Associação Cultural Videobrasil

Held on May 22, 2015 at the Goethe-Institut in São Paulo, the opening session of Southern Observatory — a research project focusing on the Global South and its representation in the arts and social sciences — revolved around the notion of “Counternarratives.” Understood as a critical project or a discourse device worthy of being discussed in a more speculative and therefore less predefined fashion, the debate about the South strove to set itself free from fixed geographies to embrace symbolic, political and/or historical territories in a broader way. Southern Observatory is a study and debate platform integrated with the 19^th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil | Southern Panoramas — and with Goethe-Institut’s Episodes of the South project. By August, the Observatory will feature as many as four meetings, based on the thematic sections in an anthology of texts slated for release in October 2015 as part of the 19^th Festival publications, and feeding into the event’s upcoming Public Programs Seminars.

Curated by Sabrina Moura and featuring Amy Buono (art historian, UFRJ/UNICAMP) Marcelo Rosa (sociologist, UNB/ University of Cape Town), Pedro Cesarino (anthropologist, USP) and Kelly Gillespie (anthropologist, University of the Witwatersrand), the project’s opening meeting also had collaboration from four researchers selected through a call for entries — Alex Flynn, Cristina Bonfiglioli, Marina Guzzo and Nathalia Lavigne — and from members of the Goethe-Institut and Videobrasil teams — Katharina von Ruckteschell-Katte, Patrícia Qulici and Ruy Luduvice.

Buono’s and Cesarino’s research work kicked off the day’s program, with debates focusing on the creation of tools and methodologies that can respond to the specificities of art production from outside the Euro-American axis. Speaking on the coexistence of various historicity regimes and agencies in the production and circulation of objects produced in colonial Brazil, Amy Buono called for a broadening of the traditional Art History field. Centering on three different types of artifacts — the lucky charms known as bolsas de mandinga, tiles, and Tupinambá Indian feathery —, the historian asserted: “Each of these art forms reveals trajectories that encompass different cultures, transits between different continents and time periods.” For his part, Cesarino went over the connections between Art and Anthropology, and the contributions of this discipline to the eroding of a totalizing view of Western theories of art. For him, the different modes of existence that cohabit in contemporary Brazil raise fundamental issues to the understanding of South-South relations.

To Kelly Gillespie, the input from these researchers indicates new epistemic forms that emerge to destabilize Western narrative modes. “The quest for other epistemologies leads us to look into other modes of existence, other ways of being in the world,” says Gillespie. The second part of the meeting featured Marcelo Rosa (currently a visiting professor at the University of Cape Town) via videoconference. Rosa not only offered a counterpoint to the notion of a Global South, he also problematized the postulates of certain authors who are discussing the Theories of the South, such as Jean and John Comaroff, and Boaventura de Souza Santos. Speaking on the uses and occupation of “land” in Brazil and South Africa, Marcelo Rosa called on the debaters to consider the South from the perspective of practices, concreteness, and specificity.

Finally, the references brought in by Buono, Cesarino, Rosa and Gillespie were cross-analyzed with the practices of each participant, evidencing how slippery the epistemic boundaries of a possible South can be. What in fact constitutes local, specific knowledge? How can we approach it? How can we escape the grip of Euro-American theoretical assumptions that at times imprison our research work? If we can generate theory from the South, how can we use it effectively to produce knowledge? What is the artist’s role in this? These are difficult questions to answer, and they will be revisited in the upcoming Southern Observatory meetings. 

References:

Laboratório de Sociologia Não Exemplar
JWTC Salon #5