The Paradox of No: Carlos Pazos, George Brecht, Robert Filliou

How to avoid a piece of art turning in merchandise? Does the world need more objects? Should things and experiences continue to be compulsively produced? These were some of the questions that not few thinkers and activists asked themselves in the decade of the sixties, when it became clear that the economy and social relations revolved around consumption. Life wasn’t organized around the factory but the shopping center. And a new proletariat, without fixed schedules and with apparent freedom, started to occupy the public sphere, now transformed into a space for advertising.

Can art be made without making it? The practices of Brecht, Filliou, and Pazos lie outside the disciplines. To quote Maurice Blanchot, for these authors, the artistic act is the experience of that which cannot be taken away, of that which feels present and does not pass, because it is only traffic. Art is a transitional phenomenon. It generates an illusion in the viewer that drives them to relate to others and to an environment that, although external, is not perceived as alien. We are faced with three artists from two different generations who have perceived the problems of our time and the need to escape the art system. They have not sought to create a work of art, but rather to stop creating it.