Manifesto: A Gambiarra for Performance

Alessandra Montagner and Beth Lopes

Brazil has been built over erased voices, violated bodies, and histories that have been created by false truths. Narratives that have been misplaced between the native and the colonised have resulted in a society that has been interwoven as a patchwork—an improbable juxtaposition of languages, cultures, and ethnicities, all of which are founded upon genocide. The same applies to the paradigms of the country’s art. For too long, these have followed Eurocentric models, to the detriment of local and indigenous manifestations. For at least a century, though, this approach has been contested, when the Modern Art Week (1922)^[1] consecrated the search for national autonomy in Brazilian art.

This manifesto engages with the continuing unfolding of this search, within the specific realm of Performance Studies (PS). It is written by four hands, in an attempt to assemble broken pieces. This writing exudes from the heat of the tropics, being whispered by the complexities of our^[2] shared position as bodies of partial privilege in Brazil: white, but female, possessing a type of whiteness that does not extend beyond our country’s borders—Latin (American).

“Tupi, or not tupi [:] that is the question” (de Andrade 51)^[3] that concerns us. In this sentence, from the “Manifesto Antropófago” [“Antropaphagous Manifesto”], the poet Oswald de Andrade reworks the famous soliloquy of Hamlet, specifically to acknowledge the duality that is entailed by the search for national autonomy for the arts in Brazil. To be, we have tupi.

Tupi-guarani,^[4] Brazil’s ancestral mother (tongue), was eradicated in order for European imperialism to shine. But it was never finally able to truly obfuscate the cravings of its peoples. Anthropophagy has been—and continues to be—our legacy, as well as our ambition. Anthropophagy,^[5] as a strategy that was originally proposed within the context of the Anthropophagic movement,^[6] is driven by the idea that foreign cultures and references are there to be cannibalised, in the same way that some indigenous tribes would cannibalise their enemies, to appropriate their knowledge and their power. Cannibalisation, then, is a means of decolonisation that does not entail the eradication of our colonial past, but rather its ingestion.

The peoples of Brazil have survived colonisation as abaporus^[7] who plot their revenge. We have endured as cannibals: hunger is our weapon; cannibalisation is our performance. As such, we hereby devour PS, digesting its Anglo-(North) American paradigm via the puzzles of our desires, to excrete it as our masterpiece: gambiarra.^[8]

Gambiarra is the rule when no ruling system can ensure survival. It is an action, an artefact, an attitude that is born from necessity or adversity, because an essential part of something was neither present nor available. Gambiarras improvise with cables, granting illegal access to electricity, scribbling the Brazilian skies with abstract drawings. They often refer to illumination, especially in the context of the theatre^[9]—they light paths. Gambiarra assembles the improbable: it is a nail that is placed in the base of a broken flip-flop strap, subverting its role to fix the strap and to ensure that one does not need to keep on walking barefoot. It is a kludge: fundamentally inelegant, but effective for a particular purpose, at a certain time.

To exalt a local method that is an epistemological perspective, then, this manifesto approaches Brazilian performance through the lens of the gambiarra: as a perspective that has been assembled via our paradoxical relationships with Western paradigms, which are grounded both in desire and contempt. The legacy of colonisation has engraved not only Brazil’s history, but also its people. The “coloniality of being” (Mignolo 4) has left deep marks in our minds and on our subjectivities. Indeed, the “colonial wound” (Mignolo 8)^[10] remains open, and it still bleeds. It pours out whenever we adhere to the understanding of the exotic inferiority of our America, which is Latin.^[11] It haemorrhages whenever the colonial norm provides us with “a north.” Following in the footsteps of Jota Mombaça,^[12] we (hereby) write with our blood: the south is our ground zero. And paraphrasing Mombaça, we shout: (not only one, but) many empires owe us.^[13]

As long as there is a centre, there is also a point of reference. If decolonisation blurs previously defined notions of centre and periphery (Mignolo 9), then performance, in turn, confuses compasses. To claim a gambiarra for PS, we declare it to be a(n) (in)discipline in a territory with no jurisdiction—somewhere between the north and the south; beyond Anglo and Latin America; certainly further from the centre than the margin; at the crossroads.

