| Elsewhere museums In 1985 singer Gilberto Gil (later Minister of Culture in Brazilian Lula da Silva’s government) chaired the Gregorio de Mattos Foundation in Salvador Bahia (Brazil). In order to “expressly upset the Eurocentric priorities of the Brazilian artistic-intellectual class”, he asked architect Lina Bo Bardi and anthropologist Pierre “Fatumbi” Verger (both European rooted intellectuals who have become Brazilian by adoption) to collaborate in building two museums documenting how slaves were rounded up and celebrating Afro-Brazilian heritage. The results are the “Casa do Benin” in Salvador de Bahia and the “Maison du Bresil” project in Ouidah, Benin. The two locations represent respectively the points of departure and arrival of the slave ships, and are a now forgotten comment on a pre-globalized era. The certainly harsh and not so glam issues that these two museum experiments call into play are part of a sustainable and careful re-interpretation of the world and of its relationship with places and uprooting. Moreover Bruce Chatwin’s “The Viceroy of Ouidah” (1980), as well as Werner Herzog’s screenplay “Cobra Verde” (1987) which stemmed from Chatwin’s book – are relevant contributions to this path. A video documentary will narrate this peculiar “Elsewhere museum” story between Africa and Brasil. The first part of film archive research on Lina and Pierre was edited by GP for the cultural association Orlandolab and produced for the Festival of Creativity, held in Florence in October 2008. |
