Artememoria is starting a new blog series: the Artememoria Blogcast. In each episode, editor Lara Norgaard calls up an English-speaking scholar to talk about Artememoria‘s themes (memory, political art, public history, authoritarianism — you name it).
Our first guest is Joshua Reason, who will speak to us about researching the marginal memory of queer communities of color in Bahia. His research does not focus on the period of the military dictatorship, but the topic is very relevant to the memory of the regime. The military regime targeted LGBTQ communities and censored any media deemed “immoral,” silencing content related to sexuality in art, literature, and media. For LGBTQ people of color, 1964-85 marks a violent chapter in a long history of oppression.
Produced, edited, and hosted by Lara Norgaard
Music by cdala, reproduced with a Creative Commons license
This interview was edited and condensed for clarity
Interested in learning more about moral censorship in Brazil? Read Artememoria‘s interview with human rights lawyer Nilo Batista and with curator Gaudêncio Fidelis.
Joshua Reason is a MA candidate at the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas. His research spans across various disciplinary fields, including anthropology, geography, performance studies, queer studies and Africana studies. His current research explores the life histories of Black queer and trans Brazilians as they pertain to urban space. Using ethnographic methods, geospatial mapping and policy analysis, he unpacks how Black, queer, transgender, and femme realities are transposed onto urban space.