Event Description
The curatorial team of Natalia Brizuela, Ian Alan Paul and Rachel Price is thrilled to announce the digital launch of Waldemar Cordeiro: Bits of the Planet. This online exhibition explores the life and work of Waldemar Cordeiro, a prominent Brazilian post-war artist and theorist.
Bits of the Planet is an experimental online platform that delves into Cordeiro’s legacy, showcasing his Concrete painting, landscape architecture, computer art, and prescient theories on “arteônica” — computational art in the face of global challenges. The platform incorporates a rich array of materials from Cordeiro’s archive, including artworks, documents, notes, plans, and essays. Visitors can navigate through the platform using modes inspired by Cordeiro’s formal and theoretical interests. The exhibition is structured around four central concepts: Mathematics, Computation, Landscape, and Language, grouping diverse materials into constellations of related works and revealing connections between Cordeiro’s seemingly disparate practices.
Waldemar Cordeiro was born in Rome in 1925 and moved to Brazil in 1946, where his work moved from figuration to geometric art and landscape architecture. His innovative gardens mirrored the geometric forms of his concrete paintings, rejecting imitations of “untouched nature.” In the 1960s, influenced by information theory and mass media, Cordeiro began manipulating pop cultural objects and mass media images. Between 1968 and 1973 Cordeiro created pioneering computer art on an IBM 360/44.
Waldemar Cordeiro: Bits of the Planet brings Cordeiro’s visionary legacy into the digital realm, offering algorithmically generative ways to engage with the artist’s work. Cordeiro’s insights into the political and cultural potentials of decentralized communication and cybernetics resonate strongly today. As he foresaw 50 years ago, “centers, as information’s physical site or as a place in which things are exchanged, are gradually losing their function.” Bits of the Planet reflects this reality, making Cordeiro’s work globally accessible, offering a prophetic perspective on the promise and threats of digital technology and the climate crisis. The project was led by Natalia Brizuela (curator), Ian Alan Paul (curator, platform designer, programmer) and Rachel Price (curator) with the research assistance of Lia Carreira and Larissa Guimarães.
Speakers
Natalia Brizuela, curator. Dr. Brizuela is the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies Chair and Professor in the Departments of Film & Media and Spanish & Portuguese at UC Berkeley. Her work focuses on photography, film and contemporary art, critical theory and aesthetics of both Spanish America and Brazil.
Ian Alan Paul, curator, platform designer, and programmer. Dr. Paul is Associate Professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, and is in the process of writing their next book “Anaesthetic Culture: The Weaponization of Un/Feeling.”
Rachel Price, curator. Dr. Price is Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Princeton University. She works on Latin American, circum-Atlantic and particularly Cuban literature and culture. Her essays have examined a range of topics, including media, slavery, poetics, environmental humanities, and visual art.
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