Abstract:

The article aims to observe the rising of new ways of dealing with the Brazilian cultural policy, which began to be tested in the last decade and in the current days become more critical due to the termination of the Ministry of Culture in 2019. The Festival Olhares Sobre o Corpo, the actions of the collective Estopô Balaio and of the Trupe da Lona Preta were analyzed. To collaborate with the debates that, like the selected experiences, problematize the recent decisions of the State, the concept of commonism as cultural action is presented. This is a proposal still little researched at the Brazilian universities. Therefore, it could open new ways to think about the relation between politics of the culture and collective action.

Keywords:
Politics of the Common; Culture; Necropolitics; Cultural Action; Politics of the Culture

Resumo:

O artigo observa o surgimento de novas formas de lidar com a política cultural brasileira, iniciadas e testadas na última década e que, com o agravamento da situação a partir da extinção do Ministério da Cultura em 2019, tornam-se cada vez mais importantes. Foram analisados o Festival Olhares Sobre o Corpo, as ações do coletivo Estopô Balaio e da Trupe da Lona Preta. Para colaborar com os debates que, a exemplo destas experiências selecionadas, problematizam as decisões recentes do Estado, apresenta-se o conceito de comum-ismo como ação cultural. Essa é uma proposta ainda pouco pesquisada nas universidades brasileiras. Portanto, poderá abrir caminhos inéditos para pensar a relação entre política da cultura e ação coletiva.

Palavras-chave:
Política do Comum; Cultura; Necropolítica; Ação Cultural; Política da Cultura

Résumé:

L’article examine l’emergence de nouvelles façons de traiter la politique culturelle brésilienne, mise en place et testée au cours de la dernière décennie et qui, avec l’aggravation de la situation depuis l’extinction du Ministère de la Culture em 2019, deviennent de plus em plus importantes. Le Festival Olhares Sobre o Corpo, les actions du collectif Estopô Balaio et de la Trupe Lona Preta ont été analysés. Afin de collaborer aux débats qui, en tant qu’exemples de ces expériences choisies, problématisent les décisions récentes de l’État; le concept de commun-isme en tant qu’action culturelle est présenté. C’est encore une proposition peu recherchée dans les universités brésiliennes. Donc, elle devrait ouvrir des nouvelles voles à la réflexion sur la relation entre la politique culturelle et l’action collective.

Mots-clés:
Politique du Commun; Culture; Nécropolitique; Action Culturelle; Politique de La Culture

It is broadly known that, since 2016, public policies for culture and private financing have been gradually reduced or deprived in Brazil. At first, this article lists some of these events to contextualize the presented discussion by introducing theoretical concepts that, even though developed in different countries, such as South Africa, Belgium, and Slovene, contribute with some local issues, as explained at the beginning. Next, some practical experiences made in different Brazilian regions will be shared, those that, in their way, add to the debate by showing unusual ways to propose cultural actions, even in the most precarious conditions that seem impassable.

In Brazil, the new federal party management that took place in 2019 ended up the Ministry of Culture and delegated the cultural area firstly to the Ministry of Citizenship, and later, still in 2019, to the Ministry of Tourism. The sponsorship of public and private companies assigned to several artistic groups and companies were canceled, or drastically cut off. Besides financial issues, a moral agenda has been responsible for characterizing many productions as enemies of the Brazilian (morality) society.

After some years with initiatives that showed to be promising, such as the implementation of Pontos de Cultura⁸ 1 Pontos de Cultura was the major project developed by the Cultura Viva Project, created by the federal government in 2004 and that became a State policy in 2014. Pontos de Cultura sought to build up actions with a social and cultural impact in communities spread throughout the country. They were essential for the social and educational development in farther places from big urban Brazilian centers (Turino, 2010). and the project Mais Cultura nas Escolas⁹ 2 Mais Cultura nas Escolas was officially regulated by PDDE/FNDE number 30, of August 3rd, 2012, and by complements from PDDE/FNDE number 4, of March 31st, 2014, and by PDDE/FNDE number 5, of March 31st, 2014 (Santana, 2015). The project aimed to provide financial resources to public schools in order to assure cultural activities that could promote the interlocution between local artistic experiences and the schools’ pedagogical-political-project (PPP). Thanks to the proximity between the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Education, the creation and implementation of the project were possible. , Brazil seems to go through a regression, that affects culture in a negative and radical perspective. What once contributed to the flourishing of cultural politics presently seems to be managed by a cruel project of cultural necropolitics.

