Dear reader,
This publication was conceived as part of the conclusion of my research trajectory at a.pass {advanced performance and scenography studies}. The materials presented here are part of Arquivo Atlântico, a multi-chapter research project that Beatriz Cantinho and I have been developing together since 2020. The publication accompanies an installation composed by three audio pieces focusing on stories from the triangle formed by Brazil, Angola and Portugal, and a performative experiment, temporarily named Symmetries.
Arquivo Atlântico emerged from a desire to look back at the history of the various territories bordered by the Atlantic Ocean in order to understand the forms of occupation, extraction, hierarchization, exclusion and extermination that, still today, mark the experience in these geographies. Working with a wide variety of sources – films, official documents, literature, sonic registers, oral narratives we have been exploring how creative and compositional practices can rescue the affective capacity of these materials and allow us to deconstruct narratives and visualities that characterize a political imaginary of colonial matrix. More than about history, Arquivo Atlântico is an investigation on memory, on the possibility of re-membering differently places, peoples and knowledges. It is an attempt to understand how, by positioning ourselves within larger narratives, we can draw connections, inaugurate dialogues, foster imaginaries and open space for other readings of the present.
The three scripts and the two letters presented in this publication were produced by us in October 2020 in the context of OSSO’s Collective research residencies, in Caldas da Rainha, Portugal. They were first presented in the third edition of Eira#, an experimental radio platform for artistic residencies created by OSSO, and later became the basis of an experimental podcast series that we have been developing in the frame of Arquivo Atlântico. Departing from the narrative structure of the film Sans Soleil, by Chris Marker, the composition and dramaturgy of the scripts was organized as a fractal correspondence between people across different geographies; whom, at the same, are attached to the land and their memories and immersed in the memories of others. Inspired by the idea of symmetry, as suggested by Denise Ferreira da Silva, we propose to think about how these materials, when put together, reveal the dynamics and inventiveness of the colonial practices embedded on our everyday life.
Completing the publication, we have two conversations recently recorded for the Arquivo Atlântico’s podcast platform and for On Coloniality, a public gathering organized by Amy Pickles, Chloe Janssens and I within the context of a.pass. The first conversation with Woie Kriri Sobrinho Patte responds to a desire to investigate the singularity of the processes of colonization in South Brazil, where I was born and raised, and to understand how indigenous resistance continues to be formulated in response to contemporary colonial dynamics. The second, with Helena Vieira, is part of our desire to understand how theory and critical thought can support our search other forms of engagement with archive materials, and to better understand both the legacies we build upon and the challenges that lie ahead.
By publishing these texts, we intend to facilitate the access to part of the materials we have been producing in Portuguese while creating an opportunity to revisit and expand the reflections contained in them. The audio pieces we refer above are available and can be listened at arquivoatlantico.com and anchor.fm/ arquivoatlantico. Put on your headphones and enjoy the reading.
Túlio Rosa
Brussels, January 2022