"If I can't dance, it's not part of my revolution" - A conversation with Marcela Menezes

Welcome to the Onassis AiR Conversations. My name is Myrto Katsimicha. I am a curator and cultural worker based in Athens and your host in this series of recorded encounters with the participants of Onassis AiR. Founded on the principles of learning and doing with others, Onassis AiR is an international research residency program in Athens, initiated by the Onassis Foundation in 2019. They say that what happens in one place stays in that place. I cannot find a better way to describe all the things that have been happening inside the Onassis AiR house, since I first entered as a participant of The Critical Practices Program in fall 2019. The truth is, it is not easy to transmit an open ended process of relationing which is very personal and relevant to a specific place and moment in time. How can I then give you a glimpse into that process? Everything starts with a conversation. Throughout this series, I'll be speaking with the Onassis AiR participants to shed light on their artistic practices and needs, as well as to reflect on ways of being and working together.

Today, I have the chance to speak with Marcela Menezes. Marcela is a social activist from Brazil with varied experiences in social movements, in academia and in the cultural field. Since 2009, she has co-founded and taken part in several collectives that pursue alternative economic, cultural and political practices through community engagement from the perspective of solidarity economy. Marcela is a participant of The School of Infinite Rehearsals Movement VII with a collective research focus on the notion of community economies. Drawing from her own experience in community organizing, in this conversation we trace together the social roots of a solidarity economy by discussing how we build a common ground.

Marcela, welcome to Pali-Room!

Thank you Myrto. I am really glad to share this moment with you and the community of Onassis AiR.

Marcela, thank you so much for joining me today. I would like to start our conversation with one of your favorite quotes that you shared with us during the first weeks of the residency. I chose this quote because I think it describes a lot your practice and the way that you perceive your work. So the quote is "if I can't dance, it's not my revolution".

Well, I guess for me, it's really important to think what in the end we really want to achieve or to have in our community practice and in our life. And I guess this is about being happy. We need that as a human being and as persons who are part of a community. So I guess, when we are thinking about revolution or change in society or in the structure of the economy, we are trying to find a way to have fun, to be happy. And because of that, it's really important to me to think how we can try to do things together to have a better life, while being happy at the same time. Also, as I told you before, I am part of a huge traditional and popular culture in Brazil. I guess everybody is in a certain way. But in this sense, being part of a popular culture, like capoeira, carnival, or samba, is important [for me] to realize better who I am and how and what I really want to be and what I want for my community. Through this popular culture, we can connect with our ancestors, with our memories, with our identity and we need to know who we are as a person and as a community and what makes us happy to build the revolution. And just one more thing. We have to feel part of something to build collectively something. We need to feel the happiness. We have to feel the other people around us, we have to feel our memories and our identity to build something different and it just makes sense to build this other society, if we are happy, like [when we are] dancing.

When you did your presentation —that day— you also danced a little bit and what I hold from this moment was something that you said. You said that before we arrive somewhere, we have to excuse ourselves. And this also connected in the way that the dance is a way to connect with your ancestors, the ancestral memory and the past.

Yes, for me it is really important. To think about the future, we have to think about our past, about our memories. Also, the way our ancestors resisted to the slavery system, to a lot of difficult realities, teaches us how to survive and how to live today and what we want for the future. Because before, capitalism was not that organized and they had their ways to produce food, to share dances, to live well in a community with the environment. So we need to learn from them to think about our future. And because of that, this excuse as a way to come, is a way to say that we are not alone in the present. We have these ancestors with us, we have their memories and this is important for us to keep [moving] forward.

Thank you, Marcela. I would like to talk a little bit about your background. You studied public management and regional development and you are currently working full-time as a public servant who specializes in public policy. At the same time, I know that you are actively involved in activism and grassroots organizing against poverty and human rights violation, and one could say that these two are two conflicting roles. I would like to ask you, how do you balance these two aspects of your life?

Well, when I studied public administration, regional development and solidarity economy at the university, I was trying to find a way to think about projects, to think of a professional way to contribute to the communities and the society. But then I realized that the state, this institutional organization, like the state, is not enough for a structural change in the society. So because of that I worked hard in trying to be inside the other part, as a social activist, for example. But it's not a huge conflict, because as a public servant I can really think a better way to promote, for example, human rights or to build, for example, an agricultural system to produce food or something like that. But also, I know that when I am there —in the state—, sometimes the state doesn't want you to put in practice what as a servant you want to build. So because of that, I am in the other part of this situation. I am in my community trying to fight and to struggle for more rights from the state. In this sense I can help my community, because I know how the state works. I know a little bit more about how to think of collective projects, to aim at some objective. But also I believe that to achieve these rights, we need to struggle together as a community and not inside this state. So I guess this is the balance.

