No Glorious Embraces

The school classroom has always provided inspiration for screenwriters, right back from 'The Blackboard Jungle' in 1955 as Glenn Ford struggled to control a class of unruly teenagers in a New York inner-city school; more recently, we've had 'The Wire', whose 4th season is dedicated to an examination of the American public education system as we follow former officer Roland "Prez" Pryzbylewski in his first year as a Maths teacher at a Baltimore inner-city school. And who could forget Michelle Pfeiffer in 'Dangerous Minds' in 1995, the film that spawned the chart-topping single 'Gangsta's Paradise'. It's easy to see why this framework is often repeated since it offers a simple and direct platform for an inspirational story: new teacher encounters disillusioned teenagers and lifts their spirits so they can reach new heights. It's a plot outline that more or less applies to all these examples; even 'The Wire's more gritty approach still has moments of idealism, despite the story's conclusion being more pessimistic (or perhaps actually realistic). Yet a much more recent offering from France comes at it from a relatively new angle.

Laurent Cantet's 'Entre Les Murs' ('The Class') follows the lives of a French teacher, François Marin, and his class of 14 to 15-year olds throughout a school year. Unlike the newcomers of the above examples, Marin has been teaching at outer-suburban school in Paris for some years and knows exactly what he faces each and every day: a battlefield where teachers and students face off against each other in a constant power struggle. Alliances are made and broken at the flick of a switch; a good relationship with a student can easily turn sour in a matter of hours. Students aren't the only ones Marin has to put up with; parents complain about disruptive students hindering their children's learning, disciplinary boards dish out punishments on his students, and teachers even argue amongst themselves about how to control these "animals".

Whilst the film deals with all the above points throughout the film, the main narrative thread involves Marin (François Bégaudeau) and Soulemayne (Franck Keïta), an unmotivated student with Malian origins. Marin tries to challenge the apathetic Soulemayne, stimulating the teenager's interests to encourage him to participate more. However, Soulemayne's stubbornness gets the better of him, resulting in a heated argument between that ends with a fellow classmate injured and his eventual expulsion.

But to reduce the film to one plotline is to miss the point of the film completely. The extended classroom scenes are what reveal the true significance of the film, providing an insight into the complex relationships between teacher and student that are in constant ebb and flow. In one of them, we see Marin trying to teach the imperfect subjunctive to his class; they complain that he's teaching them an antiquated form of French that no-one (they know) uses. Marin then realises the condraction of trying to reach out to these teenagers through a cultural tradition they're simply not a part of. As they themselves point out, they aren't French; they're Moroccan, Algerian, Malian, Arab, Chinese, anything but French. As was also pointed out in 'L'Esquive', this language does not belong to them, they've come to develop their own language, one which only they understand and which insulates from the rest of French society (throughout the film, Marin asks his students to "translate" the slang they use). In the end, Marin conceeds that it is a language of the bourgeois but that one must learn it before one can question it.

The film was based on a novel, written by Bégaudeau himself and who also adapted the screenplay, which is somewhat surprising since it feels so cinematic in style. The classroom scenes have a very naturalistic feel to them, as if they were happening right there and then. It's a testament to Bégaudeau's writing but also the quality of the actors since it's clear that each scene has a purpose to it and is not just a rehearsed improvisation. Bégaudeau also manages to depict a myriad of rounded characters, particularly in Marin's classroom but also among the teachers. Whilst they seem a little more caricatured than the students, the episodes they appear in breathes life into them; one highlight that demonstrates this is a meeting in which they are discussing a new, effective system of punishment for the schoolchildren. Each teacher offers an opinion, ranging from very authoritarian to a much more liberal approach. However, within minutes the discussion has moved onto the fact that the coffee machine has gone up 10 cents. Evidently it's a comment on the banality of issues discussed in the education system but it also shows that in the end they're just people like the rest of us. Who wouldn't be annoyed that the price of a coffee went up for no apparent reason?

