The Independent Aesthetic

Abstract

From 1978 to 1982, groups of college-age youth took to the streets of São Paulo and other Brazilian cities performing works of art that they referred to as ‘urban interventions’. Mixing aspects of performance, conceptualism and street art, they constituted a repossession of public space during the abertura, or opening period of Brazilian history, when the military regime that had been in power since 1964 made a slow transition to democracy. Newspaper articles constitute one of the most important sources of information on the urban interventions, however, at the same time these articles tend to criticise and dismiss them for their amateurism, effectively excluding them from the history of contemporary Brazilian art. Such an attitude reveals a lack of awareness of the fact that this generation, known loosely as the independents, created works that deliberately lacked polish as a way of criticising mainstream cultural production. This article outlines analyses the traits of the independent aesthetic through consideration of several urban interventions in the areas of visual arts, performance and literature.