A moment of erotic “performance” in the centenary palace of Buenos Aires.operaperiferica (RR SS)
The Buenos Aires museum manager resigned this Thursday after an avalanche of criticism that began on social media and ended within the city government. On Saturday afternoon, an act in a hundred-year-old palace in the Argentine capital caused outrage among hundreds of social network users over the sexual content of a fragment of the opera, accompanied by dancers in underwear. After nearly a week of criticism, Buenos Aires’ culture ministry announced that Victoria Otero, who was in charge of programming events at the city’s museums, has resigned from her post and that the government is not supporting or promoting “this class of shows”. “Had I had the slightest clue, this ‘performance’ would not have been scheduled in a public space, nor at this time of the evening,” their statement read.
Ópera Periférica, a group that mixes classical music with punk and drag staging in their latest project, jumped out of the niche into all the country’s newspapers after the event. With grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and recognition of social interest by the Buenos Aires City Legislature, the group, formed in 2014, was recognized years earlier for performing Mozart or Pergolesi operas in subway stations, parks, skates or the theater brought slums of the city. Furious Baroque, the project that the city’s culture ministry supported earlier this year, had a more political profile.
A moment of erotic “performance” in the centenary palace of Buenos Aires.operaperiferica (RR SS)
The minute it went viral on social media, two dancers in their underwear wiggle around in the gardens of the Fernández Blanco Museum, a hundred-year-old mansion in the city center, while another artist sings, “What defines poverty? if you have the really hard cock? What constitutes poverty when you have a hungry cock? Plays a role! When you go out looking crazy in the streets, in the corners, after that little bit of mad love that numbs you and makes you forget poverty for a while.
“We think that other voices rendered invisible and other bodies can think and make opera; We are not interested in thinking about an inbred opera, but an opera that can have an impact on the contemporary symbolic order,” said Pablo Foldadori, leader of the group, of the Telam agency.
Criticisms of precariousness and hypersexualization appeared to have permeated dozens of viewers, but outraged Twitter users. “We reject what happened at the Fernández Blanco Museum. We believe that explicit content is neither appropriate nor appropriate, nor does it promote culture for the general public,” wrote Cynthia Hotton, City Council social affairs officer and one of the capital government’s most conservative advisers in her networks. . Almost 10 hours after that first message, Hotton also reported her colleague’s resignation: “In response to the widespread complaint, Victoria Otero, Manager of the City Museums and leader of this program that outraged us all, resigned today.
The Ministry of Culture defended in its statement that it had coordinated the show’s approval “in several discussions” with the group, but said there was “no indication that the work should be age-restricted and that there’s an age restriction there would be the use of an explicit one.” Language “. The resignation of the person responsible for programming events in museums has opened the door to the review of one of Buenos Aires’ richest projects. The city organizes hundreds of free cultural events every week, whether in elegant palaces like the Fernández Blanco or in neighborhood community centers. Many of them deviate from the conservative turn of Mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, who launched his presidential candidacy a few weeks ago. As of today, the authorities have announced that all of these incidents will be subject to more rigorous scrutiny.
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