The Collectivity of Art: Collectives of Art, Class War and Peripheral Capitalism in Brazil

- Presentation speakers
  - Marcelo Mari, Universidade de Brasília / Visiting Professor at Università di Bologna
- Download presentation
  - Marcelo Mari The Collectivity of Art - Collectives of Art Class War and Peripheral Capitalism in Brazil.pdf
Abstract:

Against neoliberal economics and the fatal march of globalization in the late 1990s, young people worldwide began to organize ways of fighting and resistance to the contradictions created by the state of exception policies and losses of civil and labour around the world. In tactical terms, these young people have created alternative vehicles for information and were benefited by the internet as debate and mobilization tool. This new form of combat and art instruments meant the emergence of artistic collectives. These groups of artists or collectives, in addition to the criticism of art production as individualized production, went beyond to the traditional metier of the visual arts and denied the traditional definition of status of the visual arts to become combative agents in the political and cultural level. In Brazil, the names of these collectives marked history and approached social movements such as Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto, MTST (Homeless Workers Movement). Among them: Collective Skeleton and Bijari Group. The symbolic power of the work of these collectives was the joint political action with the Homeless Workers Movement (MTST) in the unused building situated in Julio Prestes Avenue, São Paulo downtown, Brazil, with direct transmission and dialogue with the Havana Biennial in 2005. After that, things have changed configuration in Brazilian scenario. With the resurgence of disputes between social classes in the cities – given the irreversible crisis of representative politics – in recent years and in particular from June, 2013 until nowadays, many political and cultural events or cultural political character took to the streets of main Brazilian cities.