Casa do Povo
Founded in 1946 in the Bom Retiro neighbourhood of São Paulo by a constellation of anti-fascist Jewish associations, Casa do Povo was established as both a cultural centre and a place dedicated to remembering those who died in the Holocaust. The slogan ‘never again’ took the form of an activist project, a place open to radical otherness, to the urgency of contemporary struggles, to minorities, to alternatives. Over the decades, a wide variety of activities have been organised there: a Yiddish choir, a constructivist school, a politically engaged newspaper, and an experimental and popular theatre. During the period of military dictatorship in Brazil (1964-1985), Casa do Povo naturally became a hub for all forms of resistance and avant-garde activity.
Since the early 2010s, this house of the people (literal translation of Casa do Povo) has reinvented itself, remaining faithful to an anti-fascist political line and a fluid mode of operation that leads to practices very different from those often associated with art centres. The commissioned works and programmes – particularly educational ones – developed by Casa do Povo coexist with the use that some twenty associated collectives make of the space: a popular boxing academy, a printing studio, a psychoanalysis clinic, a fashion cooperative and choirs. It does not matter whether their activities are professional or amateur, social, artistic or cultural: these distinctions do not apply here. They have the keys to the space and participate in its management and programming.
Cet automne
For the past four years, the Festival d'Automne opens its program to artists or collectives, making a gesture both artistic and policy. The Carte Blanche becomes a field of experimentation, conducive to crossing of aesthetics, the circulation of ideas and the public.
For two weeks, the Festival invites the Casa do Povo, a unique Brazilian art center, to invest the Maison des Métallos in the 11th arrondissement of Paris. On this occasion, the Festival d'Automne experiments with new forms of conviviality, and inaugurates for the first time a HQ, open to upheavals and collective reinvention.
Casa do Povo au Festival d'Automne