Between Terror and Revelry

ANA LONGONI

Atenas

Workshop; 34 Exercises of Freedom, Public Programs, The Parliament of Bodies n° 1; 2016

Documenta 14

Between Terror and Revelry. Collective Strategies of Resistance during dictatorships in Argentina and BrazilThe Brazilian (1964-1985) and Argentine (1976-1983) dictatorships had much in common. In fact they were both part of the Operativo Condor, the illegal repression plan coordinated by different governments of Latin America, conceived with the aim of carrying out a policy of State terrorism that implied the systematic genocide of politicians, workers, students, intellectuals and artists that opposed the Regimes. The methodology employed involved the ?disappearance? of dozens of thousands of persons, through their kidnapping, torture, killing and other crimes.While ?concentrationary terror? (Calveiro) that brimmed over detention camps flooding public space was clearly paralyzing, however it was not absolute. There were fissures and alternatives, spaces of resistance, disorder and confrontation, camouflage and reinvention strategies for the political action and new ways of conceiving the body. Between Terror and Revelry speaks of the coexistence or even the confluence of different ways of resistance: the denunciations of repression in the public space through the creative actions of human right movements, but also another resistance mode which Roberto Jacoby characterized as a ?strategy of joy?: the exultation of being alive, of enjoying our bodies, transforming them by disobeying disciplinary norms.