Audiovisual experience of the “Sinógeno”: mischaracterization or anthropophagy?

Abstract

In this work, we reflect on the questions about tradition and modernity in the artistic and cultural perceptions of the bell’s tradition in the city of São João del Rei in the state of Minas Gerais. We bring as material for analysis the visual EP entitled “Sinógeno”, which, when published in March 2021, brought a series of repercussions, among them some controversies, around the possible artistic or sacrilege contained in the work. Here, we will discuss, through this object, themes about the Minas Gerais perception about cosmopolitanism and artistic experimentation, relating the message concepts of José Miguel Wisnik, as well as the in-between of the local and global conceptions. Passing briefly through the historical context of Minas, from the land exploration process, through the influence of Churches and the Catholic religion in the process of building the region, to contemporary sound, visual and performance experiments, this work addresses the idea of movements and narratives. artistic works in São João del Rei and other bell cities. The sociability inherent in the language of the bells, which crosses the place, the soundscape (SCHAFER, 2001) of the ringtones, as well as the imagination of the listeners, bring up reflections on the various artistic practices and knowledge involved in this tradition. We defend that the culture and bells’s tradition and Minas are being negotiated daily by the people who invent and move them through the mediations that operate in their relationships. In this sense, the controversy around the Sinógeno expresses this relational aspect in the production of assemblages and meanings from works of art, whether through the attempt, by some, to accuse it of sacrilege, or through the attempt of others, to affirm and claim the expression of belongings and contributions of African sounds and rhythms in Brazilian territory as bases for nation building. Let us therefore analyze the way in which the Sineira culture manifests itself in São João Del Rei, in its emergence, institutionalization, and resignification.