“Popa Da Bunda” – the rear end, and “O Crime tá ai” – the crime is there. With these titles two thematic complexes are named, queer dance and body representation as well as favela gang culture, which play a major role in current Brazilian music videos. While queer music and corresponding music videos receive a great deal of attention worldwide, reflecting mega-trends of gender diversity, and therefore the Brazilian varieties of queerness and their depictions should be inquired into, the favela gang culture per se is a specifically Brazilian development, because it led to the development of its own genre, Proibidão (radically forbidden music). Music is used specifically for communication against the militias of the military police and rival gangs, but also for recruiting new gang members, whereby the beats are often based on recordings of shots or are saturated with them. Proibidão is thus part of the genre of militant music, far beyond the world of marches.
The evening introduces the two thematic complexes with numerous video examples.
As part of the Colloquium Media Dramaturgy (directed by Florian Leitner) and in collaboration with the Seminar “Audiovisual Performance – live and in Realtime” by Cornelia Lund and with fluctuating images, Berlin.
Thanks for impulses for the screening program go to Pedro Oliveira, who applied decolonial design research and sound studies to the genre Proibidão in his dissertation project.
