Monthly Archives: March 2009

Andruchak & his Geometric visions

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(Andruchak – Painel2 – Brasil – Tecnosfera – 2008 – acryllic on canvas)

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(Andruchak – Colorindo - 202x480cm – 2007 – acrylic on canvas) 

“Andruchak is a painter and a professor of art. He works with figurative and abstract themes using a neo-cubism form to his colorful style called ‘Geometricism’. Involved in painting panels with large sizes, he uses art as an ideological tool to promote the achievement of cultural growth where he is working. The Brazilian artist and painter Marcos Andruchak creates magnificent sensitively rendered works in an unusual approach to geometricism which he customizes for each work. Unconventional perspectives, the accurate application of paints, a multicolored border and the deletion of orienting details are characteristic of his style. This method creates a tension between what is seen and unseen, forcing the audience to extrapolate the message and participate in the act of creation. His works deal with a variety of modern approaches including visions that display a remarkable wealth of talent for rendering the natural world by a geometrical view. “
- Fine Art America

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“My art has been with me my whole life. I express myself through my art by painting from the heart. I create my own worlds, my own perspective. I want the viewers to come away seeing this world in a magical way.”  - Marcos Andruchak

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(Andruchak – Barco na garrafa – 2004)

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(Andruchak – Engenharia – 2004)

For more of his works, see his flickr page and the flickr page for his Santos Dumont exposition. For his professional site (in PT), go here!

Endossa – Retail Collective in SP

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Interesting concept that a store called Endossa out of São Paulo is playing/working with. Apparently, its a retail store with a bunch of cubbies and small spaces and every four weeks, the products are swapped out for other small-time designers and entrepreneurs to have their chance to showcase their work. Its basically a consignment store minus the commission off the products they sell. You as the designer, set the price and decide what will be sold there while the store provides you with the physical space and the access to the customers plus an online accompaniment of your remaining stock and sales.

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Think thats cool? There’s more! You’re probably wondering how Endossa makes money. Well, the spaces are rented per month for anywhere from R$100-R$350 so basically you as the designer want to sell more than you are paying for renting the space. If you come up short over three consecutive months, it acts like a popular vote and you are restricted from selling the fourth month in an effort to make way for new products.  

For everything from more info on how it works to where its located, try their FAQ (in PT).

Child, The Name of the Game

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We all know I like documentaries….and there’s a fairly disturbing yet interesting documentary out now in Brazil called ‘Criança, A Alma do Negócio’ (which roughly translates to ‘Child, The Name of the Game’). Its a study done on propaganda and children and it presents both professors and children themselves speaking about consumerism. Everyone knows technology enforces the problem, unless you’ve been living in a jungle (oh, wait…nevermind…jungle included).

Who I’m against are those who just give in and allow their children to be babysat by the television and to play online for hours at a time, not to mention buying them the latest Chinese-made product of the moment. After all, if one product really made someone happy, that same person would never need any other product for the rest of their life….sadly, things don’t bring happiness and buying the newest thing-a-ma-jig doesn’t make for a good parent. In one scene in particular, a mother with a hard-to-hide grin on her face tells the camera that her daughter (after her fourth cell phone by age 11 or so), is an extreme consumer. How can anyone be proud of that? 

In another instance, a professor says “these days what matters is the quantity of what you have rather than the difference in what you have (versus the other person),” while another professor says “the passport to enter a social group in school is to have this brand or that brand, while in the old days what mattered as far as social passports go, were the abilities you possessed…such as how well you played a sport or how good you were at telling jokes.”

As far as consumerism in general within Brazil, the country ranks very high in worldwide terms of hours of TV watched per child, money spent on beauty products, percentage of household items bought for children, etc. At one point, a teacher says “by age 4 or 5, the girls are using makeup”. I find that pretty disturbing too as scientifically women use makeup to replicate natural occurences of a biological cycle…which is definitely something children should not be imitating.

Think about this, if so many children the world over want the same exact things in the same colors, in the same way…thats not simply because they are children, its because the propaganda is being heavily directed towards them.  In two experiements in the documentary, the children are shown fruits and told to name them (they fail), and then are shown packaged popular goods with the names blocked out (they pass). The other experiment revolves around them being shown animals versus famous brand logos minus the actual name…guess which one they always get right. Here’s the trailer…in PT

If you wanted to see the documentary now, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was on Youtube too.

