Antropoceno, arte, tecnologia: um olhar (po)ético sobre a investida de Augusto de Campos no suporte computador

Abstract

Mapping, charting, tracing routes: this is the aim of this work. Based on the foray of poet, translator, and essayist Augusto de Campos into what Virilio (1999) termed technoculture, we investigate literature and society, body and machine, creator and creature, social world and natural world, from an epistemic perspective that questions the regime of modern development. This is done in relation to various theoretical voices, spanning from literary theory/criticism (Burgüer, 2000; Paz, 1990; Pound, 1990; Risério, 1998; Schwartz, 1983, 2022), philosophy (Benjamin, 1997; Deleuze and Guattari, 2010; Haraway, 2009, 2023; Latour, 2009, 2014; Lyotard, 2021), anthropology (Danowski and Viveiros, 2017), and communication theory (Machado, 2010; McLuhan, 1971) to economics (Tavares and Belluzzo, 2002; Fonseca, 2014) and semiotics (Peirce, 2008). Using the principles of the orthodox phase of Brazilian concretism as a starting point, we analyze Campos' trajectory to his post-concrete phase (Aguilar, 2005; Vieira, 2015), noting the author's departure from the initial phase of concretism in favor of a convergence of his po-ethics with social world phenomena. Hence, the concept of the Anthropocene serves as a platform for reflecting on the artist's trajectory. We identify that Campos' body deconcretizes, countering the deterministic rhetoric that his critical/creative activity aligns with the tradition of his predecessors (Santaella, 2004), thereby guiding an incursion under the sign of anticipation. For the development of this perspective, we use as corpus the book Despoesia (2016), focusing specifically on the poems "coraçãocabeça" and "poema bomba" in their versions expressed in the computer medium and their arrangement on paper, paying attention to the particularities of each signic inscription and the referred ethical paradigm of incorporating the cyber context into the creations. Furthermore, we will discuss the productions mediated by electronics as generators of an experimental register inscribed in contemporaneity, situating Campos' poetic body in the present time. Therefore, this is a postmodern reflection on Augusto de Campos' digital foray, addressing the inevitable problems and affections that the term incurs (or carries with it).