Fernanda Roman Morais Artistic Research – University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Dr. Sruti Bala 2nd reader: Dr. Jeroen Boomgaard
“Selvagem”
Devour and the origin of the warrior’s strength
Keywords: Anthropophagy; Performance Art; Taste; Consumerism; Capitalism; Patriarchy
Table of Contents:
Abstract to Devour ……….………... 2
Introduction to Devour ……….…….……….….….. 3
Devour and Anthropophagy in Brazilian Culture ..……….……...… 9
1. Anthropophagic Movement – re-connecting to primitive rituals………..……..9
2. Re-Capturing Anthropophagy – devouring the native ritual and the “Manifesto”. 13 3. Anthropophagy and Performance I – Lygia Clark ………..………..14
4. Anthropophagy and Performance II – Zé Celso and Teatro Oficina Uzyna Uzona.17 5. Anthropophagy, Clark and Oficina – ‘Modus-Operandi’……….…22
Devouring Abramovic ………..………….…….. 24
1. Immateriality facade………25
2. Taste……….27
3. Capitalism and Consumerism……….28
4. Sugar and Colonial history……….30
5. Commodification……….32
6. Patriarchy………33
7. Anthropophagy and Performance III – Marina Abramovic……….………36
Conclusion ……… 37
Abstract to devour
The present thesis aims to analyze to what extent the concept of devouring can be conceptualized in art performance practices. Moreover, it intends to categorize the concept of devouring as a constant tool for development, survival and empowerment in Western society. To accomplish this, the thesis is divided into four parts. Firstly, an introduction to the notion of devouring. In this section, the thesis will examine devour as a concept, including anthropophagy and other indigenous rituals, and analyses of performance practices, which will be explained in order to understand devour and the origin of the warrior’s strength. The second part will deepen the concept of devouring into the context of Brazilian culture and art. Oswald de Andrade’s (1890–1954) Anthropophagic Manifesto shall be used to analyze several artworks that deploy and engage devouring practices from a variety of theoretical perspectives. Three main works will be analyzed in the second section: Lygia Clark’s (1920-1988)
Cannibalism (1973) and Anthropophagic Slobber (1973), and the work of Teatro Oficina Uzyna Uzona (1958-) focusing on the ritualistic play Macumba Antropófaga (2011). These art
works will be used as examples in which the concept of devour is both extended and literally used in art practices. Clark’s work will be analyzed as opening a possibility for a pure ritual practice and communion between participants. Teatro Oficina Uzyna Uzona will be read under not only a ritual perspective but considering the history behind their theatre plays and ritual theatre. Lastly, the latest of Marina Abramovic’s (1946-) performances, selling a macaron that tastes like her in Macaron (2017), will be analyzed to frame a contemporary manner of conceptualizing devour in art practices. The analyses will approach the art works from three different perspectives: capitalism, colonialism, and through a Feminist lens. The conclusion will aim to define the possibilities of connecting the concept of devouring and performance practices, introducing the possibility of expanding the concept of devouring to engage not only with performance practices but also with scholarly theoretical research.
Introduction to Devour
“We are all cannibals”
1“Selvagem” – Devour and the origin of the warrior’s strength aims to place the act of devouring as a tool to enhance the warrior’s strength. Accordingly, in anthropophagic rituals, when one eats an Other one can acquire the skills of the dead person. This type of ritual was defined as a savage ritual. Therefore, the title of this thesis is “Selvagem”. If one translates it into English, ‘savage’, one would face a colonialist view on this title. However, to be “selvagem” in my understanding, entails being strong and in constant contact with one’s primitive inner self, acknowledging that one is and will always be an animal. “Selvagem” is the wisdom of the nature and the ability to co-habit with different species. If someone were to ask me who is a ‘savage’? I would never say it is the native people. The ‘savage’ for me is the invading white man who devoured native’ land. To embrace the “selvagem” side of oneself is to re-connect with something that was always here but was briefly shadowed by the ‘savage, capitalist, patriarchal’ world. The warrior’s strength lies in being “selvagem”.
The etymology of the word devour comes from Latin de- “down” + vorare “to swallow”, in Latin devorare.2 The verb “to devour” has four different meanings according to the Oxford Dictionary: 1. To eat quickly, greedily, hungrily, or ravenously; 2. To rapidly destroy, engulf, or lay waste; 3. To take in avidly with the intellect or with one’s gaze; 4. To absorb or engross the mind fully, especially in a destructive manner. All four definitions comprehend different manners of understanding the concept of devouring. However, when analyzing performance practices, the definition of devour can be enhanced to a larger comprehension. To devour is not only to eat, it entails a branch of possibilities and aspects as defined previously, but to devour also entails the transmutation and transformation of history, the self, the society, to consume or be consumed and the consumption.My intention in relating the concepts of devouring and performance practices, is due not only to my personal background as a performer, but also because the concept of devouring creates a challenging scene when taken into a performance space. Where does the concept of devouring take place? Due to it’s several possibilities of analyzes, to create an art work which belongs to a devouring
1 Claude Lévi-Strauss, We are all Cannibals: And Other Essays (European Perspectives: A Series in Social
Thought and Cultural Criticism), 2016.
sphere is already, by itself, a political statement. Over the course of this thesis I aim to open the reader’s view to the perspective that the concept of devouring relies on an embodiment experience, transforming the artist’s, or the spectator’s body, in the concept of devouring itself. To contextualize my perspective, and consequently my experience with the concept of devouring, I need to place myself within society. I am Brazilian with indigenous roots from Kaingang clan, a race which later mixed with Spanish immigrants. Thus, my devour experience started in my early years when I encounter the history and rituals of my own country and people. The concept of devouring has several faces. Indigenous groups, from various clans in Brazil, perform distinct rituals that can be understood as devouring rituals. The most recognized one is the anthropophagic ritual, briefly explained in the first paragraph. It is also known that native Brazilians were devoured by white ‘civilization’. Not in the literal manner, but white colonizers absorbed our land and interpreted our rituals in a destructive way. German explorer Hans Staden (1525 – 1576) was the first author who wrote and printed a book about Brazil. In his book Warhaftige Historia und beschreibung eyner Landtschafft der Wilden Nacketen,
Grimmigen Menschfresser-Leuthen in der Newenwelt America gelegen, Staden narrated his
experiences in the tropical land, as well as the tribe’s ritual of anthropophagy.3 He divided the anthropophagic ritual in three phases: the fattening, the slaughter, and the butchery. The victim was never killed as soon as they arrived in the clan. The preparation could take days, or months. The first phase, the fattening, began when the victim was taken into a cabin where woman and children would assault the prisoner and sing revenge songs. After this, the victim was well treated. The clan would invite friends from other groups to attend to a feast, in which the prisoner was also invited to eat and drink. In the second phase, the slaughter, the Cacique would slash the prisoner’s neck.4 The women would take the deceased’s body close to the fire, and shave his skin off, then they would close his anus with a stick, in such a manner nothing would escape from the body. After this, the third and final phase of the ritual begins. The butcher of the tribe would cut the legs of the dead above his knees, and his arms close the torso. Four women would take these four limbs and dance and sing, around their houses. This was the highest point of the ritual, the cathartic moment. When the clan was in a euphoric state, it was
3 As he was not Portuguese he was spared by the tribe and during the period of nine months was able to witness such rituals. Another case is the Sardinha’s bishop, who in 1556, did not have the same fortune and was eaten by the Caetés. It is not possible to check written materials about Sardinha’s story, one must rely on verbal stories that survive through time.
