As máquinas do Brasil

Abstract

This essay proposes to outline an assemblage of works of art that are related to the machines of Brazil: the colonialist world machine (Vera Cruz, Rosângela Rennó and Os Lusíadas, Luís de Camões); the mining world machine (A máquina do mundo, Carlos Drummond de Andrade); the control machine of Google Maps (Nunca é noite no mapa, Ernesto Carvalho); the Great Machine of the contemporary capitalism (Break S/A, Marcelo Pedroso and Arabia, Affonso Uchoa and João Dumans); the coup machine of the media (Lígia, Nuno Ramos) and the judiciary (O processo, Maria Augusta Ramos); and the re-existance in the machine (Action Lekking, Negro Leo). Our goal is not to analyse in thoroughness the works, but to draw a panorama of how art brings about, interprets and resists to the different machines of Brazil. One of the pivotal matters that has guided our text is the way art relates to itself and interferes aesthetically in the heat of the moment to the politics and history of our country. When we do not talk about contemporary works, we try to extract from works of the past such as Camões, Drummond and Leon Hirszman reflections that provide us elements to the interpretation of our present.