Having been the first French film in over 20 years to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes, the film has definitely made a stir in its home country and around the world. Perhaps it's because it's a familiar story and yet is one everyone's in the dark about. Do teachers understand they're students? Do students understand their teachers? Do parents have any clue what's really going in the classroom? Pigeon-holeing the characters into these different categories continues to be the education system's biggest downfall, as the film's final scenes suggest. We see all the conflict throughout the film that occurs in the classroom and yet in the end we see everyone enjoying an end-of-year football match in the schoolyard. The division between student and teacher has been demolished, at least temporarily; the juxtaposition of this image with that of an empty classroom with chairs scattered around suggests that the problem isn't the relationship between the teachers and the students, it's the dynamic itself and the inherent conflict within it. Far from being an environment where knowledge is exchanged, the classroom has more or less become a No Man's Land.

Last week, my friend Helena came to visit me from London. It was only for a short while, about 10 days (some might say too short). I was undecided over where we should go since I wanted to show her a Brazil that wasn't simply tourist attractions but at the same I was aware that there were some things she couldn't leave without seeing. We ended up spending about half the time in Rio and the rest of the time divided up between Paraty and São Paulo. I suppose it was inevitable really and I'm sure it'd be the same with the UK: you can't really visit it for the first time without spending some time in London and going to Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace and so on and so forth. In any case, I'm positive Brazil made a good enough impression that it won't be her last trip, so perhaps taking a boat through the Amazon is next on our list.

So while we were in Rio, we saw the sights: Crist Redeemer, Ipanema and Copacabana Beach, Lapa, Santa Teresa, etc. One night, whilst walking round the centre of Rio, we discovered an exhibition that was taking place by Os Gêmeos (The Twins), Brazilian graffiti artists Otávio and Gustavo Pandolfo, who are indeed twins. I'd seen some of their work around São Paulo already, lining the walls of underpasses and forgotten street corners, and so the chance to see it up close and in more detail was one I couldn't pass up.

Os Gêmeos began doing graffiti back in 1987, influenced by the hip hop culture of New York and by São Paulo's own graffiti tradition called pixação, a movement with very specific rules and with an aesthetic based solely around a kind of black-letter calligraphy. However, they've developed their own trademark over the years, producing images based on Brazilian folklore as well as social commentary of São Paulo, characterised by the yellow figures that are often present in their works. Over time, they've found much wider acclaim, with offers to produce works in spaces overseas as well as in Brazil. The photograph above shows their participation in The Graffiti Project on Kelburn Castle in June 2007, where Os Gêmeos, along with two other Brazilian graffiti artists, were given permission to paint an old Scottish castle. The yellow face on the castle's tower in the centre of the photography is particularly indicative of their style. They've also exhibited their work in London, as part of the Street Art exhibition at the Tate Modern last year. Six graffiti artists from around the world produced large works along the wall of the Tate, each one given free reign to do whatever they pleased. Os Gêmeos produced one of their large-scale characters, a fisherman who holds a net full of ripped out CCTV cameras, as the photograph below shows.

The exhibition we went to see was somewhat different from these works. Whilst painted images was still the focus of their art, there was also a lot experimentation with textures, fibres, use of multimedia. One room had two large boxes which on the outside were painted with their traditional yellow faces. Inside, however, they contained much more: one was a small, dark room fully equipped with a bed, an oven, and a TV playing a looped video of a beggar on the streets of São Paulo. There was also a lazer, similar to one you might find in a club. The room wasn't lavish at all but it seemed to suggest a social inequality in São Paulo, even between someone of a very modest home and someone without a roof over their heads of any kind. One could also hear Gary Jules' cover of 'Mad World' on loop, adding to the melancholic feel of the room. The other box was sealed but for a small hole where you could pop your head in to reveal mirrors on every side and blue bulbs lighting the space; along with an Aimee Mann song playing in the background (I don't know which one specifically), it had an equally melancholic feel to it, creating a space where you were surrounded by an infinite number of people and at the same completely alone.

