Heloisa, how was your education in Letters, before you worked at the School of Communication? I graduated in Classics – Greek and Latin. Then I left the country and spent some time away. And when I returned I went straight to Brazilian Literature. But I was working at the College of Letters, on Avenida Chile. I had a great time, it was very good. It was 1964, 1965. The university was hot, wasn’t it? Debates everywhere, very lively students, professors, everything.
Before 1968 this was possible. Yes, before 1968. It was an incredible climate as a university, a place of thinking. I was working there, and then, in 1968, ECO was created. People came from Letters, the largest contingent was basically from Letters. And people from other units came also.
Did you come as part of this first group? I was part of this first group, and I would split my time in half: 20 hours in Letters, 20 hours in Communication. But then 1968 came and the university climate became very depressing. So that charm of Letters passed and, in a certain way, Communication was attractive, it was very new. You could invent what you wanted. It was the first years of an institution, with young colleagues, everybody betting a lot on this new thing. And I left Letters for good and totally migrated to Communication.
What did you teach? I taught courses in Photography, imagine that. Photography and Cinema. So it was stimulating.
Going back a little, you said that you spent time abroad. You graduated and then… I went to Harvard. My husband at the time went to study there, to do his master’s in Law, in 1963. So I went to work at the Center for Latin American Studies and I never dropped the topic again. And I totally forgot about Greek and Latin, forever.
Never again? I’ve already done my master’s in Brazilian Literature. Never again, never again.
You lived through 1968... Intensely.
Things got rough inside the university, didn’t they? Yes, very. There were a lot of whistle-blowing, it was a climate of general paranoia.
Inside Communication as well? In Communication it was different. Communication was in a building at Praça da República. For the first time there was class in that room. There were few professors, and all of them beginning on the same day. So it was a team of people inventing a school. It was very good.
And when did you begin teaching in the postgraduate program? I don’t remember the postgraduate program, but I think that, when it was created, I went straight there, because I had a master’s and doctorate. Communication had an appeal and a limit which was novelty. So, it didn’t have professors in Communication, for example. It would only have Communication professors a generation later. That’s why some were from Letters, others were from who knows where. And no one had a master’s in Communication. This degree didn’t exist. So, to create the postgraduate program, it was the same thing. To create the postgraduate program, it was a migration from other areas. The postgraduate program at ECO differentiates itself a lot from other Communications, because it is very philosophical, anthropological, which is an ECO thing, in part because of this composition. And it became more interesting because of this. When CAPES came and tried to change that, it became less exciting.
Was it an attempt to change the identity? Communication, at the time, was understood as everything. Since we didn’t have equipment, it was a new school, you didn’t offer degrees in Cinema, you didn’t offer degrees in anything that required technology. Even Photography, which was my case, didn’t have a lab, because at that time you would photograph and develop. There would only be a Lab much later. It didn’t train Communication technicians, because it didn’t have Communication professionals or equipment for that. So, the beginning was a very rich period, I think it gave ECO a very special DNA, that of being fundamentally interdisciplinary and bringing together people who liked such a novelty – leaving their original disciplines in order to go on an adventure. Everyone was very young, everyone more or less of the same age. It was very stimulating. The Praça da República period was incredible. There were excellent directors as well. Simeão Leal, who was incredible. Really, he was a good guy, he let everything go. So students would invent, we would invent. It was like a lab, let’s say.
Do you think that the country’s bad moment incentivized innovation in some way? Invention, right. Yes, that’s why I said that Letters got very depressed, because it was already established. It became empty. The other one was never empty. We went to create something, there wasn’t the blow of resignations or anything. It was created later.
