ROOTS in Brazil - the first few days

Two staff and three members are in São Paulo, Brazil this week as part of the Hemispheric Institute's semiannual Encuentro. We arrived Saturday, January 12 to lots of rain with the bustle of the city laid out before us. Driving through streets filled with beautiful graffiti and strange, mixed-up smells, we threw our bags in the hotel and ran off to the conference as fast as we could. Ok, we may have stopped for sandwiches and coffee. Our travel party consists of Carlton Turner, ROOTS Executive Director; Melisa Cardona, New Orleans-based photographer; Will MacAdams, theatre artist (and featured performer in the conference); Ebony Golden, writer/director/consultant; and myself, Shannon Turner. This conference is an interesting mix of highly academic theory and strong arts activism from all over North and South America. Every day there are keynote speakers, lectures, performances, and demonstrations. And, much like ROOTS Week (our Annual meeting), there is a thriving late night cabaret that is the heart of the event. Sunday was drier weather, so we got out and saw some markets and fairs, including an Asian fair called Liberdade. I bought four huge mangoes for $2.50. That night, we saw an amazing piece that used the Orpheus myth layered against 20th century Brazilian politics and was called a Hip-Hopera. Because the piece was not translated for us, many of us agreed that we had never enjoyed something so much that we understood so little. The theme of the conference is "The Politics of Passion." While most of the performances are not translated, the keynote lectures are. I worked and lived on a university campus for 10 years before coming to work for ROOTS. It has been interesting to re-engage in the hyper-academic world of theory and language (words like pedagogy, discursive, phenomenological), especially while having all that translated through headphones. In fact, it's been an especially interesting process to go through the days not understanding most of what's going on and relying on others. It led me to write a poem, with which I will close: I'm learning about the politics of passion But the problem is that it's in some other language I'm living on an eight-second delay As someone else explains it to me I squint, leaning my torso forward, head cocked Yearning to understand this passion, These politics I place all my trust in the translator, Led along like a child in a giant bazaar When no translator is around, I smile & nod, darting my eyes around in search of an escape route Quietly, I reflect on a life -- Longer than this -- Where I do not know the language, The rules, Or own the roadmap A small shiver makes me pull the shawl Of American privilege closer round me.

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Toronto-based fabric & performance artist, Johannes Zits, cuts strips of cloth from his body and weaves them together under a tree at the University of Sao Paulo.