It is perhaps at the crossroads that PS can lose its (Anglo-American) bearings.

In our (Brazilian) America, performance revolves around the crossroads, swiftly moving in many different gingados (swings); spiralling, in time and in space, with Eshu.^[14] Our (Congado)^[15] queen Leda Martins^[16] states that “black culture is crossroad culture,”^[17] referring to the ways in which African traditions have crossed with oral memories from the cultures of the Americas (15). In Brazil, these crossings intersect with black, Indigenous, Asian, and European cultures. In Brazil, PS therefore results from a complex juxtaposition of the colonisation of desire (the fascination with Western paradigms), the colonial wound, and the hunger for decolonisation.

Irrespective of its Anglo-(North) American dominance, performance continues to exist as a tool for decolonisation and for the affirmation of difference in Brazil. In this respect, it manifests itself as a countervailing space-time for subjugated groups, matters, and practices; as such, it works for—and through—ghettos. The freaks, the whores, the crips, the blacks, the bichas,^[18] and many others—they all perform, creating gambiarras towards the constitution, both, of their oeuvre and of themselves. Estela Lapponi^[19] engages her public in the activity of covering what she dislikes about her disabled body with adhesive tape on which the world “fragile” is inscribed, turning herself into a makeshift—constricted—statuette.^[20] Antônio Obá^[21] uses a simple traditional corn grinder to grate a figurine of Brazil’s (black) patron (Catholic) saint, Our Lady Aparecida, before coating his black body with the white powder that has resulted from the grating of the figurine, as a strategy of bleaching his way into becoming a saint—and disappearing, as a consequence. In their different ways, they both assemble discourses that surround the specificities of their circumstances in the world, using simple tools and materials (tape and gypsum) to daub provisional corporealities that stand as shuddering devices: gambiarras.

In our land, performance leaks through the cracks in the cultural and social systems. Gambiarra works in a similar way, through similar fissures, underground, quietly but repeatedly hacking functions and modes of production. Gambiarra challenges power—the official structures of today, the colonial heritage of the past, and the histories of both that continue to be narrated and validated in order to rearrange them, making space for provisional (new) ones.

As a critical concept that originated in the Brazilian visual arts,^[22] gambiarra entails an aesthetics of the precarious as well as an ethics of the provisional.^[23] Both precarity and provisionality are instabilities that constitute the live performative event and the persistence that is involved in keeping it (a)live. Performance, as a phenomenon and as a field, is rife with instabilities. Assembling a gambiarra for PS therefore implies the welcoming of such instabilities, by defying linear discourses and reframing peripheric modes of performance that are, above all, bodily and repertoire-based—as conceptualised by Diana Taylor in the book Arquivo e Repertório: Performance e Memória Cultural nas Américas [The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas].

Gambiarra represents an unstable assemblage that highlights decolonial epistemologies, being based on precarity and provisionality, as well as on sufficiency,^[24] rather than on flawlessness. Gambiarra is able to resist all means of imperialism, precisely because it is able to subvert them.

Claims have been made that gambiarra originally derived from the Tupi-guarani word gambiarã, meaning “a provisional camp in unknown territory” (Sedlmayer 15)—undiscovered, for sure, and uncolonised, perhaps. Gambiarra dethrones centres in order to affirm other unchartered territories, challenging PS to not betray its promise. It confuses the compasses of performance even more; no definition can hold; no definite frame can be demarcated; and no empire can be claimed. To conceive of PS in Brazil as a gambiarra, we summon it (PS) to dance at the crossroads: where everyone gathers, everything converges, and all, ultimately, passes. Performance stands precariously precisely because its instabilities and its provisionalities are its greatest wealth: as an art genre; as a(n) (in)discipline; as a dominion; as a provisional phenomenon. As a gambiarra—which is always about to collapse.

Notes

^[1] “Modern Art Week” was an art event/festival that took place in São Paulo between 13 and 18 February 1922, bringing together artists from fields such as the visual arts, performing arts, music, literature, poetry, and architecture. It was an important milestone in the Brazilian modernist movement, as it was intended to question and interrupt the prevailing academism of the arts, which was highly Eurocentric, with a view to stimulating the search for a true Brazilian identity in terms of the arts.