Of your postgraduate students, do you remember people who deserve greater recognition? I’ve always had a terrible memory. But let me see if I can remember. In the undergraduate program, I remember Abel Silva. Now, in the postgraduate program, I’ve directed so many dissertations…
You created CIEC, didn’t you? Yes, in the postgraduate program. I traveled to the United States, I went to do a post-doctorate. I spent three years at Columbia University. When I returned, I created this center, which was called the Interdisciplinary Center for Contemporary Studies (CIEC). It was something bringing these new subjects to Communication, women, blacks, all of these identities that were appearing here in the 1970s, that were entering the academy. It’s the time of feminist studies appearing in the academy as theory. We had Jewish studies, we made a large collection, generated a lot of research, international research, a lot. It was something very important, because I was arriving after a period of three years in the American academy. So, that tsunami came with me. There was a lot of support and many foreign characters also at CIEC. We did a lot of publications, there was a series called Papéis Avulsos, it was, thus, a very productive place, with a lot of big projects. There was another series called Quase Catálogo, which was also very interesting. We began to do surveys. For example: the history of TV until 1962. In 1962, the videotape was introduced in televisions. So, before 1962, there was no record at all. Everything was live, without a record. So, we surveyed this history backwards, we interviewed people. I like documentation a lot, I’ve always been a fan of this: producing documents – not so much keeping them, but producing them. So we made this record, it was incredible, because the people were dying. It was in 1980. A necessary and urgent record. We interviewed technicians, soundmen, scenery crew, actors, directors, all those who were still alive. Then we did silent film. In the Quase Catálogo series we did silent film, too. Those old magazines, from the time of silent film. In International Women’s Year, in the Women’s Decade, from 1975 to 1985, we covered everything that happened, all of the exhibits in this period. We did one of a very big project that CIEC developed, called Abolition Project, in 1988, because of the hundred years of Abolition. We realized that there was a lot of money going around in the country for commemorations of Abolition. There were public notices everywhere, FUNARTE, etc. So we did a project with the support of the Ford Foundation, covering all of the demonstrations, with the question: “What do we mean when we speak of color in Brazil today?” Because it was an extraordinary moment, with many things happening, and we recorded it all, but recorded it really well. A collection.
Always through the postgraduate program? Right. It’s an important collection. Because, for example, the Abolition March was a very controversial march, because the black movement does not recognize May 13 – the Abolition of the aristocracy, of the prince, of Princess Isabel. They think that the black date of liberation is November 20, Zumbi Day. So there was a boycott at the official demonstrations on May 13. We rigorously filmed it all. At the Abolition March, we have the recording by Globo, by TVE, the recording by anthropologists who asked questions. It’s a beautiful thing. We have a panorama, a state-of-the-art from the debate about Brazil that year.
After CIEC you created PACC. I created the Advanced Program of Contemporary Culture, which is another thing, but already not linked to ECO, a certain follow-up to CIEC, but in another environment. I stayed at ECO until 1993, the year in which I did the controversial selection process. Later I still taught some courses, but I was no longer participating actively anymore and I left CIEC.
The selection process was a topic even in the press. In everything, on the cover of everything. The selection process was filmed by TV Globo, it was rough. But then I left for somewhere else. I kept teaching at ECO, but already at PACC. I stayed at the Center for Philosophy and Human Sciences (CFCH) for a time, then I went to the Science and Culture Forum. I taught ECO postgraduate courses, but they weren’t at ECO, they were at PACC. There was a nice auditorium and the students would go there. And now I came back only to Letters. A journey like that of Ulysses.
How did you see CAPES’ relation to ECO’s postgraduate model? CAPES is a make-up that is put on. I don’t know about this generation today, because I’ve been away from ECO for quite some time. I was forced to retire, because you have to retire at 70 years old. It’s a really cruel thing: on the day of your birthday, you’re cut. You’re not even notified. This is true for all public professions. It’s a horrible thing, it’s a depressing birthday present… Because it’s on the same day. There’s no ritual, no one says: “Now you’re going to retire. Sign this document here.” You don’t sign anything. It’s absolutely a decapitation. And you’re already desperate because you’re turning 70 years old, you think you’re dying, you’re mentally unsound and are even fired!
But you are professor emeritus. Yes, professor emeritus from ECO. So I’ve continued for a time, I’m 75 years old, it’s been five years. This year (1914) I went to Letters for good. Because I needed to. I have a huge project. It’s called Quebradas University. Huge.
This project wouldn’t fit at ECO? No, but I tried to go back. I tried to go back but there was no space, there were no conditions. Because PACC is a post-doctoral project, and ECO also wanted to create a post-doctorate. I don’t know if it already has. So it was sort of incompatible. If it already had one, it could have one more, but only mine was already consolidated. There was no conflict, but there was actually an institutional disagreement. It was impossible to put PACC there. And it was also impossible to put Quebradas there. Letters is huge. There are rooms, a theater. Huge and empty. I built it, because there is a lot of space.
