Danças (2021)

Single-channel video

30 min.

Danças is a meditation on the employment and preparation of three ingredients that connect the cuisines of Turkey and Brazil—okra, chilies, and oranges—through the recounting of personal stories. These ingredients lead a double life: they are known primarily as food, while also being ingredients in preparations meant to induce fertility. Conversely, some attributes of these ingredients can be linked, symbolically and materially, to the deployment of tear gas as a form of crowd and population control, and thus to a history of repression and dissent. This video essay links the sensorial and affective impacts of these ingredients to the history of Condor Non-Lethal Technologies, a chemical weapon manufacturer based in Rio de Janeiro, and its international impact as a major exporter of tear gas, offering reflections on the position of the modern nation-state as an arbiter of biopower. The video also touches upon a historical parallel to Condor Non-Lethal: from the mid-20th century, the U.S.-funded Operation Condor provided training, aid, and intelligence, through the CIA, for the installment of military dictatorships all over Latin America—as well as the kidnapping, murder and torture of left-wing political dissidents.

This video essay was commissioned as part of the Critical Cooking Show — a digital programme of films, lectures and performances that reimagine the kitchen as a space central to design thinking and production — within the 5th Istanbul Design Biennial.