Audiovisual production and embodied pedagogy as health promotion: The experience of a university extension project in partnership with the Casa Nem LGBTQIA+ shelter in Brazil

ABSTRACT

The project “Audiovisual production and vital strategies” interwove art, life, academic research, and activism with decolonial feminist perspectives. It was carried out as part of an audiovisual laboratory with students from the Federal State University of Rio de Janeiro and Casa Nem, a squatters’ settlement, cultural and educational project in Rio de Janeiro led by transgender people in situations of high social vulnerability. The audiovisual Lab was facilitated by a group of artists and educators, and the majority of project participants were Black people who identified as trans* or LGBTQIA+. We worked with critical and emancipatory pedagogies that allowed the impacts of each participants racialized and gendered life experiences to guide the entire creative processes. The project’s creative processes were inspired by bodywork dynamics from the field of performance art, and focused on uncovering profound dialogues and depths in each participant’s life narratives. In this essay, we reflect critically on aesthetic choices and modes of creation. Through our discussion of the images and processes as a whole, we discuss how reimagining the encounter between pedagogy and audiovisual production established new modes of mediating relationships inside and outside of the university, and connect these processes to broader questions of health promotion.

KEYWORDS:

• Audiovisual laboratory
• emancipatory pedagogies
• university extension
• production of integral health

With the intensification of antiracist and LGBTQIA+ struggles globally, more and more stories of resistance have arisen as part of processes of knowledge production grounded in decolonial feminist practices. These processes, which have provoked epistemological ruptures and a recognition of racism in its diverse forms (Miñoso et al., 2014; Miñoso & Maldonado-Torres, 2016), have been particularly present in the last decade in Brazil. Although Brazil is currently facing one of its most authoritative and reactionary governments since redemocratisation, the country is also – at the same time, and somewhat paradoxically – experiencing a wide proliferation of Black, trans*, and queer narratives circulating in both the mainstream media and in independent cinema, where such narratives were previously made all but invisible. Even though these narratives are grounded in visibility and representativity, the ways in which even their own protagonists tell them often reiterate scripts and dramaturgies that correspond with the modern/colonial world-system.

In this essay, we discuss the audiovisual laboratory, ‘Audiovisual production and vital strategies,' a university extension project carried out through Federal State University of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO – acronym in Portuguese). The project weaves together art, life, and academic research from a decolonial feminist perspective, and it is rooted in antiracist activism and a commitment to the de-pathologisation of non-normative sexualities. The project developed at Casa Nem, a radical, anti-capitalist, vegan, and queer squatters’ settlement space for education and activism led by trans* people in situations of high social vulnerability in Rio de Janeiro. As such, Casa Nem is closely connected to activist movements defending the right to mental health and the city.

Brazil is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for trans* people (ANTRA, 2021). In accordance with a dossier produced by ANTRA, the country’s national trans* network, 175 trans* people were killed in 2020, of whom 78% were Black. In an environment where transphobia is produced and reproduced in familial and social environments, many trans* people do not have options for housing, work, or for education, and many end up living in contexts of extreme vulnerability. In this sense, we consider the kind of work being developed by Casa Nem in offering a safe space and shelter, as well as educational and professional development projects, to be an integral part of a circuit of health promotion for trans* people in Rio de Janeiro (and beyond, as it has influenced the creation of similar institutions in other Brazilian states).

Health promotion is one of the strategic pillars of Brazil’s Unified Health System (SUS – acronym in Portuguese), and community-based organisations are among the primary axes through which this work is organised and implemented. Strategies such as those of shelters or other housing initiatives that promote pedagogical and professionalisation processes have contributed both to health promotion and to the prevention of violence and disease among trans* people in situations of high social vulnerability. Furthermore, the Covid-19 pandemic and Brazil’s worsening financial crisis have forced many LGBTQIA+ people to return to violent home environments where they are obligated to live with aggressors (ONU, 2020). In such a context, places like Casa Nem and other squatters’ settlements became essential and real possibilities offering protection to vulnerable people (Santos et al., 2021).

Since its founding in 2016, Casa Nem has offered preparatory courses in entrance examinations for Brazil’s public university system, with the aim of making professional advancement accessible to the people it supports. Originally, Casa Nem occupied a building in downtown Rio de Janeiro near an area known for prostitution. In September 2020, after numerous evictions, the city government granted Casa Nem a space as a permanent home. Over the years, Casa Nem has expanded its activities to include cultural events, health services and advocacy, as well as a vegan restaurant, making it a centre of human rights and LGBTQIA+ activism in Rio de Janeiro, and serving as an inspiration to countless social projects throughout Brazil.

