I recently became acquainted with the work of the Brazilian director Glauber Rocha who was very active in establishing the Cinema Novo with its revolutionary motivation and dialectic esthetic.
Lately, some of the themes that I have been provocatively bringing up in conversations with friends-about art, revolution, activity, collaboration and the need for a contextualized representation of the estethicised Latin figure – have found their way to me in the form of actual material. Not that the theoretical banality that composes most of these conversations hasn’t caused enough existential angst in my life to even bother going into details, but I am finally finding manifestations of these issues in the world around me. I am beginning to gather some actual material, something to look at, touch, feel and share. In Weimar, I have found that there are several international artists who are working with the identity issues, political barriers and social stigmas of being a transcultural citizen. The eroticized glance of the anglo-european avant-garde has had its fill of imagery to draw from and has even welcomed the outsider into the safe enclosure of its schools of higher training. Whether this is for voyeuristic purposes, the pleasure of having a closer look, or pedagogic ends, mainly, to educate or initiate the savages into the mysteries of rational thought and civilization, the opportunity for major infiltration, provocative action and the development of new schemas is before us. It is time, I believe, to make the implications of the ignorant gazes and preconceptions apparent to the public. Through returning the gaze, and by making the spectator aware of the lenses with which their gazes are filtered, a new understanding of multiculturalism through dialogue can be made possible. The multiculturalism that has served as a marketing strategy for international politics, tourism and the arts needs to be critiqued for major flaws: those that arise when multicultural becomes a spectacle, when ethnic presence is mistaken for ethnic representation or when it translates into a society’s right to partake in the enjoyment of the other without accepting the other’s otherness.
The Esthetic of Hunger is Glauber Rocha’s manifesto in which he deals with the necessity of a latin american cinema that sets itself apart from the centrality of euro-centric forms and aims to develop its own set of aesthetic symbolism that works with the mythological, geographical, political and cultural idiosyncracies of the people who are making the films.
“Latin America remains, undeniably, a colony, and what distinguishes yesterday’s colonialism from today’s colonialism is merely the more polished form of the colonizer and the more subtle forms of those who are preparing future domination. The international problem of Latin America is still a case of merely exchanging colonizers. Our possible liberation will probably come, therefore, in the form of a new dependency.
The economic and political conditioning has led us to philosophical weakness and impotence that engenders sterility when conscious and hysteria when unconscious. It is for this reason that the hunger of Latin America is not simply an alarming symptom: it is the essence of our society.”
Glauber Rocha, Rio de Janeiro; 1965.
These symptoms apply today, not only to the post-colonial cultural crises, the marginal crises as some people call it, but also to the anglocentric avant-garde, whose voices have lost their strength and potential in the face of political and social sterility. The hunger is a metaphysical and existential hunger that cannot and has not been satiated by the endless possibilities of consumption, freedom and media access. What is the solution to the hunger we experience when we want to make a difference but can’t? When our radical or subversive impulse is swallowed by the logic of capitalism and its endless spectacle of representations and manifestos for freedom? How are we to feed the gluttonous void of our dreams?
Scenes from Abroad 