Pivô interviews Rafael Bqueer

Bringing together two expressions of popular resistance in the Amazon region – the “Cabanagem” insurgence and the parties known as “festas de aparelhagem” -, artist Rafael Bqueer, born in the state of Pará, seeks to establish cyber-space connections between these two events contained in different temporalities. For Bqueer, all artistic and cultural production on the outskirts of Belém descends directly from the cabana resistance. TecnoCabana, the artist’s project for the digital platform Pivô Satélite is part of the virtual exhibition O Assombro dos Trópicos, curated by Victor Gorgulho. TecnoCabana is an ancestral, festive and political gathering that promotes the appreciation of the Afro-indigenous presence in the region.

Leo Felipe: Your performance as an artist begins at tecnobrega parties, especially with the creation, in 2014, of the alien-themônia-drag Uhura Bqueer. Can you tell us a little about this scene and about your experience as a carnival production assistant?

Rafael Bqueer: I grew up in the neighborhood of PAAR, municipality of Ananindeua. In addition to the abundance of rhythms such as carimbó, siriá, calypso, lambada and toada, the 90s brought an explosion of house music and the transition from brega to tecnobrega. This digital-cyber-sonorous evolution has also created a futuristic visuality, with characteristics of science fiction films and series. The musical experience in Belém and its metropolitan region is very diverse and clearly resonates with its black and indigenous ancestry.

In addition to giant speakers, the DJ tables morphed into sculptural elements: spaceships, ruby ​​stone, crocodile, fire eagle, marajó buffalo, each symbol dialoguing with the name and slogan of these great itinerant parties made up of led signs, pyrotechnic effects and unique performative characteristics. The “aparelhagem” parties are an aesthetic and political reflection of the poorer communities of the state of Pará and make me rethink the Amazon in its identity and cross-cultural complexities.

My passion for fiction, carnival, my experience with candomblé, the work of singers Gaby Amarantos, Grace Jones and Elza Soares influenced me to think about an Afro-indigenous space Amazon when I started my first drag performances. In 2014 I was crowned the first themônia queen of the party Noite Suja and in 2015 I adopted the name of the character Uhura from the Star Trek series – her name comes from the African language Bantu and means freedom star. These thoughts and actions followed the emergence of the drag-themônias scene that became a large collective of LGBTQIA+ art and activism in the state of Pará. This story will be told in the documentary that I’m developing for the photography scholarship of ZUM magazine, Instituto Moreira Salles, in 2021.

In 2008 I became an assistant to the carnival producers Claudio Rêgo de Miranda and Jean Negrão, renowned and awarded artists in the samba schools of Pará’s carnival. Designing costumes, thinking about carnival floats were dreams I had since childhood, I inherited a passion for samba from my grandmother Maria Gildete. I grew up entrenched in the carnival backstage, and there I learnt about the experimental, collective and political side of art. It has not been easy to travel down the paths of an art considered “popular” and then operate within the academic sphere. I keep trying to blur those boundaries, expand the meanings and values ​​of what each of these universes understands as art.

LF: In addition to the notion of collectivity shared by the same suffix, “cabanagem” and “aparelhagem” share a political significance. How do “aparelhagem” parties shake the colonial ruin?

RB: The “cabanagem” insurgence was a milestone in the popular black and indigenous struggle for freedom and rights in the northern region, an uprising against the exploitation of the 19th century regency government. Rescuing the memory of this battle amid the violence of the current Bolsonaro administration points to a desire for collective unity against authoritarian powers. In the state of Pará, social exclusion and inequality are a political project, the poorer neighborhoods live with precarious infrastructure and sanitation, and aparelhagem parties take place in this context as areas of freedom, creation, aesthetics, music and performance.

It is quite common to hear from the local white population and elites the perpetuation of a classist and racist discourse about the aparelhagem parties and their crowds, the same root of thought that tries to ghettoize other manifestations and rhythms from the poorer neighborhoods such as funk, axé music, paredão, samba, pagode. Thinking about aparelhagem in the field of Visual Arts aims to affirm non-institutionalized artistic practices that jolt the structures of aesthetic thought founded by Eurocentric logic. The actual shaking of the aparelhagem structures, and the speed of the rhythm, symbolically shake the colonial ruins of the Portuguese invasion of the Amazon.

LF: How has TecnoCabana research and production take place? Can you also tell us about the choice of the black jaguar as a symbol of your aparelhagem?

RB: The aparelhagem parties have been references for my work since 2014, but it was in March 2019 during an artistic residency in Belém that I first had the desire to develop my own aparelhagem. Thinking beyond performance, experiencing sound with sculptural elements. I had to interrupt this research due to the emergence of the pandemic, but I am happy to be able to resume it in the digital field. Initially, I wanted a panther as a symbol of TecnoCabana, since Uhura carries the slogan “panterona”, but in my research I found out that there already exists in Pará an aparelhagem called “Black Panther”. I then embraced the black jaguar, a typical animal from the Amazon, a symbol of fauna resistance. I also added a third eye on her forehead, a reference to the mapinguari and also club aesthetics. For the 3D creation of TecnoCabana we researched several projects and drawings of megazords, transformers and the work of artist João do Som – the architect of aparelhagens in Pará.

LF: You said that TecnoCabana was one of the riskiest projects you have ever undertaken. Why? Tell us also about the process of composition and production of the song that is part of the project.

RB: I believe that this work made me better acquainted with the world of music, which is ironic because I have always been the point outside the curve in a family with musical roots. What motivated me was the possibility of using computerized effects on the voice, a notable feature of tecnobrega songs. In order to carry out this work, I had to go to a music studio, undergo vocal preparation, and I learnt a lot about melodic and rhythmic composition. It was a lot of fun and a new experience at the same time. The composition of the lyrics was easier, I was able to rely on my experience following samba-enredo competitions and that made it more organic; from the beginning I wanted easy lyrics, with a direct message and a sticky chorus, faithful to the characteristics of tecnobrega. I am continuing this project and composing more lyrics to release an album soon. But I prefer to call this process a sonorous experience, because I have no intention of seeing myself as a singer.

It was very important throughout this process to rely on DJ Maderito and Alessandro dos Teclados, two artists from Pará with great experience in the tecnobrega music industry. At the beginning of our conversation, I was proposing something more “experimental”, we tested several effects during the editing process, and experimented with different speeds. My friends from Pará, when listening to the beats, brought me very similar feedbacks, associating the speed of the music to different times in the history of tecnobrega, the slowest with the beginning of the 2000s and the fastest with contemporary production. I like the strangeness of the digitized and high-pitched voice, and the freedom to use this in an exaggerated way, in my view, brings this experience closer to a Visual Arts practice.