VIRTUAL: Prague Heritages

Abstract

In September 2018, the National Museum went on fire and had 90% of its collection destroyed. Considered Brazil’s oldest scientific institution, the museum had also been the home of the Portuguese Royal Family back in the nineteenth century. Anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (2018) argues that the historic building should have been left as a ruin: a memento mori for no one to forget the tragedy. Currently under reconstruction, it prompted public debates about the way the Brazilian State has been dealing with scientific and cultural bodies. In “The Clopen Door” (2020), visual artist Thiago Rocha Pitta addresses the topic by filming a wooden door being devoured by a fire in the middle of a dark forest. The video art lasts 36 minutes and challenges the audience to reflect on the fire at the National Museum via an eerie allegory. In this paper, I aim to discuss the strategies employed by Rocha Pitta, one of Brazil’s most renowned creators. “The Clopen Door” plays with multiple paradoxes: the title itself is a mingle of the words “close” and “open”, as the wooden door is simultaneously closed and open while the fire goes on. Most importantly, Rocha Pitta seeks to materialise a paradoxical goal: how to depict a museum that no longer exists. This paper is part of a major postdoctoral research project named “Culture on fire: aesthetic investigations on the fire at the National Museum”.