• Home
  • About Us
  • Contact
  • ENG
  • POR
  • ESP
  • Around the world
    • Sexuality & Art
  • Library
    • SPW Books & Reports
    • Monthly announcements
    • SPW Multimedia
    • Working Papers
    • Newsletters
    • We recommend
      • Papers and articles
      • Publications and resources
      • Relevant links
  • Strategic Analysis
  • Research & Politics
  • SPW Activities

Around the world, Sexuality & Art

The ‘Family ” goes beaching

28 Jan 2016


desempresários1

In late 2015,   a highly regressive  ‘Statute on the Family ‘  was approved by a Special Committee  of  the Brazilian Congress. Around that same time,  the  art collective Corpos Informáticos circulated on the web the photographs a  street performance: “I am floating”.   The photos shows  a “family”  dressed for the beach, happily walking around  Ceilândia,  a city in the periphery of Brasilia,  located at thousand miles from the sea  coast. As in the case of other performative interventions of the group,   “I am floating” is colourfully ironic.  

It was not the intention of  Corpos Informáticos to link the performance to the House Committee approval of the ‘Statute of the Family’.   Yet  the coincidence was fruitful. The  images of   ” I’m floating”  projected a remarkable  parody of  the gap between what conservative lawmakers are proposing and Brazilian families’  realities.

When we thought of posting  the photos of  “I am floating”  we have invited Bia Medeiros –artist, researcher, professor at UNB– who coordinates the group to write about the performance. Very  generously, she and Natasha Albuquerque  shared with us a  short but enlightening text about the premises of their work. We thank them!

“I’m Floating’ 

In 2016, Brasilia completes 56 years and the Research Group Corpos Informáticos (www.corpos.org), based in Brasilia, completes its 24 years in the course of which it has investigated contemporary art through  performance, video art, urban composition and “fuleragem” (unruliness).

Corpos informáticos is a group,  a pack, a bunch, perhaps a family, another family.  Around 50 people have passed by the group, mostly students from the University of Brasilia (UNB) who, one  day,  will be artists, teachers, masters and doctors.

‘I am Floating ‘ was an urban performance proposed by Natasha Albuquerque to Corpos Informáticos and to Corpos Expandidos — which are our friends and lovers – for the 5th round of the event Performance Body Politics. This  event created in 2010 is, perhaps, the wider virtual space for art performances and art as politics in Brazil

“I’m Floating’  departs from the incomprehensible,  from what is not known. It searches for surfaces and few moments of deepening. It can also be portrayed as making a ‘poker face’. We swam in the nothingness and have floated in the landscape created by the CEI (Campaign for the Eradication of Urban Squatters)  from which Ceilândia, perhaps the largest Northeastern city outside of the Brazilian Northeast,  was born.

Is Ceilândia Brasilia (Braz-island)? Where’s the island? Where is the beach? Is there a pool there?

Fuleragem (unruliness) is our theoretical foundation: it challenges, it defi(l)es state policies, it lies, it laughs. We also use the Scanning Method: a visual apprehension model created by Joseph Beuys that consists of feeling the body in continuity with the landscape, of extending its lines to the infinite line of the horizon. Scanning explores the relationship between human beings and the open space and strikes discontinuous and fragmented visions of the big city. To slide in the landscape. To float in  the air,  in the eyes, in the senses, in  the meaning:  a body that floats in the wind, that looks but does not see and then becomes a landscape.

Another starting point of our work is Drifting, the practice theorized by the French situationist Guy Debord,  consisting of  following a path that is not necessarily the most obvious: to allow  ourselves to be taken by desire and the senses. This takes us to chance and indifference, which also pertains to the drift: it is not necessarily a destination, it is a political practice, another politics.

Rio de Janeiro / Brasilia, January 29, 2016

       Maria Beatriz de Medeiros and Natasha Albuquerque

To learn more about Corpos Informáticos 

 

Related

Categoria: Around the world, Sexuality & Art Tags: Brazil, discrimination, homosexuality, LGBTQ rights

Sharing

Tag Cloud

abortion abortion laws Africa asia Brazil BRICS china contraception criminalization discrimination Egypt feminisms gender gender equality gender identity HIV HIV&AIDS homosexuality HR defenders HR regional systems human rights india intersex rights Islamic societies latin america LGBTQ rights marriage laws political economy political repression race religious discourses religious extremism reproductive rights sexual identity sexuality sexual politics sexual rights sexual violence sex work SOGI trans rights uganda UN US violence

Sexuality Policy Watch

admin@sxpolitics.org
Rio de Janeiro | Brasil

Connect with me

Link to my Facebook Page
Link to my Rss Page
Link to my Twitter Page
Link to my Youtube Page
FW2 Agência Digital
 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.