singendes auge > das Meer des Conselheiro

the Sea of Conselheiro in production

a video installation and a documentary
production and direction Mendel Hardeman

The information on this site dates back to the initial phase of this project (2007),
and has not been updated.
For the current state of the project, click here.

"The desert will become a sea,
and the sea will become a desert"
Canudos, 1897

Step 1. A voyage through the Sertão of Canudos

In "O Mar do Conselheiro" - "the Sea of Conselheiro" the people of the Sertão of Canudos - a region in the dry hinterlands of Brazil, the country where I grew up - tell their story. A story of dreams in a world of drought. Dreams that are more than a hundred years old, that were shred into pieces by a bloody war, and survived huge famines. Dreams that once seemed to become reality, but were brutally suppressed. But also dreams that really came true, be it in such a painful way that many people stopped dreaming any further.
Between September 27 and December 28, 2007, I will be travelling through the Sertão of Canudos, collecting dreams about water.

Canudos - the land, the people and their history

The Sertão is a dry region in the hinterlands of North-east Brazil, with a size of Germany and France together. It is one of the most neglected parts of the entire country, with an extremely high unemployment rate, low quality education, and a medical service that is inaccessible for many people. The regular droughts make life in the Sertão very difficult. Usually every year has a period of rainfall, but there are regular drought periods with no rain for many years. Throughout history this has led to huge famines and enormous human tragedies, which brought many people to migrate to the big cities along the coast.
Religion has always played a big role in the life of the sertanejo – inhabitant of the Sertão. Throughout history there have been many big popular movements born from religion. In an often very incandescent devotion, enormous masses would gather around charismatic religious leaders. The biggest of those movements happened between 1865 and 1897, in the dry hinterland of the state of Bahia. Following a wandering preacher named Antônio Conselheiro – Antônio "the Counsellor" – thousands of people gathered in the village of Canudos, that soon grew out to become the second biggest town in the entire state. Antônio Conselheiro preached equality in a world of poverty and oppression, and the approaching End of Times. His charisma, his preachings and his way of living inspired people to a life in purity, and offered a possibility of existence outside of the current power structures. By following him people could escape the oppression of the rich land owners, and many saw him as a Messiah.
His followers were mostly simple illiterate people, who knew next to nothing about the world outside of the Sertão, and therefore had very little understanding of political ideologies. His huge influence, spreading over the entire Sertão, soon became seen as a menace to the power of the authorities, the land owners and the Church. In 1889, Monarchy was abolished and Brazil became a Republic. A number of incidents led Conselheiro and his followers to be accused of being anti-republicans, who represented a big danger to the country. Tensions rose to such a point that it exploded into a bloody war which lasted an entire year and led to the complete destruction of the city of Canudos. Most of the inhabitants were brutally murdered by the Brazilian army - the number of casualties is estimated at 20.000 sertanejos and 5.000 soldiers.

The Canudos War still is a sensitive point in Brazilian historiography. Even today - more than a hundred years later - there are two different versions of the story. Many believe that Canudos was a peaceful society where the sertanejo, free of any ulterior political motives, for the first time in his existence had the chance to live a life without oppression, poverty and fear. This vision is supported by the great majority of modern historians. On the other side there are those who, as the authorities in 1897, believe Canudos was a hotbed of fanatical monarchists, who represented a great danger to the young Republic. Even today, the website of the Brazilian Army sings praise for the heroic deeds of the high military officials who "fell for their country" in the War of Canudos.
Canudos has been called "the biggest unhealed wound in the history of Brazil". Added to that we must say that present-day Canudos is still as neglected by the authorities and the rest of the country as it was 100 years ago. Everyone has learned the story in school, but in spite of that Canudos, in the heart of the Sertão, still lies so far away from the urbanized Brazilian society that few people realize what actually happened there, a century ago, and what it means to live there now.

People without water dream about the sea
"the Sea of Conselheiro" is based on a famous phrase of Antônio Conselheiro: "O Sertão vai virar mar, e o mar vai virar Sertão" - the Sertão will become a sea, and the sea will become Sertão. He was referring to the soon expected end of the world, the day on which all roles would be swapped, and that would put an end to the oppression and hard life of the sertanejos. Everyone who went to school in Brazil has heard this phrase during one or another history class, but still very few people realize that his prophecy actually became true in a quite unexpected manner: in 1969, during the military dictatorship, Canudos was flooded as part of the construction process of a big dam. Many people in the region see this as an attempt from the government to cover up one of the most disgraceful stains in history. On the other hand the dam, by means of an irrigation system, has created a green oasis in a region where life had always been controlled by drought.
Conselheiro preached to people who had spent their entire lives in the dry and poor hinterlands, at hundreds of miles from the coast. He told them that one day the Sertão would become a sea. One of the questions that intrigues me is: how did his audience imagine this? Water was extremely scarce, and most of them had never even seen a lake or a big river, let alone the sea. I want to reconstruct their idea of the sea.

Ten percent of the Brazilian population still lives without electricity, and thus has no access to television and other image streams. My plan is to visit people who, just like hundred years ago, live in remote areas which they have sometimes never left, and ask them to tell me about the sea. What image they have of it, what they heard about it, and old stories, myths and legends in which the sea plays a role. People without water who dream about the sea. I want to record their stories about the sea, and at the same time capture their daily lives. Lives covered in clouds of dust, and that consists of keeping many goats, few mules and a skinny cow, planting cacti, sugar cane and manioc, and waiting for rain.