Utopia in the horizon
: plano nacional das artes and the path towards aesthetic democracy

  • José Maria Marques da Costa Cortez (Student)

Student thesis: Master's Thesis

Abstract

On June 18th, 2019, Paulo Pires do Vale, the recently appointed Commissioner of Plano Nacional das Artes presented its manifesto and strategic action plan to a room filled with political figures, cultural agents, artists, and media outlets, and so began the slow explosion of a seed. Yet, what exactly is this Plan? How does one define this complex matrix of notions that is simultaneously transdisciplinary and undisciplining in its praxis, in both its reflection and action? It is to the task of defining Plano Nacional das Artes that this reports aims at.To do so, I begin this work by proposing the assumption that Plano Nacional das Artes can be defined as utopian aesthetic-democratic mission structure of counter-hegemonic nature that seeks to produce new subjectivities through critical pedagogy and citizenship practice. However, as the first academic research into Plano Nacional das Artes this study starts looks to contextualise and explore the Plano’s origin, structure, team, and manifesto.This work is supported in my internship experience, literature review and interviews to Plano Nacional das Artes’ Executive. Drawing from Paulo Freire’s notion of praxis, I first propose a transdisciplinary look to the theories and concepts that frame my assumed definition of PNA. Secondly, I analyse Plano Nacional das Artes’ action – its manifesto and measures, through the theoretical lenses explored before. Finally, this report concludes that assumption with which it started is a reasonable definition for Plano Nacional das Artes and that its apparently paradoxical transdisciplinary and undisciplining nature is a corollary of art knowledge’s escape of the binary notion of thinking.
Date of Award18 May 2022
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • Universidade Católica Portuguesa
SupervisorLuísa Santos (Supervisor)

Keywords

  • Plano Nacional das Artes
  • Aesthetics
  • Critical pedagogy
  • Counter-hegemony
  • Democracy
  • Utopia

Designation

  • Mestrado em Estudos de Cultura

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