Mariana Pedrosa Marcassa

Mariana Marcassa is currently developing her second postdoctoral degree at PPGCA-UFF under the supervision of Ricardo Basbaum. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Concordia University (Montreal) Dept of Studio Arts at SenseLab. Supervising faculty member: Erin Manning (2016-17). PhD in Clinical Psychology, tutored by Suely Rolnik in PUC-SP. She also holds an M.A. in Clinical Psychology from the same institution and a major in Visual Arts at the Federal University of Goiás. The work of Mariana Marcassa, which is presently being developed in a solo career, begins in a large extent from a clinical study of sensorimotor limits in the production of intensive states and their relationship to both language and history. She is one of the founders of the Brazilian collective from the state of Goiás, Grupo EmpreZa, with whom she has worked for a decade (2001-2011). Marcassa has taken part in several collective encounters (Rés-do-Chão is key one), artistic residencies (with Chilean collectives Mapocho and Deformes). She has also been selected along with Grupo EmpreZa for the exhibition RUMOS ARTES VISUAIS 2008-2009, the 29º Panorama de Arte Brasileira. Currently entering a solo trajectory related to the need to include writing and literature to the study of sensorimotor limits, which had already been a key aspect of Grupo EmpreZa's work. One of the main discussions she is now exploring is the role of voice in the production of language breakdowns and, starting from these aphasic micro-fissures, the freeing of the 'Chant of the Voice' (as Demetrio Stratos would say) in its sound potency of expression. This perspective denotes the complexity of the voice and the annihilation of its intensive ability, as in contemporaneity voice is privileged as an instrument of speech in its communicational aspect. Mariana Marcassa understands the voice work in a sense of opposition and resistance. Continuing her doctoral research "Sons de Banzo" (Banzo Sounds) Mariana has developed a series of vocal and sound experiments. Skeptical to the idea that ?banzo? is a continuation of Western melancholia, such as the notion appears throughout the period in which Brazil was formed, a different approach is suggested so as to both distinguish ?Banzo? as an affect and grant it its own singular psycho-pathological statute as an infirmity produced exclusively by the colonial slave-based logic. It is, then, from an essentially clinical point of view, which questions the effects of the historical formation of Brazil in the forces making up its contemporary reality, that ?banzo? have been explore artistically, as a sonorous affect reverberating for five centuries in all sort of everyday practices, being the operation of its logic most felt in Brazil's interior or what is commonly called ?deep Brazil. The banzo affect and its sonorities are broached in terms of the relation between banzo and the state of ?voicelessness?, in what leads us to an encounter with the modal system in music and the voice-related experimentations of twentieth century artists. These encounters and experimentations will lead us to propose the voice as a language immanent to itself (and not subordinated to speech). In line with such immanence we propose the process creation capable of calling forth the particles of the ?Banzo? affect in an attempt to displace its own destiny, and present it in its affirmative, creative potency. (Source: Lattes Curriculum)