Pandemic Creates Culture Crisis; Brazilian Artists Suffer Amid Lack of Government Support

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The novel coronavirus pandemic has hit hard the Brazilian cultural industry, which largely relies on audiences and crowds in enclosed spaces, and which was already in crisis due to budget cuts and lack of public policies.

The sector, which employs five million people and generates R$170 billion per year in revenue, according to the Tourism Ministry’s Culture Secretariat, is struggling with the closure of cultural facilities, dismissals, and starvation of artists who are unable to support themselves, while the federal government, which had already demoted the former Ministry to the category of Special Secretariat, is promoting a change of leadership that leaves no legacy of effective policies.

“The pandemic has caused a cataclysm for cultural workers,” says Leandro Valiati, an economics expert at UFRGS (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul) and Queen Mary University of London. On May 21st and 22nd, over 100 people were dismissed from museum and theater networks in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, such as SESI-SP, the Bank of Brazil Cultural Center (CCBB), and the Museum of Modern Art in Rio (MAM).

On Tuesday, May 27th, the Chamber of Deputies passed a R$3 billion aid package for the cultural sector during the pandemic. The funds, from the National Fund for Culture, will be transferred to the states, municipalities and the Federal District, which will allocate them for the maintenance of venues, edicts, prizes, and public calls.

The bill, a modification by Deputy Jandira Feghali (PCB-RJ) to Bill 1075/20, of the proposal by Deputy Benedita da Silva (PT-RJ), provides for specific aid payments of R$600 for cultural area workers; to become law, it must be voted in the Senate.

While public aid does not come, artists are organizing however they can to mitigate the situation. In Salvador, actor and theater producer Lelo Filho, one of the creators of Cia. Baiana de Patifaria movie theater – which has always survived only from box office receipts – joined seven other colleagues to create a Crisis Plan for the Performing Arts of Bahia and organize virtual audiences with deputies and senators to demand measures.

In Lelo Filho’s theater group alone, eight people are deprived of income. “I don’t know a single theater artist with savings for two months with no income. We have fellow artists who are starving, others are being evicted. We’ve set up a virtual fundraiser to collect donations and food baskets for them,” he says.

To access the federal benefit, if it is indeed approved, artists will need to be registered with a cultural body. “The government wants this registration, which is necessary, but it’s not urgent now. Before registering, artists need to eat, they need to have a roof over their heads. What about street artists, who perform popular acts on buses, on subways, and who barely have a cell phone to talk to their family? How are they going to register?”, asks Filho.

According to the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), 44 percent of cultural workers work independently and without a fixed income.

“The Government has to ensure that public support reaches all professionals, including casual ones. The great challenge of public policy is precisely to support independent artists and cultural producers,” Leandro Valiati says.

Lelo Filho recalls that the sector’s productive chain is huge and also includes workers such as dressers, sound technicians, lighting technicians, ticket vendors, and others. “This chain even includes the candy and the popcorn men who sell more outside the street theater when there’s a show playing”, he comments.

In his opinion, the most despairing aspect is the lack of a “perspective” for the economic rebound in this area. “In a short time, they will relax social isolation and reopen stores, malls, but not theaters, cinemas, concert halls”.

Saving popular culture

Valiati believes that cultural activities are the very ones that will lead the post-pandemic economic rebound. He believes that the increasing trend of streaming, for instance, opens the way for the consumption of more Brazilian productions around the world, thus removing the costs of the physical environment.

However, the expert cautions that this also represents a risk to popular culture. “If we don’t ensure its survival when everything is migrating to digital, we will lose part of our cultural wealth. Public policy has to address this digital divide. The whole tourism flow that helped sustain part of popular culture has been halted. Therefore, policies are needed to ensure a balance in the market. Consider, for instance, ways to tax streaming platforms to finance popular culture”, he proposes.

Asked about the trend of online live shows which singers and bands have been organizing in partnership with several sponsoring brands during the quarantine, Valiati says that this model still lacks monetization means, and that the sponsorship logic only works for well-established artists, with a large number of followers on social media.

Would it work for the performing arts or other activities? Lelo Filho doubts it. “I think it’s beautiful when they say that an artist must reinvent him/herself, but first an artist needs to make ends meet in order to survive. People think artists live from light. And producing at home will be anything but theatre. Except that we are competing with Ivete’s live show, super produced, with really good lighting, and with Netflix, of course. The difference in the theatre is exactly the live emotion, it’s you laughing until your cheek hurts or leaving with goosebumps from a drama”, he laments.

While the legislative solution does not come, more groups are organizing themselves to survive the novel coronavirus. Pianist and composer Júlia Tygel created “A Nossa Música”, a project in which one can order an instrumental tune or song, based on a theme, which will be written and then performed through an approximately one-minute video by performers who are part of a group formed for the initiative.

On the other hand, photography director Azul Serra, knowing that friends in the audiovisual sector are experiencing hardship, created the NGO Plano Sequência, where copyright images can be purchased starting from R$250. As Leandro Valiati says, “science and culture are the things that will save us”.

Source: El País