IMHO

Online e-say (the seventh in my e-say series) Complexity theory, squiggles, narrow band, Oscar Niemeyer, VW vans, shutters, Lúcio Costa blue and the philosophical impact of sushi. Travels in Brazil – Brasília, Itaparica, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo. In 2004 I visited Rio de Janeiro and Brasília, funded by Arts Council England. IMHO was released the following year, in 2005. In January 2008 I returned to Rio de Janeiro with the British Council’s Artist Links programme. In late 2008 I visited Brazil again with the British Council travelling to Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Itaparica. The stay in Itaparica was hosted by Instituto Sacatar. The final version of the manuscript of How To Be An Artist' book (2009) was completed on this second residency in Itaparica. I note the impact of British Council residencies on my practice during the period 2005–7. 'In the evening I walk down the hill and eat at Sansushi, a small Japanese place on the main street. I have the Wednesday night special, as much as you can eat for R$. 32. This includes noodles with mushroom, sushi, deep fried hot Californian rolls and sashimi – large slabs of pale pink tuna which are particularly excellent. Through the large plate glass windows I watch dusk rapidly coming, the small lit up buses and trams running up and down the hill. Sue, an artist from Vancouver, also staying at Capacete, comes in and sits with me. She's here for three months. We exchange local information and travel tips. I've been to Rio de Janeiro before and have some sense of the city's geography. Later we walk around the corner to the white tiled Bar do Mineiro where I drink iced tea with mango and Sue swigs from a giant bottle of Skol lager. We discuss the I Ching. Sue makes an interesting observation, that we are both essentially Northern Europeans thrown into this boundless, unrestricted culture, which is so foreign to us – arriving in Brazil from countries in the Northern hemisphere that are very over-regulated and controlled. Yet Sue notes that my working with the Oracle opens me up, through the I Ching, to chance procedures, the random magic of the universe, which is my rehearsal for the impermanent structures I find here. I'm open to chance and the coincidental in a manner that suggests my boundaries are not so fixed with the logical, philosophical conceits of the West. That's perhaps what we're all looking for in Brazil – a relationship with the chaotic.' (From I Walk The Sunshine Road Michael Atavar Diaries 2007–2011 #208) 'My work mixes psychological experiment, astral magic and Jungian dynamics, all within the framework of the performance event. During my residency as part of Artist Links I have been concentrating on the street as a site for performative actions, finding every day magic in abandoned objects, litter and inconsequential items – the smallest and most hidden pieces of the cityscape. It’s within these neglected artefacts that I intend to construct the magic of mountains, time travel, memory and cumulus clouds. In small, miniature ways, these streets become liquid, eloquent, dangerous, variable.’ (From Michael Atavar Artist Links Application) 'In my residency with Artist Links I was looking at the boundaries around ritual or sacred material. I visited Itaparica, a small island off the coast of Salvador, in order to investigate how psychic content is evoked in ceremonial practice.   The difficulty facing any artist working with the unconscious is the unpredictable nature of the output and the possibility of contamination within the audience. I’m curious about the practice of ancestor worship on the island and their invocation of the Eguns, particularly the structures that they use in their rituals in order to make the services less dangerous for participants.' (From Michael Atavar Artist Links Final Report) ATTC-Minus 4: Michael Atavar for Psopo Bubble Supported: British Council Brazil, Arts Council England Website: Text, photographs and programming by Michael Atavar Special thanks: Leonardo Ayres, Paul Heritage, Roberta Mahfuz, Stephen Rimmer Graphic reconstructions: Richard Scarborough