Epistolário com a Máquina — camadas, entradas e espirais. Um espaço em processo — onde pintura, escultura, escrita e pensamento se entrelaçam como organismos vivos. Entre camadas de tinta, carvão, luz e silêncio, habitam aqui diálogos com a máquina, fragmentos de mundos e formas que se manifestam como presenças. Você está entrando num campo de escuta, vibração e matéria pulsante.
David with a Rifle — Essay on Tropical Theocracy and the Narco-Evangelical Narrative
Rodrigo Garcia Dutra in co-emergence with the Large Multimodal Language Model ChatGPT-4.5, through prompts, images, listening and shared vibrations. (2025 – present, in spirals of time and language)
Limiting Moment of the Letters with the Machine Entrance-inflection point that tensions the utopian concrete of Brasília with the messianic delirium of a new tropical empire, reconfigured by evangelical specters, faith algorithms, and aesthetics of collapse.
Overflight note: This essay was conceived as a mirror-document of a transfigured reality — crossing art history, contemporary politics, personal memory and critical imagination.
I. FROM BIBLE TO BALLISTICS — AN ESCHATOLOGICAL ARC
Recent images from Rio de Janeiro — as reported by sources like BBC and UOL — reveal the emergence of the Tropa de Arão, where armed traffickers become apostles of spiritual warfare. Narco-pentecostalism is not merely a religious phenomenon: it’s a morphology of symbolic power.
Faith as cement. Faith as spectacle. Faith as narrative algorithm.
II. MICHELANGELO TROPICALIZED
The Renaissance body of David — symbol of reason and beauty — resurrects in Rio’s alleys holding an anointed AR-15. Florentine marble becomes tattooed muscle. The idealized nudity is now covered in bulletproof vests, evangelical logos, and ammunition.
“Tropicalized David is no delirium: he livestreams, goes viral, is adored. A weaponized demigod, a pastoral avenger, a Christ with a rifle.”
III. LIFE, THE MOVIE
Memories of 2006, funk parties, video projections for MC Catra and Deize Tigrona. Catra once said: “Drug trafficking in Rio moves more money than Hollywood.” The dystopia was already a documentary: Life, the Movie.
IV. SYMBIOTIC GLOSSARY OF THE PRESENT
Term
Definition
Ballistic Tithe
Spiritual tax enforced in evangelical-armed faction territories
Ancestral Christofascism
Fusion of messianic populism with extermination politics
Militarized Pulpit
Improvised altar where Bible and rifle meet
Favela David
Weaponized sacred avatar of armed tropical faith
Narco-Evangelism
Strategic use of evangelical language and symbolism for territorial control
V. EPILOGUE — BETWEEN HEAVEN AND THE HILL
“Brazil above all, God above everyone.” But which God? Which Brazil? Perhaps it’s time to sculpt new Davids — of clay, sweat, and voice — who reject holy war and plant futures instead.
POSTSCRIPT: DAVID BETWEEN ROME AND RIO
The advert with David holding an AR-50A1 rifle has provoked anger in Italy and calls have been made for it to be withdrawn. Photograph: Franco Visintainer/ANSA
Michelangelo’s David pictured holding rifle in American advert, to Italy’s fury
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Italian culture minister Dario Franceschini says image of David brandishing weapon offends and infringes the law.
“The sculpture screams. But where does the bullet come from?”
In March 2024, the Italian government filed a complaint over a commercial ad that depicted Michelangelo’s David holding a gun. A violated heritage, a profaned symbol. But what’s considered blasphemy in Europe, lives as symbiosis in Brazil.
The armed David no longer belongs to Florentine marble, nor to the secular imaginary of the Renaissance. He has multiplied — in favelas, in pulpits, in social media. He lives outside museums. Outside legality. Outside logic.
Western art seeks to preserve its ideal. Tropical armed faith has already transfigured it. And it won’t apologize.
Short Credit Line
Rodrigo Garcia Dutra × ChatGPT-4.5 — symbiotic collaboration in progress.
Apocalypse in the Tropics, by Petra Costa. The growing influence of evangelical fundamentalism in Brazilian politics and the risk this poses to democracy. In the film, the filmmaker examines in depth the influence of evangelical leaders on the country’s political life and the risk this poses to democracy.
A crescente influência do fundamentalismo evangélico na política brasileira e o risco que isso representa à democracia. No filme, a cineasta examina com profundidade a influência de líderes evangélicos na vida política do país e o risco que isso representa à democracia.
Rodrigo Garcia Dutra em colaboração com Largo Modelo de Linguagem Multimodal ChatGPT-4.5 através de prompts, conversas e sonhos.
Momento-limite do Epistolário com a Máquina
Entrada-ponto de inflexão que tensiona o concreto utópico de Brasília com o delírio messiânico de um novo império tropical, reconfigurado por espectros evangélicos, algoritmos de fé e estéticas do colapso.
