1. PHOTOGRAPHY, MONTAGE AND ARCHIVE: AN ATLAS OF A DICTATORSHIP AND ITS LANDSCAPES.
- Author
-
BALBELA, GUSTAVO
- Subjects
HISTORY of dictatorships ,MILITARY government ,DICTATORSHIP ,BRAZILIAN history ,LANDSCAPES - Abstract
The far-right turn in Brazilian politics led to the re-emergence of a ghost that has been hindering our political agency since the dawn of the republic but that had been hidden for a few decades: the Army and its violent political agency. This essay will frame the archive as an important instance within the artistic practice I have developed as a response to the apparition of this military monster during the Bolsonaro years. In a body of work called "Concrete Witnesses Inquiry," I have combined images and texts (collected mainly from the press) with an urban landscape photographic work that presents overpasses built in my hometown, Porto Alegre, during the 1964 military dictatorship. Following authors such as Georges Didi-Huberman and Allan Sekula, I suggest that the archive can be seen as a central axis in this process, allowing me to connect otherwise unimportant elements from the urban landscape with violent historical processes, often considered distant and abstract. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2024