We didn’t know: A path about photography, archive and art violence

Abstract

The Brazilian dictatorial government and its subordinate organs of control as managing authority produced throughout the 20th century a significant collection of documents that prove and illustrate the atrocities perpetrated against the regime enemies or their interests. In this short compiled register of disasters that permeated the last decades, this essay builds, through photography, archive and contemporary art, a path reference imagery which shows – by the bias of documentary and poetic testimony of history – the characteristic violence and domination traces of power mechanisms. Memory and oblivion dialectically erect an ideological horizon, from which only what is selected by the government will stand and be remembered. At the same time it will silence the documents which refer to the margin, which will remain underground, sealing their subaltern condition.