To start with, the newspaper’s editorial statement was very clear concerning the basic purpose of A parte do fogo [The Fire’s Part]: to take part in Brazil’s cultural process and create a space devoted to reflection and to the production of contemporary art. In the opinion of all the artists and critics who signed the text, a large part of the theory of art is the “simple renewal of a mythical and arbitrary connection between art and society,” which, ultimately, stifles the formulation of all the burning questions of contemporary art. When the military government under General João Baptista de Figueiredo (1979–84) announced the “slow and gradual” relaxation of the Brazilian dictatorship (1964–85), this text revealed the ideological mask that had been pulled over the idea of a “democratic and popular” culture that was committed to open, nation-wide expression. What worried the signatories was the possibility of an “opening up” style of rhetoric that was still authoritarian and that reinforced “eventual [artistic] languages of openness.” In cultural terms, the constant process of opening up meant, in their opinion, to discover “conflict regions” that are incompatible with the rules of the art circuit, to expose the contradictions that resist the attempted homogenization of artistic production; to clarify, in a word, which is “the fire’s part.” 

The independent newspaper A parte do fogo published its only issue in 1980. It was published by the artists Cildo Meireles, José Resende, Tunga and Waltercio Caldas and the critics João Moura Jr., Paulo Venancio Filho, Paulo Sérgio Duarte, Rodrigo Naves, and Ronaldo Brito. The newspaper’s editorial supports the creation of a hitherto nonexistent space devoted to “the action” involved in the production of a work of art and the process of thinking about it. Shortly after the military government’s official announcement of the forthcoming re-democratization of Brazil, after two decades of discussion, the text is a warning against the authoritarianism that is still part of a cultural policy that seeks to define a Brazilian identity based on a rhetoric “of conciliation.” This is one of the texts proposed by the generation that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s and sought to create guidelines for the production of art in Brazil at a time when the country was in a state of total political and democratic transition.   

In reference to this matter, see “O boom, o pós-boom e o dis-boom”, the text that was circulated and signed by Carlos Zilio, José Resende, Ronaldo Brito, and Waltercio Caldas [doc. no. 1110451].