By JOHN RODRIGO V. MARTINS*
Group theater in São Paulo resists the market, rebels against neoliberalism, but cannot escape the trap of public notices
1.
Artistic groups of group theater in the city of São Paulo[I] are one of the many categories that make up the theatrical scene.[ii] Its distinguishing feature lies in the way it articulates its management relationships, understood here as a way of organizing work and artistic production, with public cultural policies, seeking to build counter-hegemonic aesthetic and political experiences. Such experiences aim to question not only the logic of culture as a commodity, but also the very relations of capitalist production.
Group theater is a category characterized by horizontal, collaborative, collective practices, with territorial roots and non-market production. A recent mapping (MATE, 2020) identified the existence of more than three hundred centers with significant production in the city. This category, by proposing a counter-hegemony, encourages reflection on fundamental aspects of the production and organization of artistic work in contemporary cognitive capitalism (NEGRI; HARDT, 2014; NEGRI; LAZZARATO, 2001), addressing the social relations of production involved in the creation of more value.
Public notices are the main means by which public cultural policy is implemented in Brazil. The city of São Paulo is no exception. The Law for the Promotion of Theater for the City of São Paulo,[iii] The main public cultural policy aimed at group theater stands out for being the only one dedicated to financing ongoing artistic research processes, without the obligation of resulting in a work at the end.
Due to their counter-hegemonic perspective, both in terms of aesthetic and poetic creation and the organization of work, the artistic groups of group theater often claim that they do not produce goods. This is because they organize themselves as informal, horizontal associations, based on collectivized, non-hierarchical work. Their focus is on the processes of research and creation and not on the result or “product.”
Thus, the structuring of the collective occurs continuously, guided by the convergence of aesthetic and poetic interests, and not in a provisional manner with the purpose of producing works intended for commercialization. This statement, however, when confronted with the notion of merchandise proposed by Karl Marx (2004, p.117) proves to be problematic, since merchandise is, above all, a social relationship and, therefore, cannot be defined solely by the object, material or immaterial, resulting from the production process. What acquires centrality in this process are the social relations that constitute it and its exchange value.
There is no exchange value in the presentation of shows or theatrical activities by artistic groups, since tickets are not charged to the public. The exchange value manifests itself in the relationship with the public funder. However, we are not talking about extracting more value that materializes in profit for the government. What is at stake, in this case, is the generation of more symbolic value that can benefit, on the one hand, the artistic group, and on the other, the State.
By producing their shows, the group generates for itself immaterial and intangible values such as prestige, recognition, visibility, networking and sociability in a field marked by intense disputes over resources. These symbolic values, in turn, can be converted into future access to cultural policies, functioning as social and symbolic capital, as Pierre Bourdieu points out: “social capital, which consists of resources based on contacts and participation in groups, and symbolic capital, which is the form that the different types of capital take once they are perceived and recognized as legitimate” (BOURDIEU, p. 1987, p. 4).
On the other hand, the value generated by the groups is collected by public managers to disseminate culture and promote their government — as Karina Mauro points out in her research on alternative theater in Buenos Aires: “we must be able to establish the links that are formed between the generation of material and symbolic resources through the work of artists and the different production circuits, in order to observe how the symbolic capital appropriated in a circuit that offers little material reward is converted into economic benefits in another” (2018, p. 133-134).
2.
With regard to social relations of production, the groups are relatively dependent on public cultural policies, which are structured through the notice.[iv] The notice, as a technocratic apparatus for organizing competition, is a neoliberal device par excellence and this has a significant impact on the organization of work, artistic production and the subjectivity of artists.
In the neoliberal context, the notice imposes precarious working conditions and gives rise to subjectivation, where the subject predominates as homo economicus (BROWN, 2015) or business subject (DARDOT; LAVAL, 2016).
The precarious working conditions are expressed in informality, with service provider contracts; in the intermittent nature of employment and unpredictability of income, with the dynamics of sporadic notices where access is never continuous due to low supply and high demand, generating insecurity and fear; in the absence of labor rights and social security, where there is no thirteenth salary, vacations, or paid leave in cases of health; in the need to supplement income with other precarious work, such as other theater groups or in areas such as education, services, and construction, given that in none of the cases monitored was an artist identified who lived exclusively from the work developed in the group and from the resources coming from public cultural policies.
In the process of subjectivation, values and practices such as competition, self-discipline, self-control, self-accountability, flexibility, versatility, efficiency, investment in oneself as human capital, appeal to creativity and risk management are encouraged. The artist or group that conforms to this form of subjectivation may be precisely the one that, even in precarious conditions, manages, for example, to mobilize the social capital built within the artistic core to obtain a better positioning in supplementing income in other areas – whether through their network of contacts, social circle or insertion in different professional circuits.
Thus, the problem with the notice's device consists of: promoting the homos economicus by organizing competition (i), in the face of precariousness, in a technocratic way, that is, presenting itself as technical, neutral and objective (ii), and stimulating corporate managerial subjectivization (iii).
First, the public notice constitutes the legal-administrative model that structures the logic of competition. There are many artistic groups in the category and little budgetary availability for public cultural policies. Public notices formulated with short deadlines and limited resources intensify competition, placing groups in a position of constant financial pressure, insecurity, fear and on the brink of bankruptcy, reducing possibilities for solidarity and mutual support given material emergencies.
