Visitor Talk: Ricardo Basbaum

Description: ”What is a collective body?”; How are “contact, contamination, memory and repetition” part of contemporary art? In this talk, Ricardo Basbaum will address these central questions to his practice, and his over 30 year-long work in developing collaborative projects. These projects involve participants around propositions, experiences, performative actions, and

collaborative authorship. Usually grounded on group dynamics, Basbaum’s projects articulate references that range from Brazilian Neoconcretism and conceptual art to performance and contemporary music. Basbaum will also discuss four of his main pieces — which will be part of his residency at UIUC:

1. “Would you like to participate in an artistic experience?”: a proposition

that works with the NBP (New basis of personality object) and has been

circulating worldwide since 1994.

2. “Collective Conversations”: a collaborative statement of multiple

local voices.

3. “Diagrams”: devices that emphasize the tense relation between visuality

and discourse, in dialogue with contemporary art’s transdisciplinary field.

4. “Me-You Choreographies, Games, and Exercises”: a proposition around

group dynamics and related developments.

This talk is the inaugural event of Ricardo Basbaum’s hybrid art residence

at UIUC as part of the project “On-Contamination: An Extended Space for

Sustaining Encounters through Art.”

Bio: Artist, writer, and teacher, Ricardo Basbaum (São Paulo, 1961) investigates art as an intermediary device and a platform for integrating sensorial experiences, sociability, and language. Since the late 1980s, he has created a specific vocabulary for his work. This vocabulary manifests itself in different projects as drawings, installations, videos, and urban interventions.

Basbaum’s work is held, among others, at the Tate Modern Collection in London. He has exhibited at Documenta XII in Kassel, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago, the São Paulo’s Biennial, the Secession in Vienna, among others. Currently works as Professor at the Art Department, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil.