These settings develop from Oiticica's concept of "Creleisure," his neologism for the revolutionary potential of creative countercultures. [slides 25, 26: Oiticica installations]

These are two other installations; these are not the Cosmococas, these are shots from his show at the Whitechapel in the very late 60s, where you could wander through the space and lie down in sand or sprawl, just simply watch TV. So along with other interactive installations these, the Cosmococas were experiments in diverting stereotypical icons of sensual languor—music, hammocks, mattresses, party balloons, sand, cocaine—to formulate an improbable concept of resistance which would incorporate the contradictions inherent in a blending of Brazilian and American leisure cultures.

Much earlier Oiticica had acclaimed the activities of barrio criminals as quintessentially anti-authoritarian, and the cocaine here may celebrate a subversive Brazilian contribution to American culture as well as criticizing the drug's dominance of New York's cultural life in the 70s.

[cell phone rings] Sorry.

Hello. Hey, how are you? Hey. What's up? Look uh . . . uh, can I call you back? 'Cause I'm in a lecture. No, no, I'm giving a lecture. It's a . . . Yeah, there's, I mean there's an audience and everything. What is it on? Theories . . . Is it urgent?

It's a crisis, ok. It's um . . . I guess . . . Well, I'll see if there's somebody who can read, who can finish it for me. Hang on, sir, hang on. Can I . . . I've got to take this. Can somebody just finish this off for me?

Do you mind? Here. Thanks. Try to speak up. I'll show you . . .

Start here.

[Ryan Mulligan reads text while Harris talks on the phone in the background. The text of Harris's intended talk is preserved here, though portions are omitted or altered in the audio.]

Considered in terms of avant-garde strategies and blockages, Oiticica's projects seem to follow a liberated trajectory. Without gallery representation his entire life, he is free to regard his work as proposals, open-ended realisations always dependent on participants' interaction. These synthesize a carnivalesque anarchy with intellectual clarity. They spill over with unconventional ideas and seem commited to being a means of generating pleasure and companionship in what was a pretty bleak and dangerous environment (compare with City of God film).

A gay man from a prosperous well-educated family, he moves into the Mangueira

MH: Hang on. Are you lost?

RM: Yeah. What's that?

MH: Favela.

RM: Favela.

favela, one the Rio's slums. After a difficult reception he is eventually accepted.

RM: Let me take a drink. Oh, that's so much better.

He loves everything about it, seeing in the energy, violence and sensuality a condition of revolt against his background and Brazilian authorities. He is allowed into a Samba troupe and rises high within the hierarchy of dancers. What he says about the all-night practice sessions brings back Nietzsche's voice: "I became ill of the ['Samba fever'] too, impregnated completely, and I am sure that from that disease no one recovers, because it is the revelation of mythical activity . . . something more important than intellectual activity or rational thought when these become exagerrated and distorted."