971.3
Communities of Sense and the Borders of Art and Politics: Graphic Art, Moving Images and Dancing Bodies in Urban Periphery of Rio De Janeiro
Duque de Caxias is a city located in Baixada Fluminese, a peripheral area of the Rio de Janeiro state occupied by many poor northeastern migrants attracted by work opportunities in the emerging 1940s and 1970s Brazilian southeast.
Transformed into national security area in 1971 by military coup d'état and administrated by mayors chosen by the national government until 1985, the Caxias of today is visually experienced through massive images of floods, garbage and violence. Overshadowed by the beauties of the cidade maravilhosa (marvelous city), the neighbor city of Rio de Janeiro, Caxias is, in the words of its youth, "a steamroller crushing all their dreams for generations"[1].
Against the trend we have outlined, a new scene erupts in 2000s Caxias: a youth who perceives the city as absolutely cinematic and responds visually to this finding.
This study aims to approach the intertwining of visual art, politics and everyday life by presenting and discussing the production of cultural activist group called Mate com Angu, engaged in a movement of filmmaking named “Novo Cinema da Baixada” that promotes audiovisual productions and free film screenings that end up in large dance parties, widely advertised by posters displayed throughout the city and also shared on the Internet. Our focus is the visible surface of exchange created between the posters, the movies screened, their film productions and the dancing bodies performing on the floor.
Based on Jacques Rancière’s concept of partage du sensible, we address these graphic art, moving images and performances as a montage, a framing of a controversial world within the given world by the clash of heterogeneous elements that can establish new communities of sense grounded either on the feeble political mode of consensus, or otherwise, on dissensual supplements that displace the territories and borders of art and politics.