Casa 1,a site of LGBTQ memory in São Paulo,Brazil

Introduction: dealing with LGBTQ memory

On the narrow street called Adoniran Barbosa, in São Paulo’s inner-city neighbourhood of Bixiga, a building draws the attention of those passing by. A courtyard with colourful walls, graffiti and a vertical garden in the colours of the rainbow distinguish that space from the neighbouring buildings. A painting on the asphalt pavement in the street depicts a woman wearing a rainbow coloured swimsuit doing kick-ups, with the inscription ‘My edy for Russia’. The joke’s sexual connotations are easily understood by those who know the Bajubá, ¹ the language of the travestis ² that circulates in the Brazilian queer community. In the dialect, ‘edy’ means ‘ass’. Taken together, the slang means ‘fuck Russia’. The gates to the courtyard are always open. This is Galpão Casa 1, a LGBTQ cultural centre established in 2017 that belongs to the compound called ‘Casa 1’, an ever-growing complex of buildings that provide LGBTQ social care in downtown São Paulo. Casa 1 was not originally conceived as a site of memory, but we argue here that it has evolved into such a space.

In the recent decades of heritage and memory studies, the investigation of LGBTQ memory has become a specific subject. The literature addresses issues such as the construction of monuments and landmarks remembering these minorities (Dierschow, 2016; Dunn, 2016; Orangias et al., 2018), the re-visitation of museum archives through queer perspectives (Steorn, 2012), the memorialisation of victims of the AIDS epidemic (Hawkins, 1993) and the potential for/ potential of queer archaeology (Dowson, 2000). In Brazil, studies investigate issues such as queer heritage in museums (Boita, 2017, 2018), intangible queer heritage expressed in parties and festivals (Lobato, 2009; Luiz, 2014) and the possibilities of creating landmarks in the urban landscape (Cymbalista, 2019).

Hawkins (1993) draws a comparison between monuments in memory of soldiers killed in war to movements to remember those killed by AIDS since the mid-1980s. The latter has the function of ‘opening the closet’ of LGBTQ mourning, sharing it in public spaces, as well as denouncing indifference and demanding better public policies. At first almost all initiatives were promoted by grassroots movements; however, in the last decade there has been a remarkable growth of non-LGBTQ institutions dealing with the topic (Ferentinos, 2019). McIntyre (2007) reports the efforts of British institutions to incorporate LGBTQ history in the interpretation of their collections and the proposition of exhibitions, but also the reluctance of museums to deal with specifically LGBTQ materials. Despite important examples in London’s museums such as Croydon and the Museum of London – which since the mid-1990s have had some short and temporary exhibitions on this issue – advances are slow. Ferentinos (2015) also raises this concern: ‘Museums [. . .] generally seem to be lagging behind in efforts to present the lives of LGBT people in the past. This is particularly troubling when we consider the respect given to museums as arbiters of history’ (p. 3).

Ferentinos (2019) divides the usual interpretations into integrated or special programmes. Integrated programmes incorporate LGBTQ narratives among other discussions about ‘minorities’ – which may include gender, race, class, ethnicity and immigration – but may present a loss of potential by not detailing specificities of LGBTQ identities or even erasing queer perspectives. Special programmes, on the other hand, have the potential to require less financial commitment and flexibility for implementation outside the museum walls. However, when LGBTQ memory is limited to this type of programming, this suggests that they are only of interest to that specific audience or are less important narratives.

Writers such as Muñoz (1999), Cvetkovich (2003) and Halberstam (2005) observe that the multiple queer activities and subcultures require complex studies and should be interpreted by using ‘ephemeral archives’. Even in queer monuments and spaces of LGBTQ memory, there are erasings related to the privileges of urban white gay men’s narratives (Ferentinos, 2019) and issues regarding the representation of lesbian women who aim to escape the female stereotype in traditional monumentality (Dunn, 2017).

Despite progress in recent years, we cannot say there’s a centrality of this issue in cultural institutions. Mainstreaming will possibly never happen, since the LGBTQ community is a ‘niche culture’. In this aspect, it differs structurally from the non-masculine or non-white world, which are indeed social majorities in many countries.

In Brazil, traditional cultural institutions are addressing LGBTQ memory in special programmes. Examples such as Museum of Art of São Paulo (MASP) which launched in 2017 the exhibition Histories of sexuality, and the Memorial Resistance of Sao Paulo and its 2020 exhibition Pride and Resistance: LGBT in the Brazilian dictatorship. Some initiatives stir up public controversy. For instance, the Queermuseu exhibition at Santander Cultural was cancelled in 2017 just 1 month after its opening due to pressure from political and religious groups.