In Achille Mbembe’s essay, where the concept of necropolitics is proposed, the Cameroonian philosopher explains that life production forms of contemporaneity are increasingly producing death. From this statement, he inquires how the new configurations of new types of social existences guide to shaping living deads (Mbembe, 2018). In other words, necropolitics not only produces literal death, but also the process of anesthesia and loss of the subject’s voices as if it were a sort of inertia or death in life. In this sense, the necropolitics regime, beyond impacting individuals and populations, is also a methodological disoperation of many politics. The cultural one is not an exception.

Instead of having increased the quantity and quality for funds to cultural production network (production-distribution-exchange-consumption), it is observed an effort to disable these elements, what impacts not only the people involved (artists, producers, curators, and the audience), but also disarticulates ideas, proposals, and actions.

Fortunately, even in face of this scenario, some investigations and practices emerge not only as propositions of resistances to the present context but also as initiatives that point to other possible formats for cultural actions. The domain of the common, a greyish area between State and market, seems to ground several civil movements that invite us to perceive cultural and artistic actions with a fresher look.

The commonism as possibility of action

The researchers Nico Dockx and Pascal Gielen have called attention upon the centrality of culture in the processes of social formation. Dockx and Gielen invert the Marxist logic, in which culture is the superstructure, instead of the root of relations (economy-State-ideology-culture). For this reason, according to the authors, interpersonal relationships must be understood as the root of the value of the politics of commons. They observe that some practices that investigate new arrangements consider that human relationships are the most essential capital, which supports that the so-called commonism¹⁰ 3 The authors play with the words communism and communism. Similar to communism, the “ism” in commonism stresses that it is an ideology. survives. “Commonism is concerned with the total person in his or her context and global environment” (Dockx; Gielen, 2018DOCKX, Nico; GIELEN, Pascal (Org.). Commonism: a new aesthetics of the real. Amsterdam: Valiz, 2018., p. 55).

Culture is responsible for the production of meaning of those who are part of and form the common. It is the ignition of all the other flows: economic, legal, ecologic, and politic. Dockx and Gielen support the idea that just like the communism, the commonism is an ideology. These authors follow Slavoj Zizek’s understanding, for whom ideology is created through different levels, which are not always conscious and verbalized - which constitutes a tacit knowledge that is very friendly to the catches of the capitalist system. Based on Zizek, Dockx and Gielen explain that ideology never exists in itself, but through relations established in subjectivation processes; thus, ideology works as a modulator of subjectivities.

From that hypothesis, and with contributions from many other artists and researchers, Dockx and Gielen have been investigated what they name as “aesthetics of the real”:

Art, creativity, and cultural manifestations could be considered essential resources for the creation of commons, even though there is a great challenge ahead for them to actually consolidate themselves as a public policy. Dockx and Gielen show that there are significant differences between artistic groups that organize themselves in communities and those that seek for a logic of the common. For them, the community’s role is to keep social cohesion and to support an integrative feeling of ourselves. On the other hand, artistic practices based on commons explore an unknown area between the market and the State. The basis of the common is grounded in the attention given to the social, and this is how commonism can enter the realm of politics. Dockx and Gielen claim that this is why artistic practices developed under this value are often ignored by both the market and public funding policies. A possible cultural politics for these artistic practices could be a cosmopolitics.

New arrangements imply other methodological configurations so that the group’s interaction flow can occur. Punctuating the differences between practices based on communities or groups that follow a new logic, such as that of the common, is crucial to signal not only new aesthetics but also new ethic arrangements.

Olhares Sobre o Corpo Festival: ignitions that emerge from the common

Although the most significant cuts in the field of culture are recent, forms of the civil organization seeking other possible policy formats are not. Whether due to low budgets or the need to trigger other links between a local community and artistic production, initiatives that operate within the common look for creative strategies to continue existing. Most of the time, they are not widely mediatized, since in many cases, their existence is dependent on the need to remain invisible - at least to the State and the market. Whenever they are mediatized, they tend to modify themselves drastically, causing previously established principles to be completely corrupted.

