Infractures Culture and Counterculture in Brazil

When reflecting on aspects of the works of Ana Cristina Cesar, Caetano Veloso, Chacal, Gilberto Gil, Hélio Oiticica and Waly Salomão, among other artists, historian, essayist, researcher and professor Fred Coelho highlights a set of thoughts and practices coming up against the hegemonic forces of their time. The connection to lack, excess, the loss of self, the limit of the senses, the exhaustion of works and the rupture of reason permeate, in one way or another, all of these aesthetic, critical and political manifestations.

Infractures Culture and Counterculture in Brazil collects 15 essays conducting the reader through the history and reverberations of radical experiences in art, music and literature in the country since Modernism, in its opening for various bodies, voices and texts. Through the idea of infratura/infracture, concept created by Paulo Leminski and used, here, as a critical tool, the author analyses the plural, complex field of culture and counterculture in Brazil.

Excerpt
“Infracture can be a critical tool to deautomate the practice of writing, demystify the interested objectivity inscribed in discourses that reproduce power, poke holes in a view of the world that ‘naturally’ builds in narrators and concepts, that is, challenge the reader's thoughts.”

About the author
Fred Coelho is a researcher, writer and undergraduate professor at the Literature Department as well as a graduate professor of Literature, Culture and Contemporaneity at PUC-Rio. He holds an undergraduate and a Master's degree in History from UFRJ's Institute of Philosophy and Social Sciences (IFCS) and a PhD in Literature from PUC-Rio. Among other works, he has published Jards Macalé — Eu só faço o que quero (2020), Livro ou livro-me — Os escritos babilônicos de Hélio Oiticica (2010), A semana sem fim – Celebrações e memória da Semana de Arte Moderna de 1922 (2012) and Eu, brasileiro, confesso minha culpa e meu pecado — Cultura marginal no Brasil 1960/1970 (2010). He wrote a column for O Globo from 2015 to 2018.
He worked as an assistant curator at MAM Rio from 2009 to 2011 and, at the time, edited the publication of Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro — Arquitetura e memória (Cobogó, 2011). He curated shows such as Tropicália — Um Disco em Movimento (CCBB, 2017) and collaborated with writing for exhibitions and books on artists such as Luiz Zerbini, Cabelo, Gisele Camargo, Raul Mourão, Maria Laet, Vania Mignone, Carlos Vergara, Luiza Baldan.

Specifications
Title Infraturas Cultura e contracultura no Brasil
[Infractures Culture and Counterculture in Brazil]
Author Fred Coelho
Language Portuguese
Page count 256
Publisher Cobogó
ISBN 978-65-5691-174-8
Cover Giovanna Cianelli
Format Softcover
Size 14x21 cm
Year 2025
Price R$ 92.00