time to cook the meat from the corpse and share it with their guests. The head and the guts were given to the women to use in soup to feed only them and their children.5
Due to this narrative, native Brazilians were called savages and considered enemies of the nation6. Indigenous groups were enslaved by general-ruler Mem de Sá, who ordered that the clans should be “enslaved with no exception”, and as a result they were devoured by the colonialist society in five years. As a consequence of Staden’s influence over the intellectuals of his time, and the illustrations on his book made by the Belgian artist Théodore de Bry (1528 – 1598), that Brazilian culture was shaped under a cannibal label, the land of devouring, or perhaps, the land of devoured. A different perspective of the concept of devouring when analyzing Brazilian history is the idea colonizers held due to Dutch theologian Kaspar van Baarle (1584-1648). Baarle claimed, in 1500 A.D., that under the Ecuador line there was no sin: “ultra aequinotialem non pecavi”7 thus justifying the behavior during colonial times, “as if the line that separate hemispheres, also separates virtue from addiction.”8 Western society’s vision has barely changed. Tourists still come to Brazil to party, to be promiscuous, and to perpetuate their colonizer gaze when touring in the favelas. Thus far, Brazil continues to be the devoured land.
If one looks at devour as a phenomenon in Western society, one can analyze the urge for possessing as one of its indicatives. The fascination for the ‘primitivism’ is maintained in the fetishization of ‘owning’ an Other. In this case, both ‘primitivism’ and the Other, refers to the people of color, which is not limited to black people, but includes Latin and Indigenous as well. The necessity of consumerism in contemporary Western society, derived by a capitalist world, helps the perpetuation of not only the class differences, but also of gender inequality issues and using ethnicity as a way of ‘exoticizing’ and consequently attributing different values to people. The commodification of people, especially women and people of color, is what sustains the cycle of abuse and exploitation, perpetuating the patriarchal gaze. In this thesis, I will discuss the act of devouring as a permanent tool of empowerment in Western society. The devour process will be analyzed under three different lenses: colonialism and appropriation, capitalism and consumerism, and patriarchy and objectification.
5 Hans Staden, Warhaftige Historia und beschreibung eyner Landtschafft der Wilden Nacketen, Grimmigen
Menschfresser-Leuthen in der Newenwelt America gelegen, 1557.
6 A small addendum, native Brazilians were considered enemies of the nation that was being instated on their own land. Hence, they were considered enemies to the European force who just arrived in Brazil.
7 “There is no sin beyond Ecuador.”
8 “Como se a linha que divide os hemisférios separasse também a virtude do vício.” Sérgio Buarque de Holanda,
The concept of devour can take several paths and has several faces. One of its biggest challenges arises when one takes the concept of devouring to a performance space. Due to its complexity it might be misunderstood because Western society is not aware of the fact that the devour process occurs in every sphere of one’s life. Hence the concept of devouring is still commonly related to the act of eating or destroying, making it tough to develop it in different artistic directions. Also, the concept of devouring, or even the word devour, still sounds like a ‘primitive’ violent act. Therefore, how can one ‘accurately represent’ the concept of devouring in a performance space? To help me to answer this question I chose a few examples of artists who have transformed the concept of devouring into a performance, or a literary experience. The first is the Anthropophagic Manifesto (1928), by Oswald de Andrade. It traveled from the indigenous anthropophagic ritual itself, to a literary translation of the ritual applied by the socio-political needs of his period. This literary experience makes it easy to understand how the concept of devouring can be applied in an artwork. De Andrade devoured Brazil’s history to claim a new possibility of identity development. The Manifesto challenged Brazilian society to acknowledge its past in order to change its future. The second is Cannibalism (1973) followed by Anthropophagic Slobber (1973), both works by Lygia Clark, who recaptured anthropophagy as a concept in the 1970’s. In her works, the analogy with the anthropophagic ritual is clear. She was able to represent, or re-enact, the rituals transforming it in a poetic scene. The fourth work is Macumba Antropofágica (2011), by Teatro Oficina, in which the group created a play connecting the historic moment when De Andrade wrote the Manifesto and the content of the Manifesto, creating a back and forward narrative. The last is Marina Abramovic’s Macaron (2017), which I claim to be a contemporary manner of exploring the concept of devouring. Her work opened a myriad of interpretations, just as the Manifesto once did. Abramovic challenged the art scene when creating not only an art object, but an edible art object that pretended to be an experience in the audience’s mouth.
In the first chapter of this thesis, “Devour and Anthropophagy in Brazilian culture”, the methods applied were literary, discourse, historiography, performance and theatre analysis. As theoretical references De Andrade’s Manifesto itself, followed by Antônio Cândido, Carlos Jauregui, Cassiano Sydow Quilici and Richard Schechner. I will begin this chapter with a section investigating De Andrade’s Anthropophagic Manifesto, in which he proposed a different perspective on devour and anthropophagy, claiming that after colonization Brazilian’s identity was lost between clashing indigenous practices and Portuguese habits. Through this period, Brazilians were able to shift the power relation between colonizer and colony. It was not the colonizer that devoured Brazil anymore, Brazilians devoured their colonizer in order to
develop and shape their own culture. Although at first the Manifesto seemed to revert the logic of power, from colonizer to colony, in the present day it is possible to understand the Manifesto as more of an aesthetic choice than a political statement that would advocate for this new identity. De Andrade did not project his Manifesto in a political manner or intended for it to support Brazilian interests. Apart from this aspect, the Manifesto did, in a way, contribute to a Brazilian way of shaping culture, and also to establishing a Brazilian aesthetic practice. After analyzing the Manifesto historically, in the second section of this chapter I will use two Clark’s art works to investigate the resonance of the anthropophagic ritual, and De Andrade’s
Manifesto in art practices. In Cannibal, Clark promoted a feast to devour tropical fruits
representing the human organs, and consequently promoted a relation between the performance, audience and anthropophagic rituals. Following that in Anthropophagic Slobber, she again promoted such a relation but, in this case, she encouraged the audience to develop a deeper connection to each other. The last work I will examine in this section is the theatre play
Macumba Antropófaga, in which the group used the Manifesto and the colonized history of
Brazil to create an orgiastic space in which the cathartic moment is the acknowledgement that one is always devouring and being devoured, claiming it is an endless cycle, an ouroboros, and opening further interpretations. Oficina’s main goal was to offer themselves to be devoured by the audience and in exchanged to also devour the spectator. Apparently, when conceptualizing devours in art practices, the audience engagement is required. The transformation/transmutation process that happens in the body when witnessing or participating in such experiences characterize the concept of devouring. In the conclusion of this chapter I would like to understand to what extent the art practices mentioned are following elements of an anthropophagic ritual in the sense of aesthetics, catharses and embodiment. Is it possible to establish an anthropophagic ritual/performance “modus-operandi”9 identifiable in different art works?
