Faça você mesmo(a): forma objetiva — território de luta crítica

Abstract

In the debates about late peripheral modernisation, Roberto Schwarz established the objective  form (1991) as a construct that provides the rhythmic and   invisible links between the socio-historical and aesthetic domains. According to Schwarz, it consists of a form that encompasses "a practical-historical  substance" (1991) or, as he would later say, that acts as the "social nerve of the art form" (1997). By connecting the preexisting social experience and the aesthetically  constructed  form,  the objective formfunctions as a social contract legitimising the  aesthetic  form. Socially and historically commissioned by a collective and impersonal subject, this construct distinguishes itself from postmodern eclecticism  model, which does not connect itself to the  historical  process. The objective formoffers  critical  intelligibility  before  the historical-social matter only if and when, taken as an intrinsic form    within the aesthetic sphere; in other words, the problem of the aesthetic condensation of social rhythms reasserts itself concretely and incessantly — in production and reception — whenever it is necessary to retrace the reciprocal links  between  artistic  and  socio-historical forms. Thus, the exercise of aesthetic  intuition and  critical  reflection,  in interaction  with  artwork materials,  is  crucial to  the  objectification  and explicitness  of  the synthesis  with  the  socio-historical matter — which, otherwise, is ungraspable in the intrinsic connections of perception and reflection with historical  objectivity and dynamics. In short, some  things  only emerge in  art,  making  it  an  indispensable  tool  for dialectical  historical  reflection. In this  sense, this work seeks to revisit some critical responses  that  Brazilian  art and  architecture (Antonio Dias, Amilcar de Castro, and Mendes da  Rocha)  provided  to  the  civil-military  coup of 1964 and the accelerated late modernisation  that followed. Finally, it  also reexamines the contemporary   installation Roda Gigante(2019, Carmela Gross) — a negative architectural construct that synthesised the tragic Brazilian moment under the ultraright rule with rare clarity and epic poignancy.