Before CIEC, which is from the middle of the 1980s, what are your other memories of the postgraduate program? ECO was always very good. Now it’s different. I’m pre-Ivana Bentes. It was very much like a family, a family business. Marcio Tavares, for example, is sort of my brother. It’s a complicated thing. It’s very much like a family. Muniz Sodré and I fight to the point of killing each other. It’s family. Have you seen Christmas? But it was a family fight. The conflicts and alliances were of a family character, not a professional one. It was not competitive, not that. It was personal, quibbles. And emotional. Now I don’t think it is. It has taken another direction. At the postgraduate program it was a closed circle. The directors took turns. I’ve never had a burocreatic position.
By choice, or a lack thereof? By choice, because I’ve always been a very alternative person. My whole career is very much marked by an alternative thing. Luiz Pinguelli Rosa, for example, used to say: “PACC is an NGO, it’s not a program.” Because I get and do the construction. With FINEP’s money, I did the construction at the College of Letters, a room for me. At the other PACC, I had also done the construction. It was an abandoned building, next to CFCH, with no one there. I asked Maculan: “Will you give me a part of that?” He said: “That won’t support a load.” I said: “No, that won’t support a load of books. We’re people, we’re lighter than books.” Then he said: “Go ahead.” Then I occupied it. The building was abandoned. Now it’s full of people in that building. There are ECO classes, there is everything. I’ve always had some sort of off-circuit things, the institutional thing afflicts me a little.
Speaking of your written work, your books, what would you highlight? I have three anthologies, which resulted in dreadful controversies, because it was something like saying that we were all something that is not literature. Today I’m working with literature of the periphery, of favelas. It’s the same conversation: “It’s literature, it’s not literature.” It’s a fight with the canon really. That’s why the institutional position gets in the way a little. So, I’ve always had this track record. For example, I did a book called Impressões de Viagem, which would be the theoretical version of the anthology. But the anthology is more important, because it resulted in a fight that was a healthy fight! Because it was a fight in a depressing moment, in 1976. And everybody shouting that that wasn’t literature, that that was crap. Someone shouted on one side, someone else on another. Then a nice debate ignited: “Is it literature or not?” Coming back to your question, I would answer: Impressões de Viagem. But it’s not true.
And besides the books? I work with many media. I’ve made films, a bunch of films. I’ve done many exhibitions, a medium I adore. I’ve researched a number of blogs, the passage from books to blogs, from blogs to books. I did a mega-exhibition, in Rio and in São Paulo, called Blooks – blog plus book. There’s a book there. What I studied, saw, and researched. Only I didn’t write, I did this mega exhibition. So all of my research, if you look at it, resulted in an exhibition first, because it’s my language par excellence. I’m a person who likes working with space. Now, for example, that I’m working primarily with the periphery, the first thing I did were two exhibitions called Estética da Periferia, in which we put into question – I did it with Gringo Cardia – what aesthetics this was, whether there was an aesthetics or if it was only a social problem. So we did a mega-exhibition, of four floors, at the Correios. A mega-research, too, because we went to all of the neighborhoods in Rio de Janeiro, we covered everything. Toys, furniture design, clothes, graffiti, obviously, house façades. We went deep.
Do you mobilize the students a lot for this assignment? A lot, always, and all of this is a course. I began working with a theme that I haven’t stopped until today, now I’m doing a book. But I’m doing a book after having done the two exhibitions. I did this one and I did another, called Periferia.com. It was at Parque Lage, also big, everything huge. Periferia.com is about the internet and virtual art in the peripheries. All technological again, much like Blooks, only it was just with the periphery. So I don’t speak only for books. Research is produced in other ways. I had a television show with the postgraduate program that was sensational. It was called Culturama: um Programa Estudantil sem Drama.
In the postgraduate program at ECO? At ECO. I got support from TVE. Because I do a complete job, I get money for that, I don’t sit around waiting. So I did this course. I went to TVE and got a monthly show about culture for the postgraduate course. This was in 1978, at the time when the debate about the opening up of the dictatorship began – Geisel. So we did it. There was a group of around 30 people from the postgraduate program. We set up a newsroom in the College of Letters. One directed, another operated the camera, another was the writer.
