Odiolândia (Hateland) by Giselle Beiguelman on Vimeo.
Odiolândia is a video without images that brings together comments posted on social media about the actions of the São Paulo city and state governments in Cracolândia. The audio was taken from videos posted online by participants in the operations carried out there between 21 May and 9 June 2017. The title emerged from the content of the public’s messages.
Largely supportive of policing the issue and using force and firearms against people with drug dependence, the comments also express a desire to see the same policies applied to other groups. People from northeastern Brazil, landless people and gay people are among their targets.
The comments are presented in their raw form, without grammatical corrections or stylistic adjustments. My only intervention is to remove electoral content from the messages.
In the flow of texts stripped of images, a social fabric contaminated by a culture of hatred emerges. Cracolândia expands, becoming a lens through which we can read the city and Brazil. It becomes the serpent’s egg. As Ingmar Bergman put it: “Through the thin membrane, you can see the fully formed reptile.”
[For Paula Beiguelman, in memoriam]
Odiolândia was the project I made for the exhibition São Paulo não é uma cidade: as invenções do centro, curated by Paulo Herkenhoff and Leno Veras.
