Events

Friday of the Month: Contemporary Indigenous Art

04/26, 5pm

Room 24 of the Social Sciences Building at USP

Streaming via Youtube: https://youtube.com/live/_NHLMKUQFEw

Invitations:

Adolfo Tapaiüna (Member of the Miriã Mahsã Collective, Visual Artist, Digital Illustrator, Graduating in Design at UEA)

Paula Guajajara (Graduate in Literature at FFLCH/USP, part of the team at the Museum of Indigenous Cultures)Sarah Feldman (Architect and professor at IAU-USP)

Sandra Benites (master and doctoral student in Social Anthropology at PPGAS/MN/UFRJ, curator and educator)

Mediation:

Paula Berbert (PPGAS/USP PhD student)

Currently, the production of indigenous artists, who mix cosmological references, visualities and indigenous narratives with Western technologies and artistic languages, have promoted fissures in the Brazilian contemporary art scene. Artists such as Jaider Esbell, Denilson Baniwa, Gustavo Caboco and Yacunã Tuxá, just to name a few, occupy institutionalized spaces, are part of the contemporary art market and make us rethink the dynamics of art in Brazil and the world.

With the intention of debating this topic, which we believe is fundamental for the academy and for the community in general, the Friday of the Month of April promotes the table "Contemporary Indigenous Art", which will address issues related to curatorial activities, production of objects, use of digital technologies and other elements mobilized by contemporary indigenous art.

On April 25th, the film "São Palco - Cidade Afropolitana", by Jasper Chalcraft and Rose Satiko Gitirana Hikiji, will be shown at the Maria Antonia University Center. The exhibition is part of the second NauCine meeting, a partnership between the MariAntonia Center and the study group of the Urban Anthropology Center (NauCidades) of the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH) at USP to celebrate the 36 years of existence of the laboratory of the USP Urban Anthropology Center (LabNAU). The event will take place in the Carlos Reichenbach room in the Rui Barbosa building.

Programming:
4:30 pm - Presentation of guests
5 pm - Screening of the film followed by a debate with directors, researchers and guests

Film synopsis:
What do African artists who arrive in Brazil in recent years carry with them on their journey? São Paulo is the stage for a creative diaspora that builds an Afropolitan present in dialogue with a country marked by openings, contradictions and tensions.

We are waiting for you!

Reinaldo Macuxi and Eric Kamikiawa (PPGAS/USP PhD students)

Indigenous students will bring their experiences when leaving the community for university, pointing out the challenges and opportunities that arose along the way, whether at undergraduate or postgraduate level.

Center for Amerindian Studies (CEstA/USP)

Rua do Anfiteatro, 181, Colmeia - favo 8
University City - São Paulo - SP

Responsible Professor: Rafael Antunes Almeida
Postdoctoral student at the Department of Anthropology (USP)
Professor at the University of International Integration of Afro-Brazilian Lusofonia (UNILAB)

Information on the poster.

The film “A Câmara”, by directors Cristiane Bernardes and Tiago de Aragão, will be shown on April 5th, at 3pm, in the auditorium of the Laboratory of Image and Sound in Anthropology (LISA). After the session, a debate will take place with both directors present.

Synopsis:
“From the depths of the Brazilian parliament, we follow female deputies doing politics. Topics such as reproductive rights, education, secular state, racism and political polarization come to the fore, as we follow these women closely in their political struggles and performances.
The Chamber is an observational documentary that follows the routine of federal deputies in the 56th legislature. Filmed between May and July 2022, the film presents experiences and spaces in the Chamber of Deputies based on the presence and performances of women from different states and political spectrums exercising their mandates.”

I will present an ongoing research project, which aims to comparatively ethnograph radical and innovative initiatives to consolidate protected areas (in this case, indigenous lands and common use territories of riverside communities) and to achieve territorial rights, in the light of conservation conviviality and some subfields of anthropology, notably studies on science and technology. Convivial conservation presents itself as an approach to conserving biological and cultural diversity that takes seriously not only cascading species extinctions, but also the structural pressures of our economic system and the violent socio-ecological and increasingly authoritarian political realities in which we live. It is a set of management principles and a post-capitalist approach to conservation that attempts to promote radical equity, structural transformation and environmental justice, based on Ivan Illich's notion of a user-friendly tool. The two situations to be addressed are: (i) the recovery area (today village) Mãe Terra of the Terena people of the Cachoeirinha Indigenous Land, in the municipality of Miranda, in Mato Grosso do Sul, as an autonomous movement that aims to gain official recognition of the their right to land and which is at the origin of the Caianas indigenous organization; and (ii) the initiative, which emerged in 2012, as a result of the mobilization of a network of actors from civil society, the social movement and the public sphere, to regularize the land tenure situation of riverside communities in the state of Amazonas through concession terms real right of collective use for community associations located outside protected areas, under the category of common use territories. The research has been conducted collaboratively, respectively, with the indigenous organization Terena Caianas (Indigenous Environmentalist Collective of Action for Nature, Agroecology and Sustainability) and with the team of the Territorial Planning Program of the NGO Instituto Internacional de Educação do Brasil, protagonist collectives in both initiatives.

