As a Dutch person you always have to start with the weather, so I ‘ll tell you how it was: extremely hot. After lunch and the visit at Museu de Arte Sao Paulo (MASP) – where they actually had a really nice Kunsthal-design of displaying the works – we sort of rolled out of our blue star bus at our first afternoon venue: CCSP which stands for Centro Cultural Sao Paulo.
CCSP
The first impression was already a nice one because we were guided downstairs by a very welcoming Brasilian man who introduced us to the Director, Martin Grossman. Downstairs it was even warmer and even all the Brasilians were complaining about the heat. Mr Grossman gave us a short power point presentation about the organisation, their ambitions, their new organisation structure and some facts and figures. It’s amazing with how many people they work (450) there and how many events per year they organise with several disciplines: theatre, film, visual arts, but also 70.000 LP’s from the discotheque! Their yearly budget was about 5 million Brasilian Rs., so it’s amazing how they get their acts together. They own or are responsible for four different type of collections, which all have different needs and demands. They get over 650.000 visitors each years and he told us that they do a lot of research on their public. Their best marketing was the ‘ mouth to mouth’ talking to get people to visit. 60 % of the visitors were classified as frequent users. He told us of course about the building history and the fact that the building was located between a 20th century motorway and a typical 19th century town house street, two different worlds got physically connected. The architect Eurico Prado Lopes has designed this immense building at the end of the seventies after having visited the Pompidou in Paris. The building was apparently never completely finished and according to the director it was in the rainy season like sitting in an open boat at sea. Imagine! And then we got the tour around this amazing building, with a huge Library (comparisons with Alexandrie were being made), theatres, filmtheatres, exhibition halls and auditoriums. It took our breath away. It was closed today so there weren’t many people, but I can imagine when all these activities are going on, it must seem like ants moving on a mountain slope. The most striking aspects of the visit were the innovative way of re-inventing themselves and the fantastic structure of the building.
Bienal
Our next stop was the venue where the Bienal takes place, a beautiful building again where you can experience the sculptural meaning of concrete. We walked around for a few minutes, alone with the group and enjoying the quiteness of the place, knowing it must be busting with people during the bienale. Afterwards we walked through the parc to the museum of Modern Art where we were going to have a meeting with our ‘ mystery guest of the day’.
Museum de Arte Moderne de Sao Paulo MAM
After a brief introduction of the head curator a new group of people joined us at the museum and with them was the Dutch Prime Minister, Jan Peter Balkenende..So we saw the collection exhibition with some really nice abstract works but since their were so many people walking nervously around I kind of gave up on that. The abstract art was only introduced in Brazil in the late forties! In ‘ 51 the first bienale was organised and mainly because of the huge internationally succes of that the Museum of Modern Art was sacrificed by the President and only existed in name till 1969 when they restarted the museum in the glass building they’re in now.
After having visited the exhibition we had a meeting with our MP and all the participants. The participants introduced themselves and gave a short discription of their recent activities on which Mr Balkenende reacted. The most reveiling thing was that at University for a ‘ split second’ he had considered to study History of art, but it was not meant to be…It was a nice encounter where our MP showed some real interest and asked us our opinion about children education and international cross overs. After seeing one final exhibition about a very successful Brazilian artist in the eighties, Jorge Guinle – a son of Brazilian most famous playboy – we were almost overdosed and went back to the hotel.
We had a really nice dinner at the restaurant ‘ Fig tree’, where an amazing huge fig tree was growing over our heads. The food here is great, but we all ate too much….It has been an inspriting first day, with a lot of new experiences, good conversations with each other and a first impression of this incredible city. Let’s see what tomorrow will bring!
What I thought striking, not only in relation to CCSP but in relation to almost all the places that we visited, was the explicit focus on the public. The CCSP offers many facilities for its public and besides ‘regular’ visitors, there were groups of students doing their homework and people playing a game of chess. To interconnect the different functions and audiences of the CCSP, they are now developing projects that cross disciplinary boundaries themselves. One concrete example was the installation of video art in the library building. That way they hope to integrate the different functions and publics of the CCSP.
Another thing that seemed to be a reoccurring theme was that of the unfinished building, its renovation and final uses. All of these unfinished -finished buildings were turned into amazing structures and spaces.