A material-discursive Abecedarium, The Sensitive City: The Micropolitical Transformations of Territories, Donas da Terra: Female Role Models of Social Leadership, Housing the Co-op: A Micropolitical Manifesto, MCMV Social Housing Program, Everything is Architecture, Patricia Lucena Ventura.
The short documentary Donas da Terra by Patricia Lucena Ventura and Paula Constante follows female role models for social leadership in urban micropolitical processes in Brazil.
The movie highlights the micropolitical self-organization of women with the aim to create a collective voice in participatory urban planning discourses to actively shape local politics. The women involved distance themselves from given gender roles in order to initiate a different discourse beyond the frameworks of formal top-down policy-making conceptions. As such, they introduced a feminist perspective on sustainable urbanism allowing to make visible gender claims as urban parameters. The common thread among these women is their enormous commitment to advocate for their political needs and to position the discourse clearly in the urban space and, so equally, in the political sphere. Thereby, they fight for the right to exist within the spaces from which they are daily displaced: from the city and from politics.
The title remains in Portuguese, since the ambiguity cannot be easily translated. It can be nevertheless explained: Donas da Terra stands for lady, owners or guardians of soil, land, ground or earth.
The micropolitical transformative aspect focuses on the collective re-occupation of territories, be they spatial, physical, psychological, linguistic, social, political, or cultural, to achieve peripheral inclusion and empowerment through authentic democratic interactions. The vivid examples of hundreds of women engaging in the reterritorialization of subjectivity bear insightful witness to possible multifold transformations of territories. Their faces, stories, and words represent the struggles, resistance, and victories that enabled them to become, directly as well as figuratively, Donas da Terra, that is, guardians of the earth, owning their ground.
The importance of contextualizing the Brazilian experience internationally relates to the micropolitical feminist question and its urban relevance within our present global condition. Brazil is not the only country experiencing a violent disruption of its democratic structures today. Beyond national or ideological references, our contemporary society is confronted with another phenomenon, namely macropolitical, ultra-neoliberal aspirations directed against democratic and sustainable goals of inclusive social structures. Against this backdrop, the micropolitical meta-narrative gains crucial relevance as a political capacity-building, cultural resistance and democratic tool for renegotiating the way we want to peacefully cultivate, inhabit, and shape our all-planetary soil.
The short documentary Donas da Terra by Patricia Lucena Ventura and Paula Constante follows female role models for social leadership in urban micropolitical processes in Brazil.
The movie highlights the micropolitical self-organization of women with the aim to create a collective voice in participatory urban planning discourses to actively shape local politics. The women involved distance themselves from given gender roles in order to initiate a different discourse beyond the frameworks of formal top-down policy-making conceptions. As such, they introduced a feminist perspective on sustainable urbanism allowing to make visible gender claims as urban parameters. The common thread among these women is their enormous commitment to advocate for their political needs and to position the discourse clearly in the urban space and, so equally, in the political sphere. Thereby, they fight for the right to exist within the spaces from which they are daily displaced: from the city and from politics.
The film (19minutes) was produced in spring 2022 and funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Art, Culture, Civil Service and Sport. It will premiere at this year’s Architectural Humanities Research Association Conference - Building Ground for Climate Collectivism: Architecture after the Anthropocene at the Prat Institute, NYC.
The title remains in Portuguese, since the ambiguity cannot be easily translated. It can be nevertheless explained: Donas da Terra stands for lady, owners or guardians of soil, land, ground or earth.
The micropolitical transformative aspect focuses on the collective re-occupation of territories, be they spatial, physical, psychological, linguistic, social, political, or cultural, to achieve peripheral inclusion and empowerment through authentic democratic interactions. The vivid examples of hundreds of women engaging in the reterritorialization of subjectivity bear insightful witness to possible multifold transformations of territories. Their faces, stories, and words represent the struggles, resistance, and victories that enabled them to become, directly as well as figuratively, Donas da Terra, that is, guardians of the earth, owning their ground.
The importance of contextualizing the Brazilian experience internationally relates to the micropolitical feminist question and its urban relevance within our present global condition. Brazil is not the only country experiencing a violent disruption of its democratic structures today. Beyond national or ideological references, our contemporary society is confronted with another phenomenon, namely macropolitical, ultra-neoliberal aspirations directed against democratic and sustainable goals of inclusive social structures. Against this backdrop, the micropolitical meta-narrative gains crucial relevance as a political capacity-building, cultural resistance and democratic tool for renegotiating the way we want to peacefully cultivate, inhabit, and shape our all-planetary soil.