Nevertheless, the bulk of the project is still being done by grassroots movements. Relying in increasing visibility and on social media, many LGBTQ institutions are being created by collectives that express the internal diversity of the LGBTQ community. This emerging scene creates new perspectives for queer memory. Focused on human rights activism and advocacy for public policies, these new institutions are conquering legitimacy and social visibility. This position also enables the carving out of narratives of the past and the memorialisation on the community’s own terms, under the concept of ‘if we don’t write our history, who will?’.

Addressing the issue of LGBTQ memory and heritage through community institutions can provide us with a different picture to the usual absences and silences. The question is reframed: instead of denouncing the lack of representations of queer past in the usual spaces of memory such as museums and monuments, we try to find how these meanings are built in the nodal sites for the present struggles of the community. We follow the path of writers such as Van Doorn (2016), who investigates the role leather plays in the building and performing of memory associated with care in the LGBTQ community of Baltimore, United States.

This article investigates the construction of historical narratives in one of the most important LGBTQ institutions recently created in São Paulo, Brazil. It was conceived as a social facility, not as a site of memory. However, it has evolved in an enormous multi-directionality, touching almost every dimension of the LGBTQ universe, including the community’s memory.

Coined in the 1980s by the French historian Pierre Nora, the notion of the ‘lieux de mémoire’ (sites of memory) was originally employed with a concern that certain sites central to the making of French national identity were ‘getting lost’. Since then, the concept has become popular, established itself within the history field, and has become the object of appropriations, overlaps and contestations by numerous researchers. Hartog (2015) correlates the recent importance given to memory and the creation of memorials to presentism. ³ According to the writer, ‘the site [of memory] came to rescue the historic monument, which was over-subscribed and outdated’ (Hartog, 2015: 145) in ‘this present [. . .] avidly or anxiously sought to historicize itself’ (Hartog, 2015: 203). Far from seeking to conceptualise or challenge the notion of sites of memory and heritage, we argue here that the different labours of memory taking place in Casa 1 have the power to produce a new site of memory in just a few years.

We identify this ‘induction’ of a site of memory as happening in four ways: the memorialisation of the names of those who made the institution possible through crowdfunding; the naming of spaces after important people for the community; the tribute to LGBTQ people who died in violent circumstances; and the hosting of a historical LGBTQ archive. These dimensions point to different aspects of memory making: gratitude, exemplarity, denunciation and safeguarding.

This analytical lens allows us to examine how a place can mobilise a specific memory, in this case LGBTQ memory, to create or reaffirm ties with its territory and the many other social groups that are present there. It is done by addressing the memory agenda along with the access to services and the marking of a place which is not usually identified to LGBTQ people as belonging to them. Memory is promoting civility and a stronger sense of community.

This article is part of a research on spatial and territorial dynamics taking place in Casa 1. The authors have been involved in several events at Casa 1 such as classes, guided tours and workshops. Since March 2018 Artur Duarte has been working as a volunteer at the institution. Our experience has shown that Casa 1 mobilises different strategies of memorialisation in the day-to-day of the institution. We used different kinds of sources: the institution’s website and social networks, its leaders’ social networks, interviews, field research and documentation, as well as regular and alternative press.

Gratitude

Casa 1 was conceived in order to respond to the housing needs of LGBTQ runaways and homeless youths. The white middle class journalist Iran Giusti triggered the initiative. In 2015, Iran registered his flat at Airbnb. He hosted many LGBTQ guests, having explicitly stated in his profile that he was a gay man. Listening to stories of rejection and violence from some of them, he realised the vulnerability of many youths and, in June 2016, he announced on Facebook that his flat would be open to receive people in this situation at no cost.

Iran had only one sofa bed in a small flat in the Bela Vista (or Bixiga) neighbourhood. He received dozens of requests, most people only wanting to talk about their experiences or ask for advice. A first chat worked as a screening, with reports such as a college student expelled by his grandfather and a boy whose mother’s pastor tried to exorcise him (Cetrone, 2019; Delcolli, 2016). Iran thought of renting a larger house where he could host more people, but soon dropped the idea of a private response and began to plan a public institution. The first supporters were a group of four women who were active in LGBTQ activism and communication and a young man he had previously hosted in his flat. Together they devised strategies for launching a crowdfunding campaign.

The campaign was based on Facebook, the most effective social network at the time in Brazil. It was launched on 19 October 2016 with the goal of raising R$83,952 (US$25,000 ⁴ ). The campaign was accelerated by different press reports. Crowdfunding closed on 30 November and raised R$112,000 (about US$35,000) through 1047 supporters, funding the rent of a property for 1 year.

As usual in such campaigns, Casa 1 offered rewards to supporters. Most interesting to us were the sponsors who donated the minimum amount (R$20–US$6). The 353 people who did so would have their names written on the building walls. Founders then began to search for a building. The chosen property was a two-story house near Iran’s flat. On the 78 m² plot of land, the house had a built area of 151 m². The upper floor had previously been squatted in and the ground floor had a bar.