The physical space that Casa Nem used to occupy, as well as its historical trajectory and its central role in Rio de Janeiro’s LGBTQA+ activist community, formed a critical backdrop to the project described herein. It allowed us to construct an environment in which the creative-pedagogical experiences were carried out through practices of reimagining communities. Such reimagination demanded inhabiting the uncertainty that has installed itself in Brazil as neoliberalism has propelled a conservative and fascist wave, thereby intensifying the precariousness of non-hegemonic lives through aggressive policies that violate racialised and trans* bodies on a daily basis (Figure 1).

Figure 1. One of the Lab activities, in front of the old Casa Nem squatters’ settlement headquarters in downtown Rio de Janeiro. Author: Flavia Viana.

In Brazil, extension projects form the principle connection between public universities and the broader community. While extension projects are still not given the same importance as teaching and research activities, they have undergone an intense period of growth over the past two decades. Extension practices demand that practitioners reposition traditional ways of teaching, which are generally driven by a logic deeply structured by the power-knowledge dynamic (Foucault, 2004; 2007). In addition to producing lifelong after-effects in terms of generating feelings of incapability and inadequacy, this logic is also responsible for selectively deciding what can and cannot be considered knowledge.

Deepening relationships between the university and the outside community requires breaking down university walls cemented by race, gender, sexuality, and class hierarchies. Such segregation has been established for centuries, and it must be eroded in order to provoke a more porous relationship between universities and the communities outside them. The ‘Audiovisual production and vital strategies' Lab was born out of a desire to break down such barriers, as well as a desire – shared with Casa Nem – to combine emancipatory pedagogies with creative, collective processes. The Lab, which involved Black trans* and transgender residents and members of Casa Nem and Black and/or LGBTQIA+ students from UNIRIO, took place once a week, for four hours at a time, between April and December 2018. A team of artists and professors with distinct academic backgrounds, activist trajectories, and a history of working together shared responsibility for facilitating the classes.

Below, we describe our pedagogical project and the production of seven films highlighting connections between the project’s emancipatory pedagogy and the results of its creative process. Drawing on feminist decolonial theory and performance art, we will reflect on our choice to use embodied pedagogy, as well as on the specific strategies we employed, and the importance of community actions to public health. We also share summaries of seven short films produced through the project, highlighting how each one collapses the hierarchical and extractivist logics present in hegemonic audiovisual narratives and production processes. We note how these productions have circulated in film festivals, and how some of the Lab’s participants have continued producing films, entering into artistic, film, and university spaces that historically have been hostile to Black and trans* lives. As such, we believe that, in a micropolitical sense, our work helps to transform social configurations of power, and we hope that this essay can inspire other projects around the world to incorporate similar pedagogies as part of broader efforts to improve and promote a more ample vision of what health is, specifically public health and the modes through which it is accessed.

Pedagogical process

In developing the Lab, we sought inspiration in artistic processes in which the creative path taken matters as much as the art. These included Lygia Clark’s pioneering work with artists and students at the Faculté dArts Plastiques St. Charles, at the Sorbonne in Paris (Rolnik, 1999; 2005), as well as La Pocha Nostra’s workshops (Gomez-Peña & Sifuentes, 2011). We also benefitted from previous experiences in the field of public health (Murray et al., 2010) and feminist art projects, such as the long-term workshop ‘Feminist Resistances in the Art of Life' (Bacellar et al., 2017; Barreto, 2020; Pires, 2018) and ‘What you don’t see: Prostitution as we see it' (https://oquevcnaove.hotglue.me/).

Art and life were deeply connected in all of the experiences we sought to create as part of the Lab, which made a collective approach to the project unavoidable.¹ The threads of the creative processes wove together the life trajectories involved and the racialised and gendered life experiences of the participants. It was vital to us to uncouple pedagogy from both formal or informal education, thereby conceiving of pedagogy itself as being as important as whatever it is used to create.

As part of this practice, we sought to produce a healthy environment by facilitating a collective and sensitive space to deal with the helplessness and traumas that the contexts of vulnerability affecting the lives of the Lab’s participants often produced. This involved displacing creative processes from hegemonic narratives that arise from colonial, modern, capitalistic, cis-hetero-patriarchal – and therefore necessarily racist – paths.