At the moment you are part of two at least collectives Coletivo Justinópolis, where you practice solidarity economy on the grounds, and Coletivo Balayo that is more focused towards active citizenship. In both initiatives, art and creativity play a huge role as a vehicle for achieving social change and I was wondering whether you could speak a little bit about the process and the change that you are trying to manifest together in the collectives.

Well, about the process. We share the same neighborhoods, the same city, the same communities, and we try to find a place —not a physical place, but a place to meet each other and to dance, to have fun, but also to survive together. Because we live in a really hard reality with lots of people that sometimes don't have money to pay the bills, don't have house or food. So we try to organize a community to support each other, to support ourselves, but through art, because it's important for us to express ourselves and to understand who we are. And I guess art and culture is important for that. It's not enough, for example, to share foods between ourselves. It is important to think why we don't have enough food, why we don't have enough money, why we are women in this position in the society. Through art we can think about our identity and also support each other, but with more consciousness. I guess what we are trying to manifest together and what chains we are trying to build are about this cultural way to live as a society. But this is too long-term, let's say. Today, we need to eat. We need to wear clothes. We need to have a house to live. So we try to do this thing in the short-term, like in the present, where we share resources between ourselves, but also achieving this long-term changes.

Can you talk a little bit about your local context? I remember you were telling us before that in your city there are no public spaces where people can meet. It's a city that people just go back to sleep. So give us a little bit of context.

Yes, I live in a city near Belo Horizonte which is the third economy in Brazil. It is called Ribeiaro das Neves and it is a city where the 75% of the people are black workers that go to the capital to work and come back to sleep. Of course, we have a lot of cultural producers. We have a lot of popular culture because people are people there, too. But it's really hard for us because we don't have time to spend between ourselves sometimes. We go to work at 4 a.m. and come back at 8 p.m. because we don't have proper public transportation and also because we work hard and we are unpaid or we have low salaries. So, we never have time. Also, because of that, the city is not organized for us who live in the city. We don't have nice squares. We don't have nice places to go for a walk, to go with the kids to throw a party, for example. The outcome of this is a violent reality, because people have to struggle between themselves for resources. We have a lot of young people dying because of the drugs market. We have a lot of violence against women and poverty and because of that, it's important for us to be together and to struggle against this reality. But we want to do that with beauty, you know.

Collectivo Justinopolis is actually a women's collective. So how did it form and what are you doing in this collective?

Well, we realized that we need to raise money, to generate income between ourselves. This would be the first step to build something together because without rent, without income, you cannot go anywhere and you don't want to. So first of all, we realized that it's impossible to build a community without people having money to pay their bills, to buy food, etc. and so we tried to think what do people here —especially the women— produce. What can we do to generate income between ourselves? And then, we realized that people were doing and producing crafts and arts, too. In Brazil and in Latin America, this concept of solidarity economy is really strong. We have lots of networking forums, conferences and struggles about this solidarity economy, and we thought that it could be nice for us to try to generate income through a solidarity economy. We had this church service where women went to learn how to produce, how to do crafts. And then we invited these women to have a kind of workshop about solidarity economy and we tried to share other experiences around us, good experiences in solidarity economy in other cities and other states to show them that it maybe would be good for us to achieve this way to generate income. And then we started to do local markets, fairs and exhibitions. These were really nice for them, as they said, because they felt more valuable. They know how to do something and someone values what they produce. So, it was not only just about income. It was about self evaluation and self esteem and because of that we feel more healthy between ourselves because we can share our experiences in our home with our families. We can share the way we are suffering because we don't have access to a doctor and also we try to support each other, we try to generate income and we do everything together now. We try to produce, to buy the stuff we need to produce the crafts and also we sell together and we do workshops to share skills. It's being really interesting, because it's not just about income anymore, it's about shared space, shared skills and learning together and feeling part of a community.

How many women are involved in this collective?

It's around 50 women, because we are involved with other collectives in solidarity economy in the territory and sometimes one person comes to us to participate in the local market, but they are part of the other collective and sometimes we think they are part of our collective too. But it's around 50 women.