Renovation was quick and simple, given the urgency to assist vulnerable people. The upper floor was turned into two collective rooms with three beds each, divided by wardrobes, and a lounge area with a sofa, table and TV, two bathrooms, a kitchen and a laundry room. On the ground floor there was a small cultural centre with three rooms open to the street. Casa 1 was inaugurated on the symbolic date of 25 January 2017, a holiday in commemoration of the anniversary of the city of São Paulo. At this time, there were already 5 tenants, out of a capacity of 12.

Keeping the promise of the campaign, the names of the donors were inscribed on the façade. Iran wrote the names himself. This worked as the first action of memorialisation of the cathartic moment of the campaign, showing that the energy and desire of numerous people has made that community project possible. With these inscriptions, Casa 1 was already born as a site of memory – brand new, but a memory site anyway. Writing those names was conceived as a symbolic, quick and cheap retribution, avoiding the need to spend money or mobilise people to produce rewards. On the crowdfunding website, the NGO wrote: ‘It’s a symbolic reward, but from the heart’ (Casa 1, 2016).

The display of names in gratitude for sponsorship is a traditional tool. When the West stopped practicing charity just for its religious meaning and embraced modern and secular philanthropy, welfare and cultural institutions began to display lists with the benefactors on their walls. But the list on the façade of Casa 1 has at least three specific features: first, the list of names appears in a public space and not in internal spaces as usually happens; second, only first names are written. The list works as self-identification, but it does not inform third parties about the exact names of the donors. Thus, for those who did not donate, the collective mass of names predominates over the individual identification of the donors. Moreover, there is no hierarchy attached to the amount donated. Similar lists often identify those who donated the most, but in Casa 1 it was the opposite: the name on the façade was linked to the lowest range of donation, expressing non-hierarchy.

These elements reinforce the idea of a connection between the donor community and Casa 1. During the campaign, Giusti declared, ‘We chose collective funding because we believe. The State, communication and social movements are absent. People are a key factor in making the project happen’. ⁵ The Figure 1 shows the reaction of a supporter who recognised his name on the façade.

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Figure 1.

Facebook post shows the Casa 1 opening party. Detail of a comment from a supporter called Ronaldo who recognised his name on the façade’s section shown in the photo: ‘What a delight, my name is there . . . Very happy to have helped make this dream come true, too bad I live 250 km away and cannot go to the inauguration. But I will visit someday’. Photo: Lucas Genovez.

The original plan of having a cultural programme in the project had the intention of mobilising Iran’s networking: artists, professionals and academics who would offer paid courses for the public, but free of charge to the residents. This would allow engagement and development of the tenants, while also fundraising. This plan, however, was abandoned: ‘We realised already in the first week that there would be no point in proposing a paid programme, which would exclude everyone living around the house, and then we proposed that all activities should be free of charge’ (Casa 1, 2018c).

Casa 1 then organised a second crowdfunding–in the hopes of creating a totally free programme and services. This time, sponsors would contribute with a monthly fixed amount, as a signature. Casa 1 launched the recurring campaign in February 2017 and it soon became the largest of its kind on the crowdfunding platform Benfeitoria. ⁶ By June 2020, it had 2041 supporters and over R$73,000 (US$13,346) in monthly donations.

Exemplarity

On the ground floor, the organisers decided to include the neighbourhood’s population in the activities and promoted a programme beyond LGBTQ issues: readings, fairs, events, exhibitions, as well as food, supplies and clothing donations. As soon as they were opened, these spaces were treated as memorials: they were named after personalities of the Brazilian LGBTQ community.

The NGO mobilised four main criteria in the first round of nominations: a. personalities from the cultural scene of São Paulo, showing the tenants and the general public alike examples of successful trajectories within the community; b. one personality from the gay, lesbian and trans community respectively, highlighting the idea of diversity; c. people who had recently died, who were known by many of the supporters and participants of Casa 1; d. a thematic affinity between the personal trajectory of the honoured person and the uses of the space. At the time of its opening, Casa 1 declared: ‘. . .[the] rooms are named after militants who are fundamental to the city and who are greatly missed.’..(Casa 1, 2017d). The referred activism is not strictly political or partisan, and more related to values, attitudes, cultural expression and the right to sexuality and the body. The naming of the rooms was followed by posts on social media, which synthesised the biography of the honoured person and the reason for the choice. The first physical mark was a plaque with the honoured person’s name in their respective room.

The largest room (30 m²), on the corner, was dedicated to reading and gathering. It was named Vange Leonel (1963–2014), a lesbian singer and writer. One of her songs was played in the opening of an important telenovela from the 1990s. A feminist and LGBTQ activist, Vange dedicated her last years to literature. The Vange Leonel Lecture Room received a large donation of books and, soon after the inauguration, the collection was named Caio Fernando Abreu Library (1948–1996), honouring the journalist, playwright and writer who was one of the first to write about the AIDS epidemic.

