Chão (Landless) was the closing event of the NO TERRA NULLIUS interdisciplinary program, co-curated with my dear colleague and fellow Latine Galo E. Rivera at SINEMA TRANSTOPIA. Maybe I would now change the name of this day to "O Chão do Luan" just because I like to play with the words.
The idea behind this day was simple: it is impossible to talk about land and land struggles without talking about the MST, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement), currently the biggest social movement in Latin America and worldwide recognized as such.
Here are some brief words about them, written by them: "The MST is a mass social movement, formed by rural workers and by all those who want to fight for land reform and against injustice and social inequality in rural areas."
When it comes to Brazilian films, inevitably the MST marked its presence in other days of the same program: on Susanna Lira's "A Mãe de Todas as Lutas" ("The Mother Of All Struggles") through the stories of Maria Zelzuita, survivor of the Eldorado do Carajás massacre (1996), as the feature film of "Autonomia e Direito" ("Autonomy and Entitlement") day, and with their own theather group Coletivo Banzeiros in "Voice of The Earth" by Benjamin de Burca and Bárbara Wagner.
To be fairly honest, I was shaking when holding the microphone to start the evening at the garden of the Sinema. Not only because the MST has been a role model and motif of national pride in midst of so many social, political and environmental catastrophes in Brazil but because what we were about to show was also something that I, as curator, was holding with so much care that I wanted to demand the same from the present audience and their gaze. "Please listen to what we have to say, but listen it carefully".
Luan Caja – an intuitive, multimedia artist who explores performance and ritual song as a process of self-healing – was invited by Galo to perform the opening act of this program. Luan started singing from the construction rocks behind the low walls of our garden. People looked at me confused, as perhaps they hadn't notice how Luan carefully climbed these rocks while they enjoyed their drinks in that warm spring evening. Kindly and powerful, his voice expanded in the air of the entire yard:
bonito é ver
o sol nascer.
Suddenly all the worried voices struggling in their own mouths, cigarettes and drinks fell silent. Ashamed? Confused? Surprised? I couldn't tell. Luan's voice struck me in a way that recalled all the memories of collective singing, its simple and beautiful structures and every meaning and re-signification of the song in every repetition. I cannot tell how does it feel to somebody who had never experienced it in its native form.
I wonder what Luan felt while watering his roots, while singing at the top of his guts, while evoking his and his ancestors memories through his body. Could people see the magnitude of his pain? A boy holding his dry pieces – tree roots – that have nowhere to call home as home does not exist as he used to know. There, raw, vulnerable, opening up to us as we could taste the water that wet the roots and the water that came from his eyes.
Eu vi, eu vi
Eu vi, eu vi
Você brincar
Eu vim, eu vim
Testemunhar
I wish Galo was there too to get emotional and jiggle with me. In these moments you try to look around and find the people who can see what you see. I was shaking so much while recording this video:
Cameras cannot lie. The meaning that someone will attribute to an image will invariably depend on what lives at the core of each individual. Você viu, Luan? Eu acho que também vi. Eu acho que eles não viram. Azar o deles. At this point – probably because before becoming an anthropologist I was a sad marketing gal – I do care about my audience. Are we being able to share the message we want to share? How educated is my audience? Are they able to understand an art piece like Luan's?
At the end of the day, some unknown Korean words from Mud Man translated by my partner echoed in my mind: who will see, will see. Who will hear, will hear. And I guess who wants to understand, will eventually understand.
Diva!