The next room was dedicated to their paintings, ranging from surreal images including colourful flying fish, a man with a duck's head, a mermaid, as well as more grounded images such as one of four hooded graffiti artists celebrating the completion of painting a São Paulo subway train (something Os Gêmeos were themselves commissioned to do near the beginning of the decade). The balance between light-hearted surrealism and more politically-motivated naturalism sets them apart from many of the other São Paulo graffiti artists who appear to remove the light-heartedness from the equation.

The final, smaller room was an entire installation named Os Músicos (The Musicians). The walls were all filled with speakers painted as yellows faces, as the first photograph shows. Connected to these speakers were instruments that anyone was allowed to play, though were heavily muted (such as the drums) or missing strings (such as the guitar and the bass). The only instrument that did work properly was a small keyboard placed on the floor, which, incidentally, my friend Helena played this tune on (having said that, I'd recommend watching the whole video for its full effect). The installation seemed to be suggesting the irony of having so many speakers and ability to produce a lot of noise and yet not having the proper instruments to do so. Whether that's simply a playful joke or more of a social comment is in the eye of the beholder. Knowing Os Gêmeos, it's probably a bit of both.

To see more of their works from around São Paulo, take a look at the site below.

http://www.lost.art.br/osgemeos_01_04.htm

So who enjoyed their May Bank Holiday last weekend? Technically, Brazil doesn't have bank holidays but since May 1st is International Workers Day, they celebrate it as a national holiday too (any excuse for a day off, really; St. George's Day is a holiday in some places in Brazil and it's not a even a national holiday in England). I do find it somewhat ironic that Workers Day is celebrated by not going to work, it'd be like celebrating Mother's Day by giving mums a rest. But I digress.

The holiday weekend in São Paulo coincided with the Virada Cultural (The Cultural All-Nighter), a free street festival that encompasses all of the arts from music to theatre to film to dance and everything else in between. And the festival's name is no exaggeration, it goes on uninterrupted from 6pm on Saturday to 6pm on Sunday, with the closing act on the main stage of the festival going on til 8pm. It all takes place in São Paulo's city centre, a mostly run-down area of the metropolis and more or less a no-go zone at night normally, but which comes to life and bubbles with vivacity during these 24 hours. It's a shame that so many people subscribe to this image of the centre since there's lots of gems hidden away in the middle of it, some of which I've been to and many of which I've yet to visit. Thankfully the Virada Cultural is helping diminish this widespread dismissal as it brings more people to the cultural and historic hub of São Paulo, the very birthplace of the city.

Despite having stayed there for an (un)healthy length of time, I didn't end up seeing more than a handful of performances, which I put down to 2 main reasons:
1) the festival "site" is about the size of Notting Hill Carnival. Or maybe bigger, I'm terrible at judging distances and areas. The point is that it's enormous and the stages are very spread out so they don't drown each other out, hence a lot of the time was taken up by walking.
2) this year's budget was much smaller compared to last year, so there weren't many street performances in the same way. From what people had told me, last year one could find something on pretty much every corner but I never really got that sense on the weekend. There was even a carnival-style parade running through the streets all night last year, and there were was certainly nothing like that this year.
Whilst the reason partly reflects my laziness for going to search out different things it also illustrates the lack of the element of surprise of this year's festival, that idea of stumbling across something incredible by accident. It was more a case of going to look for it this year, which is where reason 2 comes into play. Consider all this and the fact that there 4 million people in the streets, the notion of sticking around a few stages seems much more appealing really.

Of the shows I did see, pretty much all of them were great: particular highlights were the Tim Maia Racional Tribute Band at 3 in the morning with hundreds of thousands of people singing along, seeing a DJ spin some of my favourite songs by one of the city's landmarks whilst watching the sunrise, and enjoying a late, sunny afternoon show by a 70s samba-rock fusion band called Os Novos Baianos. Superb stuff indeed.

