Connectivity and creation: aesthetics, politics and art in the making of a Funk Carioca singer in Brazil

• In Event: Media, Identities, and Representations

Abstract

In this paper I want to explore the figure of the urban popular artist through the work of a singer of Funk Carioca, an electronic music movement native to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. By reflecting on artistic and cultural creativity, I will argue that it is the connective dimension of art, the ambiguous quality of communication that the artist establishes by relating different worlds, that allows us access to the way in which aesthetics in contemporary urban societies can replace ideology in political discourse. I will rely on an ethnography of the funk movement conducted through the network of relations of the singer Mr. Catra in order to discuss both urban art and artist in this contemporary context. Thus we will approach the creative artist in Western urban contexts, often characterised by his creative genius, through an alternative view. However, we will not neglect the notion of individuality. The perspective taken in this paper does not regard the artist in his synonymy with the Western concept of individualism nor take him as an immediate expression of his culture. Rather, we will question the very notion of art, as well as of creativity and inventiveness, by remitting them to the tension generated by poles such as part and whole, individual and society, tradition and innovation, production and consumption. Thus, by discussing themes around creation and creativity we will analyse the relationships between art, marketing, invention, circulation, the definition of artist, individual and individuality.

Author

• Mylene Mizrahi, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro