BARTIRA FORTES

A performer, a singer, a songwriter, an anthropologist, an ethnographer, are a handful of labels I go by. My academic background can be found in the conjuncture of Humanities and Social Sciences, intersecting environmental science, global development studies, social anthropology, performing arts and media. Broadly, my research interests include themes of democracy, climate change, Indigenous media, Indigenous peoples’ participation in global politics, socioenvironmental justice, digital activism, and decolonisation. I received my MSc in Social Anthropology from Stockholm University, Sweden, on the basis of my thesis titled “Democracy, a Tragic Carnivalesque hero: The narratives of a transnational social movement against the coup in Brazil”.

The thesis offers an overview of the emergence of forms of resistance among Brazilians in the diaspora against the authoritarian turn in Brazil since the impeachment of the president Dilma Rousseff in 2016. I ethnographically investigated how a transnational mobilizing allowed the construction of a new collective identity of Brazilian migrants through the intersection of multiple struggles – including the fight for democracy, human rights, and the environment. In particular, the thesis covered the online organizational networks, background, ideologies, and narratives of The International Front of Brazilians against the Coup (FIBRA). Overall, I explored the processing of conflicts surrounding the scope and limits of the democratic rule, inserting Brazil in a broader context associated with a new wave of radical right-wing populism. I also explored ways to bring my artistic practices in the field into the anthropological text and used elements of Epic Theatre, Greek Tragedy and Carnival as conceptual tools through which to understand democracy as a tragic carnivalesque hero.

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Before embarking on Social Anthropology, I started a MA in Aesthetic Disciplines at Stockholm University, from which I completed 90 credits. I attended courses in aesthetics and critical theory, performance theory and methodology, culture and communication, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, dramaturgy, theatre activism, and queer and gender studies. This academic experience prompted me to create a project called “Sonorous Activism” to investigate the relationship between music/sound and spaces of “otherness”, especially focusing on the aesthetics and political ontology of the “other”, namely the silenced and marginalized and their struggles for social emancipation. Subsequently, I released the album IDentidades (Identities) with own songs on themes ranging from xenophobia, racism, sexism, and urban violence.

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I also hold a BA in Performing Arts, with specialization in Theatre Directing and Media, from the Federal University of Ouro Preto, Brazil. There, I developed the monograph “The Scenic Word: Integrating voice and movement in the actor’s training” and directed the theatre play “Guantánamo: story of men and animals”.