The Art of Bielsa-ball - Square Ball 20/3/20
CYCLE OF EXPERIMENTAL ART
Written by: Aaron Moorehouse-Everett
Art and football have often shared an uneasy relationship,
when they have shared any relationship at all. They each have their respective
theatres, the stadium and the gallery, and historically, their respective
audiences. While the working class filed to the framed field of green in their
industrialised heartlands, the upper classes would prefer the Monet occupying a
Victorian building in the city centre. And never the twain shall meet (to the
relief of each).
Or at least, that’s how things generally played out in the
north of England. However, as Alan Brazil won’t let us forget (even as his
surname sings for a South American sun), Marcelo Bielsa isn’t British.
Contemporary art could afford to be irrelevant to the
working class of post-war Britain — the war had been won, and as long as
paintings were bought and sold, the market could sustain itself with or without
the blessing of any ‘vile animals’. However, while operating against a
succession of increasingly oppressive dictators throughout the 1960s, art in
Argentina, and particularly in Bielsa’s Rosario district, was necessarily
violent and antagonistic; the public were dared to interrupt art, in order to
unmask the aggression of the political regimes, and to rehearse the gestures of
a revolution.
As the art historian Claire Bishop writes, in November 1966
the Argentine intellectual Oscar Masotta lined up twenty elderly members of the
public against a wall, and subjected them to a barrage of fire-extinguisher
foam, deafening high-pitch noise, and blinding white light.
Meanwhile, the exiled Brazilian director Augusto Boal
devised semi-staged theatre for restaurants throughout Buenos Aires, during
which an ‘actor’ would order and enjoy a two-course meal, before loudly
declaring themselves too poor to pay the bill. At this point, similarly
masquerading diners would leap out of their seats and direct exaggerated anger
or sympathy towards the ‘actor’, as a means of eliciting responses and action
from the surrounding members of the ‘real’ public.
And in Montevideo, the artist Marta MinujÃn used a
motorcycle gang to herd hundreds of working-class members of the the local
community onto the pitch of Peñarol’s football stadium, before locking the
gates and commandeering a helicopter, from which the unsuspecting ‘audience’ on
the field were pelted with huge quantities of flour, lettuce, and 500 live
chickens.
However, it was in Rosario during the 1960s, while a teenage
Marcelo cut his teeth on the way to his beloved Newell’s first team, where
antagonistic art found its most dynamic platform.
‘The Cycle of Experimental Art’ was held in Rosario during
1968, and presented interactive events every fifteen days, in order to
replicate hostile situations that were only tolerated by the public in their
everyday life because these circumstances were handed down to them by figures
of authority. Naturally, these provocative interventions became increasingly
radical, and the ninth event resulted in a semi-simulated street fight that
required mediation from the public in order for the attack to stop. However, it
was the tenth event that became the most notorious.
Graciela Carnevale, on the anniversary of Che Guevara’s
death, staged an exhibition opening in an unoccupied art gallery. Once the
public were assembled, they were ushered into an empty glass room, imprisoned,
and left to their own devices without any means of escape. Over time,
excitement and light-heartedness turned to trepidation, nervousness, and
ultimately frustration. A passing member of the public eventually noticed the
scene, broke the glass, and the police arrived as the freed audience stumbled
out of their shattered enclosure. Unsurprisingly, the Cycle of Experimental Art
was subsequently outlawed.
While it would be odd to draw comparisons between Don
Revie’s ‘Dirty Leeds’ team and the fairly benign works of David Hockney,
perhaps it is less far-fetched to sit Bielsa’s Leeds against the backdrop of
dissident Argentinian art, revolutions, and dictatorships that framed his
teenage years.
Like the post-war artists of Argentina, ‘El Loco’ is
frequently cast as a provocateur, often to his own bemusement. A
regularly-repeated legend recounts how a pyjama-clad Marcelo once confronted a
group of Newells’ ultras with a grenade in his hand, before chasing them away
from his home as he dared them to continue the conversation.
The ‘Spygate’ scandal, tedious and unwitting as it was,
triggered the kind of mass-hysteria that British radical art can only dream of,
as dewy-eyed managers, flailing in a sea of gambling advertisements and
‘sport-washing’ accusations, scrambled to lecture on the ethics of English
football. Meanwhile, on the pitch, Bielsa’s lieutenants, Messrs. Klich and
Alioski — commendably carry out cuter duties in the name of shithousery, and
the intricacies of Bielsa-ball have generally tempted a long-suffering fan base
out of its stupor. Incidentally, there probably isn’t a seat in the stadium
where a supporter can sit safely out of range from the onslaught of wayward
shooting that has accompanied several United games under Bielsa.