Inspired by the writer Conceição Evaristo, we took the experience of ‘escrevivência’ to be one of our primary methodological references. ‘Escrevivência' is a central concept throughout Evaristo’s writings. The word is a neologism that brings together the Portuguese words for writing (escrita) and lived experience (vivência). Although an exact translation is impossible, the concept can be understood as writing from one’s own lived experience. In our pedagogical process of writing scripts collaboratively, we worked with ‘escrevivência' as a methodological tool to help participants embody other narratives that differed from the violence of coloniality. However, as Evaristo notes (2005), ‘our escrevivências cannot be read as lullabies to put the Master’s house to sleep; rather, it should disturb them in their unjust dreams' (author’s translation, p.21).

By wagering on summoning the body as a whole in the process of learning and sharing audiovisual knowledge, we also sought to break with the hierarchical productivity and image-making that often follows an extractive logic. Historically, white cisgender men have primarily been responsible for producing images in movies and publicity. Within this context, narratives regarding blackness and gender issues have been stigmatised and regarded from pre-established positions of power. Stepping into a creative-pedagogical Lab with a group composed mostly of trans* people and people of colour brings the possibility of establishing counter-narratives to such dominant discourses to the audiovisual realm. It is critical to do so at a time when stories and communities such as these are still being invisibilised.

Breaking with normative and hierarchical patterns linked to the formal structures of education is far from simple. Part of our work as facilitators meant organising the Lab as a place in which people’s lives could be present in all of their wholeness. The development of our work was only possible because we consider that racial, gender, and class issues to be fundamentally intertwined and inseparable. Creating a process centred on active group engagement required that we be prepared to integrate these issues. We found that opening a space for more horizontal collaborative relationships does not, in and of itself, guarantee, that silences will be broken, inasmuch as the scars and markings connected to traumas that generate silence are profound.

In this sense, the first and perhaps foremost challenge we faced as facilitators was to create, in a collective way, the conditions for the people involved in the Lab to feel comfortable and active in the process of excavating their own trajectories (Donini, 2017) in such a way that each participant’s issues would arise according to their own terms. Although participants produced seven short films, we did not organise the Lab around an expectation of creating a final product.

Every Lab meeting included classes in film direction, script writing, photography, editing, equipment management, etc. In the context of the Lab, however, we did not regard pedagogy as merely a vehicle through which technical knowledge regarding audiovisual methods could be passed on or conducted. Instead, we situated film production as part of a broader process in which personal and collective transformation is necessary, so as to inhabit this world in another form and generate responsibility for our surroundings.

The Lab’s pedagogical methodology was aligned with decolonial propositions designed to encourage each person’s physical presence. As such, we sought to provoke discussions about the mortifying places to which our gendered and racialised existences are allocated and to contrast these with possible pathways to liberation.

In their book Reflexiones pedagógicas en torno al feminismo descolonial (Miñoso et al., 2013), Miñoso, Gómez, Lugones and Ochoa detail some of these propositions. The authors affirm that decolonial feminist pedagogy is a coalitional, intercultural, and transformative process. It involves questioning racist, colonial, and capitalist domination, as well as the modern colonial system of gender, with the aim of producing processes that coalesce and move towards a horizon of a common good life. The critical emphasis that decolonial theories place on the coloniality of knowledge indicates that we can – and, perhaps, that we should – search for other forms of relating to knowledge and its production.

Curiel (2014) signals that one of the primary characteristics of the coloniality of knowledge begins with the premise that alterity and colonial difference are objects of research. Generally, however, this leads to discursive colonisation and epistemological violence, as Black women, poor people, indigenous peoples, migrants and the ‘third world' often become research objects, and the person or people conducting research rarely question any of their own privileges or positionality. As such, Curiel warns that the displacement of the coloniality of knowledge means raising various questions in relation to the knowledge that is produced, how it is produced, who is producing it, and for what it is being produced. With regards to recognising and legitimising subaltern knowledge of the ‘Other', the author observes that this recognition cannot be employed to clear one’s epistemological guilt.

It’s not about citing Black, indigenous, poor feminists to bring a critical touch to the research, knowledge, and thoughts that construct them. It is about identifying concepts, categories, and theories that come from subaltern experiences, that are generally produced collectively, that have the possibility of being generalized without being universalized, of explaining distinct realities as a way to break with the imaginary that these knowledges are local, individual and not possible to be communicated (Curiel, 2014, p. 57).

