South American music and culture magazine

Many of Argentina’s publishers are currently feeling aggrieved at the Government’s decision to impose a strict regulation for books to be printed within the country, a decision which has led to a huge stock-piling of books at customs where all foreign-printed books have been impounded. Continue Reading

If you’re making a search today on Google you may find yourself looking at an image of an old man standing in front of a fantasy backdrop (pictured above). That old man is Jorge Luis Borges and today would have been his 112th birthday, hence Google’s decision to base their logo on the Argentine author and the magical world he wove. Continue Reading

Route Brazil-116 is a new festival of discussions, performances, demonstrations and research between artists working in the context of the London-Edinburgh (M1) and Rio-São Paulo (BR-116) axis who are invited to ask ‘what is it like to be in transit between (mega) cities and global audiences’. Continue Reading

Three Brazilian artists are to feature amongst the BRIC 2011 auctions, the second-ever auctions to celebrate the work of artists from Brazil, Russia, India and China. In total 203 lots will go up for auction with an estimate sale value of between £5,917,000 and £8,933,000. Safe to say, these really are some FINE pieces of art! Continue Reading

Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa has been awarded the Nobel prize for literature. The author, who we profiled in a recent article, was given the award – using Nobel’s words – “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat”. Not to mention the fact that he is an author who has seemingly mastered the world of writing, as gifted at writing novels as short stories, poems and adaptations. Continue Reading

The Paraty International Literary Festival aka FLIP takes place every August in Paraty, roughly four hours from both Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. The festival has been running since 2003 and has become a hot ticket for many of Brazil’s intelligentsia as well as from further field. In attendance this year will be Salman Rushdie, Isabel Allende and William Boyd. Lou Reed was originally to appear but has recently cancelled.

Brazil has always had some problems with literacy, which continues to this day, but the festival along with the growing popularity of magazines in the country (even if some of them are filled with celebrity nonsense) shows that this is beginning to change.

FLIP runs from Wednesday August 4th until Sunday August 8th. Don’t miss the opening ceremony when Edu Lobo will be performing. I would also recommend visiting or staying in the nearby fishing village of Trindade. Quite possibly my favourite place in the world!

More info:
FLIP website

Medea, The Foreigner will be arriving in London on 31st August after a spell in Lisbon. A Modern adaptation of Euripides’ tragedy Medea that focuses on the theme of being a foreigner, and the experience of living in a foreign land, this multidisciplinary performance is also a multinational collaborative project (between citizens of Brazil, UK, Portugal and Spain) initiated by Nicole Pschetz and Patrícia Carreira.

The original idea for the show came from the desire to start a work with a common frame of reference. Both artists and foreigners resident in London, they realised that common experience could work as a catalyst for the creation of an innovative work.
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Interesting article in The Guardian yesterday by Jude Kelly (one of the organisers of Festival Brazil that’s been happening at the Southbank Centre this summer) looking at how they have managed to deal with creating enthusiasm for art better than we have done in Britain. They have gone for the unbelievable notion of actually creating art projects wherever there are people, meaning that thousands of people without any previous concept of art now had access. Continue Reading