For 1 month and a half I was back to my birth country, Brazil, with the aim of doing field research for my master’s artistic research. The purpose was to share my artistic research; practice the methodology “Actions of Connecting” to evaluate and access it; create and perform an action-based solo performance at the Santa Efigênia bridge in the city centre of São Paulo and to offer the Fissure Art Practice during 1 intensive week for participants that registered at Oficina Oswald de Andrade - São Paulo. It’s important to highlight that the period of field research was also to immerse myself there, having time for observations, reflections, study on behavioural patterns that I correlated with my personal experiences back there. Thus, besides my artistic actions, I had theoretical reflections to identify the behavioural patterns that influenced and impacted my life, as well as my family narrative and possibly other people. Hence, during this period I transited between the city of São Paulo and my hometown, São José do Rio Preto. Regarding the methodology used, it has three methods: 1. Sharing; 2. Co-creation; and 3. Dissemination (see on Actions of Connecting | Fissura Art). In reason to discuss my findings on co-autoethnography, this text focuses mostly on the first one. For the Sharings, I offered 1-hour one-to-one encounter or online meeting; and also embedded during entire intensive week for 3 hours a day for a small group of three people at Oficina – this activity also involved a collaborative co-creation (2) with a performance with the participants on the last day, besides readings, discussions and practice-based exercises for the co-creation. Another interesting detail is that happened during my last week of stay in Brazil – from March 20th until the 24th, 2023, which also culminated on the same week of the strike of transport in São Paulo. Having that in mind, it was a very intense week – for me and them, which I can say with much appreciation their interest on keeping on meeting amidst such chaos on the city when there was no subway or buses lines working.

          The content of the Sharings were all confidential, thus, the documentation of it concentrates on audio recordings of each participant answering two questions – 1. What resonates with you after the sharing? 2. What is the "fissure" in your own words? - (see on t h e i r fissures | Fissura Art ). Every participant has received the agreement of participation and was kindly asked to read and sign it. They have received the document prior to meeting with me by email, which explains the methodology, the aims of their participation, confidentiality agreement in relation to personal contents shared between participant and me – researcher-artist and the main aim of connecting people in a meaningful way through unravelling personal experiences and traumas within the Historical and socio-political context one lives or has lived.

          The sharing embedded always the exposure of the self, which needs to be done having in mind care as a practice - self-care and reciprocal care towards each other. I always started the conversation sharing a little introduction of what is behind the “fissure” concept of striving against the TRIAD of Colonialism, Capitalism and White Supremacy. That means, telling the participant how I came up with this term, thus, sharing the substantial experiences that I’ve lived to be who I am today and how that relates to generational trauma – that passes from generation in generation, making one embodies blindly such behaviours that sustain the TRIAD. The very first time I’ve thought about fissura was when I started to acknowledge my traumas and how they’re correlated to each other – how one situation leads to another on behavioural matter, which has enabled me to trace a few behavioural patterns of myself in relation to what I call the core-trauma – the one that has opened the first “fissure” on someone’s life. The core-trauma creates the first “distortion of reality”, which everything the way it was, it will never be the same.

          It is irreversible, I know that from own traumas, however I know that it is not  living in an endless helplessness. From my own experience I can say that I cannot erase what I've lived through, but I do can transform those experiences. This knowledge I’ve shared in all encounters for the Sharings, contextualizing within my core-trauma - I was a 7 years old girl that suffered a “estupro vulnerável”, vulnerable rape, and several sexual assaults throughout my adolescence and youth. At that age I lost my childhood. I’ve started to perceive the world in a different way, distorted for some, or very truthfully for others. However, no child should ever suffer such traumatic experience, because with that comes the loss of innocence and its lightness. I was a child which embodied fear, victimization, repressing and suppressing feelings, and tons of rage that were never fully released because I was not voicing that, even though I was releasing through dance and performances. “Tender Transgression – {Fissure Series}” (BRANCO, 2022a) is a performance of mine that I finally started to release my supressed screaming about all my loath and abjection of those moments haunting me. After 22 years, I finally brought up to public and that is what it means to me that performance – the very start of releasing my "silenced-burden" and discover of my own “envoicement” process to set my voice free.

