In Brazil, the Punk Scholars Network has been meeting since the middle of 2020 with its members organizing their first event to take place at the end of January 2021. The symposium was organised primarily by João Bittencourt and Maiara Rodrigues, with help from the other members of the branch.
Over the course of three days, a public and live event (all available on the Punk Scholars Network Brasil YouTube channel) was developed with the participation of members of the Brazilian punk scene as musicians and activists, in addition to academics and researchers interested in theme and active participants in this forum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUqaRW1TFPU 1st day - Apresentando a PSN Brasil
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UJydEeqqIg 1st day - Entrevista com Minerva - Punk Colômbia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyA5Cy8gtI8 2nd day - Interseccionalidades e ativismos no punk brasileiro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP3iaF-biSc 3rd day - Arquivo Punk - colecionismo, memórias e resistências
On the first day of the seminar, we held an opening of the event, introducing PSN Brasil and explaining the Global PSN project, the basic principles of the community and how this discussion forum about punk culture came to our country. Following this, Gabriela Gelain (member of PSN Brasil) chaired a presentation by researcher and academic Minerva Campion (Pontificia Universidad Javieriana) on the subject of Colombian punk from the 1980s to the present day. On the second day of the seminar, the discussion was organized by Maiara Rodrigues and Carolina Cardoso and centred on the issues of intersectionality and activism in Brazilian punk. Three women active in the punk scene in Brazil were interviewed: Elaine Campos (from the band Rastilho), Natália Matos (from the band Punho de Mahim) and Daniela Rodrigues (from the band Renegades of Punk). Finally, on the last day of the seminar Antonio Carlos de Oliveira and João Neves reflected on their trajectories and research relating to collecting, memories and resistance in Brazilian punk.
In parallel to the PSN Brasil public seminar, there were two days of internal seminars. These were arranged specifically for the members of the network to get to know each other better as well as sharing their research, and to have the opportunity to discuss topics related to punk in our country and region-specific information. João Bittencourt discussed punks in a region located in the northeast of Brazil, reconstructing the sociological clues of this urban youth culture. Carolina de Andrade Cardoso's work focused on women in underground rock in the city of Curitiba, capital of the state of Paraná in southern Brazil, where one of the country's Girls Rock Camps also takes place. Moacir Alcântara presented her work on the representations and modes of subjectification of punk in the newspaper Correio Braziliense, using excerpts from the period 1990 to 2014. Henrique Conti presented work on the straight edge movement in Brazil as a political performance, specifically from an anarchist perspective. Felipe Silvatti led a discussion on punk festivals, relating this empirical field to Foucault’s concept of heterotopia.
Gabriela Gelain then recounted the experience of her dissertation, which focussed on the readings and updates of the Riot Grrrl movement in Brazil. This conversation related to the work of Karina Moritzen, who discussed other works on gender, with an emphasis on intersectional feminism, issues of whiteness and Riot Grrrl. Hellen Cristina Silva de Oliveira analysed the meanings of violence in the punk movement in the city of São Paulo in the Southeast Region of Brazil, while Edson Alencar Silva presented work on the musical recordings of punks in São Paulo. Alexandre de Almeida offered a debate on the organization of musical documents produced by Brazilian skinheads and White Power bands, and José Rinaldo Queiroz de Lima developed an interesting work on the punk of Alto Sertão Alagoano, specifying his research in the town of Delmiro Gouveia, situated in the eastern part of the Northeast Region of Brazil, from 1984 to 1996.
We were able to learn about the work of Maiara Rodrigues dos Santos Silva on gender violence in Latin punk in the 1990s, based on a comparative analysis between Brazil and Argentina. João Augusto Neves presented his work on tensions and stresses of punk masculinity, demonstrating some dialogues within a selected range of Brazilian fanzines. Finally, researcher Rodolpho Jordano Netto had the opportunity to show his work on anarcho-punk squats in Brazil, as territories for the creation and experience of libertarian culture.
Author: Gabriela Gelain (PSN Brazil – ESPM-SP) gabrielagelain@gmail.com