^[2] That is, the position of us, as the authors. We are both Latin American Brazilian women and artist-scholars whose interests and research revolve around PS. We view performance as a frame that is capable of disrupting established linear discourses and epistemologies. As a consequence, we are writing this manifesto in a way that accounts for the complexities of our geopolitical context, in order to engage with what we understand to be performance’s constitutive open-endness.

^[3] “Tupi” has a similar pronunciation as “to be”. The reworking of the soliloquy in Andrade’s “Manifesto” demonstrates a conciliation between a foreign device—which has been altered both from and towards a Brazilian perspective—and local compositions.

^[4] A subfamily of many of the Indigenous languages of South America.

^[5] As a strategy, anthropophagy aimed to disengage Brazilian peoples as well as art forms from the chronologies of colonial epistemes, but without negating them altogether: indeed, they could still serve as inspiration for Brazilian art, as long as what was created in the country was not simply a reproduction of the aesthetics, principles, and values that had been developed elsewhere.

^[6] The Movimento Antropofágico (Anthropophagic Movement) was an art movement that took shape in the 1920s, taking its name from Andrade’s “Manifesto.” It proposed the appropriation of anthropophagy—as implemented by some Tupi-Guarani rituals—in order to assimilate foreign art paradigms (usually European or North American), instead of refusing them, as a means of embodying resistance against different imperialist forces.

^[7] Abaporu, in Tupi-Guarani, means “a man who eats people” or cannibal or anthropophagus—deriving from aba (man) + porá (people) + ú (to eat).

^[8] Gambiarra, in Brazilian Portuguese, is a term with multiple meanings and an unclear history; there are different claims to its origin, resulting in its obscure etymology. It is used in numerous situations to name objects, arrangements, and solutions, as well as attitudes. A direct translation into English could be “kludge,” but that does not do the term justice, because gambiarra entails certain logics and ethics for navigating the world. Sabrina Sedlmayer, in A Jacuba Is a Gambiarra, suggests that gambiarra might derive from the word gâmbia, an old Portuguese word for “legs”—as in the expression dar às gâmbias, or “to use one’s legs” (as an animal or a human) to flee astutely in the face of adversity, danger, or need (15).

^[9] Gambiarra is also a piece of equipment in the theatre: the batten that supports the theatrical lights and spotlights on the stage.

^[10] According to Walter Mignolo, in The Idea of Latin America, the “coloniality of being” (4) is a process that excludes some people from history, either because their histories are considered to be irrelevant or because they are themselves considered non-entities. This is a process of silencing that results in the erasure of entire languages, cultures, and histories, as well as modes of existence, being based on the idea that some populations and cultural systems are inferior or underdeveloped. Ultimately, then, this is the structure of coloniality, which affects nations and individuals by means of the perpetuation of what Mignolo has called “the colonial wound”—in other words, the “physical and/or psychological” dimensions of coloniality, as experienced by those who have been deprived of the “locus of enunciation” (8). As such, the continuing belief of the inferiority of colonised societies, in relation to those who have previously colonised them, or the “developed” world, is a learnt pattern that cannot but shape the desires and paradigms that are subsequently adhered to.

^[11] Latin America is thus named in order to distinguish it from its “developed” counterpart, “Anglo-America” (Mignolo 3-4).

^[12] Jota Mombaça is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, and performer who self-identifies as a non-binary bicha (see below). They work across performance, writing, and interventions, both in Brazil as well as abroad.

^[13] A Ferida Colonial Ainda Dói, Vol. 6: Vocês Nos Devem [The Colonial Wound Still Hurts, Vol. 6: You Owe Us], dating from 2017, is an intervention, as part of a performance series, in which Mombaça negotiates issues of trauma and vengeance via the precarious inscription of their blood onto the area surrounding Padrao dos Descobrimentos—a monument in Lisbon, Portugal, which pays homage to its “discoveries.” These inscriptions of blood aim to make manifest the violence that the Portuguese colonial enterprises have imposed upon the countries that Portugal has colonised.

^[14] Eshu is one of the Yoruba divinities who is worshiped in Candomblé and Umbanda—two religions of African origin. The offerings to this guardian, orisha, and protector of the paths take place at street crossings—the crossroads.

