The 32nd ANPPOM congress in Brazil, last month,
was informative, to say the least. Held in the north-eastern coastal city of Natal, with the southern hemisphere's spring well
underway, the biotope was more conducive to exploration than the European
Autumn I came from. Airconditioning was necessary, of course, even in
concert halls during performances, but this proved to be much like listening to
a clavichord recital: like the ears easily adjust to the lower dynamic levels
of the old keyboard instrument, they quickly learn to filter out the noise of
the air conditioners when listening to a colourfully soft piece played on a
Steinway. More surprising were the efforts of the organizers towards
inclusivity: not only was there space for children from 4 to 6 years old, the
presenters were asked to introduce themselves to the visually impaired by
describing some characteristics of their countenance, and the whole conference
was simultaneously translated in English (for the foreign guests), Portuguese
(when the foreign guests presented), and sign language. Curious to know how
large the hearing-impaired conference participation had been expected to be, I
was told there probably weren't any, but that putting in this type of effort
results in the crucially important perception of an inclusive environment. (I
later saw that the video recordings of the presentations were being posted on YouTube, where the sign language will
no doubt have a more direct effect.)
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| National Association for Research and Graduate Studies in Music |
Impressive as they were, these peripheric
practicalities didn't deter from discovering some eye-opening facts about
artistic research in Brazil. The conference topic's title - Multiple
dimensions of musical praxis in the production of knowledge - was
certainly broad enough to allow for the announced intention "to foster a
broad debate", but of notable interest, at least to me, was how this
production of knowledge was detailed as "scientific-musical knowledge in
Brazil". Even if the conference's promotional texts didn't include the
words 'artistic research', they were clearly intended to be part of whatever
can be understood by the relations between scientific and musical practices. As
broad as the conference's content had been intended, as diverse it turned out
to be. Large ethno- and historiographic perspectives were deployed to discuss
knowledge production as well as interculturality, social impact, and training,
but there was quite a bit of live performance as well, with even sizable groups
of musicians spontaneously participating in enthusiastically welcomed
sessions of choro and samba in the university's hallway.
The congress was held at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, one of
the ten largest universities in Brazil. It's Arts Department (including performance,
dance, design, and theatre) spreads over 4,000m², which it considers as
potential "to bring the community closer to the academic
environment". Indeed, musicologists and musicians work under the same
roof, even when there is no conference to unite them. This is quite distinct
from the situation on the European continent, where academics and musicians are
seen and treated as separate, not only in their identity, but in their work
locations as well as through the legal and financial structures. (See here for some insights into how far this can
be taken.) In their self-presentation, the UFRN arts department further singles
out knowledge production and the link between art and research. However, in the
curriculum there is nothing on artistic research, specifically. But there are
courses on research in the visual arts and in art teaching, as well as modules
in academic and creative writing. Also noteworthy is the absence of musical
composition.
Last August, Bibiana Bragagnolo and Leonardo
Pellegrim Sanchez mapped artistic research in Brazil (see here) based on keyword searches in 45 journal
articles in four journals. Though the sample size is small, some interesting
insights can be gleaned from it. It is argued that the beginnings of artistic
research in Brazil are situated around 2012, in the Southern region, with
expansion into the South- and North-east in 2017/18. Since then, the increase
in production seems to follow that which is perceived abroad. The foreign
influence is especially visible in the cited literature, with the
Mexican Ruben López-Cano (18 references), the Flemish Kathleen Coessens
(16), the Dutch Henk Borgdorff (10), and Catarina Domenici (10) as the only
Brazilian author frequently cited. Borgdorff's 2012 book The Conflict
of the Faculties was cited the most because of (and since) a part of
it was translated into Portuguese in 2017. The popularity of Ruben
López-Cano's output is analysed as due to its Spanish language (with one
article in Portuguese), as well as thanks to the more didactic nature,
illustrating AR and its methodology rather than emphasizing a theoretical focus
as in Coessens and Borgdorff.
It is further shown that artistic research is still
inscribed more in the context of graduate rather than undergraduate studies,
and located within the academic production of interpretive performance
practices.
Bragagnolo and Sanchez conclude with the remark on
the coexistence of different conceptions and perspectives on AR, with two main
methodological categories: the theoretical and the autoethnographic. The latter
encompasses "quite different texts", and it has been stated that, in
many cases, autoethnography has become a "mere transcription of work
diaries that do not construct questions or defined artistic research
problems".
In 2020, López-Cano considered Latin-American
artistic research in music to be in the early stages of construction, lamenting
the lack of associations dedicated exclusively to artistic research,
specialized journals, etc. Nevertheless, some movement towards consolidation is
to be highlighted, with, already a year later, the creation of the Brazilian Observatory and Artistic Research Laboratory (at
the Federal University of Mato Grosso) with an e-book on artistic
research in the works, and the first Autoethnografia Brasil conference. In 2022,
the Claves journal plans a thematic issue.
It is interesting to learn how artistic research
started in Brazil. In 1987, concern about music education and research led to a
national symposium (SINAPEM - see here), which in turn led to the creation of
ANPPOM and of the first music journal in Brazil. In the first years of ANPPOM, most
of the research at their conferences was from the part of music education and
musicology. Both of these fields are still the most prominent of music research
in the country - performance is the smallest. But in 2011 the latter expanded,
and a year later, as a consequence, the Brazilian Association of Music Performance was
created. It's first conference, in 2013, had Artistic Research as the main
theme.
Considering this link between research and
education, there's the question of artistic research training. As the arts
curricula are part of the university biotope, verbalized reflection is
naturally embedded: there is no masters degree to be gotten without
writing. And PhDs are possible, e.g. "in music/performance".
Composition's place in all of this remains remarkable, though. For
composers of a previous generation, this has sometimes been a matter of mixing
fields, for instance as part of a PhD in communications (semiotics). This is
not the case anymore, but traces can be seen, e.g. at the Federal University of
the State of Rio de Janeiro, with the research strands "Language and Musical
Structuring" and "Creative Processes in Music", both which
programs cater to composers envisaging a PhD. The last paragraph of the latter
indicates how the meaning of 'composition' has developed away from the old
'writing music onto paper' type that has been distinguished for so long from
the practice of the performers. At the same time, the former strand still
demonstrates remnants of the older approach. Here is an example of how post-graduate
research projects are distinguished along the lines of education, musicology,
composition, and performance, at the Music School of another university in Rio
de Janeiro.
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| Map of Brazil superimposed over Europe |
All in all, the most striking to me remains
the fact that artistic researchers in Brazil can work under the umbrella of
music research as much as musicologists. In Europa, perhaps literally due to
its high population density, researchers in music tend to see each other as
competitors for space, arguing divisively over money as well as identity.
Obviously, a very large country has issues of its own, if also to unite and
find financial support. But, at least in some of the aspects touched upon above
- and I would add: in more matters of umbrella functionality than merely in artistic
research - it would be nice if Europe could be a bit more Brazilian.
I am grateful to Bibiana
Bragagnolo, Magno Caliman, Joana Cunha de Holanda, Paulo
Dantas and Luis Silva Queiroz for their help in finding sources
and pointing out nuances.
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