A Democratic Rupture

“It is so much that does not fit here” (“É tanta coisa que nem cabe aqui”). That is the sentence written in one of a multitude of posters that were occupying the streets during the mass protests of June 2013 in Brazil.

The demonstrations of June 2013 unfolded in a powerful aesthetic experiment. Artists joined activists, countless collectives took shape in their own manifestations, and all this production was itself poetically and politically recorded. Those actions, many of them performative, opened the political imaginary to other forms and contents of the struggle. At the same time that this aesthetic was being formed in the immediate clash of the streets and the networks, the June 2013 movement actualized and activated aesthetics that were less linked to the events, but that were keeping with them indirect relations, forms of politics proposed through the art, within and without the institutions. The aesthetic of politics and the politics of aesthetic also exchange points of view.

The event “Brecha Democrática” (Democratic Rupture) aimed at being the space-time of those exchanges, linking the Brazilian insurgence with the Spanish 15-M and the resistances in the margins of Europe. “Brecha Democrática” took place in Venice on 10-11 October 2015, within the framework of Transnational Dialogues, an exchange and research programme across Brazil, China and Europe, started by European Alternatives in 2011. The event was organised in collaboration with Universidade Nômade, S.a.L.E Docks, the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo and the Municipality of Marghera.

All the discussions of the round-tables, in English or Italian, hold at S.a.L.E Docks in the afternoon of Sunday 11 October are now fully accessible online:

The three panels were:
1. Democratic Breach Today: Brazil and Europe between crisis and rebellion – Speakers: Giuseppe Cocco / Raul Sanchez / Fabio Mengali / Lorenzo Marsili
2. The Aesthetic of Politics and the Politics of Aesthetic – Speakers: Luiz Camillo Osorio / Barbara Szaniecki / Valeria Mancinelli / Massimo Mazzone / MP5 | with a presentation of videos and images on Brazilian demonstrations and artivism

3. Marginal Notes: Where the next rupture will be – Speakers: Silvia Dal Dosso / Luigi Galimberti / Jota Mombaça / Marco Baravalle

The full text “Brecha Democrática” is available here in English, Italian and Portuguese. It was collectively drafted and edited by some of the contributors to this event.