Great Circle
Maximum Circle, Geovanni Lima (MG), in the Governor's Cultural Park, with a view of the sea. Photos: Disclosure

ARTE!✱ – Your journey begins with literature…
Yes. I work well in this interdisciplinary field, I like it, everything I do comes from poetry in some way. A search that is always permeated by a poetic perspective, about the way of reading. My first job was at a publishing house, then I went on to work in advertising, music, and arts. I worked a little with everything that came my way. I learned as I went. Song lyrics, set design, film, design. I created sets for Gal, Macalé, Adriana Calcanhotto. I think that all of this connects for me. I started curating and, in some way, my way of thinking is permeated by my background, I think it comes from my family. My father [writer and artistic director Waly Salomão] was a poet and also lived in the visual arts. I grew up in this mix, in this melting pot of references. My background and my life go hand in hand.

Several years after graduating in Communication: Journalism and Cinema, I went back to university to do a master's degree, precisely because at PUC in Rio de Janeiro there was this program that considered literature in a broader field (taking Rosalind Krauss's approach and understanding sculpture as something that goes far beyond the boundaries of the sculptural object and the monument), which was called Literature, Culture and Contemporaneity. And that was it, the mix, looking at culture in multiple ways. Without that nonsense of counting words and rhymes to judge a poem, for me a waste of time when there are so many incredible things happening in a good poem. The objective, pragmatic, efficient way of reading a poem or a work of art is the elimination of possibilities, it is the disenchantment of art. Or as [the Czech-Brazilian philosopher Vilém] Flusser wrote somewhere, they are confusing rigor with rigor mortis. Or even, as a professor once told me, “what matters is the possibility of inventing new meanings for the world.” In other words, what matters is the deviation.

A project I am very proud of became a book published by Cobogó, Flutua pelas ruínas, fluxo, in partnership with Editora PUC-Rio and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. After that, I started a doctorate at Harvard, which was crazy, it changes everything, your references, your point of view, everything multiplies. An experience of helplessness that knocks the ground out of you, and little by little you start to root yourself again, finding yourself.

And that's how I learned, with my father, to read things as if they were alive. You pick up a book, a work of art, and engage in dialogue, conversation. Change. Nomad. I don't have that view of dead things, of dissecting them. I look for the pulse in things. That was my education: my father, Heloisa Teixeira, Marcelo Yuka, Tunga. Humor and chaos. Creating and putting it out there, in movement.

ARTE!✱ – How did you get to the Casa do Governador Cultural Park? Do you think your profile influenced the invitation?
Yes, Fabrício Noronha, who is the Secretary of Culture of Espírito Santo, has a very broad vision. In 2021, he created a call for sculptures around the Governor's House. It was the first national call for cultural projects in the state and transformed that huge space into a park. The Governor's House already held a mythical place in the minds of every Espírito Santo resident, an inaccessible piece of land on the seashore. The sculptures allowed the beginning of the opening to the public. They then created another call for sculptures, and with the success and curiosity, especially from a biweekly event called Parque Aberto – which, as the name suggests, opened the Park to everyone with shows, events, and food trucks – Governor Renato Casagrande and Fabrício created the Casa do Governador Cultural Park. It is an incredible space, a forest by the sea.

And this is where I come in. Together with the institute selected to manage the space: the IAC. I am here to try to organize the artistic personality of the Park. The public notices were very important, but they usually create a very dispersed whole. One of the challenges (there are many) is to strengthen this group and expand it. To develop the Park's potential as a place for coexistence with art, as a stimulus, a meeting place, a catalyst.

ARTE!✱ – There seems to have been a trend towards outsourcing the management of public spaces through a dedicated company. Do you think that is true? Do CSOs have freedom of contracting, are they autonomous?
It's a partnership. The government is the, let's say, client. It has the choice, the voice, that is, it can determine the direction. But that's it, it's a partnership. The CSO can be more dynamic, bring in other forms of investment. It's less tied down. And I think that in the arts it works, because the artistic space is very idiosyncratic. It depends on many ways of thinking. It's very important to create cultural development policies, and that doesn't happen with public notices for the production of works, for development. It's good to have them, but they often end up separating, because they create competition, rather than uniting. And for artistic production, for creation, encounters, exchanges, coexistence, chance, all of this is incredibly important.