From what you said, independence is also a key element in this process how women feel that they can stand on their own feet and do their own things and have this self-awareness and self-determination that they can create something together. So I think it's very important in any context, not only in Brazil. But at the same time in a collective, I guess that there are also many, many challenges that you face. I am curious to know what are the main challenges that you encounter through your participation in collectives?

Well, it's really difficult in this individualistic system of the society to share and to try to think collectively, to think and to act and to be in a collective. So we have all the time this tension between the individual interest and the collective interest. Also, even if we understand what is best for the collective and we have to put ourselves in the service of the collective, sometimes people don't want to. It's difficult to understand this balance between the individual interest and the collective one. I guess this thing, this tension is one of the most challenging things and also the values. Here, in our collective research, we had a lot this kind of tension because we were different, from different backgrounds, from different realities, and we had to build something together. Sometimes we had like mood swings and people were struggling about personal stuff back home. So it's difficult to understand and to value the collective and to try to step back from our own interests.

Yes, I think that it is a constant negotiation between the self and the other and a process that takes time —to build this shared values together. I am glad that you mentioned your collective research, because my next question has to do a lot with your research as part of The School of Infinite Rehearsals and also the term community economies that was the title of this Movement group. If I am not mistaken, this question around the values and the principles of solidarity was also what you were interested to explore here? I would like to ask you, how did you see your perception of community economies evolve through your participation in the collective research?

Well, I guess our collective understanding of community economy was something about negotiation, like how a community negotiates the values, shares experiences, but also creates their own system of values: what is important and what is not; what are the rules and how we want to keep moving; how is our relationship with outside institutions; where does the money come from. This is community economies, to organize this thing. My concept about community economy is that, like how we organize things. But we want to organize ourselves through affect. We are in the community, because we like each other, because we care about each other and we discussed a lot about this kind of things here in our collective research. But also we want to be autonomous in our decisions. And I guess autonomy has to do about what we decide and not just about where the money comes from and how we get funded to do what we do, but also trying to make our lives better and in harmony with nature.

So in your group, you tried to define this term and you actually separated it and started looking at the term from the perspective of what the community is and how the community is formed and then what is economy and how do we perceive economy. What were your findings throughout this process?

Well, I was more certain that community is a group of people who care about each other and who want to share lives, values, interests and go somewhere together. Community is about sharing in order to go to a better spot, a better place. Sometimes you don't choose to be part of a community. Sometimes you are there. But also you can just say that you are a community if you are there and if you are trying to build something together to get a better life together for everybody in the community. Economy, I guess, is how we manage our resources. The resources could be what skills I can share with people or material resources and also how we do this exchange between the community. We discussed a lot, for example, about currencies, about gift economy, about a market that is based on an exchange system. We had the opportunity to discuss about Quilombos and the economy that we want to build is one where we don't concentrate everything in some people and the other ones are without nothing or living in a bad situation. How can we share more? How can we build this sense of justice, equality —equality in many senses— and organize the resources we have to get more resources and also do this in a sustainable way?

Marcela, you also actually brought a very concrete example of a community economy to the group by introducing us to some members of a Quilombo in Brazil. For me, what was really interesting about the way that this community organizes itself is the fact that it is highly based upon ancestral memories, that we talked about before, and how the past informs the present. How did you decide to invite them into your collective thinking, and what were the most interesting finds for you as a group?

Well, when we decided to offer small conferences, like workshops, I was trying to think, how I could contribute to the group, with my sense of community and my sense of community economies, through what we were already discussing. We were discussing about autonomy, currencies, the notion of affect, popular culture, sustainability. While we were discussing this thing, I was thinking what could I, as Marcella, share, what is my background or my references. I remember that I started to be an activist and to do what I do because people did that before. Which people was I thinking? And I remembered that the Quilombos, for example, is a great reference for us in Brazil. They share communities in an interesting way, in harmony with the environment and between themselves and they do that with low resources. They don't need too much to do what they do and they have been there for 300 years. This is our reference. So I invited this friend of mine who is a Quilombola to talk to us about who they are, what they value, and what's important to them.

How did the Quilombos started in Brazil?