^[15] Congado is a cultural and religious Afro-Brazilian manifestation, which brings dancing, music, and singing together.

^[16] A poet and essayist who works across the fields of performance and literature.

^[17] This passage is translated by the authors: “[…] cultura negra é cultura das encruzilhadas.”

^[18] Bicha is traditionally associated with effeminacy, so it might find some resonance with the word “sissy.” However, it is also a derogatory term that has been reappropriated in order to affirm a mode of existence, similar to the notion of “queer,” in a way.

^[19] A performer and videoartist based in São Paulo. Lapponi is an artist with disability whose work encompasses dance, performance, video, and the visual arts.

^[20] INTENTO 00035—Ça m’Énerve!! (2016) is part of a series of intents (performances) performed by Lapponi, with a view to exploring the notion of the anti-muse, as part of the project Intruder Body (Corpo Intruso). It has been performed many times since 2016.

^[21] Antônio Obá is a performer and visual artist who is based in Brasília. Atos de Transfiguração: Desaparição ou Receita para Fazer um Santo [Acts of Transfiguration: Disappearance or Recipe to Make a Saint], dating from 2015, was a very controversial performance in Obá’s career. Owing to its religious content, it inspired violent reactions in Brazil, which resulted in Obá having to leave the country for a period of time, after being on the receiving end of death threats.

^[22] The debate about gambiarra in the visual arts in Brazil has largely focused on the various materials that are required to create artworks (paint, steel, canvas, etc.). Over the past two decades, the concept and practice of gambiarra has been widely explored in relation to the Brazilian visual arts, with alternative methods and materials being implemented, in order to explore how artworks are made in the country. Gambiarra was first implemented by the art critic and curator Lisette Lagnado, in a text entitled O Malabarista e Gambiarra [The Juggler and the Gambiarra]. At the beginning of the century, Lagnado had noticed a trend relating to the ways in which specific arrangements were made at some museums, so that they were able to host certain exhibitions, and the ways in which artworks were then created and placed in such spaces, leading to a characteristic precariousness that could be representative of a Brazilian cultural identity—which would also converse with its geo-political context. See Lagnado, Lisette. O Malabarista e a Gambiarra. Revista Trópico. 2007.

^[23] The critic and art historian Renata Gesomino, in A Arte da Lata: Uma Crítica à Estética da “Gambiarra” ou Como Tecer uma Análise Crítica sem Utilizar os Discursos da Precariedade e da Provisoriedade [Tin Art: A Critique on the Aesthetics of “Gambiarra” or How to Weave a Critique without Using Discourses on Precarity and Provisionality, 2015], contests the understanding of gambiarra as an aesthetics of precarity and provisionality, which could characterise an identity for Brazilian visual arts, by pointing out that it regards precarious art as being inferior to art that is not considered to be precarious, thereby reinforcing colonising perspectives about Brazilian art. See Gesomino, Renata. A Arte da Lata: Uma Crítica à Estética da “Gambiarra” ou Como Tecer uma Análise Crítica sem Utilizar os Discursos da Precariedade e da Provisoriedade. Revista Poiésis. Volume 16, issue 25, 2015, pp.215-229.

^[24] See Carolina Camargo De Nadai, Gambiarração: Poéticas em Composição Coreográfica (Universidade de São Paulo, doctoral thesis, 2017, p. 29).

Works Cited

Andrade, Oswald. “Manifesto Antropófago.” Manifesto Antropófago e Outros Textos, Edited by Jorge Schawartz and Gênese Andrade, Penguin Classics Companhia das Letras, 2017, pp. 42-60.

Martins, Leda Maria. Afrografias da Memória: O Reinado do Rosario no Jatobá. Perspectiva; Mazza, 1997.

Mignolo, Walter. The Idea of Latin America. Blackwell Publishing, 2005.

Sedlmayer, Sabrina. Uma Jacuba é Uma Gambiarra / A Jacuba is a Gambiarra. Autêntica, 2017.

Taylor, Diana. Arquivo e Repertório: Performance e Memória Cultural nas Américas. Editora UFMG, 2013.