The middle room was planned as an exhibition space. It honours Vitor Angelo, a journalist, screenwriter, director, human rights activist and member of the LGBTQ movement who died in 2015 at the age of 47. ‘His stories, lessons and care are missed every day and that is why this space bear his name, in a small effort to keep his legacy alive’(Casa 1, 2017d).

In the smallest room, some of the donations received by the NGO are distributed. Despite its LGBTQ focus, Casa 1 does not consider itself a segregated facility and donates food, clothing and personal care items to the general neighbourhood independent of sexual orientation or gender identity. The space was named in honour of Cláudia Wonder (1955–2010), an actress, singer, songwriter, writer, and one of the leading names in activism for trans visibility and public policies. Below, Figure 2 shows the layouts in early 2017.

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Figure 2.

Casa 1 layouts in early 2017. The house initially had a reading room, a cultural centre and a care room on the ground floor and 12 reception beds on the upper floor.

Despite Casa’s consistent programme on the issue of bisexual invisibility, it did not include a bi personality in the first round of nominations. While there has been a noticed increase in the discussion in recent years, it shows that even LGBTQ institutions have work to do in rescuing the memory of bisexual community.

The cultural programme grew every month. In 2017, Casa 1 opened formally as an NGO. Over the course of the year, several companies cooperated. In June, LGBTQ Pride month, two campaigns by multinationals donated around R$180,000 (US$54,878). These resources allowed the organisers to rent another building in August: a 252 m² shed in the same neighbourhood, that had previously housed a theatre company. After some renovations, the Cultural Centre Galpão Casa 1 was opened on October 1. Unlike the House, which keeps its façade clear of LGBTQ symbols and markers of the movement, the Galpão shows these markers: the rainbow flag colours appear on the asphalt, on the courtyard’s vertical garden and on the front windows. A further highlight is the aforementioned painting of the woman on the asphalt in front of the building, which symbolises the drag queen singer Pabllo Vittar wearing the colours of the LGBTQ flag.

The process of room naming went on. While the first building’s spaces were dedicated to posthumous tributes, in the Galpão living personalities were honoured, highlighting ‘the importance of making visible and acknowledging people who are among us making things happen’ (Casa 1, 2017a). All the new spaces were named after LGBTQ women: ‘The idea of giving their names to these spaces is to remember every day the importance of care, educational and cultural work and the struggle for rights and the life assurance of all’(Casa 1, 2018b).

The first named spaces in Galpão were the classrooms, in homage to two important personalities of the trans movement who are active in the education field: Jaqueline Gomes de Jesus and Symmy Larrat. Jesus is a black psychologist, professor and activist who is an authority in Gender Studies in Brazil; Larrat is an activist and public manager, ‘reference in the care for transvestites and transsexual people . . .’(Casa 1, 2018b). She is the president of the Brazilian LGBT Association (ABGLT) and was the coordinator of the Transcidadania programme, a public policy of the Municipality of São Paulo for education, professional training and citizenship of Transgender people.

Galpão’s main space, the Leci Brandão Hall, pays homage to the Samba singer from Rio de Janeiro who has a career of over 40 years, dozens of albums and socially engaged song lyrics. Active in the black and lesbian movements, Leci is a representative in São Paulo’s provincial parliament since 2010, advocating for minorities, artists and culture professionals (Casa 1, 2019d).

The spaces in Galpão’s mezzanine paid tribute to dead personalities. Vange Leonel’s room moved there from the first house due to Galpão’s characteristic of honouring only women. The other room was named Cassandra Rios (1932–2002), honouring the first woman writer to sell one million books in Brazil. At the age of sixteen she independently published her first book, the lesbian novel A Volúpia do Pecado (The Voluptuousness of Sin), which the dictatorship ⁷ banned years later, as well as 36 of her 50 books, making her the most censored author of the period (BBC, 2019).

The Studio hosts activities such as dance classes, taekwondo, music, talking circles and study groups. It was named after the actress Cláudia Celeste (1952–2018), the first trans woman to act in a soap opera in 1988. Cláudia died a few months after the inauguration of the studio in May 2018. Her name was then transferred to a new room for social care on the mezzanine, in order to strengthen the bond of the spaces on the ground floor with living and active personalities. The studio was then renamed as Renata Carvalho, an actress and activist for trans rights. By then Renata had already staged her play in different spaces of Casa 1 on three occasions. ‘We are pleased to name the studio after [. . .] someone who lives and works with art and is pure inspiration for us’ (Casa 1, 2019c).

