The Hammer's "Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985" is showing Analívia Cordeiro's
M 3x3 (1973), a globally influential work of video art. Cordeiro costumed herself and fellow dancers in form-fitting, striped, black-and-white outfits. They performed a robotic dance that draws on futurist and constructivist precedents but is ultimately unlike anything that came before.
M 3x3 is essentially a monochrome animation; Cordeiro's high-contrast costumes were a low-tech, analog form of motion capture.
With 1970s technology Cordeiro anticipated later motion capture effects, from Disney's
Tron (1982) to the poo-emoji hawking $1000 iPhones. But
M 3x3 was a political work. "3x3" refers to the set's painted black-and-white grid, an allegory of the repressions of Brazilian society. More earnestly than Warhol's grids, Cordeiro's embody the boxes of gender, consumerism, and technology.
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