[-empyre-] Another book...

["arteonline" <arteonline@arteonline.arq.br>]

Hello all,

Yesterday  I sent you the link to a text about the Neoconcrete movement.  I
did this because I think that to understand the structure of my books it is
necessary to understand the Neoconcrete.

The estructure of all my books point out the inconclusive nature of
reasoning. They express a multiplicity of relationships, ambiguities and
contradictions that lead spectators to complete the work, removing them from
their passive role. It is my aim while building this books.

Today I would like to show you my favorite book: "The newest  song of exile:
Sabiá Virtuality".

"Sabiá Virtuality" is an experimental narrative that compares and contrasts
the real and the virtual through three versions of the same text /
hypertext:

1- A printed artist's book.
http://www.iis.com.br/~regvampi/virtualidade/livro.htm
2- A multimedia and interactive digital artist's book (CD-ROM).
3- A multimedia and interactive "net-digital" artist's book (website) /
http://arteonline.arq.br/virtualidade .

"Sabiá Virtuality" also spotlights similarities between Brazilian and
Mexican culture and plays with parodies of the poem "Canção do Exílio"
("Song of Exile," 1843), by Brazilian poet Gonçalves Dias (Sabiá is a
brazilian bird.). The project is also based in Octavio Paz ("Labirinto da
Solidão" /  Labirinth of Solitude)

The project was created to InteractivA'03, a new media exhibit that took
place at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Yucatan MACAY (www.macay.org.mx)
in Merida, Mexico (2003);  curated by Raul Ferrera-Balanquet.

The poem Song of Exile ( 1843) and fragments of its parodies:

SONG OF EXILE

My land has such palm trees
Where sing the sabiá.
The birds, which here sing,
Do not sing as they do there.

Our sky has more stars,
our fields have more flowers,
Our woods have more life,
Our life has more loves.

When at night, alone, I dream,
More pleasure find I there;
My land has such palm trees
Where sing the sabiá.

My land has such beauties
Which here cannot be found.
When at night, alone, I dream,
More pleasure find I there;
My land has such palm trees
Where sings the sabiá.

O God, let me not die,
Before I go back there,
Before I enjoy the beauty
Which here cannot be found,
Before I see the palm trees
Where sings the sabiá.

Tradução de John Milton (Gonçalves Dias)

1925

Our flowers are lovelier
Our fruits more delicious
But they cost a fortune.

What wouldn't I give to chew on a real carambola fruit
And listen to a sabiá with a Brazilian ID card sing!

Murilo Mendes

1929

My homeland has palm trees
Where the ocean warbles
The birds here
Don't sing like the ones back home

Oswald de Andrade

1945

Only at night,
Could he be happy:
A sabiá
In a palm tree, far away.

Another cry of life and
Return...

Carlos Drummond de Andrade

1968

I'll go back I know that
I 'll go back
That my place is here
and there it will always be
There where I can hear the
Song of  the sabiá

Antonio Carlos Jobim, Chico Buarque  and Norman Gimbel

1970
Floral games

In my homeland there are palm trees,
Where the tico-tico sings,
Meanwhile the sabiá
Is eating my maize flour

Now Brazil is modern
And the miracle is modern too
The water does not turn into wine,
It turns into vinegar

Cacaso

2003

Out there, the moonlight shines on
But the "traffic" and poverty split Rio Like a meridian
Where is sabiá virtuality?
And the hot tin roof that once scattered our soil with stars?

(Regina Célia Pinto)

Always

In our daily Brazil,
(Like our daily bread)
Give us
Sabiás and poetry

(Regina Célia Pinto)

As you can see the romantic intentions of Gonçalves Dias are being changed
while  time goes by.

This work  studies the Carnival, and a carioca phenomenon of it , the parade
of Samba Schools which is compared  with some aspects of Mexican culture:

One of the traditional highlights of carnival in Rio de Janeiro is the
parade of the top samba schools which take place on the Sunday and Monday
nights of carnival along the purpose built Passarela do Samba (Sambódromo -
image above), located on Avenida Marquês de Sapucaí, close to the city
centre.
BRAZIL


Rio de Janeiro has its own special brand of popular culture. During carnival
and the days that lead up to and follow it, time hangs in sweet suspense.
Rio's carnival is summed up by the samba schools, where the peaceful union
of all ranks of society pursues the common goal of beauty, organization and
creativity. Thrilling to the beats of bass and tenor drums, we can feel this
potential for becoming, which we have decided to call "sabiá virtuality."
Rather than waiting till the tomorrow that never comes for a harmonious and
productive future, the residents of Rio de Janeiro are presenting the
possibility of the future here and now, and for a night or two we will once
again see the palm trees and hear the sabiá sing, momentarily forgetting the
divisions, the drug war, the poverty, and the pain of living in exile
without leaving home.

