Can I understand that which I have not experienced?
Text & podcast by Caetano Carvalho (BR, 1980) in the framework of the exhibition Is There Any World to Come?
̶ “Chauvinists”
̶ “There won’t be a coup”
Dizzying voices swinging around my head from the above.
He:
̶ “Dilma, chicken….”
She promptly replies:
̶ “So are you…”
̶ “Your mother…”
̶ “Shut up you patriarchal chauvinist”
Syncopated voices crying out the name of our first woman president a couple of hours before the impeachment.
̶ “Diiiiilmaaaa…”
̶ “Diiiiiiiilmaaaa…”
Turn on the TV to see a nest of snakes, the parliament men celebrating corruption’s victory of every vote like and like a bunch of ten years old boys they make faces to the girls. Best reality show of the year. The demonstration goes on with no faces, the voices are coming from all the high buildings around. Back lit rectangular windows show silhouettes of men shouting misogyny, while women reply with cries for democracy.
Next door a group of people smashes pans together.
̶ DEMOCRACY, what do we mean with this principle? …
The democratic system has never been in its lowest level, although we have to recognize that for the largest part of the world population, democracy has never existed, even in the limited liberal sense of bourgeois democracy. ̶ Silvia Federici introduces her talk…
̶ The feminist movement has been questioning democratic principles in its core. Women have to fight the normalizing control of their husbands.
Thora watches the buildings around, amazed as we all are, she looks at me and says “It is like a feminist urban opera”.
When I walk around the wrong corner a group of heavily gunned youngsters record my every next move, confused I look around and can’t figure out if I’m already in Brussels or still in Rio – the violence of automatic machine guns are filling up my bones. Independent of where I am now their silent stare shouts violence to my body.
Is democracy better here than there?
This is not even an introduction to the series of conversations on democracy, gender, race, class, privilege, representation…we need to have.
All recordings were made in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2016.
Special thanks Marssares and Luisa Marques for sharing their recordings with me, and to Aurélia Defrance, Michelle Mattiuzzi and Cecilia Lisa Eliceche for trying to teaching me what I haven’t experienced and probably can never fully understand.
Silvia Frederici lecture was recorded during her seminar at Escola CAPACETE.
Some of the background noises were recorded during the “Futuros sequestrados x o Anti-sequestro dos sonhos” organized by Fabiane M. Borges e Leandro Nerefuh.
Linked exhibition:
Is There Any World to Come?