In the second chapter, “Devouring Abramovic”, I will apply the notion of the “Manifesto” to analyze Abramovic’s Macaron, in which she claims the macaron contains her identity and taste. Moreover, beside using the anthropophagic concept comprised in the
Manifesto, I will take three different perspectives to investigate the “devourism”10 in Abaramovic’s work. Capitalism and consumerism are entitled to the concept of devouring to the extent that they can also be understood as consuming furiously, absorbing, and eating with
9 Latin expression that means the way one acts, operates, or executes something following the same method. 10 The transformation of the verb ‘devour’ into a practice and philosophy.
one’s mouth or eyes. Through the lens of Pierre Bourdieu’s taste theory, described in the book
Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, I will discuss the capitalist and
‘artsy’11 society that devoured her and argue that taste is not only a matter of flavor, as Abramovic defended, but also it entails a range of capitals that are used to defined one’s taste. Furthermore, the marketing choices the group made in order to sell the macaron. Colonialism is the second perspective due to the fact that Abramovic, in collaboration with Raphael Castoriano and Ladurée, created a dessert, made essentially using primarily sugar. Even though the use of sugar as a media for an artwork might be innovative, it opens the possibility to review the shameful history of sugar production. By unravelling the links between Abramovic’s macaron and the colonial history of sugar, I want to show that Abramovic and Castoriano lacked in interest and research towards colonialism and the process of making sugar, being more attached to the aesthetics of their product. This absence of concern sustains a colonial look upon pastry. The last point I would like to make is regarding patriarchy and the perpetuation of the patriarchal gaze. Regardless of the fact the macaron was a project partially idealized by Abramovic, she is selling macaron with the statement, or even with the promise, that one is eating her. To devour her macaron is to experience herself in one’s mouth. To what extent can this macaron be understood as her, a woman, being bought by wealthy people, and what does that acquisition represent for a feminist society trying to end objectification of women and fighting for gender equality?
By the conclusion of the research presented in this thesis, I aim to define different approaches to the use of the concept of devouring analyzing art works. From the literal devour process in the anthropophagic ritual itself to the appropriation of indigenous culture with the intention of shaping a new Brazilian cultural identity. From a literary translation of the anthropophagic ritual to a performance practice able to assemble relevant moments of the indigenous ritual. From the eating and transmuting frame of the concept of devouring to an expansion into capitalism and patriarchy. Moreover, I aim to classify the concept of devouring as the action that can unite humans. Just as the Manifesto says: “Only Anthropophagy unite
us.”12 The concept of devouring is what bring our “selvagem” side back into place. To be
“selvagem” will only be possible when living in an open system, exchanging constantly with
11 Using the term ‘artsy’ I refer to the artistic community which attends openings and launches of art events, a community which values appearance just as highly as the content of the art works that are being shown.
12 De Andrade, “Manifesto Antropófago” Revista de Antropofagia 1 year n. 1. Originally published in Revista de Antropofagia, n.1, year 1, May 1928, São Paulo. Translated from the Portuguese by Adriano Pedrosa and Veronica Cordeiro.
the Other. The concept of devouring is the key to understanding how society was and is shaped. It is the devouring process of the Other that kept art, and society, alive. It is the concept of devouring that enables art to reflect society.
Devour and Anthropophagy in Brazilian context
In this section, I will historically frame anthropophagy within Brazilian context. From the indigenous practices to the development of the Anthropophagic Manifesto by De Andrade, and later to the artworks it influenced through the course of the following years. After analyzing the Manifesto itself, I will briefly study two of Clark’s performances, Cannibalism and
Anthropophagic Slobber, succeeded by the work of José Celso Martinez Correa, and Teatro Oficina, focusing on their play Macumba Antropófaga. I will investigate the concept of ritual
body in relation to the concept of devouring and the three artworks cited above. At the end of this section, I aim to conclude to what extent the three performances re-performed anthropophagic ritual practices and its ‘modus-operandi’.
1. Anthropophagic Movement – re-connecting to primitive rituals
The etymology of the term “Anthropophagy” derives from Greek “anthropo”- men, or person, and “phagy” – feeding on, consumption of.13 The Anthropophagic Movement was an avant-garde art movement during the first Modernist phase in Brazil under an agenda of using the concept of anthropophagy to transfigure the different cultural influences, aiming to generate a proper Brazilian culture. The Brazilian Modernism movement began in the Week of Modern Art in 1922. The first Modernist phase (1922-1930) attempt to create a Brazilian cultural identity, inciting artists and writers to create manifestos and magazines. It is considered the most radical phase of the Brazilian Modernism movement due to the necessity of breaking old structures and systems.14 For this reason, the first Modernist phase had an anarchical face, destroying old practices, being called “the destruction phase”.15 This devouring spirit spread throughout Brazil valuing indigenous practices. The origins of the Anthropophagic
Movement16 dated back to 1922, when during the Modern Art Week of Sao Paulo, these same group of intellectuals presented a way of modernizing Brazilian culture. The Modern Art Week was sponsored by millionaires from the coffee production industry. The modernist movement
13 Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology.
14 Marina Cabral da Silva. “O Modernismo no Brasil”. Brasil Escola.
15 Mário de Andrade, 1922. Sabrina Vilarinho. “Modernismo – Primeira Fase Literária”. Mundo Educação. 16 Not the movement itself yet.
idea encompassed not only an artistic movement, but also a political and social one. It counters the totalitarian politics, as well the social contradiction between proletarians and immigrants, and the rural oligarchs. The Modern Art Week of Sao Paulo was considered a “new era” in the Brazilian Cultural identity.17 However, it is important to accentuate that the Modern Art week was not only sponsored by rich and privileged people, it was made by some privileged artists as well. This acknowledgment is relevant to the extent that, even though the Manifesto was apparently intended to canonize an indigenous practice as a way of shaping Brazilian culture, it was made by privileged people for privileged people. De Andrade, born into a wealthy bourgeois family in Sao Paulo, recognized Brazilian modernist mentality when Sao Paulo government made an attempt to industrialize and modernized the city.18 The urge for progress, including from an architectural and geographical perspective, was complemented by groups of cosmopolitan intellectuals such as Mário de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade, Menotti Del Picchia, and Anita Malfatti. These intellectuals, mostly members of wealthy bourgeois families and communists, devoured European and North American culture. Therefore, one can state that they created a movement, the anthropophagic movement, to legitimize the consumption of different cultures in order to shape a new perspective of one’s own culture. De Andrade himself was also going through a process of shaping identity. By that time, only privileged people with access to universities and capital to travel abroad would be able to understand all the references which De Andrade used in his Manifesto. However, even though by that time it was a hermetic manifesto, in contemporary society it cannot be considered elitist anymore, being more accessible to the public since in the present day more people from different social classes have access to universities, for example.
