01/07/2008

Folia - Teatro na Quinta da Regaleira

A pedido da Maria Luiz aqui vai um endereço para um peça na Quinta da Regaleira em Sintra.

Mais informações visitem Blog Serpente Emplumada

24/06/2008

"criminal tribes" na India

Como prometido aqui vai um artigo antigo sobre as tribos indianas (pensadas como geneticamente ou culturalmente potenciadas para a prática criminal) que foram criminalizadas e banidas pelo Crimnal Tribes Act 1871 pela administração colonial britânica e que depois teve algumas - apenas algumas, note-se - correcções depois da independência. Existe ainda neste site (clicar aqui) um excelente trabalho do Budhan Theatre com uma comunidade deste tipo (clicar aqui também).

The Branded Tribes of India
-By G. N. Devi

[The following piece is by G. N. Devi, editor Budhan, the newsletter of the Denotified Nomadic Tribes Rights Action Groups (DNT-RAG). The newsletter is named after one Budhan Sabar who belonged to the Kheria Sabar Tribal community of the Purulia region in West Bengal. His dead body was handed over from the Purulia jail to his family in February, 1998. The police said that he had committed suicide in his jail cell. Jnanpeeth-Magsaysay award winner Mahasweta Devi took this case to the Calcutta High Court and alleged that Budhan was beaten to death. Justice Rama Pal of the Calcutta High Court rejected the police story in the judgment delivered on July 6 and ordered the State Government to pay compensations of Rs. 80,000/- to his wife and Rs. 5,000/- to his parents. The judgment also directed the State to punish the Jail Superintendent of Purulia and the office in-charge of Burrabazar police station. The newsletter of TNT-RAG is so named after Budhan Sabar - General Secretary]

The social category generally known as the Denotified and Nomadic tribes of India covers a population approximately of six crores. Some of them are included in the list of Scheduled castes, some others in the Scheduled Castes, some others in the Scheduled Tribes, and quite a few in Other Backward Classes. But there are many of these tribes which find place in none of the above. What is common to all these Denotified and Nomadic Tribes (DNTs) is the fate of being branded as 'born' criminals.

The story of the DNTs goes back to the early years of the colonial rule. In those times, whoever opposed the British colonial expansion was perceived as a potential criminal. Particularly, if any attempts were made to oppose the government by the use of the arms, the charge of criminality was a certainty. Many of the wandering minstrels, fakirs, petty traders, rustic transporters and disbanded groups of soldiers were included by the British in their list of criminal groups. During the first half of the nineteenth century, the tribes in the North West frontier had been declared 'criminal tribes'. This category became increasingly open ended and by 1871 the British had prepared an official list of Criminal Tribes. An act to regulate criminal tribes was passed that year. For instance, Bhils who had fought the British rule in Kandesh and on the banks of Narmada and were convicted under section 110 of the IPC were to be recognised as criminal tribes. The CT Act made provisions for establishing reformatory settlements where the criminal tribals could be kept in confinement and subjected to low paid work. They were required to report to the guardrooms several times every day, so that they did not escape the oppressive settlements.

By 1921, the CT Act had been extended to cover numerous other tribes in Madras Presidency, Hyderabad and Mysore. Thus, about the time Indian politics saw the emergence of Mahatma Gandhi as the leader of the freedom struggle, the Indian society mutely witnessed the emergence of a new class of people who were branded as born criminals.

Soon after Independence, the communities notified as criminal tribals were denotified by the Government. This notification was followed by substitution of a series of Acts, generally entitled 'Habitual Offenders Act! The HOAs preserved most of the provisions of the former CT Acts, except the premise implicit in it that an entire community can be 'born' criminal. Apparently, the denotification and the passing of the HOAs should have ended the misery of the communities penalised under the CT Act. But that has not happened. The police force as well as the people in general were taught to look upon the 'Criminal Tribes' as born criminals during the colonial times. That attitude continues to persist even today. One does not know if the police training academies in India still teach the trainees that certain communities are habitually criminal; but surely the CT Act is a part of the syllabus leading to the discussion of crime-watch. The result is that every time there is a petty theft in a locality, the DNTs in the neighbourhood become the first suspects. The ratio between the arrests and the convictions of the DNTs needs to be analysed to see the extent of the harassment caused by the police to these most vulnerable and the weakest sections of our society. The land possessed by the criminal tribes was already alienated during the colonial rule. After independence, various state governments have done little to restore their land to them. Schemes for economic uplift do not seem to have benefited them. The illiteracy rate among the DNTs is higher than among the SCs or the STs, malnutrition's more frequent and provisions for education and health care almost negligible since most of the DNTs have remained nomadic in habit. And above all, there is no end to the atrocities that the DNTs have to face.

