Facta #2

Scrap artists
With a flowing and imprecise traffic between artist and
wrecker, there is the exemplary case of Arthur Bispo do
Rosário. At one point in his long career of more than 50
years as an intern in the mental health institute Juliano
Moreira located in the suburb of Jacarepaguá in Rio
de Janeiro, under the diagnosis of schizophrenic and
paranoid, he began to produce objects with different types
of materials from trash. Among the themes, ships stand
out (recurring due to its relationship with the Navy in his
youth), banners, misses’ bands and household objects.
Bispo ended up achieving posthumous recognition, with
his work being elevated to avant-garde art and often
compared to that of Marcel Duchamp. He was greatly
honored at the Bienal de São Paulo in 2012.
Along the same lines, it is impossible not to mention part
of the work of Vik Muniz. His sculptures made from
thousands of discarded pieces, carefully arranged in huge
proportions, become photographic images of birds, fish
and human characters literally composed of scrap.
The function in Baudrillard
The issue of hoarding, accumulation and systemic
reorganization of things echoes in the field of philosophy
applied to various areas. The French theorist Jean
Baudrillard suggests that objects continually pass from the
functional to the symbolic realm within a given cultural
system. He claims that objects have imanente meanings
and that the very adjective "functional" is not just linked
to the practical purpose of things, but also to their ability
to take part in a game of relationships. These ideas are
expressed in his “The System of Objects”.
In this book, Baudrillard also focuses on the place of
antique stuff, now already devoid of its function. The
importance of antiques occurs, precisely, in that it
contradicts the reasoning function to fulfill a purpose
of another order: the survival of the traditional and the
symbolic through testimony, remembrance, nostalgia
and evasion. In his dissertation in design to the Federal
University of Paraná, the researcher Marcos Beccari points
out that "to Baudrillard, men don’t feel at home amongst
the functional, thus justifying the necessary presence
of the antique object as a reorganizer of the world and,
simultaneously, an alibi that preserves an intimacy of the
one who owns it. While the functional object refers to the
current and is depleted by the everydayness, the old object
appears (both in terms of objects and also in behaviors and
social structures) as a regressive dimension that, although
witness to a relative failure of the system, paradoxically
makes it work".
In practice this theory holds, to avoid the disposal and
consumption of new goods that the market and the
system itself impel will always be much more than simply
accumulating junk. It's just a matter of new ways of
looking to everything around us and ”mining” from them
the symbolic value pointed out by Baudrillard. Nothing
is lost.
Artist scraps
In the opposite direction but not far from the scrap artists,
there will always be the scrap artists. The media is responsible
for, occasionally, bringing some of them to the surface. This
is the case of Wagner Agnaldo de Souza, a vigilant from
Samambaia, in the Federal District, who for ten years now
recycles scrap metal to make ornaments and watches, guitars
and motorcycles. The prices of the pieces, sold at a fair in the
region, ranges from R$ 40 to R$ 600. Usually taken from
vehicles, spades and pans, the material he uses in his work is
collected in the streets or donated by neighbors. The ability
to transform iron, plastic, wood and glass into art originated
in childhood. The vigilante says he made all his and his six
sisters’ toys with material found on the streets.
It is understandable that Brazil is a fertile ground for scrap
artists, for its cultural peculiarities, but just like the scrap
artists, their counterparts have vast geography. Chinese
farmer Wu Yulu became famous around the world after
inventing and building 47 robots in his backyard with old
iron. These robots perform various tasks, such as jumping,
painting, drinking, massaging and even leading the owner
to a rickshaw, that typical Chinese vehicle that is pulled
by a person. After a long period of debt and discredit,
motivated by his obsession, he was invited to display more
than 30 of his robots at the World Arts Fair of Shanghai.
* ARTISTS SCRAP ARTISTS * 31