I read a few reviews and comments people made about the Virada around the internet and they mostly came down to 3 things: too much rubbish, drunken behaviour and awful transport. The transport was certainly poorly handled; despite claims that there would be tubes all night, one of the stations opening to the main hub of activity was closed, there was little signposting about this, and in the end tubes all night meant one every half hour. But concerns about the other two issues seemed exaggerated. I'm not saying I advocate littering or drunken antics but if you have 4 million people in the streets eating, drinking, and doing god knows what else, you just have to face the fact that you're going to encounter these things. Why let these inevitable negatives outweigh the positives? This is a free festival that brings together people from a range of backgrounds and that promotes all kinds of cultural activities on such a grand scale, an event whose main objective is anything but profit. In a country where sponsorship is splashed absolutely everywhere, it's encouraging to see that an event of this size can still happen in this way. Otherwise, it'd be another corporate V Festival-style event, with overpriced drinks, entry fees and artist, all sold in a neat little package. You might be able to see the stage better, standing on your nice little green patch of grass without a drunkard in sight and perhaps it's this "idyllic" vision the naysayers are after. But me, I can see the stage from where I am just fine, behind the five hundred people in front of me. Even through my rose-tinted glasses.

My friend took me to an art exhibition on Tuesday, at the MASP. It was a new exhibition by a painter called Vik Muniz. I had never heard of the artist but had seen posters for the exhibition around town, and since the MASP is free on a Tuesday, I thought, "why not?". In my ignorance, I asked my friend where the artist was from, attempting an educated by suggesting Spain on account of his Hispanic-sounding surname. Turns out I was wrong, he is in fact a Brazilian artist and one of the most well-renowned and prolific Brazilian artists around. But this was all the knowledge about him I would be privy to, my friend decided that it would be best to see his works for myself rather than to try and explain them beforehand. It really is something else.

Using everything from condiments, trash, diamonds, toy soldiers, wire, dust, and caviar, Muniz are very much about the medium through which we perceive art and the forms that constitute it as much as content itself, perhaps even more so. Most of his works use images that are already familiar to the public (such as above) so the fascination lies in how these images are represented. One series of works of his, called Life if I'm not mistaken, are sketches of famous photographs from the 20th century, such as the protester in Tianamen Square, the nine-year old napalm victim naked in the streets, JFK Jr. saluting his father's casket, and many more. Muniz says how he had a book with all these photographs but had lost it and so sketched them all from memory. What we end up with are sketches of photos which have lots of mistakes in them but as the original sensation remains there, we are ready to forgive or ignore the mistakes. Our relationship with the sketches become based not on visual perception but rather on sensual memory, something which seems to characterise much of Muniz's works.

Along with an esoteric range of materials, Muniz's presentation of his works are always photographs rather than the works themselves, or rather the representation of the art through another medium becomes the art itself. It's not for practical reasons, although some of his works such as his trash series wouln't actually fit in the gallery space, but rather to present an optimum point of view. In many of his works, you can see that the angled perspective of the camera means that the materials must be arranged in order to complement the camera, which would make it distorted from a straight on view. Although the photo above is quite small, you can see the angled perspective. To keep proportions right, Muniz had to have smaller objects in the foreground, a detail which is easily overlooked because of the perspective.

Tracing his works chronologically, it becomes clear that with each step, Muniz is looking for something bigger and more daring. What started off as small hand-drawn sketches eventually becaming huge arrangements using scrap metal, but all the way through one can see a thread that unifies all his work. There is a clear sense of juxtaposing high and low culture, which isn't a particularly new idea, but the creativity comes from making use of culture that we are more than familiar with, both high and low. Our interaction comes from the familiarity of the image represented and the tools with which he represents them: so Mona Lisa becomes immortalised in peanut butter and jam, the Hindenburg crash in a chocolate-like liquid, the American flag in wilted flowers. Whilst the materials chosen can sometimes carry deeper meaning in conjunction with the image being represented, a lot of the time there's an undercurrent of humour that typifies Muniz's work, that seems to imply, "why can't this be art?". The most explicit example of this is his Mounds series in which he chose a variety of materials and simply but them together in what appears to be an arbitary position. One mound included cat hair, aspirin, headless army men, poison scorpions, rat poison, and granola. The question here is simply "when does a mound of stuff become a piece of art?". Call me ignorant but for me, this is probably one of the most honest statements I've read concerning modern art and someone who is prepared to question the very work he presents in such a cynical and open way always wins my vote.