C. ist ein zweisprachiges Objektbuch über die brasilianische Militärdiktatur.
C. é um livro-objeto bilíngue sobre a ditadura militar brasileira.
C. is a bilingual object book about the Brazilian military dictatorship.
C. is an attempt to give life back to the historic memory of the brazilian military dictatorship occured between 1964 and 1985. It contains 5 short stories about this period originally written in Portuguese by Bernardo Kucinski and transated into German by Pedro Paulo Teixeira. The short stories talk about love, loss, abuse and death among other things. The book is hidden inside a box - under a fake bottom, which was sprayed in black and magenta. The spray ink gave the box the roughness of a dictatorship. The book is printed on tracing paper and polen paper so that picture intervetions could be positioned over actual photos of the dictatorship and both texts - German and Portuguese - could be simultaneously read.
Two posters containing the names of the people who disappeared or were murdered during the dictatorship - according to the National Comission of Truth - complete the concept of the book. The stars on the posters show if the person was killed - full star - or disappeared - star stroke. They are based on Data Visualization graphics. A CD was also recorded. It contains the short stories read in German - by me - and in Portuguese - by my friend Beatriz Chaves.
The tower - to protect us - is on the lid of the box.
The snake - the dictatorship - is on the inner bottom of it.
"Four years ago a sad looking man searched after C. - a foto restorer. He wanted that the restorer gave the image of his mother back to his memory. She died years ago. But he had only one foto of her - dead in coffin. That man wanted a foto in which his mother appeared full of life. It would be impossible to do that only with a foto restoration. I asked him to describe me how her hair, her lips and her eyes were. From the description I took his mother off the coffin. I drew on her a beautiful dress, I oppened her eyes. Fifteen days later the man came back and when he saw the picture he cried. C. remembers that."
Taken from the exposition Cicatriz - Scar - by the artist Rosângela Rennó.
This work is also inspired by the german word Erinnerungskultur - the culture of memory.
The german language is the element that made possible the transition from ideas to actual products.
The process of translating the words was also the process of translanting the thoughts.
The short stories were taken from the book "Você Vai Voltar Pra Mim e outros contos" - edited by Cosac Naify and written originally in Portuguese by Bernardo Kucinski.
The pictures were taken by Evandro Teixeira in Rio de Janeiro during the Brazilian military dictatorship.
The memory of the project can be read here (in Portuguese): read memory / ler a memória
Danke!
Thanks!
Obrigado!
