Brazil - Cross Dynamics of Otherness

There is a sense of historical impotence when one is confronted with the mavericks perpetrated by Brazilian government in recent years. One of the most significant outcomes from such lines of action are the scorch and beratement of dialectical trajectories. To subtract or deny the possibilities of dynamism brought by such trajectories is to prohibit the transitions, transgressions, and transversality that they entail thus lacerating the very multi-layered fabric that constitutes Brazil and South America. 

Following Zalamea’s reflections on South America, the notion of weaving — interlacing — and pendular movements — back-and-forth — become key instruments to navigate the complexities brought into being by Brazilian cultures over the past few years. Both internally and externally, its outcomes seem to thrive on bipolar trajectories. Magic and science, become magic-as-science and science-as-magic; local and universal, become local-universe and universal-locale. Such manoeuvres are easily observable in the ever-expanding scale of a single condo in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Aquarius, or in the sinusoidal epistemological games in Ana Vaz’s Apiyemiyekî?. All confirmations of Brazil as a pivotal platform in producing, holding, building upon, and cherishing the results of such pendular movements. 

These pendular movements also suggested Portuguese artists to immerse in the political and historical convulsions of Brazil’s geography. In this sense, both Susana de Sousa Dias investigation on Fordlândia and João Salaviza / Renée Nader Messora living project in the Krahô community testify the need to understand other alterities and to negotiate very different world views. 

At this year’s Porto Summer School, participants will be immersed in these discussions, participating in daily workshops with these artists, who will be in Porto during the first week of July 2022. Between artistic practices, creative atmospheres, and a historical and contemporary dive into the epistemologies of the South.

The Summer School will be organized in partnership with Kebraku, a cultural association based in Portugal that fosters the diversity of Brazilian culture