Specters of Artaud

Specters of Artaud. Language and the Arts in the 1950s. From September 19 to December 17, 2012

Kaira Cabañas: I think the main shift would be to think about Artaud and his legacy and its potential effects in the generation just after World War Two. The exhibition is very much a kind of proposal, to a kind of rethink a sort of history of postwar artistic practices through Artaud and his legacy but rather than reinscribe I think the kind of usual association of Artaud with the theater, very much kind of taking up also his discourse related to language. And then the relationship between language and the body and then how that is taken up by different figures in the postwar moment.
 

Frédéric Acquaviva: what is striking is that on the period we’re focusing on this exhibition of Artaud is when he comes back in Paris between 46 and 48 and this particular moment which is very of high creativity for him, which is not always the case with the late life of artists. But it’s exactly the same time that lettrist … that Isidore Isou arrives from Romania in 1945 and sets up lettrism in early '46.
Of course, there is a relation because Artaud came to the point of shouts and even doing things with sound like in Pour en finir avec le jugement de Dieu and there is evident connection with some of the lettrists. With Jean Louis Brau who was attending the letter of Artaud, but also the figures of Gabriel Pomerand and Gil J. Wolman and François Dufrêne which refers explicitly to the involve himself of Artaud at that time because they were twenty and who else really a living figure, legend of poetry so, of course, that was Artaud in those years.

Kaira Cabañas: in the context of Artaud’s reception in the US often times is written about it* first happened in the 1960s or beginning in 1958 with the publication of The Theater and its double translation in English by MC Richards and that those ideas other taken up by the Living Theater in the 1960s. In so that kind of pushing Artaud’s reception back to the earlier 1950s you find that Mary Caroline Richards is already reading her translation in progress of Artaud at Black Mountain College in 1952 and that her reading of her translation in progress was very important for John Cage but also reading Artaud was very important also for David Tudor and then as a result of that reading of the translation, Cage developed what is often considered the first happening his Theater Piece Number One which was very much a kind of an interdisciplinary composition.
Well, I think in the context of Black Mountain College the question of art and life bears specifically on the question of the inmanence of perception. So this question [that I spoke about earlier] about the kind of non-repeatability of an experience, of how one can arrive and having something that is an event rather than a representation I think brings this to this question of Artaud about wanting the kind of seek, the kind of inmanence almost immediacy of one’s reception be in the theater or in poetry. And so Artaud’s quest to kind* of move beyond the kind confines of language both writing and spoken and to kind somehow and bring word and gesture back together. I think, at least, in the American context this responded to in so far as something like Theater Piece Number One is really searching for the inmanence of perception of the spectator and that experience would not be then reproduced in any way.
In the Brazilian context, I mean Artaud’s specter is much more of a whisper I woud say that in the 1950s really evolves into this question of spectator’s participation and the relationship between art and life much later in the work of Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticia. I mean Oiticia by the 1970s said that he’s the son of Nietzsche and the stepson of Artaud. There is this kind of legacy in terms of his moving towards increasing spectator participation and this approachment of art and life as his work develops.
 

Frédéric Acquaviva: all concerning the lettrists is a bit different because, of course, in all the lettrists they don’t all have the same opinion. As far as Isou and Lemaître are  changing. Life is not so important and the changing life begins by changing art in itself and so what it means poetry or painting, etc. On the other side, Brau, Wolman and Dufrêne are more like… something, for the poetry, for example, une poésie physique, physical poetry… is more something which is mixed with the experience of the body.
 

Kaira Cabañas: so the exhibition really presents structural break I mean you can say we have the clinical Artaud at the end and before that the kind of the critical reception of Artaud. I earlier spoke a little bit of Artaud reception in terms of Doctor Nisa de Silveira in Rio. And so the exhibition shows some of her notes for hers exclusively, copying citations from Artaud and there are three wonderful films by Leon Hirschman which, you know track the painting of three of his different patients and that is juxtaposed to the work of Lygia Clark who in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the midst of the antipsychiatric movements developed her own type of alternative therapy. So you have this kind of tracing of Artaud’s specter in early fifties in Nisa de Silveira’s proto-anti-psychiatry, I mean because is much earlier than the actual, historical appearance of anti-psychiatry as a movement. So you have archival documentation related to that and also and related to its Artaud’s theatrical incarnation in Rio in the 1980s. And then the exhibition ends with material related to the lettrists…
 

Frédéric Aquaviva: yes, because they were always critical also they were against anti-psychiatry so there is a kind of anti-psychiatric room with material mainly related on Isou because, well not only he wrote a book on Artaud and draw so the figure of Artaud but he also was cured because he had a mental breakdown and he was cured by Gaston Ferdière, doctor of Artaud, of course, and he was very much against this and he called him* neo-nazi, so he wrote many, many pamphlets with Maurice Lemaître against doctor Ferdière. So there is a strong relationship which is moving between Isou and Artaud that it gives a sense also to the introduction of Isou himself in this exhibition.