In this project, we sought to create supportive networks so as to listen to each other’s demands, and to understand the body as the locus where the social realm is negotiated, where it is produced, and where it overflows. To achieve this, we invested in ‘opening up bodies,' by drawing upon corporal practices used in collaborative creative processes drawn from performance art. Our process was guided by a desire to listen to vibrations that did not simply conform to the sadness that stems from the consubstantiality of oppressions, but that also operate at the crossroads of vitality.

Our decision to draw on creative dynamics from the field of performance art came about because it was through these dynamics that we were able to locate the body’s interpellative capacity to consider life experiences and relational dimensions, and to refuse the duality often created between body and mind. Activating each participant’s body did not mean essentialising naturalised identity categories, but rather seeking ‘affinity-through-difference' (Sandoval, 2004), and not in spite of differences.

Researchers and artists in the field of performance art such as Jones (1998, 2011), Gomez-Peña (2005, 2011), Bacellar (2016, 2019), Bacellar et al., (2017), and Spinelli (2018) have drawn attention to a historical gesture found in some feminist epistemologies in which one’s own body is particularised as a strategy to challenge the disembodied objectivity and totalising discourses that support a voyeuristic position between spectators and neutral subjects. Such strategies aim at creating an ethical responsibility, inasmuch as singularising the gaze is a way to train it to be responsible for what you learn to see.

Among the performance art dynamics used to activate creative processes, we drew inspiration from methodologies utilised by the choreographer Meg Stuart and by the La Pocha Nostra collective (Gomez-Peña & Sifuentes, 2011) in order to develop exercises to make the group feel welcome, and to increase imagination, as well as corporal and spatial perception. Observation and dream exercises also constituted a vital axis of the Lab. Such dynamics allowed us to inhabit time in a spiral, rather than linear, fashion, and to undo boundaries between past and present, and memory and forgetfulness. In this way, we sought to reclaim the poetic and powerful dimensions of death and near-death, and to combat the erasure of our lived experiences.²

Film, narratives, and vitality

Using film to trace the emotional and physical course of the effects of the violence imprinted on racialised and trans* bodies is not easy. As described above, part of the creative transduction process that the Lab fostered entailed inviting group member to participate in writing exercises. This resulted in a deep dive into narratives that guided participants’ script and project development. The fabulations that participants proposed for film narratives were directly connected to the group members who filmed, assembled, and conceived of them. Each film process was constructed non-hierarchically among participants with greater or lesser experience with equipment and shooting techniques. We collectively workshopped scripts in the Lab, and then defined shooting schedules in which Lab participants supported each other with filming, photography, and acting. Although each work was authored by a director, participants collaborated in all aspects of production. Throughout the process, they shared cameras, produced images together, and debated their creative processes within the group. Wherever possible, all of the people involved in making the films also participated in editing the final cut.

The films were made in accordance with the rhythm that was possible for each director. As such, each film had a distinct timeline, although all of them were equally influenced by the difficulties we faced in terms of accessing film equipment and editing programs. Cameras, microphones, computers, and other accessories necessary for film production are not available through our university, and they were inaccessible to Casa Nem and to Lab participants due to their exorbitant cost in Brazil. Over the course of the Lab, Casa Nem received a donation of a single camera, and we, as facilitators, shared our equipment with participants. This reality made the possibility of recording daily life outside the space of the Lab especially complicated.

In analyzing which films to highlight in this essay, we decided that we could not choose only some of the productions, as this would be unfair to participants, and in contradiction with the ethos and praxis of the entire process of the Lab. Each film belongs exclusively to the filmmaker who directed/created it, and all of the filmmakers involved gave us permission to use their films and our reflections in this essay.

I Only Know How to Feel (Só Sei Sentir, 2019), by Xayoncé, follows the artist's vital movements in which dance leads to strong forces of (re)existence. The camera travels over parts of her body that – between what we see and what is not shown – create a spiral effect of time and movements. This body does not present itself as a repository of the violence that was imposed on it, but rather as an inscription of affection and owned desires (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Frame from the film I Only Know How to Feel. Author: Suzy Rocha.

The Era We Raised Up is Only Beginning (Só Está Começando a Era que nós Levantamos, 2020) by Agatha Clemente, André Costa, and Yasmin Bondarenko, mobilises reflections on situations of racism, transphobia and lesbophobia that the creators and other students have experienced on a daily basis at their university (UNIRIO). Through students’ creatives processes, the film also suggests ways in which the academic space can be reinvented. The narrative interlaces poetry, statements, mural images, graffiti, activism, and affection, and it is woven together with poetry by Flôr Vicentina, a student at UNIRIO’s drama school (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Frame from the film The Era We Raised Up is Only the Beginning. Author: Flavia Viana.

