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Read the complete interview with Patricia Canetti for the Número 5 magazine, by Juliana Monachesi.

“Radical Media” is the term used by the researcher in communications John D. H. Downing to designate alternative media which main characteristic is activism. According to him, this kind of media serves two purposes: “to vertically express, from the subordinated sectors, a direct opposition to a power structure and its behavior” and “to horizontally obtain support and solidarity and to build a network of relations that oppose public policies or even the very survival of the power structure”.

In Canal Contemporâneo’s case, the target power structure is, in first place, the conventional media itself: in two years of existence this online vehicle of information about exhibitions and all kinds of events related to visual arts made printed journalism obsolete and become the “agenda” of people in the arts. Then, due to the agglutination of people that began themselves to constitute Canal Contemporâneo (subscribers, readers, institutions and artists that disseminate information, etc.), the target power structure became the Brazilian cultural policy for the arts. In the following interview, Patricia Canetti, the artist who conceived and directs Canal, analyzes the mobilizations in which Canal played a major role.

I would like to start asking about the role that Canal Contemporâneo’s played during the Guggenheim-RJ episode. In your opinion, how the engagement of the “artistic community” would have happened if there wasn’t a vehicle encouraging people into action?

Patrícia Canetti - It is hard to know how it would be, and in order to try to imagine it we need to analyze the context and the actions taken by Canal Contemporâneo that shaped the struggle.

It was the beginning of 2003; on one hand we had the first days of the Lula government raising questions about our cultural policies and art endorsement laws, and, on the other hand, the administration of the mayor César Maia promoting authoritarian changes in the cultural area. This context was responsible for the two large manifestations that took place in Rio at that time: the Arts Forum, gathering artists from diverse areas at Sergio Porto Cultural Center to debate these themes, and the mobilization against the construction of the Guggenheim Museum with public resources.

At the end of 2002, Canal Contemporâneo started to grant visibility to issues related to cultural policies and, in January 2003, it disseminated a letter addressed to president Lula, read at the Town Council and at Arts Forum, about the construction of the Guggenheim Museum in federal land and the use of federal art endorsement laws. After that a group of artists and art critics started to meet at AGORA and the text of the petition was written, mainly focusing on two issues: the need of a greater participation of the artistic community in the establishment of the city’s cultural policies and our disagreement with the use of public resources for building the Guggenheim Museum.

Throughout the following six months, this group of artists and art critics continued to meet (after AGORA was closed the meetings resumed at Parque Lage and also online, via a discussion list, that baptized the group as the Portuguese for visual arts_policies) and the debate deepened with new contacts and the analysis of the future museum’s studies and contract. Canal Contemporâneo granted visibility to the meetings, to the texts that were written, to the researches and to the petition – and its number of signatures grew as the information and analysis of the problem were disseminated. (This information can be researched in the database at www.canalcontemporaneo.art.br, that keeps all e-nformes ever published.)

Manifestations took place. We took our ‘carnival block’ to the streets (literally, during Carnival we sang and danced the samba-plot “Sinking Guggenheim”) and took part in several others, along with dockworkers and the town councilors that became involved (Mário Del Rei and Eliomar Coelho). The “practical” work was added to the “theoretical” task of writing documents, which was the fruit of the efforts of the artistic community, professionals connected to the area of Patrimony and politicians displeased with the situation. While Canal Contemporâneo disseminated the manifestations and analysis, it was also responsible for keeping a dossier with everything that had been published, including the petition, to be sent to the minister of Culture.

This very dossier, gathering several documents, both Brazilian and foreign articles denouncing the awful trade conditions accepted by mayor César Maia, began to amply circulate among journalists and professionals of the executive and judiciary powers, generating a new level of information available to the public, which ended up in a initial decision obtained by petition by the town councilor Eliomar Coelho, deferring the first payments of the contract, which was hiddenly signed by mayor César Maia (in spite of all objections raised by professionals directly involved with the museum’s construction).

At that moment we started to find out in practical terms the value of visibility in contemporaneity. A visibility that illuminates gaps and creates spaces departing from the aspirations and fears of a community. The space that Canal Contemporâneo had already created through gathering and disseminating information was now expanded into other contexts, equally political and important.

The Guggenheim case was a good example of the balance we may be able to reach in democracy with the help of Internet. Civil society’s voice secured the Legislative and Judiciary powers preventing a dictatorial attitude of the Executive.

Canal Contemporâneo brings up many questions about the medium Internet, paradigm changes and sensibilities. I tend to think that it is part of the nature of Internet, as a medium, to summon a reaction from the user, differently from what TV does, that is, when the interface changes, the subject changes, etc. But in this interview I would like to focus on Canal Contemporâneo’s level of activism, in a restricted sense only; its role at the level of cultural policies for the arts in Brazil. And so I’ll move to the next mobilization trigged by Canal Contemporâneo: why change the federal bill on fiscal endorsement to the arts, and what? How was Canal Contemporâneo able to gather so many people somehow connected to the universe of art/technology?