Being illiterate and ignorant of the law of the land, the DNTs know very little about the police procedures, and so often get into difficult situations. The onus of proving innocence rests with them. I have known many of these people who are scared to wear new clothes for the fear of being arrested and therefore spoil them before using them. Mob-lynched, hounded from village to village, starved of all civic amenities, deprived of the means of livelihood and gripped by the fear of police persecution, the DNTs of India are on the run. Freedom has still not reached them.

It is time that the Census authorities take up the work of deciding on a procedure to count the DNTs as a distinct category in the next Census. Similarly, the police training academies will have to make special efforts to senstise the new trainees to treat this unfortunate lot with less brutality and greater understanding. They will have to be brought under the provisions made for the STs in the Tribal Sub-plans. Moreover, the people of India will have to raise their voice and alert the authorities at local and national level to the kind of silent genocide that the DNTs are facing. It is then that, some day, these first freedom fighters of our country will receive the benefits of independence for which they have carried the stigma of being branded for over a century.

22/05/2008

Seminário - Viviane Rocha 29 Maio

PERFORMANCE E RITUAL:

CRUZAMENTOS ENTRE O SAGRADO E O PROFANO

Viviane Rocha

ESTC, 29 Maio, 14.30-16.30h


Viviane Rocha é artista multimídia, actriz, titereira, encenadora, arte-educadora e professora. Está cursando o doutorado em Artes Visuais no Instituto de Artes / Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul / Brasil; é Mestre em Artes Visuais / UFRGS; especialização em Museologia: Patrimônio Cultural / UFRGS; e tem o bacharelado em Filosofia / PUCRS / Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul / Brasil.

A proposta do seminário é dar início a uma reflexão mais aprofundada sobre as manifestações ritualísticas identificadas na performance artística Memória do Afeto, e sobre os cruzamentos entre o sagrado e o profano nesta ação poética. Partindo inicialmente de algumas definições de ritual apresentadas por teóricos da antropologia, da sociologia, da filosofia e da história das religiões, busca compreender as conexões que estabelece com a arte contemporânea, particularmente com a arte da performance, nosso objeto de estudo. A seguir investiga a relação dialética entre o sagrado e o profano nesta expressão artística. Mas por tratar-se de uma performance cujo tema são questões da mulher e, além disso, apresentadas por performers mulheres, por fim interessa também observar como se estabelecem os vínculos entre o feminino e o sagrado.

17/05/2008

Tchiloli - comentários











Aproveito as fotos enviadas pela Ana Paula para abrir aqui mais um espaço de reflexão sobre uma manifestação performativa tão intrigante e prolixa como o Tchiloli em S.Tomé.

11/05/2008

Life is to short...


Life is to short for the wrong job... (precaridade também é isto)
encontrei isto numa das minhas viagens pela blogosfera...
e repentinamente pensei que quando acordamos com aquele sentimento de um certo não-sei-quê... deve ser por nos termos imaginado algures num destes empregos...

...mas também era uma ótima (viva o acordo!) ideia para uma performance...

24/04/2008

Da leitura adiada do texto Vermelho e(é) Negro


Olá,
Agradeço a vossa serena paciência em me ouvirem durante quase 4 horas hoje....
e porque estavam curiosos com o texto do Michael Houseman sobre um exercício performativo que ele fez com estudantes seus, aqui fica a referência (salvo erro, também deixei uma cópia no dossier na reprografia): basta clicar aqui!

17/04/2008

Stefan Kaegi - Chácara Paraíso na Culturgest


Absolutamente imperdível este espectáculo de teatro documental do jovem encenador suiço Stefan Kaegi, fundador dos Rimini Protokol, e que irá decorrer entre 23 e 28 de Maiono âmbito do Festival Alkantra.
Abro aqui e convido desde já para um debate online sobre este espectáculo e sobre a relação entre quotidiano e arte - Kaegi fala num teatro de especialistas do quotidiano. Neste caso são policiais brasileiros os actores deste "documentário teatral". A não perder mesmo...

Morte de um dos grandes poetas da "negritude"


Aimé Césaire, poeta da ex-colónia francesa da Martinica, expoente máximo do movimento literário e político da "Negritude" morreu hoje, como anunciava um diário nacional. Alguns dos seus poemas, ensaios e peças de teatro ficaram célebres e continuam a ser representadas em diversos lugares do mundo, sobretudo em África.