Virtual Surgery: From a Brazilian Perspective

On the 5^th May 2020 Landscape Surgery held its first virtual session, in response to the Covid19 pandemic and subsequent closure of all but essential services in the UK— and elsewhere across the globe. Sasha Englemann valiantly led the way to the Surgery’s first foray into the digital— hosting us from a various locations via Zoom. I joined from my living room (a name which has growing pertinence) in Plymouth. 

“For Brazil is a country of cultural contrasts and of a strong spatial dynamism.”

Roberto Lobato Corrêa & Zeny Rosendahl (2004)

 The session introduced us to two visiting scholars: André Reyes Novaes and Mariana Lamego. Based in Brazil at Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, André and Mariana were visiting the UK and spoke to us from their temporary base in Angel, London. 

The title of their presentation was “Historical and Cultural Geography in Brazil: Institutions, Practices and Subjects,” and was an overview of doctoral research in Geography in Brazil. André and Mariana discuss the importance of Maurice Abreu to Brazilian geography —noting that he is the only South American geographer who’s obituary has been published in JHG (Journal of Historical Geography). However, they stress that this does not represent the consolidation of historical geography as a sub-field of geography in the country, and its recognition as a field of geography at all is a relatively recent one. They argue that part of the reason for this is how little international work is translated and published in Portuguese to make it accessible to scholars in Brazil. 

In the 1990s there was a new turn toward cultural geography, which was indeed aided in no small part by translation.  Since it first began publishing in 1995, the journal Espaço e Cultara,  has focused on disseminating research on the spatial dimensions of culture, and contributing to the expanded field of cultural and human geography— in the Portuguese language. Likewise a series of books called Geografia Cultural aimed to contribute to a solid theoretical base from which Brazilian cultural geography can thrive from. These translations included the work of Landscape Surgery’s own Denis Cosgrove.

Cover of Espaço e Cultura, n. 46 (2019) July-December.

The feeling is that there is more to be done. In an article shared ahead of the session Roberto Lobato Correa and Zeny Rosendahl state:

Brazilian cultural heterogeneity has spawned, on the one hand, a rich literature of an urban and regional nature, and, on the other, a rich geographical output. The dialogue between both, as suggested by Brosseau (1996) is only just beginning in Brazil. 

Roberto Lobato Corrêa & Zeny Rosendahl (2004)

André and Mariana share an excellent film of their students discussing their research which we have the pleasure of sharing here. The students discuss the challenges of undertaking doctoral research in Brazil, including precarious funding conditions and marginalisation of social research more generally.

Overall, the session gave us a great insight into realm of human geography in Brazil. It reminds us too that academia is not a level playing field, exemplified here by the domination of the English language in social research, and on another level by place-based structural challenges in Brazil.

Special thanks to Sasha Englemann for organising and hosting LS’s very first virtual session, to André and Mariana for joining us, sharing their work and that of their students— and to all who made it on the 5^th May 2020.

References

Roberto Lobato Corrêa & Zeny Rosendahl (2004) Brazilian studies in cultural geography*, Social & Cultural Geography, 5:4, 651-662, DOI: 10.1080/1464936042000317758

Written by Rachel Tyler.

Edited by Rhys Gazeres.

Researching performance, coloniality and contemporaneity

Our first Landscape Surgery presentation of the autumn term was on 17 November and was organised and presented by Dr. Poppy Spowage and Dr. Sofie Narbed, both experienced UK-based researcher-practitioners. The session looked reflexively at performance as a subject of research in cultural geography and how coloniality and contemporaneity has shaped this topic.

Poppy, who completed her practice-based PhD at Royal Holloway this year, is a Creative Producer and Researcher with over ten years’ experience producing contemporary art and cutting-edge performance projects in the UK, East Africa and Latin America. Since 2016, she has helped produce a music festival in Uganda, public art events in Nairobi and art residencies in Kenya and Tanzania; each of which has looked to create new opportunities for artists and audiences and raise the profile of the regional contemporary cultural scenes.