The Manifesto was also influenced by other groups such as Pau-Brasil (1924-1925),
Verde-amarelismo or Escola da Anta (1916–1929), and Manifesto Regionalista (1928-1929).
All the groups had a nationalist goal, in the sense of a search for identity. The turning point for the Anthropophagic Movement to be understood as such, was Tarsila do Amaral’s19 (1886 – 1973) painting Abaporu20 (1928), in English it is translated to “man who eats flesh”. Abaporu shows a naked indigenous person with an enormous body and a minuscule head, portrayed in the same position as the figure in August Rodin’s Le Penseur sculpture from 1882. Tarsila gave the painting as a gift to her husband Oswald de Andrade (1980 – 1954), inspiring him to write
17 Correio Paulistano, February 1922.
18 This action provided Sao Paulo with the possibility of deeply embracing capitalism and increasing its population to 515.000 people in the period of thirty years.
19 In Brazil, Tarsila do Amaral is always referred to by her first name, Tarsila. 20 Tupi-guarani language.
the Anthropophagic Manifesto. Another source of inspiration for the Manifesto was De Andrade’s visit to Europe, where he watched the “Futurist Manifesto”, by Italian Felippo Tomaso Marinetti (1876-1944). Marinetti announced the compromise of literature with a new technical civilization, but most of all the battle against the scholarly. Supported by the Futurist ideals Brazilian writers ruptured with traditionalism and conservatism. Hence, De Andrade himself was a cultural consumer of Western Modernity, showing the first signs of his ‘cannibalistic’ future to come. The Manifesto was published on 1st of May 1928 in the first edition of the Anthropophagic Magazine, which had two phases or “dentitions” as their idealizers called it.
“Only anthropophagy unites us. Socially. Economically. Philosophically. The world's only law. The masked expression of all individualisms, of all collectivisms. Of all religions. Of all peace treaties. Tupy, or not tupy that is the question. Against all catechisms. And against the mother of the Gracchi. The only things that interest me are those that are not mine. Law of man. Law of the anthropophagite.”21
The Anthropophagic Movement had as its main goal to structure and shape a more united Brazilian national culture. However, it was not an academic movement nor a theory that aimed to formulate an identity through a devouring process. Brazilian writer and sociologist Antônio Cândido (1918-2017) stated the Manifesto had
“(…) a Brazilian attitude of ritualist devour of Europeans values, for the purpose of overcoming the patriarchal and capitalist society, and their rigid social norms and their repression imposition in the psychological level.”22
As Cândido stated in 1970, De Andrade never exactly formulated what anthropophagy was, instead he left some elements to assist one understanding of such notion.23 Thus, anthropophagy as a concept has become exactly the transformative process it claimed Brazilian culture should be. It became paradoxically consumed by Brazilians and outsiders and devoured as it was transformed, since the release of the Manifesto, giving space for multiple interpretations. Due to the use of different European references, philosophies, and practices, in parallel with a statement that no matter the philosophy or European practice, one will always
21 De Andrade, “Manifesto Antropófago” Revista de Antropofagia 1 year n. 1. 22 Antônio Cândido, Vários Escritos, 1970
rely on one’s primitivism, or on indigenous practices as anthropophagy, several researchers claimed the postcolonial character of the Manifesto. However, the Manifesto was written under an “agenda of an aesthetic revolution prompted by a cosmopolitan bourgeoisie”24. It had made minimal effort towards social or decolonization movements. It had no preoccupation over labor movement or actual indigenous resistance against modernization. The “pop-indigenous practitioners”25 had indeed helped to establish a Brazilian culture, but the extent of actual dialog with indigenous peoples is null. Another relevant point to understand the Manifesto as a pure literary experience, instead of a political manifesto, is that according to Carlos Jauregui in his book Canibalia. Canibalismo, calibanismo, antropofagia cultural y consume en América
Latina cultural consumption was not the main focus of the Manifesto. Considering De Andrade
appropriated anthropophagy in an attempt to modernize the ritual of devouring without concerning emancipation, his agenda intended to use anthropophagy as a metaphor to reject tradition and xenophobia by swallowing the Other, which in this case is the colonial, the European. The Anthropophagic Movement was placed in between elitism and cultural decolonization, having contradiction as one of its main pillars, nonetheless approximating itself closer to an artistic practice and literature than to a political statement that advocated for cultural consumption and development of Brazil as a cultural potency. However, due to its “relevance to contemporary debates, cultural consumption became the canonical definition of anthropophagy”.26 This argument will be brought back in the next chapter when discussing Abramovic’s Macaron and consumption. Cândido, besides acknowledging Oswald’s attempt to overcome capitalist society, indicates Oswald’s urgency in overcoming patriarchy. The struggle and fight against authoritarianism is represented in the father image. In the last sentence of his Manifesto he stated
“Against the clothed and oppressive social reality, recorded by Freud – reality without complexes, without madness, without prostitutions, and without the penitentiaries of the matriarchy of Pindorama.”27
24
Carlos Jauregui, Dictionary of Latin American Cultural Studies 2012, 27
25 ‘Pop-indigenous practitioner’ will refer to the individual, or group of people, that devoured indigenous practices as a statement that acknowledges Brazilians are heirs of indigenous civilizations, but that actually are not involved nor belong to such communities. It is the appropriation of a practice to make it artsy, pop, and a product for consume.
26 Carlos Jauregui, Canibalia. Canibalismo, calibanismo, antropofagia cultural y consumo em America Latina. 2008
De Andrade wished to see the woman as the center of society. Even though in his
Manifesto he devoured Freud’s ideas, he also reflects on the female role. Later in this chapter
I will bring Freud’s Taboo and Totem to the discussion, which is essentially dominated by male protagonists, opening the possibility for De Andrade to oppose to Freud’s idea and the thought that the act of devouring the father could be the foundation of society. Beatriz Azevedo opposed both figures, Freud and De Andrade, stating that Freud made a ‘patriarchal’ critique on patriarchy, and De Andrade made a ‘matriarchal’ critique on patriarchy.
2. Re-Capturing Anthropophagy – devouring the native ritual and the Manifesto In the 1960’s, anthropophagy was brought back as an aesthetic in the Tropicalist
Movement. The movement was named after an Hélio Oiticia’s (1937-1980) artwork, Tropicália, showed at Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, in 1967. The movement arose
under the influence of artistic currents of the Avant-guard, and both national and international pop culture, for example rock’n roll music. It mixed-up traditional Brazilian manifestations and radical aesthetic innovation.28 The intention of the movement was to shock, it was characterized by excess. The lyrics were innovative and codified, demanding that cultural capital be fully understood, similar to the Manifesto. The movement aimed to break with an art tradition that was obviously politicized.29 In the 1960’s there was a rich cultural moment in Brazil. Besides Oiticica’s work, Glauber Rocha (1939-1981) started the new cinema, shooting
Terra em Transe, Chico Buarque (1944-) was writing Roda Viva30, and José Celso Martinez Corrêa (1937-) was staging O Rei da Vela31, written by Oswald de Andrade.32 O Rei da Vela ridiculed an underdeveloped Brazilian industry and criticized the bourgeois society that flirted with international capitalism. The Tropicalist movement emerged during a complicated political moment and even thought it was not a protest movement, it was considered as such. During this decade, the militaries took over Brazil and dictatorship was about to have its most critical moment, including the censorship and persecution of those against the military government. Several artists had to be exiled directly after the end of the Tropicalist Movement, in 1969.