Horizontal Flowers (Flores Horizontais, 2019) by Bruna Andrade utilises the language of performance art to highlight the weights and erasures imposed upon transgender peoples’ bodies. The battle to be rid of harassment and medical diagnoses is referenced in scenes where surgical gloves invade the protagonist’s body and organs. Throughout the film, the hands symbolise both the violence imposed by the cisgender system, as well as alliances between trans* bodies whose mutual support becomes a weapon against the weight of normative structures and violence (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Frame from the film Horizontal Flowers. Author: Duca Caldeira.

Street Vender (Camelô, 2021), by Suzy Rocha, is a documentary that investigates the daily life of Sabrina, an informal worker, accompanying her as she sets up her candy stall at one of the busiest intersections in downtown Rio de Janeiro. Sabrina’s profession is intense, and despite being hyper-visible and overexposed to rain, sun, and police raids, she is completely made invisible by the logic of what is considered formal work. The decision to place an underrecognised existence at the centre of this narrative of the city arose from Suzy strolls through downtown Rio, during which she recognised that, as a transgender woman, her body is simultaneously overexposed to different forms of violence and also invisible to society, especially in terms of access to the formal job market (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Frame from the film Street Vender. Author: Flavia Viana.

Life is Poetry: Body, Soul, and Heart!!! (A Vida é Poesia: Corpo, Alma e Coração!!!, 2020) by Debbs Gomes is a fictional film that seeks to unravel the Sophia’s transitioning process, and the struggles that the protagonist faces both in the university environment and in the face of her family's non-acceptance. By diving deeply into her subjectivity and sharing her suffering with a transgender colleague from the university, Sophia produces an opening of hope. The narrative alludes to a positive outcome in which Sophia and her mother come to understand each other, and in which Sophia regains interest in her studies (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Frame from the film Life is Poetry: Body, Soul, and Heart!!! Author: Marina Cavalcanti.

Black Lips (Lábios Negros, 2021) by Rebecca Gotto, is a fictional film that raises issues of internalised racism and the challenges of dealing with a subjectivity constituted by values of whiteness as established through hierarchical relations of power. Samantha’s character remains in permanent conflict with her own African ancestry, including denying the existence of her biological mother. The narrative turning point results from a process wherein the protagonist becomes aware that she has cancer, leading her to reflect on the internalisation of racism (Figure 7).

Figure 7. Frame from the film Black Lips. Author: Xayoncé.

Clandestine (Clandestyna, 2019) by Duca Caldeira brings performance actions by three transgender women from the Baixada Fluminense lowlands region in Rio de Janeiro state to the screen. Through music, poetry, and spoken words, the artists’ performances evoke a re-elaboration of the violence inflicted on people of colour and the trans community. The narrative addresses the racism and transphobia that occur in the different spheres their bodies circulate in, including public spaces, the art industry, and in their romantic lives. In claiming the power of clandestinity, the artists make this positionality the locus of their creative experiments, contrasting the construction of their bodies with the dynamics of the contemporary art world, which continues to operate through exploitative logics, even as it yearns to address issues of gender and sexuality (Figure 8).

Figure 8. Frame from the film Clandestine. Author: Bruna Andrade.

Through the images and narratives, each of these seven short films presents a practical attempt to collapse the hierarchical and extractive logic that often derives from rationalised and objectifying gazes on the singularity of each body. As teachers and artists, we were instigated by the radical nature of Casa Nem as an activist project to reflect continuously on our own practices in terms of what we want the pedagogies we develop (both in and outside the university) to achieve, and how we articulate modes of creation in our works.

In moving between processes of critical pedagogy and film creation, participants in the Lab activated relational dynamics and encountered experiences that, generally speaking, are not available in spaces where they are welcomed and heard. Through welcoming, listening, and accessing the invisible through dreams and imaginative practices, participants drew inspiration from belonging, and were subsequently able to remake the vitality that had been permanently hijacked by capitalistic, modern, colonial, cis-hetero, and racist dynamics. For those who, due to such dynamics, had not been allowed to feel, entering into such processes offered the courage to choreograph alternative routes of (re)existence in a world that, systematically, and structurally, seeks to annihilate their power. For example, in I Only Know How to Feel (2019), dance is a healing power that unleashes winds of freedom and of uprising.

