OEI #80–81: THE ZERO ALTERNATIVE: ERNESTO DE SOUSA AND SOME OTHER AESTHETIC OPERATORS IN PORTUGUESE ART AND POETRY FROM THE 1960S ONWARDS edited by Jonas (J) Magnusson and Cecilia Grönberg
195 x 300mm, 640 pages, full colour printing, perfect bound, 2018
OEI editors Jonas Magnusson and Cecilia Grönberg are quick to correct anyone who might see issue 80-81, The Zero Alternative, as an anthological publication. For them, it is “a montage based publication trying, in as material a way as possible, to register, prolong, transform, and reflect upon energies from the work of Ernesto de Sousa and some of his fellow aesthetic operators.” In this celebration of de Sousa, a prominent twentieth-century Portuguese multidisciplinary artist, writer, and curator, Magnusson and Grönberg have curated a selection of work by artists, experimental poets, and writers that were apart of de Sousa’s contemporaneous circuit, those that were outside of such a designation but whose work reflects his cultural and political interests, and contemporary artists whose outputs are equally suited to de Sousa’s concerns.
OEI #80-81 is not an anthological publication, and has no representative ambition. It is a montage-based publication trying, in as material a way as possible, to register, prolong, transform and reflect upon energies from the work of Portuguese artist Ernesto de Sousa and his fellows (Alberto Carneiro, Túlia Saldanha, Álvaro Lapa, Fernando Calhau, Lourdes Castro, Ana Vieira, Ana Hatherly, E.M. de Melo e Castro, António Barros...). Ernesto de Sousa and his fellows defined themselves as aesthetic operators and worked as filmmakers, photographers, curators, critics, writers, folk art researchers, multimedia artists... OEI #80-81 also gathers texts on magazines such as Poesia Experimental, Operação, Nova, A Urtiga, and Alternativa; and works by artists from younger generations such as Isabel Carvalho, Paulo Mendes and Mariana Silva, in dialogue with that of de Sousa.
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