28Josnei Di Carlo, “Tropicália é a prova dos nove”, Outras Palavras, 12 Dec 2017
29Celso Favaretto, “O Surgimento. Uma explosão colorida.” Extracted from Tropicália: Alegria, Alegoria. Atelie Editorial, 1996.
30 Which years later had a performance invaded by the military, who destroyed the scenery and costumes, and beat-up the actors.
31 Re-staged in 2017, to celebrate 50 years from the original performance. Zé Celso, as the director, invited Renato Borghi, the same actor who was the protagonist in the first enactment, to play the Rei da Vela once more. 32 Neusa Barbosa, “Estreia – Tropicália reavalia impacto do Tropicalismo na cultura.” Jornal O Estadão, 13 Sep
3. Anthropophagy and Performance I – Lygia Clark
Following this wave of change and rebellion, at the beginning of the 1970’s, Brazilian artist Lygia Clark (1920 – 1988) developed two important works related to anthropophagy. The first Anthropophagic Slobber was first enacted in 1973. The idea was for participants to place cotton reels inside their mouths and unload it onto another person’s body. The unloading movement would help with the production of saliva, and after they finished the reel, they would roll it back again. According to Clark, the participants “first feel that they are pulling the thread out. Then they begin to perceive that they are pulling their very guts out.”33 Her idea came from a dream she had:
“I dreamt that I opened my mouth and took out a substance incessantly. As this was happening I felt as if I was losing my own internal substance, which made me very anguished mainly because I could not stop losing it. In the work I made afterward, which I called Cannibalistic Slobber, people had cotton reels in their mouths to expel and introject the slobber.”34
Clark’s works transformed the dichotomy of subject and object.35 Transgressing the logic of devouring and vomiting. It is a clear vision of what anthropophagy is when applied to the body. In a letter Clark sent to Oiticica she stated that with this performance she arrived at what she calls “corpo coletivo” (collective body)36 due to the exchange between people. Which is not a pleasant experience, but an intimate one, and the word “communication” is too weak to define what was established between the participants. When a group experiences such a ritual, they become one body breathing together. It is as if the pores of one’s skin could communicate with another body, it is a difficult task to articulate in words such feelings and experience. The relationships created in a ritual is probably close to a symbiosis or telepathy. The telepathic communion, acknowledged by anthropophagy, is also referred to in Marcel Mauss’ (1872-1950) General Theory of Magic. In his book, following anthropologist J. G. Frazer idea (1854-1941) of “a savage telepathy”, he analyzed a clan in New Guinea. About the
33Marie Carter, “The Re-enactment of Lygia Clark´s Baba Anthropofágica (Anthropophagic Drool)”. The
Brooklin Rail – critical perspectives on arts, politics and culture. 10 Oct 2008.
34 Susan Hiller, “Lygia Clark,” Dream Machines, by Susan Hiller, and Jean Fisher. Guy Brett, “Lygia Clark: The Borderline between Life and Art,” Third Text 1, 1987.
35Petra Löffler, “Media Art Net - Lygia Clark: Baba Antropofágica”. Medien Kunst Netz, Media Art Net. 36 Hiller, “Lygia Clark;” Lygia Clark, From a letter to Helio Oiticia, 6 July 1974.
moment when the man left the clan to hunt or fight, and the women kept on dancing the entire night, he stated:
“The whole social body comes alive with the same movement. They all become, in a manner of speaking, parts of a machine or, better, spokes of a wheel: the magical round dance, performed and sung, becomes the ideal image of the situation. This image is probably primitive, but certainly still occurs in our own times…The rhythmic movement, uniform and continuous, is the immediate expression of a mental state, in which consciousness of each individual is overwhelmed by a single sentiment, a single hallucinatory idea, a common objective.”37
The extract above sums up the symbiosis I referred to before. All the participants transformed themselves into a “collective body” with a common goal. The ritual state of the body occurs when the mind, body, and extra body are connected promoting such experience. It is this deep and profound connection between individuals in which anthropophagy, as a concept, can also be placed. Clark’s idea of shifting her art from creating an object38 by using her body as the place for art she challenged the romantic idea of art as an object. The greater distinction she made in early 1970 was between the artists that transformed themselves into their own object, and the artists that incorporate the object in order to make it vanish, becoming in this way the object of his, or hers, own sensations.39
Another of Clark’s works that can be analyzed in relation to the devour concept is
Cannibalism. It was performed in 1973, and entailed a person wearing a rubber romper stuffed
with tropical fruits. Around this person, were blindfolded participants who opened the romper and ritualistically devoured his, or hers, guts. More literal, and therefore easier to understand than Anthropophagic Slobber, Cannibalism is jointly art and anthropophagy in a performance, which is a reference recognized not only in Brazil but in the whole world. Both works depend on a participatory audience and entail a sort of ritualistic practice, in this way the ‘savage telepathy’ is once more applicable. Clark’s works are great examples of Brazilian art, not only because the works reflects their formulative culture, but because it requires a political body. At first, one might not relate the act of devouring to a political body, but both are necessarily
37Marcel Mauss, A General Theory of Magic, 163. Mauss is referring to a phrase from J. G. Frazer. 38 As seen in the example of “Bichos”.
connected from the perspective that the political body reflects and protest contemporary, or not, subjects. The political body absorbs, and consequently, devour whatever is different to regurgitate a manifestation afterward. The Brazilian body is a “digestive body”40.
Clark, as mentioned previously, called the encounter of bodies in her performances “collective body”, in which the participants commune to achieve a new level of consciousness, breathing as one unique body. This ‘collective body’ can be framed as a performance ritual. Victor Turner (1920-1983) conceptualized this specific moment when the community achieves a new level of awareness allowing them to share a common experience, as “communitas”. Both ‘collective body’ and ‘communitas’, assist with the transformation of the group from a vertical relationship to a horizontal manner of interaction. This kind of process occurs in a flux, in which the person representing becomes what is being represented. Richard Schechner (1934-) would call the flux of representation “when the dance dances me”41, or the moment when one becomes, or fuses with the representation “not me… not not me”42. These states of consciousness could also be compared with a trance state, which also takes place in a “liminal time/space and in the subjunctive mood”.43
In both Anthropophagic Slobber’ and Cannibalism, Clark transmutes the body by not only involving the body of the artist who lies down in the space, but also engaging the audience, who become active spectators and therefore artists of the performance. Her work promoted a ritual between the people present in the space. It is a bounding ‘bubble’, in which they are all consuming and being consumed, devouring and being devoured. The present moment, when all things happen is the performative moment itself. Making a comparison with the anthropophagic ritual performed by indigenous tribes, one can argue that this telepathic communication, or this cathartic moment, is equivalent to the moment the tribe butcher their prisoner. At first, it might seem a pure act of violence, but the ‘collective body’ created by the ritual appears to have transformed the butchery into a communion poetic moment. For indigenous warriors, it was an honor to be eaten in such a ritual. It meant that the warrior was strong and powerful, and that a part of this warrior would remain alive inside the person who devoured the warrior, and aid the other person in becoming a more powerful and strong warrior too, improving them.
