Cnsorship of Body Arts Yesterday and Today

Reflections on political violence in brazil during the lead years and contemporary

Abstract

ABSTRACT The conservative and neoliberal conscience that has been manufactured in Brazil by bourgeois sectors, helps in the maintenance of certain cultural practices, which are based on the oppression of certain bodies that oppose the hegemonic logics. In the field of scenic arts, in which the poetics happens through the body itself, the artist who questions the political state of things through his works ends up being the target of violence in order to block his freedom. Going back in time and observing the end of the sixties - the period when AI-5 (institutional act number five) came into effect during the military dictatorship -, in which repressing those who were subversive to the regime was a State policy, several artists questioned the system through their bodies, confronting a structure that did not allow environments for discussions about art and society, on the contrary; there was only room for ideological submission. Perceiving this period in which censorship was legitimized as a driving device, and analyzing the last years of Brazil - which is no longer a dictatorship, but a fragile democracy - it is understood that, with the ascendancy of conservative right-wing groups, artists who carry out their performances based on social criticism are increasingly vulnerable. In this context, in which freedom of expression has been under attack, this study intends to discuss, based on reflections between performances made in the leaden years and in recent times, how censorship tactics have been updated, considering that Brazil has always been dominated by hands that use repression as a method of control. Thus, thinking about censorship of the arts becomes urgent in a society in which hatred and criminalization of artists advance at a fast pace, dismantling democratic structures and curtailing communication through the poetics of the body. KEY WORDSBody Arts, Censorship, Policy