Edition #15
Lisbon, 2011
I have a Brazilian friend who is a designer. Some time ago, his agent informed him that there was a businessman in the kitchen industry interested in his work and asked him to design a "conceptual" kitchen to sell in his store. He then created a very different project and showed it to his agent, who thought the proposal was fantastic. "It looks amazing! Top-notch. He’s gonna love it!" They then showed the kitchen design to the businessman. He acknowledged that the kitchen was high-quality. "It's really good... but for Milan!" He said it was "too much" for his store, meaning that he didn’t think it would sell in Brazil (we're talking about Sao Paulo, the fourth-largest metropolis in the world). However, he admitted that if it were displayed at the Milan Fair, it would certainly have more chances of success. He then asked the designer to "tone it down" and come back with something more "provincial" (he didn't use that word, but that was essentially what he wanted—a product to be sold to more conventional minds, not avant-garde ones).
My friend was very disappointed but decided to make new versions, gradually "trimming" the kitchen design until it reached a completely standardized point, with nothing new at all. Only then did the businessman agree to produce it. However, my friend no longer wanted to be associated with the project—"If it’s just to make a common kitchen, then hire any designer; they don’t need me," he said, and decided not to continue. As a result, he had created a high-level kitchen, but there was no market for its production in Brazil because the Brazilian market doesn't support anything "out of the ordinary".
To be commercially successful in Brazil, creative professionals—artists, designers, musicians, writers—must "adapt" to market limitations and can only stand out if they compromise their artistic creation. The more standardized, the better the chance of reaching the masses. The irony of ironies: a creative professional cannot be creative! Brazil adheres to "sameness" - success comes more easily to those who don't take risks, who always produce more of the same. Not only designers but all creative professionals in Brazil are restrained in their creative capacity. The more innovative they are, the more it scares the standard middle class. If your work is too creative, it won't have a market in Brazil and may even face rejection. This is because an artist may see that the level in Brazil is very basic and try to raise the standard by demanding and bringing more quality. But what happens? People think he is becoming "arrogant," that he thinks he is "better than thou," and that he should "tone it down because here in Brazil, things are different."
After years of fruitless attempts to express his creative strength, to the point where my friend started to become emotionally ill, he decided to go to Europe to show his work. He showed the very same designs to Italian entrepreneurs that he had shown to Brazilian businessmen—the same ones who said these designs were "too advanced" for their stores and unfeasible for the Brazilian market. In Italy, however, all the entrepreneurs were very excited about the designs, and they are already being produced, all within less than a year (and keep in mind that Europe is in crisis!).
In Italy, children are constantly taken on school trips to museums from an early age. They are exposed to this culture and grow up in this context. By the time they reach adulthood, they generally know how to appreciate good design. Meanwhile, in Brazil, people have no idea how to distinguish between ordinary design and truly good design.
“DKANDLE weaves swirling multi-colored vibrant unearthly soundscapes, blending fuzzy and reverberating Shoegaze textures, mesmerizing Dream Pop meditations, sludgy Grungey tones and moody Post-punk strains, heightened with soul-stirring lyricism and pensive emotive vocalizations”
My friend said he visited a large metal fixture manufacturing factory in southern Brazil, and the owner showed him a room where the company's "creatives" work. To his surprise, he found that the job of these so-called "creatives" was simply to disassemble foreign products on a large table and literally copy their design. These copies then achieve significant sales in Brazil because, being replicas of successful European products, the logic of this businessman (and many others) is that these copies will necessarily be successful in Brazil as well.
The factory owner, who hires copycats of European products instead of creative professionals, does this because he has a certain "inferiority complex" and tends not to value anything from his own country. He and many others first seek the endorsement of the well-established abroad, and then agree to produce it. This is the result of a country with a colonial past, accustomed to valuing what comes from the Metropolis and disregarding what is made locally.
But this isn't just a remnant of colonialism. It is also the result of two decades of dictatorship, during which a culture developed that anything "out of line" should be repressed. This mentality is still ingrained in the psyche of Brazilians, especially those who lived through the dictatorship, but it also affects those born after it, as they grew up in a society that had just emerged from that regime. It will take more than a few years for this wound to heal. It will take a few more decades for Brazil to free itself from this stigma of opposing anything that aims to soar higher.
In Brazil, dear creative colleague, there's always someone pulling your rope, preventing your balloon from rising too high... This restriction on artistic creativity couldn't help but strongly affect music. Practically all the musicians who achieve commercial success in Brazil make... commercial music!
It has become a formula: make a bland, sterilized cheap tune, and millions of mindless people will consume it. Add just a bit of thought or innovation to your work, and you will face harsh consequences!
The rule in Brazil is: STANDARDIZATION. Daring is for gringos... In Brazil, people are afraid to take risks. There is a lack of vision for potential. There are no visionaries. No one is prepared. Submission to what comes from abroad is almost total. The media feeds people garbage daily, like a drug that keeps them from thinking, so they passively accept whatever is "sold" to them. Their minds are "stuck"; there’s a wall or fence around them that prevents their thoughts from going further. As a result, these people become mediocre, leading culturally impoverished, if not miserable, lives. Brazil is a vast sea of Homer Simpsons, the kind of people who get fat on the couch watching the evening news and believing that what they hear is the truth. They never have access to what is truly good, and as a result, almost everything in Brazil is of poor quality, subpar, and inferior. For example, coffee producers select the best coffee beans and send them abroad, leaving Brazilians with the leftovers. Priorities...
Brazil urgently needs to invest in education; otherwise, it will fall behind on the global cultural stage. It is shameful and humiliating to see that mediocrity is reigning more and more in Brazil and that, to be successful, you need to "tone it down."
Fuck all of you who directly or indirectly wanted me to be standardized!!!
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