#brumadinho

[fernandoflessati]

@fernandoflessati

[cdnbrasil]

Vídeo de CDNBRASIL

Pegando Estrada.

[letitrainathousandflames]

Since its the Molasses Massacre's anniversary and the memes are everywhere, i figured i should share my thoughts on the whole thing.

My controversial opinion is that i can't find the Boston Molasses Massacre funny. I know, its subversive and fun to make fun of tragedies, I've done it myself.

However, I witnessed a similar tragedy in my country, where a poorly-mainteined dam in a iron ore mining facility collapsed, effectively drowning and killing 19 people (including children), destroying two villages and permanently polluting a river and all wildlife it supported.

Three years later, another iron ore mining facility (owned by the same megacorporation) had a dam collapse, releasing a thick mudflow that killed 270 people, some of which were eating lunch in the facility's cafeteria. The nearing river was too, permanently polluted and the local fauna and flora devastated.

There were reports that the company knew about the infrastructure risks and had simply chosen to ignore it.

The similarity in these massacres - ignoring of safety measures, victms drowning in sludge to thick to swim, families being broken and towns destroyed - makes it hard to find humor in them.

If you wish to learn more, here are the english wikipedia pages on the disaster of Mariana and Brumadinho. A decade later, the victims did not receive financial aid from Vale, the megacorporation responsible for the flood, and none of the people in charge faced justice.

Mariana dam disaster - Wikipedia

Brumadinho dam disaster - Wikipedia

(This post is not a callout to anyone having fun with the memes, btw. I just wanted to share my opinion & raise awareness about these tragedies that the global media did not pay much attention to back in the day)

[moodboardmix]

Casa Seriema, Brumadinho, Brazil,

Courtesy: Tetro Arquitetura,

Photography by Luisa Lage

[pepe-000]

Adriana Varejão, Inhotim ; Brumadinho-MG

[johnbjustiniano]

"Desvio para o Vermelho" (1967-1984) de Cildo Meireles, Inhotim, Brumadinho, MG, Brasil.

O Quarto de Almodóvar

Entrei como quem entra numa cabeça alheia. O espaço não era um cômodo, era um estado emocional saturado. As paredes — pareciam lembrar que o desejo também sabe brincar antes de ferir.

Ali, a luz não ilumina: ela confessa. Cada móvel como um pensamento que não pediu permissão para existir. O corpo, quando atravessa o quarto, vira personagem sem roteiro fixo, é uma narrativa inteira.

Há algo de doméstico e violento nessa calma. Como nos filmes de Almodóvar, tudo parece organizado demais para não esconder um excesso: uma paixão que não coube, um segredo que ainda pinga nas superfícies, uma infância que reaparece em forma de cor.

O quarto observa de volta. Ele sabe que toda intimidade é performática e que até o silêncio tem figurino.

Inhotim, hoje, me deu um cinema sem tela. E eu fiquei ali, esperando que a cena continuasse mesmo depois do corte.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazilian House report calls Brumadinho disaster "unforgivable"

A House report on the Brumadinho dam disaster, which killed over 270 people in early 2019, decries the lack of criminal accountability for the security flaws that led to the collapse of an iron ore tailings dam and the resulting tsunami of toxic sludge.

The report also criticizes mining giant Vale for a lack of transparency in compensation agreements with victims.

Authored by Congressman Pedro Aihara, the report was presented in early July to a select committee on dam failures. However, two scheduled meetings to vote on the report have been canceled. 

Mr. Aihara, a native of Minas Gerais, the state where Brumadinho is located, served as a spokesman for firefighters during most of the prolonged recovery operation at the disaster site. He successfully ran for a House seat in 2022. In his report, he describes the Brumadinho tragedy as “unforgivable.”

Continue reading.

[ohsogirlie]

Me and my bf Bill at Inhotim Museum, 2024 (Brumadinho, Minas Gerais, Brazil).

Inhotim feels like such a hybrid place for me because I used to live there in my childhood. The house I grew up in is now Inhotim’s car park. So many places that were part of my life are now part of the museum area.

So, whenever I’m there, I have memories of playing with my dogs outside, going to the local church and the parties that the community used to organise, visiting my other relatives who were our neighbours... Inhotim used to be a simple community, created due to the mining activities for which the area was – and still is – rich.

The feeling that the place where you used to live – having a simple life with your family – suddenly becoming the largest American Latin open-air museum is a mist: I’m proud of that, but I also miss what that place used to be for us, as the museum destroyed almost all of what the community had worked so hard to build, with so few resources. Inhotim started on Bernardo Paz's own property: he used to run a large mining company, acquiring the rights to exploit the Inhotim deposits in 1984, along with the house that previously belonged to Lisio Pacífico. Pacífico and his wife loved the art of gardening and, little by little, created a lovely place to live. Paz fell in love with that view and the tranquillity of Inhotim, and the house that he had previously only frequented on weekends became his permanent home, making him our neighbour. In 2002, he began to purchase the properties surrounding his house and officially established CACI in 2004. CACI is short for Centro de Arte Contemporânea do Inhotim (in English: Inhotim Contemporary Art Centre). Later, we can acknowledge that not only did he buy our simple community, but also the name: Inhotim.

Nonetheless, I recognise that the Museum of Inhotim is an amazing place to visit (although I do question their curatorship in some of the artwork present there), and if you have the chance, don’t miss it. It will be an extraordinary experience, and you’ll see artworks by incredible contemporary artists, such as Yayoi Kusama, Cildo Meireles, Chris Burden, Adriana Varejão, Robert Irwin (whose artwork illustrates this post), John Ahearn & Rigoberto Torres, and Tunga. I cannot fail to mention the botanical garden, which is not only meant to me as a love letter to the tropical climate, but it is remarkable how they’ve cultivated many other species of plants that wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for the museum that Bernardo Paz created. Despite the controversies surrounding Paz, my father often says that only an ambitious, courageously mad person, passionate about art and in search of utopia, could create a place like Inhotim. He could have built that kind of museum in any chosen place in the world, such as in the USA or the United Kingdom. But no, he chose a little uknown place in Brazil. Isn’t that something I should be proud of? As I say, I think, somehow, it is.

If you are curious, visit the Inhotim Institute website.

Alice Oliveira