What about the affective imaginary of dissident Brazil?

Our writing cannot be read as a

bedtime story for those in the Casa Grande^[1]

but to disturb them in their unjust dream.

(Conceição Evaristo)

In the 2010s, intergenerational debates were deliberately held in Brazil, in various democratic spaces and on social media (internet). There was a recognition of the importance of receiving the legacy of black feminists from the 1970s and 1980s such as Lélia Gonzalez, Beatriz Nascimento, Luiza Bairros, Ochy Curiel, Inaldete Pinheiro de Andrade, Matilde Ribeiro, Conceição Evaristo, Nilza Iraci, Sueli Carneiro, among others, as well as visualizing the future for the younger generations. Between the analog and the digital, older and younger Afro-Latin American and Caribbean black women could celebrate the encounters and dreams of their ancestors or the extended family that moves together in public confrontations about politics, economy, and culture.

Some contemporary projects related to the aforementioned debates include the Marcha de las Mujeres Negras (2014/2015), the musical album “Audácia” (2015) by Preta Rara, the Mostra Diálogos Ausentes/Itaú Cultural (2016) curated by Diane Lima, and the films “O dia de Jerusa” (FIC 2014) by Viviane Ferreira, “Kbela” (DOC 2015), “Mulheres Negras – Projetos de Mundo” (DOC 2016) by my authorship, “O caso do homem errado” (DOC 2017) by Camila Morais, and “Travessia” (DOC 2017) by Safira Moreira, as well as the best-seller “O que é lugar de fala?” (2017) by Djamila Ribeiro.

The reformulation of public and interdisciplinary themes (place of speech, affectivity, and political representation) encouraged the resistance of black millennials and other dissident groups with great mobilization both in-person and virtually in Brazilian social life. Simultaneously, independent audiovisual production became a necessity for generational continuity, while projects developed for production companies and streaming platforms reflected the demands of the major media market by making it essential for creators to become creative directors and researchers. In these spaces, the content produced and the need for a form/language combined with values linking ethics, aesthetics, and anti-racist politics are timidly contrasted with autonomous subjectivities and self-representations, as they continue to be suggested by hegemonic leaderships in the corporate hierarchy of companies and institutions.

Narratives and their plots in spaces coordinated from a single perspective often evidentially lack restorative criticism towards their creative and technical directives. On the other hand, there is extensive knowledge among artists outside of power who use ancestral technologies to professionalize and institutionalize themselves: resistance, active listening, and negotiation strategy. However, the lack of affection, care, and respect for non-white bodies, creations, subjectivities, and lives, especially those most oppressed and peripheral, prevent the construction of a radical audiovisual language from an internal perspective, from the Global South.

Following this perspective, there is a contemporary filmography produced by filmmakers and social representation researchers that addresses aspects of their intimate and/or community lives but aims to seek an aesthetic based on Afro-Brazilian, African, indigenous, and other minoritized group references, even though the time of violence and inequalities is present as the Bahian curator Diane Lima. Based on millions of disputed narrative images on the internet, in exhibition spaces, and on the streets, there is also the possibility of accessing authorship and inspiring approaches that shift existence beyond an extractivist and colonizing gaze. Thus, the call for debate on the representation of dissident bodies is reflected in both common and ancestral daily lives when considering pedagogical processes and the production of practices with anti-racist directing strategies.

Thus, among contemporary arts and the actions of activists and researchers, we have institutional spaces barely reflected by the majority of the population (black and indigenous) with viable budgets and schedules for the objective needs of our cinematographies. Therefore, in the continuity of the black women’s movement to which I belong, I recognize the contribution of fundamental dialogues to debate image, representation, art, and democracy, as these seek prosperous conditions for all people. Therefore, if they have already been the subject of the main media currents, we also know of the concentration of financial resources in power institutions that finance Brazilian arts. Now, support us in ensuring the right to affective imaginaries and diverse and plural memories along with curatorships that include contemporary dissident artists.

Day Rodrigues

References:

BORGES, Rosane. Ensaio “Política, imaginário e representação: uma nova agenda para o século XXI?”, in Blog da Boitempo: https://blogdaboitempo.com.br/2016/02/16/politica-imaginario-e-representacao-uma-nova-agenda-para-o-seculo-xxi

EVARISTO, Conceição. Sobre escrevivência, disponíveis no site da Ocupação Conceição Evaristo: https://www.itaucultural.org.br/ocupacao/conceicao-evaristo/escrevivencia/

GONZALEZ, Lélia. Por um feminismo afro-latino-americano: ensaios, intervenções e diálogos. Organized by: Flavia Rios and Márcia Lima. 1st ed. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2020.

HOOKS, bell. Olhares negros: raça e representação. Translation: Stephanie Borges. São Paulo: Elefante, 2019.

SOBRINHO, Gilberto Alexandre. Identidade, resistência e poder: mulheres negras e a realização de documentários. In: Holanda, Karla. Tedesco, Marina Cavalcanti. (Org). Feminino e plural: Mulheres no cinema brasileiro. Campinas: Papirus, 2017.

^[1] The patriarchal system of Portuguese colonization in Brazil, represented by the casa-grande (big house), was a system of plastic compromise between […] two tendencies. While it expressed an imposition of European forms (already modified by the Asian existence and settled nature of the colonizer) over the tropical environment, it also represented a compromise with the new living conditions and environment. The casa-grande of the sugar mill that the colonizer began to build in Brazil as early as the 16th century […] was not a reproduction of Portuguese houses, but a new expression, corresponding to our physical environment and to a surprising unexpected phase of Portuguese imperialism: its agrarian and sedentary activity in the tropics; its rural and slaveholding patriarchalism. (Gilberto Freyre, 2006). Translation note: Denise Cruz