One of the cases that illustrates an action of the common in the field of art and culture is the Olhares Sobre o Corpo [Glances on the Body] Festival. The festival was held between 2004 and 2014. It took place in Uberlândia (in the state of Minas Gerais), and its core was the language of body art. According to the release of its 7^th edition (2010), available for download on the website movimiento.org, its purposes were:

The general direction of Olhares Sobre o Corpo, by Fernanda Bevilaqua, was not limited to performing. Besides performances, different actions for the relationship between artistic production and the city invited people to not limit themselves only as spectators but also as participants in the building of the festival. As a value, it intended to promote exchanges among the community of Uberlândia, the artists from the city, and other states. The principles were based on the democratization of access to art through the educative process of audience formation.

However, it is essential to mention that the democratization aspect developed by the festival was not limited to access to artistic productions. Isaura Botelho (2016BOTELHO, Isaura. Dimensões da cultura: políticas culturais e seus desafios. São Paulo: Edições Sesc São Paulo, 2016. ) states that many of the projects based on democratization values have one-sided vector; in other words, an action that leaves from one side to the other, with no engagement and participation of the party that receives that action. The author recognizes that access policies to the cultural goods arise with a perspective that aims the forced inclusion of individuals within a system of values. This understanding of democratization can be naïve if one considers that appropriation happens merely by bringing the audience and work closer together. It is also important to highlight that, in a country like Brazil, a country with impassable borders and destitute of the most basic services, access policies are still a conquest. Access and participation are not aspects that exclude each other, but elements of the same network that can be developed in combination.

In the case of Olhares Sobre o Corpo, in addition to democratizing access to productions and discussions, the value of cultural democracy was at stake as well.

The editions of Olhares Sobre o Corpo sought to develop what the curatorship called as glocal, that is, a notion that investigated the cohabitation of political and aesthetic principles of the global and local instances. The festival considered the geographical and social structure of the city by observing artistic practices. As described in the release: “These observations allow understanding and effectively participating in a culture, creating possibilities of restructuring political and social crises” (Red Sudamericana de Danza, 2010RED SUDAMERICANA DE DANZA. Festival Olhares sobre o Corpo - Uberlândia / Brasil. Movimiento/Movimento, 1 dez. 2010. Disponível em: <Disponível em: http://movimiento.org/profiles/blogs/festival-olhares-sobre-o-corpo >. Acesso em: 01 jul. 2019.
http://movimiento.org/profiles/blogs/fes... , online).

The actions for continuity that went beyond the duration of the festival, which were not limited to performance schedules, deserve to be highlighted. While it lasted, the blog of Olhares Sobre o Corpo kept consistent updates about artistic productions of body arts, fomented discussions, and promoted creation of networks. There was a live feeling in the festival, and artists, the audience and partners discussed, proposed, and experimented with ways of continuity. One of the discussed and experimented strategies happened a few years later, in the 9^th edition, in 2012. That year, Olhares Sobre o Corpo, as in all other editions, had small public funding. In the 9^th edition, the festival received R$ 3,000 from the Uberlândia Municipal Secretary of Culture - an amount that certainly is not enough to pay the most basic needs of an event like that. In the previous editions, besides the town hall’s support, the festival applied for edicts, even though it was never dependent on them because most of the time, the structure of Olhares Sobre o Corpo was possible thanks to the donation of inhabitants. Donations were a way of inviting people to practice their citizenship as they were responsible for the existence of the event.

In 2012, what was a local practice was extended to the entire country. Through a network of acquaintances (professors, producers, and dance artists), the festival organizers spread 100 piggy banks over all the national territory. It is possible to state that what Olhares Sobre o Corpo did is similar to the most recent crowdfunding. However, fundraising was not separated from values and principles presented in the previous editions of the festival. Even the fundraising was considered and developed as an artistic gesture.

The opening of piggy banks was a performance that launched the 2012 edition. They were not broken but got through a minor surgery. Money was collected, and some seeds covered by a bit of earth replaced it. Piggy banks were destined back to the cities of donation. The professor and critic of dance Helena Katz mentions:

The way the gesture of donating was installed and developed by Olhares Sobre o Corpo went through the curatorship from end to end. That is, money donation was not something that happened before the event started - because it was already part of the event. Nor did it finish at the end of the festival, because the principle of the donation explored not only financial aid but also the participation and commitment of everyone.

Katz stresses that due to the low budget conditions, Olhares Sobre o Corpo never was able to extend its activities over many days. However, the schedule concentrated in three or four days was enough to trigger ignitions that were not thought by the biggest dance festivals in the country. Militant creativity (Katz, 2012, online) was established as a counterpoint to festivals engaged with market and sponsorships by tax reduction.

