1. THE BODY AS ZERO
Experimentalism and Participation. Portuguese Art of the 90’s
Mafalda Marcos
ABSTRACT
Taking as a starting point the 1960’s experimentalism in Portugal, the current dissertation
aims to examine and understand the developments of the Portuguese artistic production of
the last decade of the twentieth century. Focusing the discussion on the field of the body
within the Portuguese artistic scene, we propose to consider both the contemporary
spectator and the production that invites him, according to an interpretation of the body as
subject, process and object of the work of art. Invoking the interventional language that is
evident in the 1970’s, keeping up the founding premises of the preceding decade, we aim to
develop a chronologically organized path. In this context, we have decided to highlight the
Alternativa Zero — Tendências Polémicas na Arte Portuguesa Contemporânea, curated by
Ernesto de Sousa, as one of the most influential hallmarks in recent Portuguese art history.
In order to understand and contextualize 1990’s artistic logic, the first part of the presented
work takes as a reference the subversive language of the 1960’s and its subsequent
incorporation in the work of Alternativa Zero in 1977, prolonging itself through the
following decade. Naturally, the Serralves Foundation’s Museum of Contemporary Art
opening is featured, as well as the re-visitation of the event from 1977: Perspectiva:
Alternativa Zero, curated by João Fernandes in 1997. This exhibition project was able to
clarify a new wave of artists, updating the knowledge about Portuguese art as well as
reinterpreting a set of ideas which focus on a field of action levelled with the international
proposals, based upon different approaches on the spectator’s role as a fundamental
presence. In a second part, considering a set of artistic proposals produced in the final
decade of the twentieth century, we explore the body as a concept through its diverse ways
of approach in light of three vectors – absent body, present body, spectator’s body – and
according to a dialogue centred in the depth of participatory art.
Not intending to underestimate the importance of the visible and material, this dissertation
proposes an interpretation of the artwork as a multi-sensory dynamic based on the concept
of immateriality, expressed through the dialogue with the audience.
KEYWORDS
body; experimentalism; participation; 90’s; portugal; twentieth century; contemporary art