The Materiais Diversos Festival promotes the meeting of different audiences and imaginaries around the arts (dance, theatre, music and performance) with thought, questioning actuality and fostering cultural participation as a condition for citizenship. Born in Minde, in 2009, it spread to Alcanena and Cartaxo (in 2013) and became one of the most representative projects for programming outside the large centres in Portugal, attempting to think and act from the places it originates. It had been occurring annually until 2017 and became a biannual event starting with its 10th edition in 2019.
From the 5th to the 15th of October 2023, the Festival Materiais Diversos will be in Alcanena and Minde with a program of dance, theater and music shows, installations and conversations. Slowing down and making people, places and processes visible are the mottos of the 12th edition of the festival.
The new creation by artist Ana Rita Teodoro explores the aesthetics of “fofo” (cute in English, Kawaï in Japanese, mi-mi in French), in all its social and political implications. It is a choreographed piece which seeks to expose the “fofo” as an appeasing tool of critical thinking (capitalism, consumerism), while at the same time, revealing it as a possible emancipatory aesthetic within the panorama of contemporary dance, in which minimalism, slow strength, non-aggression and pleasure stand in the face of speed, aggression and the hardness of today.
The “fofo” has been investigated and analysed by different art history, sociology and philosophy theoreticians in recent years, and forms an important pilar in the development of consumerist societies and in the manipulation of the masses – Japan being an example.
Observing how it is present in different domains (art, literature, and in the world of commodities) allows us to understand, on a large scale, the inherent power of the “aesthetics of those without power” (powerlessness), as defined by Sianne Ngai. ´It is precisely in her research around the aesthetics of “cute” –
During the period of creation, two research workshops with adolescents took place at the Cartaxo Cultural Centre and the Secondary School of Alcanena, centred on improvisation and Butoh dance practices.
Diversos