Associação Cultural Videobrasil

Traveling Artists

The condition of immigrants permeates not only Maurício Dias and Walter Riedweg’s choices in life, but also and mostly their artistic and political stance. In the 1980s and 1990s, Maurício Dias lived as an immigrant in Europe. Around that time, disappointed with the possibilities of the art system as a space for poetic expression, he put a spin on his position as a visual artist, setting aside his painting and drawing production to favor actions that were then outside the scope of the art field. From his meeting with Walter Riedweg, who worked in the spheres of theater, music, and performance, there emerged a collective, hybrid practice based on a project that was at once aesthetic, cultural, and political. An oeuvre which, as French critic and curator Catherine David put it in her essay Do próximo e do distante: algumas notas sobre o trabalho de Dias & Riedweg [Of near and far: some notes on the work of Dias & Riedweg], “invites us to rethink the relationship between aesthetics and politics, and to question artistic practices from a political perspective.” In fact, with each new work, new devices seek a new perception of reality, similar to the freshness of our first gaze at the world.

Eight years ago, Maurício Dias went back to live in his hometown, Rio de Janeiro, and currently Walter Riedweg, born in Lucerne, Switzerland, lives as an immigrant in Brazil. Even with that momentary exchange of roles, both still possess—as shown in their projects—the same experimental verve that leads all immigrants to travel unusual paths. 

The first work by the duo Dias & Riedweg, Serviços internos (1995), as well as the majority of their projects deals with the issue of immigration. “The immigrant is he who moves not only in geographical space, but in time as well. This provides him with a unique perception of the world,” said Maurício Dias. To restore complexity to life, and to increase the degree of perception that people have of their reality. This is where the activism lies in the proposals of Dias & Riedweg, which are executed by means of interactive sensory experiences—staged encounters, orchestrated situations, sensitization workshops, improvisation exercises, and other strategies for relating and communicating with the groups with whom they work. 

The first work of Dias & Riedweg was made for the Shedhalle, a contemporary art institution in Zurich, Switzerland, dedicated to proposing questions and reflections, rather than setting up exhibitions per se. Serviços internos featured 280 foreign children that attended integration classes at public schools in Zurich, and was based on exercises of association between smell and memory. Multilingual, coming from various African and Asiatic countries, the children had, as their common language, a sensory game proposed by Dias & Riedweg. “Communication was established through smells, and they understood that we wanted a representation of their home countries, and of this new place they had just arrived at,” said Maurício Dias. 

The video recorded the statements of students, who associated smells with past events and initial impressions of their new reality. As a symptom of the methodology that would develop over the next twelve years of the duo’s works, the statements were always uttered with closed eyes, emphasizing senses other than sight. After working with smell in Serviços internos, there came touch in Devotionalia (1994-2003), then touch, smell, and the body in Question Marks (1996); smell, hearing, and sight in Inside & Outside the Tube (1998); and taste in Sugar Seekers (2004). In all those works, sensitization workshops were used in order to awaken the memory of the setbacks and paths in each person’s travels. In addition to sensory work, the duo’s strategies involve a series of other activities, including drawing workshops, sculpture, and theatrical dynamics. But travel is always the driving force in their projects. 

Travel is not only present in the contents of conversations established with others. Travel is present in the very dynamics of the duo’s life and work, since most of their projects are made far from home. Sometimes they travel by invitation of Biennials and artistic institutions, at other times they don’t, but the duo is always interested in developing specific dynamics aimed at conjuring regional issues. In Rio, Zurich, Atlanta, São Paulo, Cairo, Alexandria, Venice, Tijuana, San Diego, Johannesburg, Munich, Barcelona, or the Nordic Islands, they seek local realities that translate universal issues. The meetings staged with male prostitutes from Barcelona in Voracidade máxima (2003), for example, represent the connections between issues such as economic domination and immigration. In Os Raimundos, os Severinos e os Franciscos (1998), by focusing on the poverty of the architectural space destined to doormen in wealthy buildings in the city of São Paulo, they call attention to the despise of Brazilian elites toward the working class. 

In Dias & Riedweg, even though the experience of the world is a traveling experience, it is not measured in terms of geographical distance. “What is nearness?,” Walter Riedweg asks in the interview for FF>>Dossier. “I can feel out of place even though I am in my place.” Their last project, Funk Staden (2007), which is still under production for the Documenta 12, in Kassel, Germany, explores two types of distance, temporal and spatial, and establishes a bridge between the city of Kassel in the 16th century, and the city of Rio de Janeiro in the 21st century. For the extent of their intervention in reality, for their work with intangible issues, and with invisible things (which remain hidden underneath inflexible social conventions), Dias & Riedweg cannot be acknowledged as plastic or visual artists, plain and simple. As travelers, they move through terrains that have not yet been plainly incorporated by the art system, and this warrants them some freedom of expression and motion. Even though they might come close to social action and assistance (although they never really engage in such actions), and although some of their work might be labeled as public art, the oeuvre of Dias & Riedweg features a constant not-fitting in with models and categories. Thus, they inhabit the unknown state of life in exile.