Well, we had this horrible past of slavery system and we had the colonization that forced people from Africa to go to Brazil —from different areas of Africa, different nations. It was a horrible memory —the slavery system. But these people who were enslaved, they struggled a lot against this system. Some of them ran away from the farms they worked and tried to find places to build another system, to build a community without this and out of this slavery system. They started to do that and to receive people from other farms of other places around the country. I am sure that was a huge challenge because the Quilombos received people from all over Brazil. The black people who were there were really different. They spoke different languages. They had different religions. They were from different places in Africa, but they did come together because they had something bigger that brought them together. So it started 300-400 years ago. In 1888 in Brazil the slavery system was over, but that was just a symbolic gesture, because after that the structure didn't change. Black people didn't have access to land, to jobs, or to anything. And then Brazil started to invite white people from Europe to work instead of the black people. So nowadays, for a little bit more than 100 years, we have this huge structural racism in Brazil and Quilombos are still references to inspire us because of that, because they are there and they are struggling against the huge racist system in Brazil. Also, we have this recent policy towards self-determination about Quilombos. So people who are living in the city, sometimes they realize —in a collective way with the black social movement in Brazil— that their parents were enslaved. And they live nowadays, but they have these references, this memory, this way to share the neighborhood, to share their community, so they can self-determine themselves as a quilombola, as a reminiscent of the Quilombo. So we have this experience of Quilombos who are far away from the cities, but we have urban Quilombos too. In my city we have one. Quilombo is a huge reference for me, but I cannot speak for them. So it was really important to bring Wandeli, but what I'm saying here is about what I perceive and how Quilombos affect my practice, just that.

What is the element that brings people together in a Quilombo? Is it family ties or the land?

I guess it is memory, ancestrality, shared cultural aspects, more than material aspects. They used to share spaces, to share a community and they keep doing that. Wandeli told us a lot about it. All the time they are discussing with the youth, with the kids about how their great great grandmother used to live. So, they learn from the past and they keep sharing the present and thinking about the future through these memories. I guess this is what maintains people together in the Quilombo.

I am also interested a lot in the scale of the Quilombo, because I think that scale has also been part of your thinking process here. How many people are part of a Quilombo usually?

A Quilombo can be a community of five families, for example, like 30 people, but also, we have huge Quilombos with almost 1000 people, for example, of 200 families or something like that.

Well, Marcela, thank you very much for bringing a piece of Brazil here in Athens. I am also interested to know, because this was your first time here, did you witness any interesting examples of community economies?

Yes, we went to Thessaloniki and we had this kindergarden experience [Little Tree] and we also visited Eterotopia. We also talked a lot about experiences of people who share food in the city. I've never had this experience of having to think about refugees before. This was really important to me: how we have people who are forced to leave their countries, their culture, their identities to try to survive in another country and how this country receives them. I guess this was part of my experience in this collective project, too. In Brazil we don't have refugees. In my place, we have a lot of refugees, for example, from Haiti or from Bolivia, but in my surroundings this phenomenon is not as strong as it is here. To think about building an economy with this issue of the refugees is really a challenge, I guess. But it was nice as I learned about this and I thought about this identity issue, about where we belong, where we want to go back.

And now you're about to go back to Brazil and before we close our discussion today, I wanted to ask you, what are you taking back with you? What was the most interesting aspect of your experience here at the residency and how are you arriving back?

Well, first of all, it's been so strong to realize how important it is what we are doing there. Because sometimes you are inside the struggles, you are inside the cultural producers, you're doing festivals and exhibitions and stuff, but it's difficult to realize what it means. Because we are there, we are inside it. So, this opportunity to come out a bit, to step back and to stay away from my community was really important to really value what we are doing there and to value other experiences that we shared here. It's interesting how we can understand better who we are, even when we are away from our place. This was really interesting. And also I really want to think about how to share this opportunity with more members of my community, for them to know other places, to [get to] know other cultures, so they can come back, as I'm going to, with this experience of how to perceive ourselves when we are out of our place. I guess I will go back with a lot of questions, not answers, but nice questions, like what maintains or keeps us together. I also have some answers. We really care about each other, but how can we improve this care, how can we improve this affect to be together? How can we value more ourselves as members of the community so that we can do more things as a community, as a collective?

Well, it's been a pleasure to share the room with you today. Thank you so much for sharing all this experience with me. It was lovely talking with you, Marcela, and I hope that you come back very, very soon.

Thank you. I am really happy because this is an opportunity to organize the ideas we have and I guess it's a huge material to share with the Onassis AiR community and also with my community in Brazil. So thank you, Myrto.

Thank you for listening. If you want to listen to more conversations, please subscribe to our channel. You can find more about the Onassis AiR residency program and each participant at www.onassis.org. This series is produced by Onassis AiR. Thanks to Nikos Kollias, the sound designer of the series, and to Nikos Lymperis for providing the original music intro theme.