The production belonged to all of you? All of us. It was incredible. Later, in the editing, a student would go to assemble it together. Those guys who are at GloboNews em Pauta are all from this time. What’s the name of that journalist there?
Gerson Camarotti? Camarotti. And the other one, do you know? He was very good, very good. These journalists who are all a little older. That show was incredible. Do you know who we hired to be the reporter? Look how precocious it was! Regina Casé! She hadn’t done anything yet, only theater. The last show was censored. We went too far.
What was the reason for the censorship? It was about the opening up of the dictatorship, with Regina Casé interviewing. We invited Zuenir Ventura, Villas-Bôas Corrêa, all these serious, legitimate journalists. We invited some people like that and took them to a gay club at Praça Tiradentes. And we began to film the interview about the opening up with them. I remember that behind Villas-Bôas there was a gay angel, a boy dressed as an angel. And he didn’t see it, poor thing. He was speaking very seriously: “No, because Geisel’s relationship, détente….” Something completely…
It couldn’t be aired. The party was over. And I don’t have a copy because they used to reuse the tapes at that time. They erased Tarsila, do you want more? I did a course also in which I did a film about Raul Bopp. Raul Bopp died, there is no document. It was a special show on TVE, huge, done by the students.
All erased? It’s unbelievable, but true. I got very upset because they erased them – mainly this Culturama, which was really all I’d want to have –, they said they had erased Pelé’s thousandth goal, so I shouldn’t complain. I really can’t complain.
But other shows went on the air. This one didn’t because it was… Not this one, but the others… Regina, who was very cunning, was kidding about the opening up, but the guy was talking seriously. It was a masterpiece.
Who created the name of the show? A journalist who is famous today, I forgot his name – from Camarotti’s generation –, he’s an international correspondent. He invented this name: “Put Culturama, a Student Program without Drama.” It then became a slogan. I also remember that later I began to do something complicated with the postgraduate program, this much more recently, which was the following: I began to fall in love with the undergraduate program. Because I think this is the normal path. You first teach in the undergraduate program, then try as many postgraduate courses possible, next you go to the postgraduate program and begin to think it’s a bore. Then you want the undergraduate program again. So, I taught classes in the postgraduate program, and instead of abandoning it, I did an undergraduate course at the same time, in the same room, that is, with two syllabi and two titles. But, since it was in the same place and in the same room, it was the same thing, only the undergraduate students had to do a report and the others had to do an essay. But it was the same thing. That is how the Quebradas University was born. It began to get good, because mixing undergraduates with postgraduates is a very good thing. The undergraduate program gives a lot of subsidy to the postgraduate program, and vice-versa.
Feedback. The undergraduate program is a radio: the students tell you things all the time that you don’t know. That’s why you do this trajectory of loving the postgraduate course, and then coming back. I’ll come back to where the news is, do you understand? Because it’s there that things are hot, in the undergraduate course. So, I mixed them. This mixture was very good. I spent many years doing this. And I began to read texts. I’ve always liked reading texts. More towards the end, I liked reading a lot, something I didn’t know. So, I would pick up a book that is coming out now: Alain Touraine, Arjun Appadurai, who knows. I read Appadurai’s last book during the course. Mixing undergraduate with postgraduate readings is astonishingly rich, because the postgraduate program has more repertoire and the undergraduate program has more inquietude, it understands things more quickly. It’s funny: it is less constrained, it makes mistakes but does things anyway. This mixture is interesting and beautiful. Over the past ten years I have been doing this. I did it little by little. First, I combined the master’s with the doctorate. Then, the doctorate, the master’s, and the undergraduate degree. Then, the master’s, the doctorate, the undergraduate degree, and extension courses – so I put an extension course at the same time and in the same room, with everything made-up again. Then things really got hot. They were the best courses I’ve given in life.
For your intellectual development, which references do you consider most important? Mikhail Bakhtin, hopelessly. Walter Benjamin, hopelessly. At the moment, I work more with Appadurai and Touraine. I work a lot with them. And French theorists: Rancière, these things, a little. But in principle, way back, I was schooled in Erich Auerbach, Bakhtin, Benjamin, and Barthes – a lot. Then there was a postmodern period, I introduced this as well, brought many things, Fredric Jameson and Néstor García Canclini. Then came a lot of Latin America. When I came back and created CIEC, then it was already something else: cultural studies. With real projects of intervention, which is something that has always been instinctive to me and that was formalized. So it’s a research-action, it’s no longer speculative.