Musica Do Bolso – Pocketful of Change

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Change isn’t always a good thing but being the optimists we are, we try to associate the word with positive sentiments. For those of us who are searching for the good kind, I believe I’ve found it. Now, I wasn’t going to do a music post for another week or so but its very hard not to do one when you come across ‘the greatest thing since sliced bread’. Musica do Bolso (Music from the Pocket) is an absolutely wonderful project, according to a music nut like myself, which aims to….well, I’ll let them explain…

“Pocket Music (Música de Bolso) is a Brazilian website that contains “videos to hear and music to see”. Daniel, Rafael and Tati are filmmakers who are capturing with a camera different kind of artists playing music in unusual places and with a lot of spontaneity, with a help from the cultural journalist Marcus Preto. It’s a union of an acoustic pocket show in unexpected Brazilian places and a one shot live video with a touch of documentary. Every week we post one volume of the project that is kind of a 7″(virtual) vinyl with 2 videos (a side A and a side B).”

That being said, they also have a blog in English so check it out. Back to the idea behind the project, I believe music should be about things like this, at its most basic, about the voices and the instruments. At its most interesting, it is beauty that comes from nowhere, something which didn’t exist before someone created it. Creativity like this is the kind of change we need…even when it’s the pocket-sized kind. Below, I’ll post two examples of their work. 

Mayra Andrade & Mariana Aydar – Tunuka

 

Thalma de Freitas & Max B.O. – Monstro ao Pôr-do-Sol

La Movida Brasileña

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La Movida Madrileña Brasileña is a radio station, website and blog from Madrid run by a Brazilian, Reginaldo Lima. It aims to bring a little bit of Brazil to the Spaniards, through its cultural and musical program via Radio Círculo (the voice of the Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid). La Movida Brasileña, most likely named after the Spanish Movida of the 80′s, is heard by 100,000 listeners all over Madrid. The song on the website is really good (not sure who sings it see comments) and if you let it finish, it’ll just repeat (no complaints here!). 

All the best to Reginaldo!

Gabriel Moura – Garota do Méier

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Girl from Méier
by Gabriel Moura (ex-member of the band Farofa Carioca)

She gets on in Méier*
the 456 (the Yellow line)
on the weekend
she goes to Ipanema beach

She steps on the sand
The day is hers
She’s the prettiest thing
on the face of the earth 

*Méier is a neighborhood in the North zone of Rio (which holds the first shopping center of Brazil).

Albinoism studied in Black community

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The burning sun, coming down on the community of Filus in the Zona da Mata region of Alagoas state, irritates Deusa da Silva, 52. “When I get some sun, my skin gets very itchy. Sometimes it even peels off.” 

Descendant of slaves, just like the rest that live in the village (the municipality of Santana do Mundaú neighbors União dos Palmares, where the Quilombo dos Palmares uprising happened, led by Zumbi), she is the oldest of a group of people which present a single characteristic that makes them different from the rest of the black community: albinoism. 

Deusa and eight others from Filus, where 40 families reside, possess albinoism. The community has a population of aprox. 180 people. The albinos represent, however, close to 5% of the population. 

There isn’t precise data on the quantity of cases within Brazil dealing with albinoism. Worldwide, according to a study done by the University of Michigan, it’s estimated that one in 17 thousand people carry the anomaly. In Filus, this frequency is 850 times greater.

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Starting in March, the albinos of Filus will start a period of medical evaluation at the Hospital Universitário of the Federal University of Alagoas, to investigate the skin problems common to albinos and to take them through a battery of exams in order to explain the reason for the high index of cases in the community.  

Eight of the nine albinos were greeted by a professional team from the Hospital Universitário, in Maceió. According to professor Fernando Gomes at the School of Medicine, who is a specialist in plastic surgery and assistant in the study, marriage between people from the same family is a possible cause for the high index of albinoism. 

“We are going to do a genetic mapping to determine these causes. Locally, albinoism isn’t confined to the most recent generation, as it has been found here in the past. We are also going to evaluate non-albinos from the same community in order to have more precise data,” he affirmed. 

According to Gomes, in three months the mapping will be completed at which point those selected for the study will undergo a digital mapping of their skin. “We need genetic information from the mapping to define which proceedures we will adopt. We also need to have control over any damage to their skin so that we may accompany the changes, and to do that, we will start by taking photographs of each individual’s skin.”  - Source  (translated by me)

For some photos, go here.

