesthetic way, which incorporates an ethical
and political reflection, a criticism of the
unsustainable consumerism, the superficial
world of pose and appearance. Do not mistake
Kludgeology by vernacular design. While the
latter captures elements of daily life,
the former brings tacit creativity to the
streets into the very process of creation
and development. It also creates a bridge
between this power of Brazilian popular
creative inspiration with trends that have
recently emerged in the world - the scene
maker, open hardware platforms such as
Arduino, laboratories for prototyping and
manufacturing.
What may be surprising in the work of
Kludgists is an almost primitive familiarity
that it emanates - a certain organicity
and the conviction in the potential of
interconnection and recombination among
the elements of all the works. There is
a feeling that everything there can be
reinterpreted, rearranged, remixed. The
pieces show a variety of materials: pipes,
cardboard, computers, hardware and free
software, spray cans, cameras, bottles,
stepper motors, sensors, blenders, duct
tape and so on. A hypothetical collaborative
exercise of reconstruction - where all works
were taken apart and artists would convene
to make others with the same materials –
would certainly result in interesting
and instigating works. The gambiological
spirit is more present in the attitude of
seeing the world as filled with interpretable
resources of multiple forms than in the
specific choices of each work.
Kludging is associated with the type of
adaptability that ultimately makes us human
- to observe the surroundings, and with what
we have at hand to solve problems. It is
an ancient knowledge, which until recently
appeared spontaneously in Brazilian cultures
as a result of precariousness. The fortuitous
optimistic trends on economic growth, income
redistribution and increased supply of
manufactured goods cannot let us forget this
increasingly necessary wisdom in a world
of economic crises, environmental collapses
and demand for creativity. Initiatives such
as the Gambiólogos are here to remind us of
that.
FeliPe FonseCa is a member of the rede
Metareciclagem (http://rede.metareciclagem.
org) and of the collective editorial Mutirão
da Gambiarra (http://mutgamb.org). He lives
in ubatuba/sP and sometimes write in a blog
(http://efeefe.no-ip.org).