Counterpublic and discursive public as crossing points

Deriving types of artistic-visual reception acts in Brazil in the 2010s

Abstract

Willing to deal with issues based on repudiation actions of the visual arts in Brazil, in the 2010s, this article invests in the idea of “reception acts”. In this way, it brings to the foreground the agency of detractor publics, discussing it based on a comprehensive project of the phenomenon. For this, it uses Michael Warner's theory about the “counterpublic” and the correlate “discursive public”. These are mobilized as concepts favorable to the recognition, description and analysis of performative gestures linked to public discursiveness and the public sphere. Taking as an example the cases involving the 31st Bienal de São Paulo (2014) and the exhibition “Queermuseu: Cartografias da Diferença na Arte Brasileira” (2017), this approach seeks to think about the circulation and reflexivity acquired by artistic works, curatorial statements and sociopolitical agendas privileged by these artistic events among audiences. It focuses on those who proved to be able to elaborate and disseminate abhorrent versions of these “textualities”, to the point of producing real effects in the sequence, or even in the interruption, of the exhibitions. The movement of Warnerian notions, and their approximation with the situations reported in the text, allow us to rehearse the coining of types aimed at representing the discursive fulcrum of the conducts and unseemly rhetoric publicly practiced by actors with a reactionary profile in the face of artistic productions with a progressive bias.