Concrete Encoded: Poetry, Design, and the Cybernetic Imaginary in Brazil
Concrete art and poetry — an avant-garde movement in which the visual and spatial arrangement of words on a page is as important as the literal meaning of the text — burst onto Brazil’s cultural stage in the 1950s, while the country was embarking on a dizzying period of modernization. Nathaniel Wolfson (Spanish & Portuguese) shows that concretism was hardly socially inert, as scholars have suggested. Rather, he argues that the movement should be seen as the quintessential literary genre of the early information age.
Concrete Encoded: Poetry, Design, and the Cybernetic Imaginary in Brazil (Texas, 2025) describes a nascent cybernetic imaginary in which Brazilian poets, artists, and designers responded to an advancing capitalist and digital era. In his exploration of concretism, which has long been considered Brazil’s most global aesthetic movement, Wolfson brings together key figures alongside less recognized ones, tracing new circles of international theorists and practitioners involved in critical technological thought.
Wolfson is joined by Mark Goble (English). After a brief discussion, they respond to questions from the audience.
