The critic and curator Walter Zanini introduces the exhibition Prospectiva ‘74, and presents a broad overview of the languages used by the new media. He places the works based on multiple channels of technological communication on a level with expressions of body art, and considers them to be radically opposed to traditional genres. He refers to the interactive and participatory nature of the works, acknowledging the value of experimentation and of the multipurpose information and semiological resources of creativity that still apply to art. In Zanini’s opinion, this process epitomizes a release of the vital importance of the idea, of the concept. And he calls the processes involved in everyday reality “non-objects.” He also discusses the impact of the exhibition, and the dialogue that has already been established with artists from other countries.  

The Prospectiva ´74 exhibition was held at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo from August 16 to September 16, 1974. The exhibition was organized by Walter Zanini (1925–2013) and Julio Plaza (1938–2003) and featured 144 artists from over 20 countries, including 21 Brazilians. Works were presented in a range of formats, such as Xerox copies, photographs, Offset printing, transparencies (slides), films, artist’s books, maps, poems, albums, and drawings.

The art critic, historian, and curator Walter Zanini was one of the curators at the Primera Bienal de São Paulo (1951), and was also the first director at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea (affiliated to the USP), a post he held from 1963 to 1978, where he sought to promote the work of new artists and marginalized forms of artistic expression, including technological works, conceptual art, multimedia, and visual poetics. He was a professor at the ECA-USP (Escola de Comunicações e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo).

Plaza was originally from Madrid, Spain, and was a professor at the Department of Multimedia at UNICamp and at the Department of Visual Arts at ECA-USP. His name is associated with art and technology events. He worked with the concrete poet Augusto de Campos (b. 1931) to produce two volumes of poems that could be manipulated by the reader: Poemóbiles (1974) and Caixa preta (1975), in which the printed texts could be changed into objects that could be manipulated. 

In regard to this text, see by Walter Zanini, “[Incontáveis artistas] = [Countless artists]” [doc. no. 1110891].

In reference to this matter, see by Walter Zanini, “8 JAC — Jovem arte contemporânea,” 8 JAC — Jovem arte contemporânea (São Paulo: Museu de Arte Contemporânea ? USP, 1974)] [doc. no. 1110584].