In 2018, new rooms for social assistance were built in the mezzanine, this time honouring Phedra de Córdoba (1938–2016) and Rosely Roth (1959–1990). Córdoba was a Cuban-born stage actress who became an underground diva of the theatre scene in São Paulo. Roth was a leading lesbian activist in the Brazilian LGBTQ movement and fought against imprisonment and torture during the military dictatorship (Yukio, 2019). She was present at an iconic event of the Brazilian LGBTQ movement: the protest at Ferro’s Bar on 19 August 1983, known as the Brazilian Stonewall uprising. Figure 3 shows the House and Galpão layouts in early 2018.

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Figure 3.

Casa 1 layouts in early 2018. At the time, the house had 18 reception beds, a community library and the care room. The middle space (Vitor Angelo) was temporarily given to Transol, a sewing collective for training trans people. In Galpão, the ground floor spaces were named after living and acting LGBTQ women, while the mental health assistance rooms in the mezzanine paid tribute to dead female personalities.

Despite its public acclaim, Casa 1 has always had financial problems. Members of the organisation constantly used their personal resources to cover costs and asked for occasional help via social media. In November 2017, the crowdfunding monthly revenue was just over R$10,000 (US$3,048), and around R$18,000 (US$4,615) by the end of 2018, corresponding to half of the monthly maintenance costs, estimated then at R$35,000 (US$8,974). Private sector financial support minimised the financial deficit.

In March 2019, there was a sudden change at the organisation: Casa 1 announced that it was shutting down by the end of the year due to insufficient funding. Following that announcement, an intense social mobilisation almost tripled the monthly funding: in January 2019, had raised around R$26,000 (US$6,684). Following the news it was closing down, funds reached around R$100,000 (US$25,707). The mobilisation ensured not only the project’s survival, but also its expansion: in May 2019, the Casa 1 Social Clinic opened in a small street near the original house.

The clinic hosts the Mental Health Working Group which has been a key part of Casa 1 since its beginning. Several studies show the importance of providing mental health care to vulnerable LGBTQ youths. However, the physical space for such a service was limited. In the beginning, mental health volunteers attended to the tenants in any available spaces, or even on the streets and in neighbourhood cafes. When Galpão was opened, they started using the rooms in the mezzanine, the classrooms and often the courtyard. ⁸ At first, the mental health service was restricted to residents, volunteers and some former residents, but in March 2018 it was opened to the wider neighbourhood (Casa 1, 2019a).

The Clinic’s opening meant the transfer of the names of the assistance rooms from Galpão to the new facility (Figure 4). Furniture was improved with donated chairs, tables and sofas. Two other rooms were named after Erika Hilton and Suzane Jardim. Hilton is an activist of the trans and black movements and in 2020 she was the first trans woman to be elected as a member of the provincial parliament. She was kicked out from home during her youth and became a regular guest in Casa’s events, lectures and workshops programmes. Jardim is a black historian, professor, activist and researcher on gender and racial dynamics. She has been present in Casa 1 since before its opening: one of the rewards of the original crowdfunding was attending the workshop ‘Racist Stereotypes in the Media’ taught by her. Like Hilton, she went on to conduct some programmes in Casa 1 in the following years.

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Figure 4.

Casa 1 Social Clinic in 2020. There are seven rooms designated for psychological and psychiatric assistance. In addition to four room names moved from Galpão, two new rooms were named after Suzane Jardim and Erika Hilton.

The creation of the Clinic left available space in the Galpão. The partition walls on the mezzanine have been dismantled to make room for the Lea T Workshop (Figure 5). The place hosts training workshops linked to fashion such as sewing and make-up. For this reason, the honoree was named after Lea T, the first trans model in international campaigns and a LGBTQ and environmental activist. Lea had already visited Casa 1.

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Figure 5.

Galpão in December 2019. The Social Clinic’s relocation created exclusive spaces to the Lea T Workshop and the Bajubá Collection, which until then used shared spaces.

The House, the Cultural Centre and the Social Clinic are close to each other (Figure 8). They have different strategies towards public space and are in a state of permanent change: besides the layouts of the spaces, their facades are changed during events, workshops, interventions by collaborators.

We can highlight some points in the strategies grouped here under the lens of exemplarity. In addition to the aforementioned choice of ‘militants of life’ and not in the partisan political sense, ‘exemplarity’ has a role of education, of dialogue with the Casa’s various audiences and partners, and of building positive identity. It is also closely related to what Cvetkovich (2003) calls the ‘archive of feelings’. According to Bruno Oliveira, Galpão’s coordinator, ‘We thought about the use of space, but also about the affections it gave us [. . .] that is, we thought about who we felt affected us, made us reflect on this project’. In other words, the choices were the result of the feelings of the Casa’s leaders, linking the discourse of these personalities with the activities of the institution. While the posthumous naming honours people already known in LGBTQ militancy, the tributes to living women constitute an important link with positive identity. ‘We also recognize these people for the trajectory they constitute in life and not only in death’ (Bruno). The namings seek intersections with black and feminist movements and with the honorees themselves: the NGO asked their permission before the nominations, and many of them participate in some way in the work of Casa 1, whether by giving lectures, promoting events, performing art on the spaces or sharing campaigns. The door plates of each space are educational to the public (Figure 6). Other references and tributes are made, as showed in Figure 7.

