In this text, Flávio Motta examines everyday urban life as well as certain qualities of life in the country. Motta asserts that life in the city—an environment fraught with contradiction—is not natural or without costs; the phenomenon of the city is, rather, cause for reflection. Motta discusses the space constructed by history and the topic of social time, which has been transformed by many conditions surrounding work. A product that might appear to be the end of the production chain can be seen as raw material for construction, something found in the trash but later used on the outskirts of the city. A burned out light bulb (a seemingly useless object) can be used to hold kerosene in artisanal lamps. Thanks to creative work that organizes the universe of things found in impoverished settings, the object takes on another meaning as soon as its initial meaning has been lost. That does not, in Motta’s view, consecrate an “aesthetic of trash” of the sort upheld by the champions of the Third World. What it does, rather, is demonstrate human ability to adapt to the chain of production, distribution, and consumption, which by no means justifies poverty.

This fundamental text is a discussion of how waste materials are later turned into raw materials in “marginalized” areas on the outskirts of the city. Awareness of this phenomenon, along with the use of popular and everyday images, was central to some artistic production of the time even when that production eschewed the term “trash aesthetic.” In other words, the uplifting of “the precarious” is not what’s at stake in this artwork. What is, rather, is making the most intelligent use possible of the materials that come to individuals by chance in peripheral countries.

Professor, historian, and critic Flávio [Lúcio Lichtenfelds] Motta (b. 1923) was an influential member of the faculty at the Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade de São Paulo (FAU-USP). He was responsible for introducing art history and the history of aesthetics into the curriculum. In 1967, he and artist Nelson Leirner proposed the first parade of flags and banners, producing works based on what was called “literatura de cordel” from northeastern Brazil. The first parade, which took place on Brasil Avenue in São Paulo, used flags that had been confiscated by the repressive military forces; the second, which took place in Praça General Osório in Rio de Janeiro in early 1968, included artists like Hélio Oiticica and Rubens Gerchman. In 1967, Motta proposed a project whereby visitors to the IV Salão do Distrito Federal in Brasília would make seals.

For additional text by Motta, see “Arte cinética e pop arte” (ICAA digital archive doc. no. 1111367); “Arte na cidade” (doc. no. 1110633); “Arte na cidade” written with Marcello Nitsche (doc. no. 1110634); “Arte pobre: gato encaixado” (doc. no. 1111369); “Desenho e emancipação” (doc. no. 1111178); “As esculturas de plástico de Mario Cravo Junior” (doc. no. 1111368); “O olho” (doc. no. 1111374); “Superfícies habitáveis: memorial I” (doc. no. 1110637); “Trabalho e linguagem” (doc. no. 1111375); and an untitled text [“Vimos a paisagem enquadrada e as árvores caídas (…)”] (doc. no. 1111210).