Sofie was previously a lecturer in Cultural Geography at Royal Holloway, and is currently a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow who has explored the geographies of dance and bodily practice, with a particular focus on Latin America. For her PhD, Sofie engaged in in-depth ethnographic research between 2012 and 2014 to study contemporary dance practice in Quito, Ecuador. After giving us an overview of their backgrounds and research and what they are currently up to, Poppy and Sofie came together for a conversation on a range of topics about their shared passions and research areas.

Poppy reflected on several areas related to her research and current work, including how atmosphere in performances can alter their effective qualities, whether the vagaries of funding leads to self-censorship by artists, what inequalities arise due to a lack to resources, and whether such issues are down to coloniality. As an example, she described one particular project she is involved in the production of – East Africa Soul Train in Kenya (watch a short film at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zC144qXSRk) – which she says was borne out of these very challenges and issues. By creating an environment of trust, this innovative project allowed artists to take creative risks in a range of media – from film, music, art and dance, to fashion and literature – and allowed them to reflect on complex issues and themes, including questions of politics, power and privilege. What allowed the project to grow and have a more meaningful effect for the artists beyond her research, she explained, was the long-term funding and resources that were available to her.

See the British Council website for more information: https://www.britishcouncil.org/east-africa-arts/projects/creative-hustle/east-africa-soul-train

Sofie currently finds herself looking back on her ethnographic work into dance in Ecuador, unpicking this research to further develop its themes. She discussed her thoughts on how identity politics can be expressed through dance, and how artists negotiate coloniality through this medium. She discussed the ‘body as memory’ – a corporeal archive – and how the body is grounded in history and physical knowledge. Her research drew attention to how dance is a ‘way of doing’ and a way of connecting to place and creative heritage. She reminds us that while contemporary dance, as most of us know it, is dominated by European and North American performances, other continents and countries can and do offer their culturally valuable interpretations to the conversation about what can brought both physically and imaginatively to dance practice. It is important that we go beyond euro-centric frameworks in how we think about dance and performance. Reflecting on ‘messiness’ in her research and her attempt to find coherence for her thesis, Sofie explained how she is now conscious of not reducing the discussion to one voice, but rather to including the many different voices that she encountered, and also those that she did not encounter due to language barriers.  

Images © Sofie Narbed

This notion of reducing the messiness of research encounters to the clarity of the written word captured the imagination of some of the session’s participants, leading to an intriguing discussion about how we should better embrace and provide space for this messiness in academia. With funding and jobs predicated on publications, the creation of a journal dedicated to disseminating research in its ‘messy’ form was one idea that was suggested as a way of countering the structures and practices of academia that are inherently ‘anti-messy’. 

Another key takeaway from the discussion was the significance of shared experiences and exchanges with the artists and the importance of creating relationships with them, as such long-term sustainable relationships are key to this kind of practice-based research in the arts and humanities. Despite such projects allowing for trust to be formed, and for access to be gained to hidden worlds and voices, and the impact they can have, one’s immersion within such artistic forms for research purposes is still looked down upon in academia due to concerns of objectivity. In response, the work of cultural theorist Yves Citton and his book The Ecology of Attention (2016) was drawn upon. According to this line of thinking, we orientate ourselves in relation to pre-conceived perceptions and modes of attention, and we project these onto new experiences and situations in an attempt to gain a mastery of our surroundings. To see past this, we need to immerse ourselves within such new experiences and environments to open our eyes to other possibilities of seeing and understanding. Moving forward, both Sofie and Poppy are sharing their research with different groups to gain new perspectives on dance as creative heritage and on the telling of shared stories and struggles.

We’d like to thank both Poppy and Sofie for their thought-provoking discussion which took us to some amazing places, to Sasha Engelmann for convening the session, and to all the Landscape Surgery participants that offered some interesting questions and discussion points.

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NB: Prior to the session, we were pointed to a text for background reading: ‘Positionality, and Languages of Collaboration in Feminist Fieldwork’, pp. 81-104, Nagar, R., 2014. Muddying the waters : coauthoring feminisms across scholarship and activism

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Written by Christina Hourigan

Edited by Will Barnes