nanopolitics handbook - Minor Compositions

Somaan anarchist experiment— Jorge GoiaDeclaration of an anarchist lover: Because I love you, you don’t need me.Because you love me, I don’t need you. In love we never let ourselves becompleted by the other. We are deliciously unnecessary to each other. 1A political contextCreated in Brazil as an anarchist therapy, by Roberto Freire (1927–2008),Soma was used at nanopolitics’ intensive workshops as a social laboratory,bringing art, activism and learning new skills together. Participants were invitedto play as a way to rediscover the body, sharing collaboration games torethink relationships. As a Soma facilitator trained by Freire, nano’s sessionswere part of a personal journey from therapy to experiment.‘There’s nothing as contagious as the taste for freedom’, Roberto Freireused to say to explain why he went on to create ‘Soma’. 2 Also, poetically, thissentence from one of his books introduces his unorthodox trajectory: graduatedin Medicine, practised in Endocrinology and Psychiatry, trained in Psychoanalysis,journalism, worked widely in the arts – drama, music, TV andfilm, political activist, a best-selling writer with 30 books published in Brazil.In this productive walking through science, art and politics, Soma is a synthesisof Freire’s activism. 3Roberto Freire was part of a generation of Brazilians who dared to livea dream. Together with Paulo Freire – not related – and Augusto Boal, hetook part in the educational and cultural projects which were changing Brazilbefore the US-backed military coup in 1964. They worked together and werejailed and prosecuted during the dictatorship because their activities wereconsidered subversive for the authoritarian regime. Later, Paulo Freire and95