XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

Carioca Youths Museum: life stories from Rio de Janeiro

• In Event: Life and Subjectivity in Brazilian Cities

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to introduce a digital museum that is being developed in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is a collection of life stories, youth cultures and memories built also from references of cultural industries.
Museu das Juventudes Cariocas (Carioca Youths Museum) brings together 18 videos of 10 to 15 minutes that record the life stories of people of different ages when they were between 18 to 25 years old, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, from the 1960s to 2010. In these reports, there are personal experiences, but also references to media products, including music, advertising, fashion, among others, building trajectories of different young people through individual memories. Based on the reports, a collection of these references is gathered, which are added to the videos, constituting a set of representations of youth cultures from different generations, also relating them to their experiences in the city of Rio de Janeiro.
Jesus Martín-Barbero, and the concept of “mediations”, Lawrence Grossberg and the “affective alliances”, Rossana Reguillo and the youngster “socially situated actor”, José Machado Pais and his theories about “youth cultures” and “leisure cultures” ”, among others, guide the work.
In addition, it is also intended to reflect on the role of cultural industries, always in the tension-negotiation dynamics with young people, to which Reguillo refers, in the construction of subjectivities, as a tissue of memory and as an affective generational alliance, offering possible narratives for the elaboration of life stories.

Author

• Cláudia Pereira, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro