*This essay of mine originally appeared in the WELL State of the World 2011, but I'm posting it here for the sake of the pagination.
*Also, in this format it's easier to steal.
inkwell.vue 400: State of the World 2011: Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky
#138 of 154: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Mon 10 Jan 2011 (04:53 AM)
Well, we're cruising to a close in a bloody haze of maniacal gunfire,
so I want to write a little concluding essay here, about a certain
Brazilian pop musician, and why she makes me eagerly anticipate what
comes next.
I happen to be quite the Cibelle Cavalli devotee, and it's not because
of her music (although her music is pretty good, if you like exotic
Brazilian electronica with diva vocals). Pop stars are always
interesting to me, while musicians interest me only on occasion.
Musicians create works of music. Popstars create wannabes. Musicians
can be very private people, while popstars are public media figures who
inspire some social emulation.
Here I think Cibelle has rather a lot to offer, as a contemporary
working artist in a 21st-century avant-garde position.
I surmise that this decade is gonna reveal a lot more people who are
doing what Cibelle is doing – following her strategy, although, likely
not quite in the way she is doing it.
First, she's offshored. She's based in London (to the extent that
she's based anywhere), although she's originally from Sao Paulo. So
she represents Brazilian Globalization. She's not American, yet her
fan-base is extensively globalized (her record label is Belgian. She
tours Turkey, Europe, and the US).
Second, she's electronic and digital. She's got a band, or at least
some London guys willing to accompany her in some of her
peregrinations, but as her career has advanced since 2003, she's gotten
steadily more network-centric and hardware-centric – less pretty-girl
with acoustic guitar, way more techno DJ on the net.
Third, Cibelle does elaborate, artsy, even vaudeville-style
performances with lighting, props and costumes. "You had to be there,"
and that's the point. That's how you get people to pay to come in
the door. Musicians can't sell music now; journalists can't sell
journalism. So "events are the new magazines."
Fourth, Cibelle has a cluster of allies who support her, and these
people are not musicians. They're the "Abravanista" movement, based in
Sao Paulo. Cibelle sometimes refers to herself as an "Abravanista
activist," and if you think of her as a Sao Paulo Abravanista
evangelist instead of some crooning diva with a guitar, all of a sudden
her seemingly scattered activities get a lot more coherent.
The Abravanista people are difficult for me to describe. I don't yet
understand them. They're very Brazilian, and deeply into performance
art, video, painting, couture, and gay liberation. Trying to sum them
up in a few words of American English is like trying to sum up the
Brazilian Tropicalia movement.
You kinda know the Abravana crowd when you see them, because they're
long-haired big-city disco people with glitter clothes, neon and body
paint. Yet they're into a headspace that lacks a non-Brazilian
equivalent.
Interestingly, and maybe kind of synchronistically, the art term
"Abravana" comes from a famous young woman who was a Patty Hearst
kidnapping figure in a huge Brazilian political-violence scandal.
Patricia Abravanel was dazed, and suffering Stockholm syndrome from her
week-long kidnapping ordeal, so after this colossal, televised fracas,
she cheerily told the media that nothing had threatened or scared her,
and that she felt great.
So Abravana means, basically, "Fuck it." It means, "no matter how
personally and politically awful this is, I won't allow myself to
engage with this and be traumatized." So the Abravanista crowd are a
kind of "oh fuck off" counterculture who have gone into a vibrant,
post-traumatic creative scene. It's this air of surreal nihilism that
puts some iron in their bones. It's why I take them seriously and
consider them global-scale trend-setters as an art movement.
I got interested in Cibelle, because she sings in English, and is big
on Twitter and seemed approachable and aware of her online fan base.
She's easier to parse than most Brazilian artists. So, nowadays, we do
know one another, although we've never met. I closely follow her
doings. I do that mostly because, I must say, she cheers me up. She
leads by example.
Americans, over our dual histories, have commonly looked on our
cousins the Brazilians as a cheery, colorful, exotic and perky
society. They're not, but that's something that they offer us that we
Americans understand. Can't be helped, there. It's like Americans, a
historically fortunate society, being known worldwide for our moaning,
downtrodden blues music.
In point of fact, the Brazilians have an exceedingly dark history,
with every kind of marauding and torment and hunger and fearsome Third
World suffering. Brazilian musicians in particular tend to get
harassed by the blinkered authorities. Mellow, perky Brazilian
musicians have a mortality-rate like you wouldn't believe.
I went to Sao Paulo and I asked around for Cibelle records. They all
knew who she was, but they all assured me that Cibelle was much
better-known in London. She's become a foreign-guy's pop star. So,
wow, maybe I should go to Dalston in London to get the real deal? How
convenient.
I know that sounds ironic, but frankly, I admire that situation. That
was a gutsy choice for her to make, as opposed to hanging out in the
neighborhood, trying to make the ultimate Brazilian Female Vocalist
National Vinyl LP.
Fifth (I'm still counting), Cibelle has got a theorist angle.
Cibelle hangs out with painters and installation people, and is
therefore keen on art manifestos. I had only the vaguest idea what
"anthropophagy" and "Brazilian syncretism" were all about, but I
listened to thoughtful people she was listening to, and, well, now I'm
starting to get it.
Only a really, really big, young, multiracial, multiethnic country
like Brazil or the USA could get behind some anthropophagic syncretism.
It's an alternative model for a global, rootless, massive culture.
It's like magic-realist globalization. I've never yet done any
anthropophagic Abravanista syncretism, but I'm pretty into Postmodern
subjectivity fragmentation. Gimme enough cachaca and lime juice, and
hey, I might be able to hold my breath and get over there from here.
As a sixth and final twist – and it's something I can't resist –
Cibelle practices folk design-fiction. In her performance alter-ego as
"Sonja Khalecallon," Cibelle creates elaborate fake video ads for fake
consumer products. The "Anti-Skeptic Lotion," the "Fresh Eye-Drops,"
and the all-too-apt "Fuck-It Button," a wall-mounted device which
transforms you into an instant Abravanista.
Cibelle also has a non-fake, genuine alliance with Melissa, a with-it
Brazilian shoe company that makes plastic designer shoes.
Popstars have been doing product-support for ages now. The Spice
Girls were all over that, and Posh Spice in particular is moving into
couture retail, rather like Jade Jagger and Stella McCartney. But
Cibelle is the first pop-star I've seen who has moved into that mode of
earning a living and just, well, syncretically cannibalized it.
She's become a "multiartist" rather than a musician, mostly by soaking
up these various changes in culture and media and trying to personify
them. She's like a sponge in a bucket-full of paints.
She'll never be Lady Gaga, and M.I.A. is a lot more politically edgy
if that's what you're looking for, but Cibelle, for me, is the
avant-garde. Not in her music so much as her cultural activities, her
global position.
So: you wanna know what a plausible pop-star looks like ten, fifteen
years from now? She's very into performance, dress, shoes and clothes.
She's cloud-centric and globally mobile. She comes from a social
movement rather than a recording label or a publishing house. She's a
syncretic multi-artist model-actress web personality, with a catchy
soundtrack. Her fans are her participants. And she's female, young,
and Brazilian.
That's the scenario. And you know, it's not that bad. It's okay.
That somebody who personifies a culture we don't quite have yet. It
could be a pretty good culture, if its activists know what they are
doing.
I look at Cibelle and I get the reassured feeling that I get from
Brian Eno. It's not that I love everything that guy creates, or that I
embrace every idea among Eno's many skyrocketing ideas, but, y'know,
Brian Eno has fucking got it going on. As a creative, you can see or
hear stuff that Brian Eno was doing thirty years ago, and you can
think, "Hey, that might work right now. I should try that." The
guy's lived example makes you want to get out of bed in the morning.
And if you keep getting out of bed, hey, you'll live long enough to
sum up another year.