          My stream of thoughts by offering the Sharings were if I’ve carried with me such core-trauma and unconsciously have embodied behaviours that lead me back to the trap of its oppressed experience, what about the rest of the people – Brazilians that also were raised or live there? Aren’t we trapping ourselves in the inner wound, then? Aren’t we sustaining an oppressed society – keeping the traumatization of it and, by consequence, reproducing History within the colonial-capitalist-patriarchal-white supremacist mindset? For that reason is that I’ve formulated the methodology “Actions of Connecting”, attempting to mind the gap between the “I” and other. Hence, the Sharings were an attempt to embody and practice othering, to not only connect with people or even recognize the reason why we couldn’t connect, but mostly to provoke in each one of them their “envoicement” processes - their inner voice to come out from their inner wounds. Traumas are inner wounds in the format of fissures asking to become a scar. All not visible by an insensitive eye, but that continuously bleeds inside, hurts and the wound grows without one’s awareness.

          Throughout the practice of sharing, I started to bring to the conversations the idea of an imaginary “Sensitive Vector” being the main tool of sharing personal experiences to co-fissuring the TRIAD - the system operated blindly by colonialist-capitalist-supremacist people in their lack of awareness, which causes traumas in other people's lives. Thus, both participant and artist/researcher, me,  were engaging with a sensitive listening towards each other, practicing (self)care and understanding the connections of similar experiences. The simple act of sharing is a striking move to strive against the TRIAD because by doing that, emerges a “connecting knowledge” that one recognises oneself on other’s life story, and therefore, people raise criticality and awareness of their condition on subjugation and exploitation. In this way, the methodology has enabled to the Fissure art practice its “piercing” movement, breaking apart the TRIAD by claiming what Colonialism, Capitalism and the White Supremacy have caused on one’s lives, critically understanding the origin and how that is embodied on behavioural patterns that I call the TRIAD Vortex.

          The “Sensitive Vector” is the “how” that the conversation is done, meaning, embracing radical sensitivity to transgress exactly what the TRIAD emphasizes as “weak” or “fragile”.  To engage with sensitivity is not to be(come) weak or fragile. On the contrary, it requires much courage and resistance from numbness – a body state that the TRIAD always imposes on us - to state it on the system one lives. I’ve noticed that when the person evokes the traumas’ memory and voices what one has experienced, the recognition of how that experience affects one’s life and how it is related to the TRIAD is re-(dis)-covered, resisting the inherent numbness spread out. As Cathy Caruth in “Unclaimed Experience” (1996) and Bessel van der Kolk on “The Body Keeps the Score” (2015) assert, traumas are experiences that can never be acknowledged at the actual time of the traumatic experience itself. It takes time to be processed by one’s body in its wholeness. Thus, in the process of recognizing them, it might happen similar experiences that saturate and even exploit through different angles the primarily core-trauma, leading to different traumatic experiences or even to the repetition of such pattern that expose the person towards the trauma’s vulnerability.

          The act of sharing experiences with someone has the greater value of voicing and listening to oneself, setting one’s voice free, but also finding out exchanges that lead to connect people. When one communicates what has been evoked by voicing it to someone, it creates a rupture of perception because the experience has been externalised – voiced and listened by the person who shares/speaks and to whom is addressed. Engaging with the “Sensitive Vector” means being attentive and caring with oneself and someone else’s vulnerabilities. I write vulnerabilities regarding the exposure of the self and triggering contents which might cause such vulnerable moment. By engaging with such tool, it’s possible to perceive people beyond their appearance, beyond their colour, beyond their religion, beyond their gender, beyond their wealth acquisitions. Radical sensitivity as a practice of listening and voicing during the sharing offers to look through and beyond the person, instead of “looking at” as the TRIAD teaches ones to behave. The motif on practicing such reciprocal radical sensitivity leads to a profound understanding of what it’s been shared in the individual sphere – micropolitical, and in the societal sphere – macropolitical.

Any process of political transformation which does not contemplate the decolonisation of the unconscious is condemned to the repetition (even when there is a displacement) of the forms of oppression; (..) there is no possibility of a transformation of structures of government without the modification of the micropolitical devices of production of subjectivity (Rolnik, p. 15-16, 2018).

The colonialist-capitalist-patriarchal-supremacist mindset collude people to react on radical movements which focus on the macropolitical, instead of the micropolitical. By no means I want to trivialise radical movements, however, I do know by experience that those leads on tragic endings.

          Before starting this artistic research, I’ve had experienced many protests, and riots in São Paulo-BR. Some of them were quite aggressive, and I saw many people injured by the police, or by the opposition. I still think that such radical movements are necessary for social change. However, I’ve understood by practicing my methodology that it is not enough. There is so much to learn from sensitivity and subtleness, to act from thinking through one’s actions, aggregating awareness, criticality, and care which generates an impact one’s cause, instead of simply reacting to one’s radical impulse. When I performed the “The sensitive crossing” (Branco, 2023) at Santa Ifigênia bridge at the city center of São Paulo I prioritised to cause a sensitive intervention instead of an extreme radical one. I spent 1 hour crossing a 225 meters bridge in its length. I was there to dwell on the "fissures" that echo in that environment. I was there to be perceived by a sensitive eye and generate more sensitivity in such a violent area at the heart of São Paulo. That experience made me realise the importance of sensitivity and to keep disseminating such precious value amidst such environment that generates violence and traumatic experiences on people’s lives. Afterall, that area is a point for drug dealers, burglary, sexual assaults, and prostitution.

