My spare time, your daily inspiration

Another post following my Tate Modern visit last week. This political statement in the form of an awesome interactive sculpture by José Carlos Martinat is called Brutalism: Stereo Reality Environment (2007). It’s a scale model of the Peruvian military HQ spitting out little messages about brutalism and dictatorship.

Here’s what the sign read:

This sculpture is a scale model of the Peruvian military headquarters, an example of ‘brutalist’ architecture nicknamed the ‘Pentagonito’ (or: ‘little Pentagon’). During the Fujimori presidency, the building became notorious for the torture, murders and disappearances conducted by the secret service.

The sculpture incorporates a computer which has been programmed to search the internet for references to ‘Brutalismo / Brutalism’, picking up extracts about Latin American and global dictatorships but also on architecture, forging associations between different kinds of ‘brutalism’ which it spews out onto the gallery floor.

Although I know art is often a trendsetter for advertising, the resemblance of Martinat’s Brutalism to a project by Wieden+Kennedy London called Tweets of Snow (2010, three years later) is astounding. Check it out:

I guess W+K creatives visit Tate Modern too…