Regina Célia Pinto
English Version: Sabrina Gledhill

MEXICO

"The solitary Mexican loves fiestas and public gatherings. Everything is an
excuse for a get-together. Any pretext will serve to stop the march of time
with festivities and ceremonies to celebrate men and events. We are a ritual
people, and this tendency enriches our imaginations and sensibilities, which
are always keen and alive. The art of the fiesta, which is scorned almost
everywhere else, is still intact among us. In few places in the world can
you experience a spectacle like the great religious feasts of Mexico, with
their vivid, harsh, pure colors, and their dances, ceremonies, fireworks,
unique costumes and the amazing shower of surprises, fruits, sweets and
objects sold on those days in the plazas and marketplaces."

 Octavio Paz, Labirinth of Solitude, fragment; English Version: Sabrina
Gledhill


It is also a Homage to the poet and founder of Mangueira samba school -
Agenor de Oliveira , Cartola; one of the best brazilian poets.

The narrative has a character which was created just for this book: Djalma
Sabiá. Below his bio:

Name: Djalma Sabiá.
Nationality: Brazilian.

He was born and lives in Mangueira, Rio de Janeiro.

Formation:
Graduated in  issues of suffering.

In Mangueira,
the barefoot Sabiá walks by the slum singing:
- Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Who talks? Is it from Brazil?

Professional Activities:

Unemployed
Sambista
Percussion player and
Poet
He carried his samba for "Mãe de Santo" to pray...
Senseless destiny, please go away!

ZIRIGUIDUM ZIRIGUIDUM
ZIRIGUIDUM
TELECOTECO
ZIRIGUIDUM

Tomorrow will be another day!!!


There is also a hopscotch game / memory game in it.

Choose one of the dice, click it. If it shows the number 1, you can start
playing hopscotch game, but  to keep on playing, it is necessary to draw the
dice in this sequence:  2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8...

The design of the hopscotch  accompanies the image of the "Sambódromo",
place where the Samba Schools parade. To play this hopscotch game in this
work is just like to parade in a Samba School.

The work has beautiful sounds and it is a homage to our African roots. There
are some scientific explanations about our process of civilization:

Foreword by Gilberto Freyre to The Masters and the Slaves, a Study in the
Development of Brazilian Civilization

In Brazil the relations between the white and colored races from the first
half of the sixteenth century were conditioned on the one hand by the system
of economic production-monoculture and latifundia-and on the other hand by
the scarcity of white women among the conquerors. Sugar-raising not only
stifled the democratic industries represented by the trade in brazilwood and
hides; it sterilized the land for the forces of diversified farming and
herding ofr a broad expanse around the plantations. It called for na
enormous number of slaves. Cattle-raising, meanwhile, with the possibilities
it afforded for a democratic way of life,was relegated to the backlands. In
the agrarian zone, along with a monoculture that absorbed other forms of
production, there developed a semi-feudal society, with a minority of whites
and lightskinned mulattoes dominating, patriarchally and polygamously, from
their Big Houses of stone and mortar, not only the slaves that were bred so
prolifically in the senzalas, but the share croppers as well, the tenants or
retainers, those who dwelt in the huts of mud and straw, vassals of the Big
House in the strictest meaning of the word.


Conquerors, in the military and technical sense, of the indigenous
populations, the absolute reulers of the Negroes imported from Africa for
the hard labor of the bagaceira, the Europeans and their descendants
meanwhile had to compromise eith the Indians and the Africans in he matter
of genetic and social relations. The scarcity of white women created zones
of fraternization between conquerors and conquered, between masters and
slaves. While these relations between white men and colored women did not
cease to be those of "superiors" with "inferiors", and in the majority of
cases those of disillusioned and sadistic gentlemen with passive slave
girls, they were mitigated by the need that was felt by many colonisits of
douding a family under such circumstances and upon such a basis as this. A
widly practiced miscegenation here tended to modify the enormous social
distance that otherwise would have been preserved between Big House and
tropical forest, between Big House and slave hut. What a latifundiary
monoculture based upon slavery accomplished in the way of creating an
aristocracy, by difiding Brazilian culture into two extremes, of gentry and
slaves, with a thin and insignificant remnant of free men sandwiched in
betwewn, was in good part offset by the social effects of miscegenation. The
Indian woman and the mina, or Negro woman, in the beginning, and later the
mulatto, the cabrocha, the quadrarona, the oitavona, becoming domestics,
concubines, and even the lawful wives of their white masters, exerted a
powerful influence for social democracy in Brazil. A considerable portion of
the big landed estates was divided among the mestizo sons, legitimate or
illegitimate, procreated by these white fathers, and this tended to break up
the feudal allotments and latifundia that were small kingdoms in themselves.

Sabiá virtuality is Tropicalist and carnivalesque but shows that carnival is
really Magic Realism.  Tonight I will speak about  other  Tropicalist  work:
Paris - Rio de Janeiro Gallery.

I hope you enjoy and if you have some question, please, ask me.

Regina