Sometime late last year, Fernanda and I started talking about people we love.  This usually happens very early in the morning, mostly via phone chat and in an excited, almost adolescent way. One thing leads to another, very quickly, and soon we are emailing each other links. Around that same time, I began having constant conversations with Yael in which Hannah Arendt kept resurfacing. She sent me  Arendt´s last interview; Hitchcock’s film on the Holocaust; I read Heidegger and Arendt´s letters; found the Eichmann trial on YouTube; read Yael´s project for the minute of silence she was presenting in Germany. I hadn´t read Arendt since the late 90´s when I studied Political Science at the New School, but she is someone I love. In January, I started talking to Fernanda about her. I re-read Between Past and Future: Six Essays in Political Thought and she read a Portuguese translation she found at her mother´s house. We have been circling around it ever since. 

In the preface of Between Past and Future, Arendt describes a literary parable by Kafka in which:

The story in its utter simplicity and brevity records a mental phenomenon, something which one may call a thought-event. The scene is a battleground on which the forces of the past and the future clash with each other; between them we find the man whom Kafka calls “he,” who, if he wants to stand his ground at all, must give battle to both forces. Hence, there are two or even three fights going on simultaneously: the fight between “his” antagonists and the fight of the man in between with each of them. However, the fact that there is a fight at all seems due exclusively to the presence of the man, without whom the forces of the past and of the future, one suspects, would have neutralized or destroyed each other long ago.

She later adds:

… Only insofar as he thinks, and that is insofar as he is ageless— a “he” as Kafka so rightly calls him, and not a “somebody” – does man in the full actuality of his concrete being live in this gap of time between past and future. The gap, I suspect, is not a modern phenomenon, it is perhaps not even a historical datum but is coeval with the existence of man on earth. It may well be the region of the spirit or, rather, the path paved by thinking, this small track of non-time which the activity of thought beats within the time-space of mortal men and into which the trains of thought, of remembrance and anticipation, save whatever they touch from the ruin of historical and biographical time. 

This idea of  ¨…the small track of non-time which the activity of thought beats within the time space of mortal men…¨ is what keeps coming into my mind when Fernanda and I talk about Pivô. I keep thinking about experimentation and about how necessary it is to have a non-profit space that allows you to think and talk about things not related to the art market, especially in the context of present day Sao Paulo. At one point she told me she had decided to dedicate a large part of the 3,500 square meter space to research and artist residencies and invited me to do a project together. We thought of Mario, we had seen his work together at the last Mercosur Biennale. So, I picked up a decade long conversation and started talking to him about a possible project in September of 2014.  In February, we went to Mexico City to meet him. 

At first, we started thinking about a collective show around artist that use thought- or at least that´s how I saw it- as their main vehicle for artistic expression, revolving around Arendt´s book. We met a lot of people, talked about our idea, came-up with several names and possible works. On our second to last day, we met with Mario. Mario and I had already discussed the idea of him shooting a video clip for his song Que coisa. But when we met, we talked about Pivô, Arendt, Sao Paulo and about love. That brought us to Cildo. None of us knew him but Mario thought it would be interesting to try and interview him. We left Mexico only knowing that we would produce the video and try to meet Cildo.

Another conversation I was having around that time, which up until now did not seem connected to this project, was with Moacir. We had just worked together on his show Cães sem plumas (prologo) at the gallery and Cildo was very much present. I knew they had a long-standing relationship and thought he might be the best way for me to introduce myself. He was very helpful. Told me Cildo was a great conversationalist and instructed me on the right time and place to call him. I nervously did and we set up a meeting. I read Alias´s Spanish edition of Cildo Mireles, Mario flew to Brazil; he saw Pivô for the first time and started clapping in the empty- it was after midnight- space. We flew to Rio, walked up to Cildo´s studio. A conversation began. It ended 3 hours later.  We left with two vinyls in hand and thinking that we might show Malhas da liberdade. A work Cildo says, has been accompanying him since he was 10. But something was left open. Sitting down for lunch, going over our morning conversation, we noticed a coincidence: Mario wanted to show a vinyl work and a large part of the conversation with Cildo had been about two of his sound pieces: Rio/Oir and Pietro Bo.

We went home, I posted Mario´s album with a note and we decided to find out more about Cildo´s sound pieces. I wanted to talk to Moacir about them. I went to New York for other reasons and Moacir happened to be there, talking about Caes sem plumas.  We had a drink, I told him about our meeting with Cildo and he told me about The Beatles. He told me about other works as well, but I love The Beatles.

End of next week I fly to Mexico to watch Mario produce the video in a cave with a jaguar and a Montez cat.

My on-going conversations with Fernanda Brenner, Yael Bartana, Mario Garcia Torres, Moacir dos Anjos and Cildo Mireles have taken me this far. We still have four months to go.