40 Adriano Bitarães Netto, Antropofagia Oswaldiana: um receituário estético e científico 2004, 82 41 Richard Schechner, Performance Studies, an introduction 2002, 88
42 Schechner, Between theatre and anthropology 1985, 112 43 Ibid.
4. Anthropophagy and Performance II – Zé Celso and Teatro Oficina Uzyna Uzona A different type of ‘art embracing anthropophagy’, is present in the case of Teatro Oficina Uzyna Uzona, directed by Zé Celso Martinez Correa.44 The theatre company was founded in 1958 at the Faculty of Law of the University of Sao Paulo by Amir Haddad, Carlos Queiroz Telles, Ron Daniels, and Zé Celso. It emerged as a theater against the traditional theater practices, which were perceived as a product to be consumed by Brazilian bourgeois society. Teatro Oficina, lead by Zé Celso, is known for a ritualistic manifesto theater style that explores carnival, orgies, and the staging of sex scenes and controversial themes. Politics is also a recurrent topic due to Brazilian history and Zé Celso’s own experience during the Brazilian dictatorship. His theatre aims to use audience interaction, the idea is to blur stage and audience. For example, in several plays, the audience is invited to collaborate with the action on a “street stage”.
Teatro Oficina is called “street stage” due to its building shape. The original
construction suffered two fire incidents, and after the second one, Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1992) and Edson Elito were asked to design a new theatre which could include the central idea of the theatre troupe: the engagement between audience and actors, street and stage, creating a stadium space for performances. The building project was considered the best theatre in the world by The Guardian in 2015. According to Rowan Moore, the long and narrow corridor transformed into the stage, it’s hard seats, and the challenging sight lines of the theatre is what makes the experience of watching the play more intense, instead of being disturbing.45 The main achievement of the theatre is the promotion of freedom and movement. Not only due to the long plays they staged, but also due to its almost anarchical understanding of theatre, the audience can come and go during their plays. Spectators are encouraged to participate, to move around the theater and to experience the story and participate as much as they feel appropriate.
One of the most controversial works of Teatro Oficina was the reproduction of the Greek tragedy Bacants (1995), by Eurípedes. It was considered controversial due to Zé Celso anthropophagic approach, constructing an orgiastic celebration based on contemporary Brazilian conflicts.46 Another important work was Os Sertões (2002-2006)47, based on Euclides
44 The same director of the first staging of “O Rei da Vela”, De Andrade’s play, written during the Brazilian Modernism period. The play was a ferrous critique against the bourgeois elite of the 1930’s. When staged for the first time, in the 1960’s, it brought back the critique spirit, showing a mirror of a decadent society that was entering a dictatorship.
45 Zé Celso claimed the idea for the open plan came when he was on acid running away from the police and got trapped against a solid wall. Rowan Moore, “The 10 Best Theatres.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 11 Dec 2015.
46 Roberto Comodo, José Celso Martinez Correa, “Orgia no palco”. Isto é Cultura, 1993. 47 Translated as “Rebellions in the Backlands”.
da Cunha’s novel. The book was divided into three parts: The Land, the Man, and the Fight. When Zé Celso adapted it for the theatre he divided it into five parts: The Land, the Man I, the Man II, the Fight I, and the Fight II. Os Sertões was also staged in Germany, where the curator of Recklinghausen Festival, Frank Castorf, authorized the construction of a replica of Oficina’s theatre in a closed coal mine.48 In Brazil, the sex scenes and the heresies were quite disturbing for some members of the audience, but it settled a new path for Oficina’s works. In the Man II the spectators were invited to take their clothes off and participate in an almost-orgy. Erroneous interpretations Os Sertões used sex to intensify and to throw light on the process of miscegenation in Brazil.49 It is important to emphasize that the colonial period is still very much alive in Brazilians minds and bodies. The rape that the population suffered for years still resonates in contemporary society. Brazil might be perceived as a liberal country to Western society, but the truth is that Brazil is a conservative country which was under a dictatorship until only thirty years ago. The famous Brazilian Carnival is the mirror of such a society. One has four days to experience it without any guilt, but after this period, everything goes back to a normal state.
Oficina proposed a “canivalization”50 aiming to achieve a Dionysian theatre, orgiastic, that confronted conservative society. As Zé Celso states, Dionysia and the theatre created the anthropology, offering a synthesis of the human which shows them as the product of violence and eroticism.51 Violence and eroticism can be considered part of a devour process, and therefore so can the work of Oficina because, although they make use of nudity, sex, and violence in their plays, it is always as a reflection of contemporary struggle with a political background. In this manner, Oficina devours governments, history, and politics, in order to stage a manifesto.
As a celebration for the company’s 50 year anniversary, Zé Celso who has always devoured anthropophagy in his plays, decided to honor De Andrade, who was a resident of the same neighborhood in which the theatre is located. The staging of Macumba Antropófaga came from the necessity of embodying anthropophagy as the only way to experience the world. The title Macumba52 is derived from African religions for whom the word Macumba refers to the act of performing magic in a religious context. The intention of Zé Celso is clear from the title:
48 Neusa Soliz, “Mina Alemã serve de palco a Zé Celso e ‘Os Sertões’”, Deutsche Welle, 20 May 2004. 49 Dellano Rios, “Fluxos e refluxos de Os Sertões”, Diário do Nordeste,19 Nov 2007.
