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Local, national and international cultural collaborations for Global solidarity
Imaginary, a space to think democracy11
Marta Porto
Is democracy a value?
This is perhaps the most important question to start discussing culture and democracy.
Is there, in society, the perception that equality, liberty and participation in power are
valid values? Values, which define the rights that must be fought for? What is meant
by equality, liberty and participation in power in an unequal and hierarchical society? If
we assume that to sustain democracy, not only as a system of government, but as a
political regime, recognized and legitimized by its citizens, it becomes necessary that
culture builds itself as a value, as a culture that is able to recognize and reinforce the
rights of citizenship, then we suggest that culture, moreover the policies that structure
it, should prioritize the construction of an imaginary of social understanding, critique,
and fight for democratic ideals. And stimulate sensitive minds, capable of designing
societies in which the fulfillment of rights is not an act of mercy, but a conscious act
that responds to a democratic imperative.
To get into the routine of the citizens, who create ways to relate in the cities from the
values and beliefs they legitimize. What does a violent behavior in the traffic, on the
streets, between men, women, and children tells us? Or the lack of social control that
establishes a city that is no more than the sum of individualities, with all the arrogance
of imposing immediate wants and needs – such as double parking, disrespect of red
lights just because “I'm in a hurry”, music played in high volume, or loud phone
conversations when one is in enclosed public places and among strangers, or, more
seriously, killing because one has been abandoned by another who, one day, loved us,
or torturing by pure sport, psychopathy, or desire to humiliate - forms and ways to
promote or not this otherness, this necessary quality to establish the right as a pillar of
society. When the examples are exceptions we can speak of lack or need of education,
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Article from an essay, presented at the International Forum Rio Cidade Criativa, Nov, 2011
when they are majority, we can speak of social culture, of an imaginary of how we
express ourselves, how we perceive and act as a social body.
Here is one of the main axis of the cultural work, and I emphasize, not of the arts
themselves, but of cultural policy understood as axis of democracy, citizenship
formation, collaboration to founding a social imaginary that legitimizes the pillars of
democracy, because without them, there is economic growth, urban
improvements, higher consumption, but the city, a space for meetings and coexistence, stands as a territory of disputes and of those who outsmart the others, that
famous logic of winners, which, unfortunately has been predominant in this country.
This is the field of the values of citizenship, where one bets in the existence of common
beliefs – respect to human dignity, solidarity, peaceful resistance, non-discrimination –
those for which it is worth fighting, because that is where society can project its future
while it builds its present. These values are rooted on the common sense idea of ethos,
of something that all of us share if we recognize the value of democracy. Because
there is no democracy without values.
In this sense, culture demands that we exit the pure logic of vulnerability, including the
ordinary citizen in the country's and the planet’s problems, and helping to forge a
change for society as a whole. And it is precisely in this strategic point that the
specificity of the cultural field exists: cultural policies can contribute to leveraging an
agenda of contemporary citizenship that incorporates the changes taking place in
society and the demands of the new generations of Brazilians.
Aesthetics and the arts, are we just merchandise?
Do the arts, and creative processes have value in themselves? Is there a place for
critical thinking and for the aesthetic experience beyond the realm of the market? Do
experimental languages have a space guaranteed in a world where the arts market and
the policies of proclamations and awards imprint a mark of domestication and
accommodation on the artistic scene? Does a museum, an arts festival, a gallery, have
importance only because they positively impact the economy of the cities, or also and
above all because they ensure that the urban scene and societies value aesthetics as
an important dimension of life?
This has long been a theme of debate between artists, curators, heads of institutions,
and it should not assume a dichotomous position - art versus the market– but to
sustain all the support to the arts to the idea of the spectacle, tourism and creative
economy does not seem to meet the precariousness of the artistic training, the access
to arts and the diversity of Brazilian culture, or even the creation or maintenance of
cultural spaces, or the renewal of artistic languages in the country. It is as if we would
decide to run a marathon with the best runners in the world without training, without
the conditions of winning the school championship, that is, skipping important steps. It
is difficult to analyze this without analyzing the inappropriate incentives’ policy that
are long lasted in the country, and the policies of government requests for proposals,
that reduce cultural policy to the precariousness of "support" without a long-term
strategy, inclusive of citizens, especially the poorest ones, in the orbit of its actions, not
only as public initiatives financed by the public sector request for proposals and
awards, but as the purpose of politics. The broad and necessary work of training and
access to the arts, aesthetics, to the spaces and environments that promote the artistic
sense, the creation and experiences that shock, touch, boost to life, for a human
dimension that affects what we beautifully name as subjectivity. This neglected
dimension, so
badly cared for, rejected by the limited notions of “development”, that place only in
the capital, in the increase of financial flows of consumption (even exacerbated) and in
the culture of the spectacle the key to think the future, the progress. This is not the
case. There is development when society expands the space given to that, which the
poet Paul Valery used to call the “space of vague things”, the place where things don't
have a predetermined function, don't gain importance just because they generate
income or impact the economy, but because they have human value, they make you
cry, laugh, provoke curiosity, rejection, self-knowledge. Being the space of nonfunction it also functions as resistance, transgression and even opposition to the
constituted power, and therefore, it opens to citizens the necessary idea of renovation
of rights, not only the observance of the already established ones. Here lives freedom.
Freedom, thought of as the autonomy of those who invent, re-signify their time and
potentialize themselves as beings, including and especially in thinking, creating and
freely enjoying. This is the field where aesthetics meets politics as it contributes to
foster conditions where freedom is a value, and where the arts and aesthetics, are a
power for life.
Access, dialogue of cultures
The idea of acting on the trajectory of life seems to be the most appropriate when we
think of the development of cultural policies targeted to the citizen. All life long, child,
youth, adult, how can they develop the dominium and the reframing of symbolic
languages, not only to express themselves, but to act consciously in community life? Is
the support to local experiences a guarantee of expanded access, or is it necessary to
have more exchanges, circuits, flows and counter flows, creating a more vivid and
pulsing plurality, a diversity of languages and environments to create and enjoy? How
to work on creative processes, with children, in schools, families, streets and squares?
And also with young people, authors and co-authors of these processes, but also coresponsible for their, and the lives of communities and society. How the network of
institutions, programs, and cultural experiences can collaborate with tools,
methodologies, and dynamics, in dialogue with the territories, desires and worldviews
of countless Brazilians who don't appear in the official programs and, when they do,
they appear as "public", service statistics, or “social counterpart”. Opening and
connecting spaces of creation, debate, criticism, experimentalism and invention.
Promoting channels of participation, information and communication on cultural
making, and guaranteeing the rights of decision in the processes. I imagine that acting
upon life's journey is a strategy that should be anchored in 4 dimensions: Memory,
Imagination, Thinking and Language, expanding the opportunities in the fields of arts,
cultural and affective memory, in the conscious use of spare time, curiosity and
respect for differences. Promoting transits, flows, circuits, real or virtual environments,
where cultural and artistic exchanges are possible and welcomed. A diverse and
pulsing country as ours must find its own ways to respond to these challenges, to
promote strategies for its cultural spaces, the old and the new ones, formal and nonformal, and not just copy international successes, or worse, fail to raise questions, to
accommodate in known
and often precarious formulas, as fiscal incentives, public requests for proposals and
awards that translate organized demands, but don't act on those which do not
demand, the great and invisible majority.
The ones who make arts and culture are the people, the artists, but what creates the
conditions for it to be democratic, expanded and full of sense for society as a whole, is
politics.