Another aspect connected to the vitality that is present in many of the films and in their creative processes relates to the desire for aquilombamento. Aquilombamento is a neologism related to the term quilombo, which refers both to the kind of organisation founded by people of colour who were enslaved under colonialism, and to the physical spaces which they escaped for survival. In English, quilombos are referred to as ‘maroon societies' or ‘maroon communities' as stated by González (2020) in her theories of Amefricanidade. Therefore, aquilombamento refers to a claim of a historical need to join forces, foster affection, and live life with joy and dignity. In addition, the creative experiences implicated in these films can be related to what Lorde (2007) conceived as the power of the erotic, a claim of our vital force (Figure 9):

It is an internal sense of satisfaction, to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of the depth of this feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves. (Lorde, 2007, p. 54)

Figure 9. Frame from the film Horizontal Flowers. Author: Camila Bastos Bacellar.

Establishing safe pedagogical spaces and propositions in which participants could fully feel, recognise, respect, and claim the power of the erotic as Lorde describes it was an essential condition for developing the Lab project. In this sense, we use the ideas of vital and vitality in this paper in a way that links them to practices that articulate artistic and pedagogical practices in constructing safe spaces free of transphobia, racism and all kinds of violence where people can feel welcome and comfortable to narrate their own histories, and free to create. We consider vitality to be associated with one of the premises of public health in Brazil, in the sense that health promotion is not just avoiding or being free of diseases, but rather allowing people to be able to enjoy all aspects of their lives fully, in all of the social spheres they inhabit.

This is especially important at a time in which spurious and harmful alliances between neoliberal and conservative forces in Brazil are repressing antiracist and de-gendering movements through violent practices throughout all spheres of the State and all spaces of coexistence and socialisation. These forces, which are organised through a constant militarisation of lives, primarily affect peripheral, trans*, and Black and indigenous people, as well as other people of colour. Furthermore, Brazil’s progressive sectors and self-proclaimed leftist political parties have significant difficulty in reviewing and critiquing their own agendas, priorities, and strategies. Facing the effects of such forces while maintaining time and space to convert the dynamics of hatred, threats, and violations into vital power is no easy task. Making the time and space to create ways of breathing life into new paths is an arduous but urgent task.

Concluding thoughts

By reimagining attitudes in encounters between pedagogy and audiovisual production as part the audiovisual lab held at Casa Nem, we were able to establish new modes of mediation in relationships fostered both within and outside of the university. The projects being developed at Casa Nem reflect the inventiveness of social movements for democracy and rights in Brazil, and serve as evidence of the importance of constructing support networks for developing safe and effective strategies to address the vulnerabilities that stem from transphobia and racism. These projects create a circuit of health promotion that brings films with narratives that also indicate paths towards integral health into pedagogical spaces. Such circuits also expand daily, as these films reach university spaces, film clubs, and festivals, both in Brazil and internationally.

As part of their trajectories, many Lab participants hoped to enter into the field of audiovisual production, but they encountered limits in accessing courses and art schools. The Lab thus became an important point in their trajectories, and many participants are acting or studying cinema in Brazil. They are therefore part of a new generation of filmmakers and audiovisual producers whose work focuses on making films that seek to tell the stories obscured by coloniality.

In this sense, confronting infinite state-supported initiatives in Brazil that sabotage rights and promote the precariousness of Black, peripheral, indigenous, and LGBTQIA+ lives, is a way of promoting health. Similarly, turning towards creative gestures that contribute to the collective elaboration of our colonial traumas – traumas that are continuously renewed through current nefarious gestures – is also a way of promoting health. Health weaves together marks, memories, and trajectories, positioning them as a central, vital life forces capable of tracing and opening paths and alliances, and indicating guides to follow.

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Notes

1 Literature in the art field is permeated with reflections of experiences in which life and art connect. In The Real Experiment (1983), Allan Kaprow delineates what for him constitutes two traditions of art in the Western vanguard: art-as-art and life-as-art. Through his terms artlike art and lifelike art, he elucidates aspects relevant to both traditions. One very important aspect of what he calls life-as-art points toward dimensions we’ve touched on above: ‘life-as-art can be read as a form of sharing responsibility, which may be one of the most urgent problems in the world’ (KAPROW, 1983, p. 216). Following his line of thought, lifelike art stops being an end to be a means, inasmuch as it no longer holds a promise of perfection in another dimension; instead, it demonstrates how to live intensely within the dimension in which we exist.

2 For further information regarding these performance art dynamics and their effects on pedagogical processes, see Bacellar (2019).