Border Dwellers (SP)

                                      Carlos Motta, still from "Nefandus", part of the "Nefandus Trilogy", 2013.

How to talk about things that don't exist? Border Dwellers is a collab between a frequent traveller-thinker and a filmmaker from the tropics. It is inspired by the journeys across the Atlantic, such as the recent trip by Caribbean poet and thinker Édouard Glissant and African theorist and filmmaker Manthia Diawara from UK to Martinique on the board of Queen Mary II (recorded by Diawara); or the trip by French philosopher Félix Guattari to Brazil following the invitation by the psychoanalyst Suely Rolnik, in the aftermath of the military dictatorship, when new things began to emerge, which resulted in a book- Molecular Revolution in Brazil.

Border Dwellers is also much indebted to Tropicália movement, to which we would like to pay a homage, in form of “inverse antropofagia”, digesting Brazil's artistic and intellectual stimuli, and this way shifting the focus south.

As Madina Tlostanova puts it: “I would not even say that I consciously chose border thinking. Rather it chose me! When you are the border, when the border cuts through you, when you do not cross borders in order to find yourself on either side, you do not discuss borders from some zero point positionality, but instead you dwell in the border, you do not really have much choice but to be a border thinker.”

In São Paulo we would like to present a freshly squeezed and meticulously curated screening followed by Q&A, where the public is encouraged to engage as an active participant. Border Dwellers (SP) features a constellation of artworks that delve deeply into the issues proposed by this edition of the biennale (such as the “turn” or paradigmatic shift we're assisting), and elaborate on “things that don't exist”, unfolding artworks which we believe would have a special resonnance within the Brazilian context and beyond.

“Édouard Glissant: One World in Relation” is a forementioned transatlantic journey filmed by Manthia Diawara, during which Glissant shares his thoughts, at the same time poetic and philosophical, while arguing for “one world in relation”. His ideas, inspired by the condition of archipelagos (islands in relation), take shape according to the poetics of multiplicity- a fragmentary theory of global relations.

“Waiting” by Zarina Bhimji, an artist who explores history and memory, especially of postcolonial Africa and Europe, was shot in a factory in Kenya, based on the previous research into this slice of history. The resulting artwork is an “abstraction that hovers somewhere between film and painting- a monochrome that combined with a soundtrack becomes immersive.”

“Nefandus” by Carlos Motta is the first film from the Nefandus Trilogy that explores the relationship between colonialism and homosexuality from the viewpoint of the colonized. It is at the same time a personal and historical account, as well as a poetic journey into a vast and nameless landscape haunted by the ghosts from the past - a dark river in the tropical forests of Colombia. In other words: Decolonial aesthetics.

“Otolith II” by the Otolith Group (Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar) is the second film in the Otolith Trilogy. Shot partly in a Mumbai slum and narrated by a fictional character Dr. Sagar, it interconnects the harsh reality and improvisation of the life in the slum with “third world” feminist concerns and outwordly gravity.

“Ativu” by César Schofield Cardoso is a video inspired by resistance fighter Amílcar Cabral, a leading figure of the independence movement in Guiné-Bissau and Cape Verd, that reconnects his poetic legacy with the present-day activist positions from the archipelago.

Neil Beloufa's “Kempinski” is a fiction-doc that features people in Mali revealing their hopes and dreams for the future. The “actors” recount in present tense how they envisage the future to come. Their imaginaries reflect (un)realizable utopias. And precisely there lies their potential. Since we arrived at a point in history- perhaps a major historical turning point, a rupture in space and time- where we cannot any longer continue to “move forward”, putting the Western fiction of progress into question.

+ Free journal for take-away.

TROPICAL = RESISTANCE

TROPICAL = FREEDOM

Rosana Sancin + Victoria Verissimo

Cape Verd Islands, February 27, 2014.