Fetish, demolition, ruins
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Date
2020-09-01
Authors
Lopes de Barros, Rodrigo
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Citation
Rodrigo Lopes de Barros. 2020. "Fetish, Demolition, Ruins." Afterimage, Volume 47, Issue 3, pp. 43 - 65. https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2020.473005
Abstract
This article compares the video Reinforced Concrete (2012) by Lucas Ferraço Nassif, begun during Antje Ehmann and Harun Farocki's 2011 workshop-based project Labour in a Single Shot in Rio de Janeiro, and the performance Bustox (2014), which was carried out by the Brazilian experimental theater collective ERRO Grupo in Florianópolis. Each artwork can be read as an attempt to defetishize an idol of Brazilian capitalism, former billionaire Eike Batista. Moreover, Ehmann and Farocki's workshop can be seen as an attack on the process of fetishizing products of labor, fetishization being one of the main characteristics of capitalist society. Ehmann and Farocki's project, and consequently Nassif's video, are connected to the work of theoreticians such as Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben concerning the themes of improvisation and profanation. The concept of the fetish is also revitalized by taking into consideration Latin American thinkers Fernando Ortiz and Osório César.
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