XV CERVEIRA BIENNIAL

THE CULTURE OF THE POWER OR THE POWER OF THE CULTURE

Culture changes mentalities. However, power is afraid of social transformations which are not dictated by it.
There are several forms of power: the political power, which establishes the rules of economy; the power of habits and traditions, which resists change and the power of the market, which is subdued to these previous powers.
There is also the power of information (or the lack of it) that conditions all powers to the “policy of the strongest”. All these powers act as a garrotte to creativity.
The creator who expresses himself through a verbal, written, sonorous or visual language, needs a vehicle to communicate and to break the habits and traditions to improve mentalities, and this vehicle is both in the hands of the politicians and of the mass media.
The ones who hold economic power manipulate the political power and the mass media and, consequently, the mentalities. It is a vicious circle where the creator either sells more to the person who offers, or has the door of the “marginality” (to be understood as the edge of…) to express himself.
The Biennial of Cerveira has always intended to be this door, against those who try to “institutionalize” it at the service of “the ones who give more”.
Questioning itself on the role of these creators in the concept of this Biennial that celebrates 30 years old this year, could be the subject of the XV Biennial of Cerveira, as well as the subject of debate between several powers and the people who have devoted themselves to develop a new concept of values between material values and knowledge.

Henrique Silva
April 2008