Secondly, the allocation of public financial contributions occurs through a committee that adopts criteria presented as technical, neutral and objective. These criteria, permeated by subjective interpretations involving worldview and conception of art, are constructed technocratically as if they were impersonal. In doing so, they end up crystallized as universal and as if they expressed the interests of society, concealing state and private forms of government.
The third aspect refers to the promotion of a business and managerial subjectivization aligned with the global precepts of good governance. In this context, artists and groups are required to adopt practices of self-responsibility (accountability), with an emphasis on efficient resource management and results management. In addition, the development of skills in areas such as strategic planning, project execution and monitoring, conflict and people management, flexibility and innovation are essential for survival.
From the perspective of group theater artists regarding work with public notices, it is common to hear reports that work with art and culture is what gives them meaning, being a space where they can fulfill themselves politically, aesthetically and ethically. These statements bring up ideas of freedom, autonomy and self-management which, from the perspective of Isabell Lorey (2006), are values that play a fundamental role in the “precariousness of the self”.
This is, therefore, a discourse in which precariousness is presented as a self-imposed condition: “What interests us here is not the way in which people, in general, are forced into precariousness, but the fact that some claim that, as cultural workers, they freely chose precarious living and working conditions. […] In this way, however, the continuous relations of power and domination become invisible and the mechanisms of normalization become naturalized as autonomous and self-evident decisions of the subjects”. (2006, p. 12).
3.
However, the artistic cores of group theater are not entirely determined by the neoliberal logic that constitutes public cultural policies through public notices. In terms of the organization of work and artistic production, practices guided by horizontality, collectivity and the rejection of hierarchies are adopted.
Decisions are made in collective meetings, where different individual views are welcomed and deliberations are made by consensus. Equal pay is established, regardless of the role performed, as a way of avoiding relationships of domination, generally represented by the figure of the theater director. All members can give their opinions on all areas of work, even without specific technical expertise, which contributes to a non-alienated relationship with the process as a whole. Furthermore, the rotation of certain tasks seeks to prevent the centralization and crystallization of power and authority in specific figures.
Faced with precariousness, the groups develop several strategies to minimize it, including solidarity within the group and between groups. The artists do not have access to social security when providing services to the government through public notices. There have been situations in which a member had to leave the project for health reasons.
However, formally dismissing him to hire someone else would have meant suspending his pay, exposing him to a vulnerable situation. In light of this, the group's solution was to continue paying him and redistribute his duties among the other members. Although this decision resulted in an overload for part of the group, it allowed the sick artist to continue receiving pay and use this amount to cover his medical treatment.
Finally, the management relationships between group theater and public cultural policies take place in divided spaces (GAGO, 2018), that is, in spaces crossed by complex and heterogeneous agencies that occupy the border between alignment and insubordination to neoliberalism, making it necessary in the analyses to simultaneously consider the tension between both forces.
*João Rodrigo V. Martins PhD candidate in Social Anthropology at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) and cultural worker at SP School of Theater.
References
BROWN, Wendy. In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West. São Paulo: Politeia, 2019.
BROWN, Wendy. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution. New York: Zone Books, 2015.
BOURDIEU, Pierre. What makes a social class? On the theoretical and practical existence of groups. Berkeley Journal of Sociology, no. 32, p. 1-49, 1987.
FOUCAULT, Michael. Security, territory and population. Course given at the Collège de France (1977-1978). New York: Routledge, 2008.
HARDT, Michael; NEGRI, Antonio. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. Translation: Clovis Marques. Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2014
LOREY, Isabell. (2006). Government and self-precariousness. About the normalization of cultural producers and producers. EIPCP (European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies) [online]. Available at: www.eipcp.net/transversal/1106/lorey/es
MARX, Carl. Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. New York: Routledge, 2008 (1859).
MARX, Karl and ENGELS, Friedrich. Communist Party Manifesto. Petrópolis: Voices, 1990
MARX, Carl. The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Sao Paulo: Boitempo, 2011.
MATE, Alexandre. Group theater in the city of São Paulo and greater São Paulo: collective creations, meanings and manifestations in the process of struggles and crossings / organized by Alexandre Mate LONDERO, Elen; CABRAL, Ivam; AQUILES, Marcio; GAMA, Joaquim. São Paulo: Lucias, 2020
MAURO, Karina. Between the world of art and the world of work. Conceptual tools to understand the labor dimension of artistic work. In: Dossier telóndefondo/27, Journal of Theater Theory and Criticism, p. 114-143, 2018. Available at: http://revistascientificas.filo.uba.ar/index.php/telondefondo/issue/view/418
NEGRI, A.; LAZZARATO, M. Immaterial Labor: forms of life and production of subjectivity. Rio de Janeiro: DP&A, 2001.
Notes
[I] Group theater is a national phenomenon. The scope of this research, however, is located in the State of São Paulo, with more emphasis on the capital.
[ii] The theater scene, in general terms, is made up of independent theater, commercial theater, group theater, etc.
[iii] LAW Nº 13.279, of January 8, 2002, was an achievement of the category organized around the Art Against Barbarity Movement. From now on, I refer to the law only as the Development Law.
[iv] We refer specifically to the Law for the Promotion of Theater in the City of São Paulo. Although certain generalizations are possible, each notice has its own particularities and requires a careful look at its specificities. The choice of this policy as the object of analysis is justified by its relevance to group theater, as explained above.
the earth is round there is thanks to our readers and supporters.
Help us keep this idea going.
CONTRIBUTE