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Figure 6.

Door plates of the assistance rooms. In 2019, a new layout was created for the plaques, which, in addition to the name and photo of the honoured person, it included a mini-biography. Thus, the plaques themselves are educational to the public, besides remembering those who have died (and the movement itself) and paying homage to those who are alive.

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Figure 7.

Drawings on city streets and sidewalks are common in Brazil during World Cups, mostly displaying footballs, players of the national team and mascots. The proposal in front of Galpão was unusual as it highlighted the LGBTQ movement by showing one of its icons, the dragqueen and singer Pabllo Vittar, doing kick-ups and wearing the colours of the LGBTQ flag. It also protests against Russia, host country of the last World Cup, known for persecuting LGBTQ people.

Denunciation

In addition to memory strategies such as gratitude and exemplarity, Casa 1 operates a third memorialising process, by denouncing the violent killing of LGBTQ people. The listing of names of victims of violence is used in memorials around the world as a way of remembering violent deaths, massacres and genocides. Their function is to go beyond tragic numbers and remember each brutally interrupted life. On 21 April 2017, the names of 91 LGBTQ people who had been killed in Brazil during the 3 months since the inauguration of Casa 1 were written on the public door of the Cláudia Wonder room (Figure 10).

In March 2018, the bisexual city councillor of Rio de Janeiro Marielle Franco was murdered, resulting in great social revolt. One month later, Casa 1 held a programme about this: ‘To talk about Marielle Franco–Dialogue, Human Rights and Citizenship’. The initiative also created a library of black women writers in Galpão, which was later moved to the community library at the House. ‘The idea arose from several statements by Marielle in which she spoke about the importance of creating the black narratives oneself’ (Casa 1, 2018a). Thus, the Caio Fernando Abreu Library received a new collection, the Marielle Franco Library (Figure 9).

Interventions on the buildings’ façades are also frequently used as a form of denunciation. During the presidential elections of October 2018, the Galpão’s façade was covered with the words ‘not him’, referring to the presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro, and the side wall of the courtyard was covered in photographs of victims of fatal hate crimes in Brazil that year (Figure 11). The first to adorn the wall were Councillor Marielle Franco and Capoeira player Moa do Katendê, both killed for political reasons. In the same month, they were joined by the photograph of Laysa Fortuna, a woman who had been stabbed. In December, a photo of Plínio Lima, stabbed next to his husband, was added, followed in January by the photo of Quelly da Silva, who had her heart ripped out by a broken bottle. At that time, people were already entering the space in order to take photos and post them on social media.

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Figure 8.

Map showing Casa 1’s surroundings. The three facilities are near each other and have their own strategies to engage and dialogue with the neighbourhood.

Using memory as a strategy of denunciation materialises discussions and is further developed by guidelines addressed in the events held at Casa’s spaces and social networks. These agendas are not restricted to the LGBTQ population and constantly address issues related to other minority groups such as feminists, Black, Asian and Indigenous (Duarte and Cymbalista, 2020).

While ‘gratitude’ has emerged as a pragmatic strategy and ‘exemplarity’ has a role of dialogue, ‘denunciation’ strategies have a political objective of highlighting the indifference with which LGBTQ people are treated, the vulnerabilities that justify public policies, and even showing that the institution is ‘on the watch’ in the resolution of crimes. Together, they demonstrate that Casa 1 thinks actively about LGBTQ memory not only as an identitary strategy, but also as explicitly political action. They also build bridges between Casa 1, other social movements (such as those rescuing the memory of the dictatorship), public administration (the participation in Heritage Days), and institutions such as the Sexual Diversity Museum and Memorial Resistance of São Paulo, which have already made joint exhibitions and partnerships with Casa 1.

Many queer monuments transcend representative function, exposing social, political conflicts and the negotiations that made their creation possible. Orangias et al. (2018) argue that such monuments have social functions such as giving visibility and reducing stigma in the public space, memorialising and educating/informing the public about the abuses to which these minorities are subjected, and further stimulating political debate about the rights and security of sexual and gender minorities. Figures 9, 10 and 11 show some ‘denunciation strategies’.

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Figure 9

Plaque marking the Marielle Franco collection.

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Figure 10.

