‘In Front of the World’: Learning Through Beatriz Nascimento

There are cuts and deep cuts
In your skin and in your hair 
And furrows on your face 
That are the ways of the world 
That are unreadable maps in ancient cartography 
You need a pirate 
Good at piracy 
Who’ll bust you out of savagery
And put you, once again, 
In front of the world 
Woman.
—Beatriz Nascimento, ‘Dream’ (1989), translated by Christen Smith, Archie Davies, and Bethânia Gomes

With ‘In Front of the World’: Learning Through Beatriz Nascimento, the School of Quilombismo makes room for the conceptual and imaginative thought of Afro-Brazilian historian, poet, and intellectual Beatriz Nascimento. Nascimento’s propositions and writings around transmigration, Black transatlantic/oceanic space(s), quilombos, and the framing of territoriality as becoming offer participants, contributors, and bystanders strategies that engage deeply with questions about the geographic-ness of Blackness without anchoring it in fixed times and places.[1]

For this iteration of the School of Quilombismo, centred around the life and work of Beatriz Nascimento, we think alongside and give thanks to the work of scholars Christen Smith, Archie Davies, and Bethânia Gomes. The title of the programme is borrowed from Beatriz Nascimento’s poem ‘Sonho’ (‘Dream’) and was translated and published in an essay by Smith, Davies, and Gomes titled ‘“In Front of the World”: Translating Beatriz Nascimento’. Here, we make a slight reformulation to allow space for the anecdotes and shift in perspective that Black Brazilian activist and organizer Sandra Bello offers. Conjuring the spirit of Nascimento, this evening school holds sonic sessions, discursive and playful gatherings, and an interrelated network of practices that portray dimensions of the mystical, spiritual, environmental, social, and political.

This HKW project is co-conceptualized with Amal Alhaag & André Pitol and will be hosted at multiple locations including Forum Brasil, Spore Initiative, and HKW.

[1] See Christen Smith, Archie Davies, and Bethânia Gomes, ‘“In Front of the World”: Translating Beatriz Nascimento’, Antipode 53/1 (January 2021), 279–316. See also Christen Smith’s essay ‘Towards a Black Feminist Model of Black Atlantic Liberation: Remembering Beatriz Nascimento’, Meridians 14/2 (September 2016), 71–87.

21:00
O Quilombismo and The School of Quilombismo
Amal Alhaag, André Pitol, Atabey, and Marie Helene Pereira
Venue: HKW
As part of the Long Night of Museums

The School of Quilombismo manifested in various locations over the summer of 2023. During this last iteration, it opens to a broader audience during Berlin's annual Long Night of Museums.

This edition of the Long Night of Museums, ‘The Sounds of Berlin’, sparks questions on how the O Quilombismo exhibition resounded throughout Berlin. What was heard from this exhibition and how do the different geographical and ideological contexts connect to the struggles outlined in O Quilombismo in current-day Berlin? Amal Alhaag and André Pitol, co-curators of the School of Quilombismo, exchange ideas, experiences, and observations with HKW curators Marie Helene Pereira and Carlos Maria Romero aka Atabey to trace the many trails of unexpected, unusual, or unruly modes of learning.

From 14:00
Healing Sisterhoods: Spaces of Solidarity and Autonomous Remedies
Venue: Spore Initiative Berlin

At Spore Initiative, and in the framework of the School of Quilombismo, exploring much-needed places of healing, solidarity, and self-determination within a healthcare system marked by racism and discrimination is imperative. To this end, we invite FLINTA* participants to engage in hands-on healing workshops and conversations about forms of applied health, their connections to nature, everyday rituals, and body awareness. The focus of these workshops lies within the diversity of healing knowledges and an understanding of health that considers sociopolitical factors as well as loneliness, alienation, and stress. In this way the aim is to create together a space for dialogue and encounter in which alternative or complementary models, projects, and spaces of accessible and collective care can be shared, lived out, and conceived.

Healing Sisterhoods is conceptualized, developed, and realized as part of the School of Quilombismo in dialogue with Spore Initiative. For more information about the programme and registration, please check here.

17:30–19:00
Ghosts in the Machine: Building Inclusive Futures in Unjust Spaces
Lecture by Karen Salt
Venue: HKW

In this Evening School lecture, Dr Karen Salt explores concepts of vitality, creativity, and survival and the ways that these ephemeral and often transient strategic practices can coalesce into institutional change—even as they haunt creative organizations and society more generally. Some of the questions that animate the School of Quilombismo are also addressed such as in what ways do people create sustenance and inclusive futures in unjust spaces?

19:00
Evening School
Gathering and conversation with Ivanete da Hora Sampaio & Serubiri Moses
Venue: EOTO (Each One Teach One)

The global status of English as a lingua franca undermines the gaps, silences, and complicated historical narratives around race, gender, class, and geographies. Global English is a myth in a world that contains many worlds of creolization, slang, and vernaculars that bend, fold, and stretch English to allow space for the imagination and cultures within those languages. The privileging of scholarship, thought, and cultural production that is Anglophone nonetheless prevails and perpetuates unnecessary divisions between Black people across the world. With this gathering, we sit in this contradiction. What does solidarity look like across differences, geographies, and dialects? Is there a possibility to overstand without total comprehension? Together with researcher and scholar Ivanete da Hora Sampaio and writer and curator Serubiri Moses, this conversation takes place in German and English, and allows space for other languages, dialects, and senses to speak together about translation, languages, Blackness, and solidarity.

19:00
Evening School: In the Spirit of Beatriz Nascimento
Talk with Sandra Bello and Baba Murah
Venue: Forum Brasil

Black and migrant historian Beatriz Nascimento (1942–1995) was one of Brazil’s leading intellectuals who made fundamental contributions to understanding Black identity as an instrument of racial, intellectual, and existential self-affirmation. She developed research on what she called ‘alternative social systems organized by black people’ investigating and inspired heavily by the quilombos and the favelas across Brazil. For this Evening School iteration, we pay homage to the lifework of Beatriz Nascimento and the ways it shapes the work and life of two unique and contemporary initiatives in Berlin, QuilomboAllee and Forum Brasil. Activist and organizer Sandra Bello and performance artists and choreographer Baba Murah share with the public their work, stories, learnings, and teachings during this critical celebration.