We have arrived in Curitiba (about), town of 3 million people 6 hours by buss, south of Sao Pulo (map).
A festival ‘ConSerto’ is organizede by group ‘Organismo’ that works here for three years. Interesting is that ‘ConSerto’ is made in government run place, but tends to be completely independent. Event is happening at part of SEAE (Secretary of Developement) in charge of technological developement.
This is the invisible action, as participants are calling it, that focuses on acknowledgement of diferent individuals and groups working in different parts of Brazil. ‘Our group is here to acknowledge that Free Open Source and Free Open Culture is a way for people to get conected and to percive their common language. We are not only a technological novelty’ says one of the ‘Organismo’ group member and one of the ‘ConSerto’ organizers, Glerm Soares. ‘conSerto’ is a place where designers, programers, free media activists, musicians and artist meet to disscus future of Free Culture in Brazil.
Octavio Camargo helped us to understand how ‘ConSeto’ works: ‘Free and Open Culture is about coming somewhere and learning what is happening there before taking action. It is not imposing one owns culture but sharing experiance and working together.’
He gave us a gret example with a cigarete box. In Brasil cigarete boxes have hideus pictures depicting consequences of smoking. But he states that this pictures are imposed culture of western science. ‘To tell us that smoking is bad and sell us cigaretes is funny. But not to realize the ritual in smoking is thing only western science can do.’
Octavio is musician and artist. He is a member of errantbodies.org/ where you can find more of his works and collaborations.
Vanessa Santos from Belo Horizonte is working with FOSS programe for video editing called Cinerella, and has produced a video of ‘conSerto’.
Some photos of ConSerto:
and Curitiba: