CRAS DO MICÉLIO (2013)

(featuring Iggor Cavalera, Laima Leyton, Elisa Gargiulo)

The March CRAS DO MICÉLIO happened in São Paulo, in a neighborhood named Pinheiros, in 2013.

The public was openly invited to dress in a special way, and received brooches and masks in order to form a sole identity.

Besides the masked participants, there were banner carriers, gia¬¬nt puppets, and several allegories representative of shamanic elements and psychoactive composites.

The work develops from a structure inspired in military parades and religious processions, although its message and contents are totally antagonistic in respect to their ideals. Stephan works in the same way a hacker does, appropriating a conventional structure to subvert it and promote questioning.

Plants, fungus, vegetal and animal extracts with psychoactive properties are deeply rooted in spiritual practices, healing and passage rites of native peoples who have been decimated, have had their culture marginalized, and their land stolen, giving way to the conqueror’s laws, culture and tradition, whose relation to nature is one of control and not belonging.

More than four centuries after the beginning of the colonization of the Americas, this marginalization process continues. In 1961 the UNO sanctioned the “Convenção Única sobre entorpecentes” (The sole narcotics convention) , which puts in the same level ancestors plants used in the practices mentioned above, and substances as crack, cocaine, and heroin, thus drastically worsening the marginalization of ancient native peoples’ cultures, and depriving the scientific society of research and experimentation of these substances.