1. Embodied Art and Aesthetic Performativity in the
London 2012 Handover to Rio (2016)
Dr Rodanthi Tzanelli (r.tzanelli@leeds.ac.uk)
Sociology & Social Policy, University of Leeds
3. Context of upcoming Rio 2016
and Brazilian (post)colonial phantoms
• Brazil’s colonial ‘heritage’ as phantom: welcome to
Darwn’s tourist ‘terra nova’
• Brazil’s authoritarian ‘heritage’ as phantom: from
Getulio Vargas (1964-1989) to neoliberal realities
• Brazil’s Olympic legacy (post-2016 to become heritage)
• Production of contested hybridities and travelling
cultural commodities based on blood lineage and
conceptions of ‘suffering’: slavery, dictatorial
oppression, neoliberal geographical divides, new athletic
ethic of laudible effort
4. ‘The spectacle’s clichés ‘don’t misrepresent us, but we want to
show other ways in which we mix. We are very far from Europe
and North America. […] We get this information and we
reinvent.[…] This is our spirit, this is how we produce culture’.
Cao Hamburger,
Credit: Divulgação
Daniela Thomas
http://redutocultural.blogspot.c
o.uk/2010/05/entrevista-com-
daniela-thomas-cineasta.html
5. Camerawork, Olympic
performance and the ‘Truth’
• Elevation of hybridity as mixing to an all-
embracing good value.
• Hidden behind this utopian abstraction is a well-
established disjunction between multiculturalism
as an ideal and multicultural political realities
that are ‘shoved under the carpet’.
• Facts behind utopia: handover’s performances
framed by collection of representations of
Northeastern Brazilian genres
• Old question of ownership: who is cast as mere
wage labour or elite artist and who takes full
credit for the product beyond loyalties?
6. Imperatives beyond individual artwork
• What do directors choose to present,
how and why?
• How: cultural style, situated aesthetics
• Rio 2016 aesthetics as judgement over
what is beautiful and worthy as
validated by senses
• Why: physical and cognitive dimensions
collaborating in producing judgements
about the socio-cultural world we inhabit
(cosmology)
7. Handover’s focus:
synergy of senses
• Visual: Coloured costumes and black-
white performers
• Aural: (1) Rio’s and Brazil’s blend of
musical traditions, including samba, (2)
new hybrid tunes and poperatic singing
• Kinaesthetic: (1) samba dance, Carnaval
and Candomblé rituals, (2) leisure
regimes as in football
• Brazilian tradition facing Western
modernity or a meeting point of
difference?
8. Syn-aesthesia
• To capture the mind-body complex of
Brazilian performativity
• Deriving from a real disorder
(synaesthesia as replacement of one
sense with another)
• Performative synaesthetics: productive
re-ordering of narrative (not neural!)
pathways through combinations of
image, movement, touch, smell and
sound
9. Rio’s ‘allegory’ and IOC’s ‘categories’
• International
Olympic Committee:
preservation of
Olympic ethical
chart/principles of
goodness, fairness
and European beauty
• Rio 2016: allegory or
ethno-national
worldview appeared
to be aligned with
these principles
Left to Right:
London Mayor B. Johnson
IOC President J. Rogge
Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes
10. Rio’s allegory as
Brazilian ‘joy’ and ‘passion’
• Stress on physical and affective aspects,
not really about Olympic aesthetics but
Brazil’s postcolonial interpretation of
encounters with world
• European goodness (cosmopolitanism)
not Brazil/Rio’s cosmetic
cosmopolitanism
• Rio’s allegory treating surfaces (form)
and emotion as meaning (content)
11. Rio’s ‘cosmetic cosmopolitanism’
• Joy/passion as deep cosmopolitan
statements:
1. as internal dialogue on racial inequalities,
social difference and geographical
marginality
2. as aesthetic and political collusion with
hegemonic worldviews (IOC, European
Enlightenment, Cartesian divide between
mind and body)
• First statement contradicts the second, as
Brazil’s modernity path contradicts that of
colonial and postcolonial Europe’s pathways
12. Ex. 1: Sorriso as favela sambista
vs. Scheidt as athletic human
• Sorriso as black human:
from street cleaning to
Rio Sambadrome to
music and film industry
and nationally/globally
recognised dancer
• Scheidt as white human:
multiple medal-wining
Olympian but not
competent dancer
• Clashes of 2 forms of
‘labour’
• Brazilian e-motion as
anti- or post-Cartesian
statement
13. Ex. 2: Marisa Monte’s aural
performance
• White (-dressed) body/form
enclosing ‘black’ content
(Candomblé)
• Mixed professional training
(samba to European opera)
• Handover’s focus: Bachiana
No. 5 from the Bachianas
Brasileiras
• 9 suites -- Musical blend
(Northeastern inspiration +
Bach)
• Monte’s overall appearance
representative of popera
• Inviting synaesthetic travel
akin to thanatotourism
15. Seu Jorge: from samba slums
to global cinematic ‘Truths’
• Brazilian musician,
singer, songwriter and
actor
• Raised in a favela north
of Rio de Janeiro
known as the city of
Belford Roxo.
• Considered by many as
an artist that renewed
Brazilian pop samba
through global blends
• City of God (2002)
• The Life Aquatic with
Steve Zissou (2004)
16. Ambrósio as Brazil’s cosmetic cosmopolitanism:
ex. 3 of synaesthetic performativity
Ambrósio’s perfomance with BLACK
samba dancers and singers.
The singer B-Negão(second left), the
model Alessandra Ambrósio
(middle) and Renato Sorriso (first
left)
SURFACES AS ENNOBLED NON-
EUROPEAN AESTHETICS: BLACKNESS +
FEMININE GRANDSTANDING
17. Trickery as tourist performativity:
Pele the Malandro
• Brazilian statement contra
European-Olympic categories of
fairness
• Malandro as cinematic character:
bad boy akin to con man in tourist
trade across Latin American
cultures
• Body (love-man) deceiving
mind/senses (foreign thought)
• BUT Pele reconciles this anti-
Cartesian statement with Olympic
athleticism and insertion of black
labour (football) into cultural
industries (cinematic appearances,
music composition, Ubisoft game
persona)
Source: Mail Online, 13 August 2013