Upon your return, that was the line. That was it: cultural studies, working on intervention. I worked a lot with museums. I began to hopelessly do a bunch of exhibitions, big seminars. I remember that in 1993, when I created PACC, I organized through ECO the most important seminar of my life, called “Signs of Turbulence.” It happened along with all of those massacres, in Vigário Geral, etc. I invited many people from the United States, a rap specialist, I brought a French philosopher – I brought many people –, many people from Latin America. So it was a very big event that lasted many days, at the Hotel Marina. It was a milestone in my mind, in my life – as it was for many people, I think. Because, for example, there was José Júnior, from AfroReggae. He was sitting in the audience, curious: what was this turbulence? Ecio Salles, all of the rappers, you know? I remember I did a panel with a specialist in American rap. It was her and DJ Malboro having a conversation. Malboro is very articulate. It was such an incredible debate between the American scholar and the DJ. It was unbelievable. So, from then on, I got a little crazy, I went after the periphery.
Was there time for other actions, besides this seminar, through the postgraduate program? Many, many. But this “Signs of Turbulence” was a milestone. Because they were signs of turbulence. From then on, heavy turbulence came. There were a lot of massacres. Because it began to appear little by little: intellectuals began to go up the hills slowly, Zuenir Ventura went there, Caetano Veloso went to Vigário Geral to see what was going on.
The book Cidade Partida was from that time, wasn’t it? Cidade Partida is from 1994. It was later, but it was already a reflection. Waly Salomão did a strong intervention also in Vigário, such that the cultural center in Vigário Geral is called Waly Salomão. And they were all my friends. I’m Zuenir’s sister and I was Waly’s, my kind of people. It was very clear that something would happen there. Since it was a very big international seminar, I did an opening address at the entrance of the Forum, which has those stairs that lead to the church. At the opening address, we did a Furacão 2000 show. I’d never seen it. I had no idea it was so noisy.
Were these actions well received by the postgraduate students? Yes, they always were. There were never any problems. It was wonderful. I think I became a professor because my father told me to be a professor, because I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with the university. It’s a passion, isn’t it, because I haven’t given it up until today. I’ve been retired for five years and am still there, inventing things. But there’s something there that irritates me, so it’s a cool thing, therefore, that gives a nice shock. And I also don’t give it up. I love it. I switch classrooms, I switch buildings... But the whole student thing is fantastic.
How much of your experience in the 1960s is related to this inquietude? It is said that the people from the 1960s became orphans and invented cultural studies. They are all from the 1960s. Cultural studies is a very reheated, limited, and watered-down response to what the university was in the 1960s, which was a very lively university. Debates were happening, everything was a debate. It wasn’t only disorder. People took their careers seriously. You knew you were there at an important moment, in an important job, with important students, and that you were an important part of history. So, my baptism was in fire. The College of Letters was perfect, because it was a campground also, because the College of Letters was located on Avenida Chile, in a hangar, it wasn’t a solid building. So it rained inside, there was an interesting promiscuity. For example, I was at the Praia Vermelha campus, until recently. I left after the fire. Now I’m at the ollege of Letters. Guys, I took a while: that Ilha do Fundão campus is the best. I’m working nonstop with the postgraduate program, nonstop, I’m working with Fine Arts. You have a campus. You go have lunch and meet people with ideas. That there is a club. Praia Vermelha is not the same thing. Since it’s very close to the city, you teach class and leave. I never stayed there. If I had a class at night, one midday, I would go home and come back later. At Fundão, everybody hangs around.
At the Ilha do Fundão campus COPPE still exists. COPPE is my greatest interlocutor, I’m inside COPPE. I articulated PACC and LAMCE, the Laboratory of Computational Methods in Engineering, because I’m working a lot with the digital. Digital culture, digital literature… I’m doing some experiments with augmented reality, with immersion, they have all of this, they have an unbelievable equipment used only for platforms. When you ask for something, they laugh. It’s playtime.
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