Something that is very important in a cultural center is to make people see things differently, to get them moving. And if this structure is too rigid, you can't have this flexibility. I'm concerned that [the Park] doesn't become just a place for events, a place you go because something is happening, a show, a fair, for example, and then you leave. Everything is reduced to numbers: so many people passed by, how incredible. It makes the data bigger. But when that could have happened in absolutely any other place, nothing is built, it empties out. It's important to try to create a relationship with the space. That's why the Park is a space that has to shelter and welcome people, because of what the space itself is. I think we have a commitment to creating legacies, to encouraging and putting down roots, to deepen the work in the Park into something that becomes part of the city, that becomes part of the lives of the residents.

ARTE!✱ – What initiatives have already been taken and what are in the future?
Internally, we are taking care of the space and the works – which had never received maintenance. Reorganizing paths to design new meanings. And we are arranging to receive works by important artists to put the Park on the national arts itinerary. Not for

I can't say any names yet, but keep an eye out, there's good stuff coming. In this change of new paths, we're going to change the entrance in order to create a whole new flow of interaction with the park. There's a plan to knock down the huge wall and build a fence, allowing more air to pass through to the street.

One of the first new things, now in May, is the Desnaturada series, curated by Ailton Krenak. It will be three days of immersion in thinking about the very idea of ​​nature, to generate futures fueled by ancestry, to renaturalize ourselves. And any opportunity to listen to a wise man like Krenak, or Sidarta Ribeiro, is incredible. Ailton Krenak is always disconcerting, step by step, in a way that is often subtle, he unfolds the conversation to take you down twisted paths. It is a joy to talk to him. It is an honor to be able to welcome him in this way.

Another idea we are working on together with Nathan Braga, and which I think will be a great game-changer, is to create a school inside the park. We are taking advantage of some activities that existed in the Work Plan that included demands from the Department of Culture and raising the bar: instead of workshops and one-day activities, we are bringing a more complete and integrated project, a free school capable of combining the environment, agroforestry with art and drawing studies. Not a school with a nursery or a vegetable garden inside, but a nursery-school where people would experience encounters with nature, the environment and creation as an experience in art, as an attitude of integration with life. Thinking about ways of life, understanding others, denaturalizing to read the rhythm of what surrounds us. An integrated school and nursery to be a nursery of futures. A Living School of Arts, our EVA.

One place that has always stimulated and inspired me was the example of the Parque Lage school in Rio de Janeiro. It was a place I attended as a child, and I took part in the Summer Camp at Parque Lage. I would sit there, scribble, and run around the park. And throughout my life, I would meet friends, experience the place, meet people, and exchange ideas. That is why Parque Lage was important for so many generations, just like MAM-Rio in the 1960s, or UFBA [Federal University of Bahia, in Salvador] with Edgard Santos before that. These places, by their simple openness to social interaction, generate things that reverberate for decades.
In short, it is a circle that will allow us to awaken new concerns in our attendees. But that's it. At this moment we have the challenge and the reflection of creating this plan. I am returning to Brazil precisely to get involved with all of this.

ARTE!✱ – Were you born in Rio?
In Rio. In the South Zone, but I grew up in Salvador. My father went to be the coordinator of the Bahia Carnival, taken by Gil. Then I returned to Rio, traveling everywhere. I've lived in so many places, I can't even say where I came from anymore. I love mapping out new places.

ARTE!✱ – How are you organized to manage the Park?
Fred Mascarenhas and Mirella Schena are the coordinators of the Park. Fred is in charge of administration and Mirella is in charge of artistic and cultural affairs. I am the curator: curatorial director. Another very important person is Nathan Braga, who is our pedagogical director. He was living in Porto Alegre, working in the educational department of the Mercosul Biennial, and we brought him here. He was a very important acquisition for us – especially now with the EVA project.

We also have Dani Maia on the board, who is in charge of production, and Melissa recently joined to be in charge of Communications. But the entire team is incredible. Mirella, Fred and I started putting the team together, and we have a wonderful, very productive connection. My right-hand man here at the Park is David Trindade, who takes care of the maintenance and conservation of the works, and is also an artist. In fact, we have some artists/creators on our team: Nathan is a great artist, Mirella is also a set designer, Kaique, from production, is a DJ and has a degree in art, among others. This creates a special look and atmosphere here. ✱


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