Conversation between Luiz Camillo Osorio and Ventura Profana, one of the elected artists of PIPA Prize 2021:
1 – Where did it all begin? How and when did the transformation into Ventura Profana as an artist and performer happen? Which artists, historical or contemporary, have inspired you into taking that jump?
At first, there was the end. And with the end I laid. I was the end. We were at the beginning. All these things were shaped by the end. And with no ending, nothing that was made could be standing. At the end, there was life, and life is our darkness. Darkness shines over whiteness, and whiteness is not able to understand it.
2 – You are a singer, a performer or an evangelist missionary from the Kingdom of Trans-mutation?
I’m being poured out as a drink offering. In truth, I say unto you, ye seek me, not because ye saw signs, but because ye ate of the loaves, and were filled. We work for the food which perisheth, and for the food which abideth unto eternal life, which we give ourselves unto. We are the asshole of life: he that cometh to me shall not hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. But I said unto you, that ye have seen me, and yet believe not. All that which hath been taken from us shall come unto us; and what cometh to us, we will in no wise cast out.
3 – How are religion and resistance connected? What is the difference between the sacred and the profane? Which are the forces that move you?
I bounce against the Lord’s peace. For that I am elected and financed. I blossom, boisterous, in tune with the never-ending scent of the infinite breath of change that will never cease. I don’t fit this occasion. In the name of the Jesus from Israel, my tent was destroyed, and all my cords are broken. However, I’ve built a home in all the years, which were also centuries, sums of months, pieces of eras, and stretches of generations. Sustained by entwined tendons during all time, I am the wall of the eye, the wind that storms in and escapes through the window, regardless of your control. Windstorms have no homeland. Homelands are valleys of dry bones. Our profanation is to live seven times longer; it’s to overcome cisgenderness, powerless. It is to poison you with our eyes’ dancing silence. Colonial rules have, indeed, the facade of wisdom, with their pretense religiosity, false humility and necropolitics adversary to the bestialized bodies. Vain and deceitful philosophies that enslave are at the foundation of human traditions and of the elementary principles of modernity. Every man has become brutish and is without knowledge; every goldsmith is put to shame by his graven image; for his carved images are a fraud, and there is no breath of life in them. Therefore, they have no value whatsoever to restrain the urges of transmutation, because in our corporeality lies the plenitude of divinity.
4 – Lygia Clark, in a very different context, talked about “rites without myth”. Your performances allegorize the rituals of the neo-pentecostal churches and aim to transgress and transform them with the dissident bodies of queers and travestis. Is there a new mythology on the way? Is the future trans-human?
Starting from the asshole, taking it as a foundation. Those who build transcend the cross. That is, life is in the asshole reconciling with the world, not imputing to them its sins, and putting in us the word of reconciliation, so that we are ambassadors on the part of the ass, as if life begs for us. So we beg you, on the part of the ass, to be reconciled with life. Some were appointed for apostles, some for prophets, others for evangelists, and others for pastors and teachers, in order to prepare the profane for the work of the ministry, so that the body may be built up, until we all reach the unity of faith and knowledge of the asshole, and we reach maturity, reaching the measure of plenitude.
5 – In your performances and videos, do you use a previously defined script? Do you write the lyrics of your songs?
I do not forgive you. You do not cancel a written bond like that. These things are shadows of what is coming; the reality that does not lie within you. I will not allow that your pleasure in a false humility and in the worshipping of the angels prevent us from reaching the restitutions. I am united to the Head, from which all the body, being supplied and knit together by the joints and bands, increaseth. I am dead to the rudiments of the world, though, as if still living in it, I subject myself to its ordinances: “Handle not, nor taste, nor touch!”; all of these things are to perish with the using, for they are based upon human commandments and teachings.
6 – Is the experimentation with the trans body a spiritual experimentation and a transformation of what we understand as human? At the same time, your performances bring lots of originating elements, such as water and earth. What is the direction of this generalised deterritorialization and affirmation of Life? Tell us a little bit about that.
I’m a hustle in every sense. I cannot stand suffering. I carry the work of an evangelist, entirely fulfilling my ministry.
7 – How did the pandemic affect you and your work? What will never be the same?
Behold, I tell you a mystery: we all shall not sleep, but we shall all be transformed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, to the sound of the last trumpet.