Patrícia Canetti - When I received the information about the decree from MinC [Ministry of Culture] I had just posted Canal’s project for the Ars Electronica festival, and this called my attention to the exclusion of technological sectors from the Rouanet Bill. Such exclusion was nothing new, but the fact that I had just finished writing and translating a project, for having received an invitation to participate in a competition overseas, made me realize the absurdity of the situation. At that moment it became clear to me why our institutions didn’t invest in the net and why our sponsors couldn’t understand the cyberspace as a cultural space; well, if even the Ministry of Culture couldn’t perceive it, how to expect that the whole structure connected to it could face another direction?

By granting visibility to this situation, the answer of the Art, Science and Technology community was very fast, and I believe the reason for that is quite simple: a feeling of exclusion. At the same time that this feeling generates indignation, it also nurtures a sense of union, which already existed, exactly due to the exclusion experienced.

The group Art and Technology had been discussing the creation of an association and Canal Contemporâneo’s attention the decree’s rules, based on the Rouanet Bill, served only as a new unifying element. At the same time that Canal Contemporâneo disseminates the material it receives, it grants visibility to existing movements of the several subgroups that form its broader area of interest, which is Brazilian contemporary art. And, once again, it is the visibility of the events that will allow room for changes or new points of view.

About the closure of the Sérgio Porto galleries: what is the importance of this space for Rio’s art scene? What political challenges/circumstances led to the determination of their closure? Why did the Secretary of Culture change its mind?

Patrícia Canetti - The Sérgio Porto galleries are the historical platform of Brazilian contemporary art in Rio de Janeiro (See its historical profile at www.canalcontemporaneo.art.br/brasa.) Their permanence is not only important for Rio, but for the whole country, especially if we want to fight this Brazilian evil of discontinuity and lack of tradition of our eternally precarious institutions.

The closure of the galleries is the result of the lack of a serious cultural policy for contemporary art in Rio de Janeiro. Every year we watch the Secretary of Culture pointing to a different direction and we are never clearly informed about the reasons for new programs or for the ending of existing practices.

For now, I believe the Secretary of Culture changed its mind only because of the electoral campaign, for in reality the budget for the Sérgio Porto galleries are still reduced to less than half, which indicates a fragile possibility of permanence of this cultural space.

In the Mazeredo issue, apparently a result was soon obtained, with the creation of a commission to establish parameters for choosing public works for the city of Rio de Janeiro; was it a Canal’s victory (understanding Canal in the sense you usually give to it, of course, a collective with already a history of conquests)?

Patrícia Canetti - I think the most important point in Mazeredo issue is to realize the importance of civil society’s demand on the bodies that form society, like the press or the government itself, whether the legislative, executive or judiciary.

The fast answer of the Secretary of Culture was due to the fact that the project of the Urban Landscape Commission already existed previously, but had not been successfully implemented. By raising the Mazeredo issue in Canal Contemporâneo, through emails sent to newspapers and to the “how to add to the fire”, the City Secretary of Culture, Ricardo Macieira, took advantage of the moment to show the relevance of the issue to our mayor, who, being in electoral campaign, probably agreed swiftly with his secretary’s strategy to prevent another Canal’s “pertub-action”. As Mazeredo itself stated in a recent article, published by Jornal do Brasil on August 4th, about the removal of her works after a Commission decision, “it is all about a political problem between the Secretary of Environment and the Secretary of Culture”. It is probably true. But the artist doesn’t say anything about the logic practiced by this policy, which delegated to the city’s Department of Public Parks and Gardens the responsibility for cultural objects.

“How to add to the fire” was conceived as an answer to the isolation of journalists who cover contemporary art from within their editorial rooms. They claim for our participation, which is normally none, as a help to expand a better-qualified debate in traditional medias. With the Mazeredo issue we learned that, with this participation, we can also contribute for a better performance of the executive, when it finds itself unable to act due to lack of political force. After all, we are the political force.

To finish, I would like you to comment how it has been the effect of working with a tactical medium like “How to add to the fire”. I feel that, although the possibility of interfering in the content of communication channels is fascinating, we still suffering from a degree of inertia and apathy; do people use this “quality control” medium well?

Patrícia Canetti - “How to add to the fire” is still taken its first steps. Skepticism and political paralysis still prevent most people from perceiving the effects we may cause by the simple fact of “making certain things visible”, and which can result in large and small conquests for our community.

And talking about collectivity, I think that to begin with we would have to have this understanding and a lot more. I remember when last year Juca Ferreira requested a document about our productive chain from the group visual arts_policies to be sent to the Ministry of Culture… So far he has not been answered. Any volunteers?