50 From the word Carnival, the pagan feast. 51 Dellano Rios, “Fluxos e refluxos de Os Sertões”.
52 It is also the name of an instrument, and when searching the word in the dictionary the first definition is the instrument.
to connect an indigenous ritual to an African ritual evoking ancestors to the communion he proposed. The audience is initiated in this ritual. The first scene in all of Oficina’s plays involves a prayer and the lighting of a candle, a method used to evoke ancestors to join the performance. Macumba Antropófaga begins with a human chain, which the audience is invited to participate in. The chain evokes an analogy with the “big-snake”53, and carried the people through a visit around their neighborhood, Bixiga. The cortege’s first stop was in front of relevant sights for the group and sites which are important in Brazil culture: Maloca
Jaceguay54, Dona Yayá’s house (1887-1961)55, Brazilian Comedy Theatre56, where Cacilda Becker (1921-1969), one of the most famous actresses in Brazil, used to perform. In front of the theatre, the audience evokes Becker to embody Tarsila do Amaral, uniting two important figures of Brazilian culture. This is an example of how acting, or embodying, is also a devour act, transforming one figure into another. The last stop was De Andrade’s house. Here, at 18 Ricardo Barbosa street, the chorus called for De Andrade to drink goat’s milk and join Tarsila in the re-creation of the great night of anthropophagy creation. From there, the public was conducted to the inside of the theatre, where the rest of the play took place. It is important to emphasize that Oficina has as its main pillar the interaction between audience and actors. As stated by Zé Celso:
“one day our daily ritual of communion between actors and audience will be perceived as gold, a rare thing, and a luxury, because our theatre faces the future, with a utopic ambition that art as soccer, will be the crowd sport.”57
During the play, the audience witness and are invited to participate in the recreation of Brazilian history. From indigenous rituals, through Portuguese colonization, finishing with an anthropophagic ritual. According to Oficina their ritualistic play, Macumba Antropófaga, awakens the rite and evokes the cosmopolitics of the “burús”58, staging a cortege to activate necrotic places in the neighborhood.59 This ritualistic place they created encouraged audience
53 Brazilian mythology refers to a “big-snake” who has the job of frightening away any fisherman who enter the territory.
54 Viaduct in Bexiga’s neighborhood, where homeless adults and children co-habitat in public space.
55 Yayá was the only heiress of a wealthy family. She promoted “saraus” and the arts and was considered insane. Yayá was imprisioned until her death, and today she represents the anti-asylum struggle, freedom and woman’s rights. During the cortege, the choir of female artists and audience sing to free Yayá from the straightjacket. 56 One of the most important Brazilian theaters of the 1960’s.
57 José Celso Martinez Correa, “Teatro Oficina.” Teatro Oficina.
58Buruns, in Krenak language, means people. According to Ailton Krenak, paraphrasing De Andrade’s poem “Erro de Português”, it was a mistake to call natives from Brazil indigenous.
participation. Following their previous works, such as Os Sertões, which was also staged in Europe, the audience is always invited to engage with the scene/action. It does not matter how one will participate, for example by singing or only watching, one is always encouraged to devour and consume it the way it suits them better. The anthropophagic cortege sings in the primitive direction, bringing back a savage perception of the indigenous’ cosmopolitics, which asks for an urgent change to alter the extent of capitalism, patriarchy, and Anthropocene, which all demand progress at any costs. In anthropophagy, the act of devouring is never a pure act of eating: it is, above all, an act of mutation and transmutation that allows one to survive and change the unchangeable. An anthropophagic feast is the permanent transformation of Taboo into Totem. However, as stated previously, it is a ‘matriarchal’ attempt at permanent transformation of Taboo into Totem.
The notion of Taboo and Totem was described by Sigmund Freud in his book Totem
and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics (1913). The
book is a collection of essays in which Freud applies psychoanalysis to the fields of archaeology, anthropology and the study of religion. I will discuss two chapters, the second “Taboo and emotional ambivalence”, and the fourth “The Return of Totemism in Childhood”. In the second chapter Freud discusses the relationship between taboo and totem, stating ‘primitive’ people feel ambivalent, in the sense that they love their mother, yet they hate her at the same time. However, instead of simply hate one other, they project this feeling to a totem.60 This relation can also be applied to general governments and their subjects. Hence, Totem is the transformation of a simple object, person, or animal, into a valuable item, or ruler. In the fourth chapter, Freud applies this transformation/transfiguration to the relation of son and father. He perceived the killing of the father figure as the true original sin, and claimed that the collective guilt that one carried after this event causes the transformation of the father into a Totem figure. This concept will be also discussed in the next chapter when discussing the performance in which Abramovic was transformed into a Totem by her audience. It is the devouring act implicit in the transformation of Taboo into Totem that Zé Celso promotes in his theatre?
Oficina can also be framed as ritual theatre and its branches as ParaTheatrical61 . The concept was developed by Jerzy Grotowski (1933-1999) when aiming to overcome the division
60 Totem can be an animal, a plant or a force of nature, but it always has the intention of being a sort of ruler for that person. Usually, in native clans, one is not allowed to marry a person that has the same totem, once totems were hereditary, thereby avoiding incest situations.
between participants and spectators activating culture and suspend social roles. ParaTheatre focused its experiences in a frame of time-space62, where the action would take place.63 Grotowski was also inspired by Antonin Artaud’s (1896-1948) Cruelty Theatre. Zé Celso follows Artaud’s understanding of the body. The understanding that a man, when not restrained by society, is an erotic being/body of desire. Joan Cocks claims in her book The Oppositional
Immagination
“that desire expresses itself most fully where only those absorbed in its delights and torments are present, that it triumphs most completely over
other human preoccupations in places sheltered from view.”64
The erotic body of desire is the body without organs.65 Re-organized, free of automatisms, open to be upside down. Desire and consumption walk hand by hand, and in this sense the body is a place for the constant process of devour. It eats, digests, and transforms. Thereat Artaud collaborates with the idea of a ritualist theatre in which the stage is the place to deepen into one most primitive behavior. He questioned what one would be capable of when there is no social judgment of his actions. For Artaud, a ritualistic theatre has less to do with ‘the sacred’ and should be looked at as a ‘mythic’ ritual, in an archaic and primitive manner. Artaud searched for a confrontation theatre to generate a catharsis, which would make possible a “radical purification”66. To make a ritualist theatre is to fight against an entertainment market more connected to a financial capital than to culture.67 This knowledge of financial and cultural capital will be further developed in the next section when analyzing Abramovic’s work. A ritualistic theater might also be used as a political statement. In Oficina’s and Artaud cases, they claimed the body needs to break with cycles of automatization which ‘tranquilizes’ people, providing an oblivion of death. However, it is only through an immersion into one’s torment
62 Renato Cohen defined performance art as a relation of time and space.
63 Others had already begun the development this concept in their works, as seen in the case of Gordon Craig’s (1872-1966) “Sur-Marionette, and Adolphe Appia’s (1862-1928) “cathedral of the future”.