Henyo T. Barretto has a PhD in Social Anthropology from FFLCH/USP (2001) and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Anthropology at UnB. He researches indigenous lands and protected areas in the Northeast, the Amazon and the Cerrado (the topic of his presentation), and has recently returned from a post-doctoral stay at Wageningen University.

The Urban Anthropology Center/NAU (today LabNAU, laboratory), celebrates three decades of activities – it began in 1988 – inspired by the initiative of two professors, Ruth Cardoso and Eunice Durham. In a department based mainly on classic authors, fundamental to the study and research in the area of indigenous ethnology (as was tradition at the time) and long before the current discussion about gender and female presence in the academic area, Ruth and Eunice led a turnaround: from the choice of study topics as postgraduate students – not without disagreements with the advisors – to the lines of research of their own students, already as professors in the Department of Anthropology at USP.

One of its initiatives, the “Monday Seminars”, which gives the title to this proposal, opened an opportunity for students to get in touch with unconventional authors in the bibliography of the department's programs at the time: Louis Althusser, Antonio Gramsci, Saskia Sassen, Jean Lojkine, Michel Foucault, Nicos Poulantzas, Howard Becker and others, from different orientations and areas of knowledge and outside the scope of classical Anthropology.

This initiative coincides with a certain situation, the “discovery of the periphery” in the city which, already in the 1970s, had social, political and economic consequences and affected the way of life of its residents. In this way, a range of research objects was opened up for his advisees and advisees – and not just in São Paulo. In the book From the Periphery to the Center: Research Trajectories in Urban Anthropology (2012) I describe this entire process in detail; here is just a quick mention, to justify this proposal and the title, which also incorporates the collection of books that LabNAU coordinates with several publishers. The idea is to resume the legacy of this seminar, opening space for the reading and discussion of contemporary authors, not necessarily linked to the area of Urban Anthropology, to expand the panorama that is sometimes restricted to the scope of ongoing research projects. To this end, a meeting is proposed every fifteen days (on Monday, of course), led by an exhibitor, having previously indicated a cutting-edge, highly controversial text (book chapter, article, conference)...< /p>

There will be eight meetings in the first semester of 2024, alternating between presentations by professors from the Department who have already been invited and postgraduate students, so as not to overload and allow time to read the indicated texts. The seminars will be open not only to the faculty and students of our Department, but to members of other university centers who already participate in LabNAU research groups and to anyone else who is interested. I will then send the calendar with the title of the presentations and the texts recommended for prior reading. For this semester, four teachers were willing to participate and the idea is that the seminar will continue, so that each colleague can subsequently present the current state of reflections and research in their respective areas.

In Technology of the Oppressed, David Nemer draws on extensive ethnography to provide a rich account of how favela residents appropriate different technologies to navigate digital and non-digital sources of oppression - and even, at times, thrive . Based on the work of educator Paulo Freire, Nemer develops a decolonial and intersectional theoretical framework called Mundane Technology to analyze how technologies can simultaneously be spaces of oppression and tools in the struggle for freedom. Nemer also addresses the relationship between disinformation and radicalization and the rise of the new extreme right. Contrary to the techno-optimistic belief that technology will save the poor, even with access to technology, these marginalized people face numerous sources of oppression, including technological biases, racism, classism, sexism, and censorship. Still, the community spirit, love, resilience and resistance of favela residents enable their quest for freedom.

Mini Bio:
David Nemer is a professor in the Media Studies and Anthropology departments and director of the Latin American Studies program at the University of Virginia. He is also an associate professor at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Nemer is the author of the books Tecnologia do Oprimido (Milfontes, 2021 & MIT Press, 2022), winner of the Marcel Roche Prize, and Favela Digital: The other side of technology (Editora GSA, 2013). He holds master's degrees in Anthropology from the University of Virginia and in Computer Science from the University of Saarland (Germany), and a Ph.D. in Computing, Culture and Society from Indiana University. Nemer writes for The Guardian, El País, The Huffington Post (HuffPost), Salon, The Intercept_, UOL and CartaCapital.

Welcome! The Permanent Affirmative Action Commission (COPAF), the student representation and the PPGAS coordination organized some activities for you to find out about the different processes that accompany the university life of postgraduates in Anthropology at USP. We had to bring forward some activities earlier than initially planned. Your presence is very important!