ABSTRACT
In Chapter 7 I sketched a context of globalisation, and investigated some of the intersections of cultural frameworks in post-Soviet states today. In this chapter I turn to the formation of identities through cultural work, by which I mean mainly work in the arts but outside art’s conventional sites, similarly outside the sites of consumerism and bordering on everyday life. I focus on Capital do nada, a multi artform project in Marvila, a multi-ethnic social housing district of Lisbon, in 2001. I contextualise this by reference to the sociology of consumption and emphasis on consumption as a means to identity formation (extending the discussion of consumption in Chapters 4 and 5). I doubt the hypothesis that lifestyle consumption is a means to identity formation, and look at Marvila as a zone offering little access to such consumption. I describe Marvila, outline the project Capital do nada, and examine two projects within it: Belcanto by Catarina Campino, a performance project in five locations; and porque é existe o ser em vez do nada? by José Maças de Carvalho, a photographic project using mass media sites and imaging techniques. Finally I reconsider issues of power and empowerment raised by the projects, citing Hal Foster (1996) and Irit Rogoff (2000). In case studies I cite an extract from Arundhati Roy’s Power Politics
Work and Research Centre (SWRC), or Barefoot College, in Tilonia, Rajasthan, India.