64 Joan Cocks, The Oppositional Immagination 1989, 141.
65 From this point onwards, I will refer to Body without Organs as BwO. The concept of BwO is usually associated with the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, but they derived the concept from Artaud. To Deleuze and Guattari it was necessary to develop tactics to un-do automatizations and to produce a body filled with “circulation of fluxes and intensity”. According to them, the body first needs to get to a sort of “zero level” in which it would experience “pure intensities”. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 1980. 66 Cassiano Sydow Quilici, Antonin Artaud: Teatro e Ritual, 2004
67
I would like to remark that Oficina has a history of investing in cultural capital instead of financial capital. For years they have fought against the construction of a shopping mall beside their theatre, which would not only block the view of their window but would change the “environment” of the region. It seems that when a theater group, or any other collective related to the making of art, fix their ‘home’ in precarious and abandoned neighborhoods, the government begin regenerating that community, rich people are very quickly wanting to open business and profit from the new situation of the area.
that is possible to be awake and lucid. In the radio play “Pour en finir avec le jugement du
dieu” (1947) Artaud says:
“When you make a body without organs you will have delivered man from all his automatisms and retuned him to his true liberty”.68
According to Artaud, the future of the theatre will depend on the understanding of archaic, traditional, and oriental.69 Artaud’s theatre devoured the nobility of its function: a ritualistic theatre that focused on the “transit between being and not-being, emptiness and shape.”70
The more as one open one’s perception becomes, the closer one can get to an ‘un-representable’ life. It is openness to instability and chaos that make ritualistic theatre possible. In this sense, Grotowski ParaTheatrical can also be applied. It approximates the ‘scenic ritual’ to phenomenology and ‘immanent incantion’, which is usually lost in the contemporary scene.71
“To re-evoke a very ancient form of art where ritual and artistic creation were seamless. Where poetry was song, song was incantation, movement was dance. Pre-differenciation Art, if you will, which was extremely powerful in the impact. By touching that, without concern for its philosofical or theological motivation, each of us could find his connection.”72
5. Anthropophagy, Clark and Oficina – ‘Modus-Operandi’
The Manifesto, Clark’s performances and the work of Oficina aimed to defy logic and Cartesian thoughts. They were more interested in producing “affects” and “percepts”. Nevertheless, the Manifesto does reflect Brazilian society to the extent of the involvement of the theme of hunger. The act of devouring stands in every level, from social communication to power relations. Brazil, as a modern civilization, was founded under a devour process. Indigenous people were eaten culturally and in return they literally ate colonizers. Artists devoured their past, appropriating indigenous rituals to justify a devour feast of European
68 Antonin Artaud, Pour en finir avec le jugement du dieu, 1947 69 Antonin Artaud, Ouvres Completes, volume VII, 16
70 “O teatro artaudiano, de certo modo, aspira à dignidade dessa função” um teatro ritual, que faça o homem recriar-se no trânsito entre o ser e o não-ser, o vazio e a forma”. Quilici, Teatro e Ritual. Translation mine. 71 Renato Cohen, Work in progress – na cena contemporânea 1998, 15.
72 Zbigniew Osinski, “Grotowski Blazes the Trails – From Objective Drama to Ritual Arts”, The Drama Review, 35 (1), 1991.
culture and, Brazil continues to suffer from this perception that what comes from abroad has more value than local products. Generally speaking, this is a contributing factor as to why Brazilians still have ‘third world country syndrome.’73 Instead of acknowledging death, Brazil made Carnival, a flesh feast. Anthropophagy as a concept is rooted in the bodies of Brazilians. It reclines under its historical and ideological contextualization: “it is an ethno-poetic model”74 that has become a flexible, shapeable source of discourse for contemporary practice and theory. If one takes Clark’s Cannibalism or Anthropophagic Slobber as an example , it is clear that the process of devouring is intrinsically linked to how one produces art. It all begins and ends within one’s body, as opposed to on one’s body. Her work promotes an acceptance of one’s body and its fluids and intended to without any judgments or taboos, exalt the body exchanging experience. I think the Brazilian body is a big open scar that no one wishes to close anymore. The temptation is to rip it wide open, acknowledging the fact that the invasion of Brazil is a memory ingrained in Brazilian people’s bodies. Oficina brings these torn apart bodies to explicit this wound. However, they promote no attempt to close the scar. Perhaps due to the
Manifesto’s several interpretations, their interest relied on showing, not healing.
In both examples analyzed in this section the anthropophagic ritual feature remains. But it is not only due to the use of anthropophagy as a theme for their works, it is also due to the performance artistic disposition of their works. Both elaborated their works to create a ritual that follows a ‘modus-operandi’. They first capture their prey, which could be analogous to the prisoner. Following this, they created a ritualistic series of actions which will take that group of people down a path culminating in a catharsis, followed by the moment when the group is already devoted to the experience, and accept being devoured or devour someone else as inevitable and acceptable. One’s strength comes from this endless process of devouring and being devoured. However, as stated previously, there are some differences between Clark’s and Oficina’s work particularly when it comes to analyzing the audience. In Clark’s work the performance does not happen if the audience merely witness it, they are an active and necessary part of the ritual. In contrast, in the case of Oficina, the play goes on, independent from the audience, but it is more powerful when the audience engage with the scene. The challenge in performing the concept of devouring is that its success is dependent on how efficient the art work is in engaging its spectator. The devouring process occurs in one’s body, so only witnessing it might not be enough to understand the extensive nature of the concept of devour.
73 For example, the idea that what comes from abroad is better than what produced locally. 74 Jauregui, Dictionary of Latin American 2012, 28
Another relevant investigation is examining how Clark and Oficina approached the Manifesto and the anthropophagic ritual itself. While Clark promoted a ritual within a ritual; Oficina created a narrative which told the history behind the Manifesto and its inspirations. Clark embodied the ritual, and her performances connect more with the anthropophagic ritual itself than with the Manifesto. Oficina re-presented the ritual and its history through the Manifesto, regarding Oficina’s own history in ritualistic theatre, their play, from my perspective, had a better connection with the Manifesto, and de Andrade’s view on history than the history itself, if that is even possible. The ‘devourism’ contained in both Clark’s, Oficina’s and the Manifesto have no definitive destructive feature, it is a tactic to build and shape a new vision of the world.
Devouring Abramovic
The previous examples analyzed have in common the fact that they were produced and created by Brazilian artists, who recognize and cite anthropophagy as a source of inspiration. I will examine the extent to which a foreign artist can devour anthropophagy, without addressing her inspiration to make a new artwork which would contain features of the previous works analyzed. As a contemporary example of a work with is not produced in Brazil I aim to discuss the ‘devourism’ contained in the latest performance by Marina Abramovic, Macaron (2017), in which she produces a macaron that tastes like her. I will analyze how her creation reflects a contemporary vision not only of the art world, but of society. Moreover, I aim to analyze her work with a view to understanding the parallels between the macaron and the anthropophagic ritual. The investigation will also focus on other subjects that are relevant to the discussion of the concept of devouring in a contemporary art context. As I understand it, the concept of devouring can be a permanent tool to shape society, with this in mind I am led to question to what extent Abramovic’s Macaron embraces the concept of devouring to create a new relationship with her audience and to what extent the concept of devouring can be transformed into a capitalist product, in this case the macarons sold, benefiting herself rather than her audience. Firstly, I will develop the idea of analyzing her work from the anthropophagic perspective. To accomplish this, I will use the Anthropophagic Manifesto as a theoretical source and the ritual itself as its ‘modus-operandi’. The second main subject addresses taste. Abramovic claimed that the macaron contained her taste. If one utilizes Pierre Bourdieu’s taste theory, described in the book Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, to analyze the performance one can conclude that taste does not entail only flavor. Hence, to what extent is it reasonable to analyze Abramovic and Castoriano’s latest inventions through
