INSTITUTIONAL

OTHER COMMUNITIES

The nation state would have us believe we belong to a cohesive community, united by language, culture and history. The people of a country both personify its national identity and eclipse others. If capitalism encouraged the development of this kind of state, it also recreates it according to its own interests. In the free market, the state’s sovereignty is challenged and its borders are blurred, benefiting the flow of things, people and ideas.

However, while frontiers become hazy, strands of xenophobic nationalism reemerge everywhere. This is especially seen in the repulsion to foreigners, further incensed by current immigration movements—triggered, incidentally, by the very lack of control of capitalism and the conflicts it generates. Faced with this dilemma, we are called on to rethink the suitability of the nationalist-oriented state.

The arts, in turn, favor the conception of other ways of constituting communities, based on alternatives to identification with the fatherland. That is the background to the curatorial selection of the 21st Contemporary Art Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil | Imagined Communities, which brings together artistic experiences keen on conceiving the common from non-hegemonic features. As a socio-cultural institution accustomed to envisioning possibilities, Sesc is charged with reflecting multiple perspectives, thus contributing to the process of re-evaluation and reinvention of our place in the world.   

 

Danilo Santos de Miranda, Regional Director of Sesc São Paulo