Names of LGBTQs who were killed in Brazil in 2017 on the Claudia Wonder room door. The list used the names published by the GGB – Gay Group of Bahia–during the period between the 25 January, the Casa’s inauguration and the 21 April 2017, the day of the intervention.

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Figure 11.

At the Galpão’s courtyard wall, photos of victims of hate crime. Above, Marielle Franco and Mestre Moa; below, Laysa Fortuna. Being placed on 29 December, the photo of Plínio Lima. In January, the wall also got a photo of Quelly da Silva.

Memory strategies work through the symbolic mechanisms of self-identification and community spirit, exemplarity and construction of a positive identity for LGBTQs, denunciation and safeguarding. Memory and spatial strategies are allies. Out of the facilities, the House is what managers are most careful to keep ‘neutral’: the memory of ‘gratitude’ is there, but the only clear LGBTQ markers on the façade are the homage plates. During the field research, Iran reported that it was not necessary to display the rainbow flag: the tenants themselves and their bodies are the flags. In contrast, Galpão stands out as a space to promote education and awareness, which explains the LGBTQ demarcations in its spaces.

Safeguarding

The strategies described so far deal with the inscription of names, images and text in spaces of the institution. In February 2019, the institution received an important LGBTQ archive, the Bajubá collection, reaching more than 3000 items in 2020. This triggered a new memory strategy. The collection was created in 2010, when some militants and researchers with different profiles met. They had in common the fact they had all gathered material related to LGBTQ issues. The group’s interactions grew, and at a certain point they merged their personal collections and began to actively search for other materials and resources to safeguard this memory. They found rare works and editions of the pioneer zines Lampião da Esquina and Chana com Chana, which were essential to the resistance of the Brazilian LGBTQ movement in the 1980s. By sharing the findings on social media, other researchers and organisations seeking to rescue and preserve LGBTQ memory contacted the group. They continued to expand its collection and, from 2013, started to provide physical or digital access to the public and researchers who needed: ‘a community right to know our history and our memory’. ⁹ The collection was called Acervo Bajubá honouring the aforementioned dialect used by the Brazilian queer community.

In the first years the material was split into four houses in different cities. In 2015, Remom and his then boyfriend – also a founder of the group – moved to São Paulo, and the team decided to move the collection with them. They continued with the collection in their home and allowing supervised visits. Being in Brazil’s largest city and an important centre for LGBTQ culture allowed connections with other activists and organisations.

In 2017, Remom met Bruno Oliveira, a coordinator of cultural activities at the recently opened Casa 1. Being a visual artist and educator, Bruno was already doing research involving LGBTQ memory and soon was interested in the idea of moving the collection to Casa 1, but the lack of physical space in the NGO’s facilities postponed the move. The creation of the Galpão opened spaces for the Collection. In early 2019 the collection was allocated at one of the Galpão’s rooms.

Bajubá drew the attention of the public of Casa 1. Jason, ¹⁰ a Black and trans former resident of Casa 1, became interested in the collection and sought out its organisers to learn more about it. The young man was delighted with the collection’s many records of trans people. Jason was hired as a trainee at Bajubá, with the task of improving dialogue between Bajubá and the public of Casa 1.

The room was shared with the social clinic. Remom points out the challenge that comes with the Casa’s culture of keeping its doors open to the public and making donations and loans: the Caio Fernando Abreu Library collection can be consulted and taken home, but Bajubá is not a circulating collection. The group did some work to increase the awareness of Galpão’s staff on the importance of preserving LGBTQ documents and material culture and the need to keep the Bajubá intact.

One day an important book disappeared, one of the first pieces of research on trans people in Brazil. Remom told Jason who then spoke to other users of the space and discovered that a young trans woman had become interested in the title and picked it up to read. He then explained to her the nature of the collection and she retrieved the book. Such a problem did not happen again.

When the clinic relocated to its own building in 2019, the room was occupied exclusively by the Collection. Casa 1 posted on social media, officializing its position as Bajubá’s headquarters (Figure 12). This increased access to the collection’s website and room and brought in further donations to the collection. At Galpão, Bajubá received about 20 visitors per month before the pandemic.

Despite the mutually beneficial relationship, the building does not yet have the ideal infrastructure. The Collection’s curators still believe there is a risk and didn’t take some of the rarest items to Galpão. The mezzanine structure also has its limits: installing suitable furniture racks is not feasible. Despite these limitations, on the whole there is a positive balance thanks to the convergent objectives of both institutions and the complementarity of their actions.