Dreaming in American documentary

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Governador Valadares in Minas seems to have some competition! I’m sure this new documentary, about what happens to a town when most of its inhabitants leave, will cover the most relevant issues involved with the GV story too. In the meantime, I’ll be waiting for Fall 2009 when its available…

“Brazil on the brain this spring, lustful dreams of beaches, carnival, sex, and drugs?  It’s still a little-known fact that a few Santa Fe locals spent two months this winter in another kind of Brazil. Nestled in the lush green hill country of the interior, they found something completely different than what most Americans expect—the sleepy little town of Resplendor exists in a parallel universe.  Almost.  With current statistics reporting a population of 17,000, the community has “…been displaced by a staggering 40 percent through a wave of immigration to the United States; it celebrated its 70th anniversary with half the town missing. There is literally not one family remaining who doesn’t have a relative in the US,” said the filmmakers of Dreaming in American, Sara Dosa, Milla Dias Araujo, Eliot Gray Fisher, and Zoe Bird.

Why leave the appeal of beautiful, idyllic farm life in such mass exodus?  Why take off for the cities in such large numbers, departing from fresh, cheap produce, family-raised meat, hot weather that leaves small need for much clothing or shelter, and days spent motorcycling through fields and planting coffee followed by evenings of singing and eating homemade cheeses?  A group of graduates from College of Santa Fe’s Documentary Studies program teamed up with US friends and local Brazilians this winter to compile a research project on the phenomenon of immigration from the rural state of Minas Gerais, where Resplendor is located, to big city America.” – Source

For more info, here’s the filmmakers site!

Two Brothers Foundation – Redefining Rocinha

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I’d like to talk a little about an organization working out of Rocinha in Rio de Janeiro, who is helping to redefine the way favelas are looked at by bringing in volunteers to work within them. Through two institutions, the Two Brothers Foundation and the Two Brothers Institute (called the ’2bros’ and ‘i2i’, respectively), the organizers and volunteers have the opportunity to redefine their vision of poor communities in developing nations as well as directly affect the communities themselves. According to 2bros, here’s a little of what they do in their own words, taken from their ‘About Us‘ page…

Two Brothers

“The mission of Two Brothers is to provide educational opportunities in neighborhoods such as Rocinha through local and international community service and cultural exchange.

Of course, one of the strongest and most important aspects of 2bros/i2i continues to be the intimate interaction between scores of international volunteers and researchers who come to live and work with 2bros/i2i in Rocinha and students and other residents of the favela. Over the past twelve months alone more than 100 people from around the world have volunteered their time and skills with Two Brothers. These dedicated men and women, along with the students and staff of i2i, help make our organization a sort of “organic university” in which the educational experience goes far beyond book leaning and the confines of the classroom into a firsthand, lived contact with the complex and intensely human realities of the lives of everyday people. It is difficult to calculate the enormous value and far reaching benefits that come from such an exchange. On the one hand, this exchange creates a tremendous flow of information, experience, and perspectives that enrich the lives of the volunteers and those of the residents of Rocinha alike. On the other, it contributes greatly to the general understanding of the profound humanity of people living in poor communities like Rocinha and helps raise consciousness about issues of social exclusion and violence in Brazil an around the world, as volunteers and researchers pass on the knowledge they gain through word of mouth, the dissemination of the audiovisual material they produce, and the publication of research results coming out of their intense interaction with their students and neighbors.”

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To get a closer look at the day to day activities of 2bros/i2i, check out their Photos & Videos page, which houses several thirty minute videos on the subject. I reccomend checking them out as they will change your impression of how the favelas are (as opposed to how they are portrayed in international hits such as Cidade de Deus).

One of the people bringing awareness to the 2bros is DJ Zezinho who I’ve met here in California a few years back. I spoke with him recently and although he doesn’t remember me, he got a chance to tell me of his day long tours of Rocinha which can be set up by contacting him on his site. Another interesting character is the Aussie Tahnee who has been living in Rocinha for almost a year and started a fashion line called Hijinx, which showcases clothing made inside Rocinha itself.

Here’s an idea of where you could be housed, if you volunteered with 2bros and wished to live within Rocinha in order to get a firsthand experience.

One day and a half in Salvador

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“OUTSIDE of Carnaval week each February, when the emphasis is decidedly on the present, the coastal city of Salvador seems almost obsessed with its African past. Nowhere in Brazil is the deep influence of three and a half centuries of slavery so obvious, from the color of people’s skin to the color of the food (often orange, from the ubiquitous use of dendê, or red palm oil); from the deep influence of the African-derived religious traditions of candomblé to the musical beats of axé and samba. In the Rio Vermelho neighborhood, home to the hottest night life in this city on the Bay of All Saints, even the cool kids often shun the chicest bars and restaurants to hang out in the public plazas, drinking beer and eating the traditional, African-inspired black-eyed pea fritters called acarajé.”

The rest can be found here on NYT. (The rest of the article is an itinerary, includes slide-show)