In 2012 edition, everyone involved in the festival worked voluntarily. The money raised in piggy banks paid airplane tickets and lodging (some inhabitants and city artists hosted some people coming from other places). Meals were paid through scholarship exchanges at Uai Q Dança dance school, a company run by festival director Fernanda Bevilaqua. Katz recognizes that while Olhares Sobre o Corpo lasted, there was a structure and a very singular force, which could only be felt through a direct participation experience. There was a “close combination between affects and wisdom that guided the festival with a political vision on the dance field, what extended its reach” (Katz, 2012, online, n. p.).

It is possible to consider that the exchange and participation dimension created and improved by the Olhares Sobre o Corpo editions are close to the action of commons, previously mentioned by Nico Dockx and Pascal Gielen (2018GIELEN, Pascal; LAVAERT, Sonja. The salt of the earth: on communism: an interview with Antonio Negri. In: DOCKX, Nico; GIELEN, Pascal (Org.). Commonism: a new aesthetics of the real . Amsterdam: Valiz , 2018. P. 91-116. ). That is, beyond the economic logic, new ways of the financings were found and experienced.

Practices of commons in the current São Paulo context

The lack of public and private funding of artistic and cultural actions has pushed groups and companies to search for other ways of surviving. Although São Paulo city has municipal grant projects, such as Fomento ao Teatro [Funding for Theater] and Fomento à Dança [Funding for Dance], many artists need to find out different ways to continue with their works. Two examples are in the city outskirts: Coletivo Estopô Balaio and Trupe da Lona Preta.

Coletivo Estopô Balaio is formed by several artists, most of them living in the Jardim Romano neighborhood, in the eastern district of the city. It became widely known due to a flood in 2009 that affected the inhabitants’ routine for several months. Many of Jardim Romano inhabitants and almost all Estopô Balaio members were born in the northeast region of Brazil and migrated to the city of São Paulo.

One of the collective’s latest creations, A cidade dos rios invisíveis [The city of invisible rivers], addresses such issues. The theater play started at a train station near downtown, a place where countless people pass by to go to study and work during the week. Migration was both subject and dramaturgy in the play: migration between the country’s regions (Northeast-Southeast), as well as inside the city.

Following the scenes that happened during the train trip, the theater play continued with the walking of the audience across Jardim Romano. The place that could have been summarized as a passive scenery for the narrative had become as significative as the actions developed by the actors. Some inhabitants and their houses were active elements in the work: their narratives crossed with the actors’, deepening on the levels of description addressed in the performance.

The bonds developed between the Estopô Balaio and the neighborhood are not limited to this theater play. The engagement of Jardim Romano inhabitants in A cidade dos rios invisíveis was a result of work developed over time. Furthermore, there are many other actions promoted through the Estopô-Jardim Romano partnership.

Between 2017 and 2018, the group followed a schedule that has its headquarter, Casa Balaio, as a place that gathers several artistic and cultural actions. The house, rented from one of the Estopô Balaio members, is managed autonomously by the group. Income is generated by activities developed by them, such as selling books, T-shirts, DVDs, and products in the bar that is open during some events. However, the funding by public edicts is still the central Estopô’s budget.

In 2018, the group proposed the project Próxima estação: Casa Balaio (Next station: Balaio House), for the Cultural Action Program of the State of São Paulo (Proac), with the objective of continuing the actions they had been developing for seven years. In this project, the group listed the activities carried out in 2017 and 2018, in partnership with the local community and other artistic groups from São Paulo’s eastern district: monthly presentations of Sarau do Peixe, on the third Saturday of each month; Cine Varal Romano, on the second Thursday of each month; Show Cabaré D’água performances, presentation of Concerto para Espinho e Fulô, theater play by Cia do Tijolo, and As três Marias, by Chicote de Língua group, among many other actions.

The Balaio House presents itself as a kind of artistic residence for Estopô Balaio, but also for the local community. By developing activities over time, the house became a space of reference and resistance:

At another end of the city, in the western district, a similar case to Estopô Balaio: the theater and circus ensemble Trupe da Lona Preta. The group is made up of artists from the city outskirts and often acts in the farther places of the city. Similar to Estopô Balaio, the funds to maintain the group’s activities are collaborative.

In 2018, for instance, Lona Preta held a season at Teatro de Arena, downtown São Paulo. In a partnership between the managers of Teatro de Arena and members of Lona Preta, it was decided that the ticket payment would be voluntary, and the value raised would be shared between the company and the Teatro de Arena’s staff. In 2019, Lona Preta repeated that action with Galpão do Folias, home of another theater group in São Paulo, Folias D’arte.