          The methodology has enabled me to understand that through sharing, co-creating, and disseminating this artistic research, it’s being possible to act on the micropolitical, thus “(..) involving ourselves in a heterogeneous multiplicity of revolutionary micropolitical processes” (Rolnik, p. 15, 2018), thus, co-fissuring the TRIAD of exploitation and subjugation. Moreover, with this art practice I’ve been realising that the individual protest does not need to be radical to happen, but actually it needs time. If inside of me it has lived in silence a burning protest for 29 years, that does not mean that it didn’t exist yet until the very moment I voiced it. It means it was being processed. It took time and tons of courage to break my own silence and for my “fissure” understanding to manifest. The same applies for the participants’ breaking of silence. It cannot be forced, it needs to be acknowledged by oneself in the micropolitical sphere to be recognized on the macropolitical, and therefore, voiced it.

          When I think of radical sensitivity, it means that the sensitive vector pierces what has frightened the person to speak out, unblocking one’s voice and its claims, and that is achieved together, co-encouraging each other. To listen the break of silence it is encouraging in the sense that one recognises oneself on someone else’s life and, much likely, the reason behind such silence stems from the constant influence and impact of the TRIAD on one’s life. Furthermore, radical sensitivity is about thinking through, practicing and embodying it. Such embodiment knowledge has enabled me and participant to dis-(re)-cover the sentiments of dissidence. “The transgressive is reflexive, questioning both its own role and that of the culture that has defined it in its otherness. It is not simply a reversal, a mechanical inversion of an existing order it opposes” (Jenks, 2003, p. 93). It breaks apart polarisations, crossing and leaving fissures on each dualism on gender, race, religion, politics, social status, among others.

Transgression, unlike opposition or reversal, involves hybridization, the mixing of categories and the questioning of the boundaries that separate categories. It is not, in itself, subversion; it is not an overt and deliberate challenge to the status quo. What it does do, though, is implicitly interrogate the law, pointing not just to the specific, and frequently arbitrary mechanisms of power on which it rests – despite its universalization pretension – but also to its complicity, its involvement in what it prohibits (2003, p.93).

This is a valid tool and concept - often used on performance art - which also proposes such “piercing” movement and reflexive questioning but still very based on the polarisations because those polarities are the references to transgress. Frequently, performance art exposes through transgression an absurd extrapolations of power disruptions, which I recognise its validity. However, the more it's explored in this way, I still reflect we also keep only one way of applying this concept in an artistic work.

          At the end, one is complying with the way that the TRIAD of Colonialism, Capitalism and White Supremacy manipulate one to react. The idea behind co-fissuring resides on unlearning and disembodying the TRIAD behavioural patterns to not keep the reproduction of trauma, hence, to learn and embody sensitivity and to engage further with transgression. In other words, it provides the hybridization of an act that does not dwell in polarities, but it traverses in its betwixt – piercing further at the polarization betwixt. In other words, embodying sensitivity doesn’t mean to be sensible or radical, but sensitive. It is sensitivity that makes people connect in a meaningful way, hence, creating - very slowly - social change, raising criticality and awareness about their past, present and future experiences as well as their actions.

          Among topics of sexual assaults, rape, murder, organised crime, human traffic, bipolarism, psychiatric treatments, gun shootings, grieving, racism and societal racism, drug traffic, narcissism, among others, I’ve listened loaded experiences from women, men, and non-binary people. Listening to all those lived experiences it has made me to realise that the “fissure” is not healed, it is in the moment before of becoming a “scar”. Since there is no “scar” yet, it’s not fully acknowledged because it’s not fully tangible or visible to the person. To track reciprocally - mine and their experiences - how trauma relates to the TRIAD Vortex – the series of behavioural patterns that perpetuate the foundation of repeating and reproducing subjugation and exploitation, it became easier considering that “the ‘I’ has no story of its own that is not also the story of a relation - or a set of relations - to a set of norms” (Butler, 2005, p.8) and, therefore, a system that one lives in but at the same time contributes to. After all, who created and has been sustaining the TRIAD in a greater or lesser degree are all of us, and there’s no way to escape that.