According to Cvetkovich (2003), the creators of ‘grassroots archives’ often made their houses into collections (p. 245). From this comes the need to transform these private spaces into public ones: ‘The history of any archive is a history of space, which becomes the material measure and foundation of the archive’s power and visibility as a form of public culture’. The association Casa 1-Bajubá presents new possibilities of spatiality, access to the ‘archive’ and discussions on memory. While writers such as Halberstam (2005) point to the need to collect ephemeral materials, other studies show access methods. Cover (2019) argues that new digital media practices have the potential to make memorialisation activity a part of everyday online experience, expanding and criticising the established idea of archives, collections and monuments. The possibilities for interaction on social media also give these memory strategies a democratic quality and further engagement. We found these characteristics to be important in the development of Bajubá, from the initial interaction of its members to the growth of the network of supporters. Casa 1 has always had an intimate relationship with social media: as we have shown, its engagement, funding and execution processes are directly tied to virtual tools and media. The NGO uses strategies that spatialize discussions coming from the social media and, on the other hand, brings to the network issues raised in the territory. For example, the denunciation activity that often begins with social network posts becomes memory acts–like the photos of the martyrs in 2019–and the audience’s posts showing these interventions reinforce the denunciation. Moreover, events, exhibitions or memorialist interventions that take place in the spaces then turn into posts on social media. A non-hierarchy is established there: the means (physical or digital) is only an intermediary for the message to be passed on, for the memory to be evoked.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 12.

Do you know what the Bajubá Collection is?’ Official announcement of Casa 1 as the headquarters of the Bajubá Collection. Briefly, the post explains what it is, the history and how the collection works. In the post comments, several people showed interest in learning about the collection.

Conclusion: a site of memory can be induced

By naming the project Casa 1, its mentors sought the idea of a new life beginning for the hosted youths: it would be their first home in independent life (‘casa’ meaning ‘house’). The NGO’s complex trajectory has unfolded its work on several fronts, at an accelerated speed. It combines assistance to the homeless, programmes for children and a centre for education and culture. The facilities quickly took on an assistive and cultural role for society. In addition, it became an unprecedented urban landmark and reference point for the LGBTQ community and other vulnerable groups.

Casa 1 works in a deeply intersectional way combining LGBTQ activism with other social struggles. These different groups’ agendas are allied to the local interest programming with various courses, lectures, programming and events that prove useful to the neighbourhood population.

These practical actions are combined with the creation and preservation of LGBTQ memory. The references registered in the spaces provide support for the lecture on the history of the LGBTQ movement in Brazil given at the monthly training course for volunteers. The establishment of facilities in the same neighbourhood and various partnerships with other organisations and places in São Paulo, such as theatres, cultural centres and important museums in the city indicate the production of a ‘site of memory’ in line with the promotion of a local heritage, both for the LGBTQ community and for the population of São Paulo.

It is quite common to see Casa 1’ s residents and volunteers explaining to users who Cláudia Wonder was, or people stopping by reading the spaces’ identification plaques. Bajubá also highlights the presence of memory discussions at the spaces. Although the main purpose of Casa 1 is not memorialization, the NGO extensively uses memory devices for what Bruno Oliveira calls ‘the production of life’s meaning’. Perhaps because of this articulation in the guidelines of Casa 1, there are no conflicts in mobilising memory either internally or externally.

Although it is not an official monument, Casa 1 takes on all these roles by inserting the agenda of LGBTQ memory in a neighbourhood that, although was intensively used by LGBTQ groups for housing and sociability, was not part of São Paulo’s memory imaginary at the same level as other historically appropriated places. Therefore, the NGO seeks to reduce the stigma so that its own residents, former residents, volunteers, and visitors are safer not only within the spaces, but also when they commute in the surrounding area.

On the one hand, recent years have seen an increase in approaches to LGBTQ history – both in and out of museums and historical sites – and to the evidence resources such as artefacts, memory and oral testimony. On the other hand, the notorious privileging of the narrative of the white cisgender gay individual situated in urban centres remains. Casa 1 avoids this by honouring personalities, both alive and dead, who have adopted or are adopting militancy in more personal and less institutionalised ways, thereby promoting debate about the right to the body, joy and identity ahead of the more traditional notions of militancy.

We must also highlight the importance of the Internet, especially social media, in the processes addressed here. Digital media is used mainly for public engagement: those who donate, those who use the spaces, those who work on LGBTQ memory or even other social groups that can be represented, such as black collectives, feminists and theatre groups that see themselves represented in Casa 1’s memorialist practices.

Each of the memory actions of Casa 1 is intentional and conscious. We built no meaning here. However, we have grouped these actions through an analytical lens into four dimensions of past interpretation. Something that the NGO operates unconsciously. The different approaches of memorialisation adopted–as a symbolic mechanism of gratitude, exemplarity, denunciation and safeguarding – reinforce strategies of engagement with the public, of self-esteem, of building positive references, of politicisation and visibility which, together, make Casa 1 a site of LGBTQ memory. Ultimately, Casa 1 shows that the establishment of a site of memory is not a passive consequence of time and historical events; it can be precipitated and induced, through intensity and intentionality.