Also, in 2019, in a partnership with Engenho Teatral - a group that deserves to be praised as well, due to the actions of common it develops -, Trupe da Lona Preta had a short season with an open rehearsal of its new work. At Engenho Teatral home, the ticket paid was voluntary, like the cases abovementioned.

Starting from critic readings of the current economic and social scenario and based on the educational principles of epic theater, Lona Preta develops an audience formation based on popular actions. The voluntary ticket paid is not a barrier to the access, and it also raises the question about the value of a theater show.

At a time when it is debated whether or not democracy (participation) is relevant in relation to the democratization (access) of culture, actions developed by Trupe da Lona Preta call attention to the absence that still exists in several places of a city that is considered a cultural pole. For participation and engagement of an audience, access is also required.

In 2015, the group was invited to participate in the I Heliópolis Theater Exhibition. The Companhia de Teatro do Heliópolis, the event organizer, invited artists, students, and researchers to write on actions and performances. In one of the critics’ review on the theater play O concerto da Lona Preta, the artist and Professor Luiz Eduardo Frin, before talking about the performance itself, observes the way the audience display is set up:

The creation of the show with scenic resources adaptable for presentations at theaters and streets is Lona Preta’s trademark. Even when performing in theaters, as is the case with the spaces of the groups abovementioned, they are often quite simple places in terms of structure. On the part of Lona Preta, there is a strong desire to approach spaces that demonstrate a commitment to their surroundings.

The examples of Estopô Balaio and Trupe da Lona Preta present us with attempts to create actions of common. Cultural activities developed by these groups are alternatives to the institutional models of biennials and the most significant art festivals. Such institutions are relevant, according to the Italian philosopher António Negri, as they are spaces of criticism, fighting arenas of ideologies where power is exposed and debated. Moreover, according to Negri, they are a market space (Gielen; Lavaert, 2018GIELEN, Pascal; LAVAERT, Sonja. The salt of the earth: on communism: an interview with Antonio Negri. In: DOCKX, Nico; GIELEN, Pascal (Org.). Commonism: a new aesthetics of the real . Amsterdam: Valiz , 2018. P. 91-116. ). Actions of common developed by the given examples show themselves as alternatives to the management formats implemented by the market and the State. They create zones that seek for a feeling of freedom within the current neoliberal scenario.

Challenges of the common

In an article published in the newspaper El Pais on June 5, 2019, the journalist Eliane BrumBRUM, Eliane. A potência da primeira geração sem esperança. El País, São Paulo, 05 jun. 2019. Disponível em: <Disponível em: https://brasil.elpais.com/brasil/2019/06/05/politica/1559743351_956676.html?fbclid=IwAR13xQeToD0wK-_BQLcnt4QRdf3GUcfBPxS6W-lTCFjfg_7cGRk3L5eqvwE >. Acesso em: 21 jun. 2019.
https://brasil.elpais.com/brasil/2019/06... , writing about a hopelessness that is affecting the new generation of climate-activist teenagers, mentions that what has moved the latest social struggles comes from causes that cross the domain of the common. In the article, the journalist mentions a passage from the psychoanalysis magazine Percurso, from the Instituto Sedes Sapientiae, in which Peter Pál Pelbart notes that:

Similar actions to the Olhares Sobre o Corpo Festival, Estopô Balaio, and Trupe da Lona Preta, besides approaching the commons investigated by Dockx and Gielen, also face the difficulty quoted by Pelbard and Brum on the increasingly hard borders between Identity and Otherness.

In this sense, so that cultural policies can be turned into politics of the culture (Otte; Gielen, 2018OTTE, Hanka; GIELEN, Pascal. When politics becomes unavoidable: from community art to commoning art. In: DOCKX, Nico; GIELEN, Pascal (Org.). Commonism: a new aesthetics of the real . Amsterdam: Valiz , 2018. P. 269-282. ), that is, so that they are no longer merely actions regulated by the market and the State, but also the result of civil movements, it is essential that we are crossed by the common. Starting from the recognition of the challenge of dealing with otherness, cultural actions need to be understood as an action that emerges from this context (hostile to the difference), but also as actions that can somehow overcome it to create new landscapes. So that this may have some possibility of existence, it is indispensable that an effort be made that invites us to elaborate on other forms of actions not limited to existing models of cultural policies.

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