          Taking one’s responsibility towards the TRIAD means to be(come) accountable, aware and critical in relation to Historical and socio-political trauma-wounds, disseminating the crack down of its Vortex to disembody and unlearn the behavioural patterns. The TRIAD strengthen globally its stability by enabling the behavioural repetition of such patterns that feed each vertex of its “triangle” in a vicious cycle.

‘The reproduction of the relations of production’ that involves ‘the reproduction of the values and behaviour patterns necessary to maintain the system of hierarchy in its various aspects of gender, class, and race or ethnicity’ (Spillers, 1987, p. 79).

The Western Culture find its way to “teaches” globally the repetition on reproducing the TRIAD behaviour of exploitation firstly with “the specific purposes of enslavement and colonization” (1987, p.71) resulting on a cycle of “discovery”, and conquest of territories around the world through the Atlantic Slave Trade. Afterwards, detached from the Colonisations’ historical moment per se, appropriating further to expand the economy from Mercantilism into Capitalism – exploiting the human being through work specifically the marginalised clusters of Indigenous, Black people, women, LGBTQI+ and also everything else such as the planet resources, the nature and its preciousness not valued as it should be. That means, being cultivated and taken care, instead of being exploited. These patterns reinforce the white race above any other, primarily the patriarchalist-heteronormative man digging emphatically what generates nowadays the White Supremacy Culture (Okun, T).

          The simple reflexive exercise of tracking back the personal experience to the social context where it happened, and to further understand how it’s related to the TRIAD brought the approach on (co)autoethnography. Differently from ethnography in which there is an interview that one makes questions and the other answers it – a method(ology) often spread through Colonialism, the sharing method from “Actions of Connecting” approaches a mutual curiosity of co-autoethnographing each other. In other words, there is the reflection embedded about oneself within the Historical and socio-political context and in relation to other's experiences, realising one's autoethnography through the practice of othering which delineates a reciprocal co-autoethnography. The Sharing of lived experiences urges for othering, perceiving and recognising from another perspective, at the same time one acknowledges their own lived experiences. This characteristic of reciprocal autoethnography is what I’m calling as “co-autoethnography” - an invitation to collaborate with awareness and criticality about lived experiences in relation to the TRIAD of Colonialism, Capitalism and White Supremacy.

          Finally, the Sharing is not a therapy session. Hence, it is not a therapeutical treatment for an obvious reason that I’m not a psychologist. Although, practicing the simple act to share has made me to practice speaking, voicing, listening, recognising and acknowledging, which unexpectedly has made me to leave behind the numbness of the pain, and suffering of my traumas. The audio recordings from the participants have shown a synthesising reflection on how these practices has reverberated with them, besides how they felt after the Sharing, which points out an emotional and psychological relief. Gathering such evidence, challenges the practice to be further developed on the psychological field of study. The Sharing has the quality to invite people to face together their "silenced-burdens", thus, unburden reciprocally through voicing the "fissures" inflicted on one's body. Moreover, it gathers the approach of community building, since the more I offer the actions from this methodology for people, the bigger will be the number of people that this artistic research has connect with. The Fissure art practice has been shaped as a socially engaged art practice that states that sensitivity and vulnerability are not to be feared but rather practiced and embodied. It aims to voice the tyrannies swallowed and to unblock the suppressed screaming; to encourage people to break their silences, and above all, connect people in a meaningful way through what they recognise on others’ lives from their own lives. Therefore, that is only done through the lens of co-autoethnography which permeates radical sensitivity to be embodied and create the social change on the micropolitical – unlearning and disembodying the TRIAD Vortex on one’s life by sharing traumatic experiences.

 

 

 

Reference List

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BRANCO, G. (2023), The sensitive crossing. [Live performance]. São Paulo: Santa Ifigênia bridge. 18th March.

BRANCO, G. (2022), Tender Transgression – {Fissure Series} [Live performance]. Arnhem: Artez University of the Arts. 11th February.  [https://youtu.be/ju3mJD7tfRI]

BUTLER, J. (2005) ‘one: an account of oneself’, in Giving an account of oneself. New York: Fordham University Press.

CARUTH, C. (1996), Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

JENKS, C., (2003), Transgression. London & New York: Routledge

KOLK, Van Der B., (2015), The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Penguin.

OKUN, T. (no date) White supremacy culture - still here, White Supremacy Culture. Available at: http://www.whitesupremacyculture.info/uploads/4/3/5/7/43579015/white_supremacy_culture_-_still_here.pdf (Accessed: 14 June 2023).

ROLNIK, S. (2018), Esferas da Insurreição: Notas Para Uma Vida não cafetinada. São Paulo: n-1 edições.

SPILLERS, H., (1987), Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book. Diacritics 17.2: 65-81.