Living Legacies Project brings together exhibition, conversation cycle, book and film show

MAM Rio presents the Living Legacies project, which reflects on the processes of building heritage and common culture, contemplating meetings, an exhibition and a publication.

The program starts in July, with the cycle of online conversations Scenes of Intangible Culture, with people linked to practices and traditions of Rio de Janeiro, Maranhão and other regions of Brazil.

In collaboration with the Vale Maranhão Cultural Center (MA), the cycle discusses knowledge related to the scenic act (singing, rhythm, instrument, clothing) in forms of expression belonging to regional, racialized, popular and peripheral traditions and contexts.

There will be four free monthly phases, until October, with the following themes: “Cultures of the scene and presence” (inscriptions opened by the link), “From rhythm and singing”, “What wears us and activates us”, “Objects, Fragments, Stories”. A film show takes place in November, with films about traditional culture practices.

According to Fabio Szwarcwald, executive director of MAM Rio, “the unprecedented partnership with the Vale Maranhão Cultural Center revitalizes the intangible heritage and collections of other geographies, through an important platform for reflection on multiple knowledge, developing educational and training projects”.

For Gabriel Gutierrez, director and artistic coordinator of the Vale Maranhão Cultural Center, the importance of this event is that of awareness. “When we invite masters of popular culture, artists, poets, popular doers to talk about this place, which was once only a class privilege, we review the role of the institution in society. It is a redemption of the institution in the face of this historical flaw of what was imposed by itself as a culture.” For him, culture is something much broader: “culture is linked to a will for existence, to the experience of everyday life, to taking risk”.

“A second importance of this event is the connection between two opposites, also historically polarized within the class struggle: the Northeast as theoretically and supposedly being the poor part of Brazil, and the Southeast, which has always been the part of progress — this idea that will be built in the 18th century with ideas civilizing.”

In September, MAM Rio inaugurates the exhibition Memory is an invention, bringing together works from the collections of MAM Rio; Collection of the Laje; Museum of Black Art and IPEAFRO, in order to raise dialogues about the processes of heritage construction.

The exhibition, says Pablo Lafuente, artistic director of MAM Rio, “aims to provoke reflections on the construction of history, its narratives, inclusions and exclusions, while proposing an exercise of imagination, a challenge to invent other configurations of the common, since the institution. In parallel, the conversations about intangible culture conducted in partnership with the Vale Maranhão Cultural Center allow us to think about culture based on more complex paradigms, and constitute a horizon for thinking about the possibilities and limits of cultural institutions, including museums”.

The project completes a publication, to be launched in 2021.

JULY

Scene Cultures and Presence

WED 28 JUL. 2:00 PM — 16:00
Brief introduction to the conversation cycle, with Gabriel Gutierrez (director and artistic coordinator of the CCVM), and Keyna Eleison and Pablo Lafuente (artistic direction of MAM Rio)
Table 1
Mother Celina of Xangô (yalorixá and president of the Centro Cultural Pequena África) and Nadir Cruz (president of Ox da Floresta), table moderated by Keyna Eleison (artistic director of MAM Rio)

THU 29 JUL. 14:00 – 16:00
Table 2
Haroldo Costa (sambist and writer) and Lauande Aires (actor and researcher at Bumba my ox), table moderated by Ubiratã Trindade (coordinator of the CCVM Educational Center)

AUGUST

From rhythm and singing
WED, 25 AUG, from 14:00 to 16:00
THU 26 AUG, from 2:00 to 16:00

SEPTEMBER

What wears us and activates us
WED 22 SEP, from 2:00 to 16:00
THU 23 SEP, from 2:00 to 16:00

OCTOBER

Objects, fragments, stories
WED 27 OCT from 2:00 to 16:00
THU 28 OCT, from 2:00 to 16:00

NOVEMBER

Cinema cycle
(on Cinemateca’s Vimeo)
Curated by: Beatriz Lemos, Gabriel Gutierrez and José Quental

The “Living Legacies” project is sponsored by the Vale Cultural Institute.