O Branco Domínio da Terra (The White Dominion of Earth), poster for Antropocénica 3. Click on the image to read about the conception of the art of this graphic piece. Image: Silvio Luiz Cordeiro.
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Antropocenica 3
Portugal and Cape Verde 2024
In continuity with the decolonial dialogues fostered by Antropocénica, 2024 presents significant commemorations as symbolic and reflective horizons for the third encounter of the international series: the centenary of Amílcar Cabral's birth (1924), the fiftieth anniversary of the Revolução dos Cravos (Carnation Revolution) (1974) and of Guinea-Bissau's Independence (1973–1974), the 530 years since the Treaty of Tordesilhas (1494), amongst others. Faced with this opportunity, we valorise the memory of a revolutionary leader whose thought, action and influence proved essential within the historical context of struggles for independence of the former Portuguese colonies in Africa; we recognise the centrality of national liberation struggles (1961–1974) to the Carnation Revolution that overthrew, fifty years ago, Portugal's protracted and violent fascist dictatorship; and we critically revisit diverse imaginaries of colonial imperialisms constructed in modernity, such as the aforementioned treaty between the Iberian kingdoms, which exposed the conditions for territorial and human domination by both expanding empires, as they began to exploit all "that is yet to be discovered in the ocean sea"; and which established, under Portuguese dominion, "that all that is hitherto found and discovered, and henceforth shall be found and discovered by the said lord king of Portugal and by his ships, both islands and mainland", according to the imaginary division of the terrestrial globe by the "straight line from pole to pole, namely from the Arctic pole to the Antarctic pole, which is from north to south (...) at three hundred and seventy leagues from the Cape Verde Islands towards the west". From ancient imaginaries (including in cartographic form) and the expressed violence of dystopian and incendiary scenes—for instance, in paintings such as O Inferno (The Inferno) (c. 1515), by an unknown Portuguese Master, and Tentações de Santo Antão (Temptations of Saint Anthony), Jheronimus Bosch's triptych (c. 1500), both from the collection of the National Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon—we consider certain "worldviews" that emerge, within their respective historical moments, as representative forms in the affirmation of ideas which, in these cited examples, participate in a broader Western imaginary, under the political—and religious—power of expanding European colonial empires. In this vein, this time within the scope of imaginary elaborated in literature, another highly significant commemoration amplifies the potential for reflection in Antropocénica on colonial expansion: the 500 years since the birth of Luís Vaz de Camões (c. 1524), author of Os Lusíadas, an essential work of the Portuguese language and a monument to Portugal's imperial power, within the historical context experienced by the poet.
We propose as the theme of Antropocénica 3 the title "Earth: Resistance and Re-existence", emphasising the essential critical focus of the series throughout its triennial journey: understanding the problems and impacts upon Earth, transformed by human agency through multiple processes of colonial, slave-holding and extractivist exploitation throughout history, leads us to rethink our existence on the planet, provoking us towards activism as a potential form of resistance against the hegemony of a predatory system and an acceleration directly influencing Climate Change, whose impacts diffuse and amplify, as floods and forest fires exemplify with extreme gravity. Amílcar Cabral was an agronomic engineer who studied the problem of soil erosion in Alentejo, a determining experience in recognising the links between exploitation and degradation, which would later influence subsequent developments within the context of his political action and revolutionary struggle for liberation. The lectures delivered by Cabral in 1969, published under the title Análise de Alguns Tipos de Resistência (Analysis of Some Types of Resistance), instigate this new encounter of the series to reflect upon forms of resisting in order to overcome the condition of life imposed by capitalism: to resist so as to propose ways of re-existing in the world.
The title encompasses two central concepts within Amílcar Cabral's thought and action, in both theory and militant practice: Earth (1) understood not merely as geological entity, but above all in relation to African territories liberated from colonial oppression and dominion, when forms of revolutionary Resistance (2) configured themselves and prevailed until liberation from Portuguese colonial power in 1974.
Both terms—Earth and Resistance—are taken up in the present with emphasis upon their revolutionary essence, considered within existing struggles of various marginalised and oppressed communities and population groups, especially in countries of the so-called Global South, marked by the history of colonial expansion in modernity, initiated by Portuguese navigations in the fifteenth century. Today we witness the importance of territorial self-determination for diverse communities and ethnicities as a fundamental condition for guaranteeing their existences. Thus, to resist becomes an act of struggle for the right to ancestral territories, inhabited by successive generations across time, and threatened by progressive predatory economic exploitation of Earth and its beings, with impacts at various levels that accelerate Climate Change.
At the same time, however, contemporary resistance cannot be conceived without the urgency of a global paradigm shift—a theoretical and practical transformation in how we inhabit and exist upon the planet—responding to the local and regional needs of diverse communities within their cultural landscapes. The resistance of Earth and the resistance of peoples who dwell upon it and struggle to defend and survive in their ancient places today constitutes, more than ever, a form of global resistance, transcending national borders to envision a diverse future of mutual respect between humans and non-humans, a biodiverse re-existence, a global community amongst beings no longer subjugated by capitalist hegemony.
We consider the contemporaneity of the concepts Earth, Resistance and Re-existence as necessary for transgressing the anthropocentrism of the Anthropocene and thus rethinking the global existence of our species on the planet, the impacts of an urban way of life subjected to capitalism worldwide. We summon reflection upon "the scenes of human drama in the theatre of a changing world", a drama involving all forms of existence. Since the series' inception, in taking up the metaphor of Earth as Theatre, we expose critique of technology's power, directed in modernity towards ends of geopolitical and geoeconomic dominion in the broadest sense, exercised by groups that reduce Earth to a mere theatre of capitalist operations, wherein all beings are enveloped by the complex dynamics of world transformation—a historical drama with protagonist and supporting actors of the predatory system (transnational corporations and national states subjugated by oppressive, reactionary, neoliberal political forces), with actors who resist (critical social organisations, activist figures, oppressed ethnicities), with actors who survive whilst marginalised, with alienated actors, spectator extras subjected to the society of the spectacle, amongst other possible relations this metaphor opens.
In this spirit, we invited Teat(r)o Oficina to participate in Antropocénica 3 as a means of celebrating the memory of struggle embodied by playwright, actor and director José Celso Martinez Corrêa, who went into exile in Portugal fifty years ago (1974) alongside other members of the theatrical company, amongst them Celso Luccas, with whom he directed and produced two films: O Parto (The Birth), about the Revolução dos Cravos; and 25, about FRELIMO and the revolution in Mozambique (1975).
Launched in the same year that a civil-military coup d'état (1964) established the violent and oppressive military dictatorial regime in Brazil (1964–1985), Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol (God and the Devil in the Land of the Sun), an essential Cinema Novo film, reaches its sixtieth anniversary in 2024, a commemoration celebrating the memory of Glauber Rocha, leading figure in the history of Brazilian cinematography, recognised worldwide. Other of his films, of particular interest to the general theme of Antropocénica's third encounter—Terra em Transe (Entranced Earth) (1967), O Dragão da Maldade contra o Santo Guerreiro / Antonio das Mortes (The Dragon of Evil Against the Holy Warrior / Antonio das Mortes) (1968), Der Leone Have Sept Cabeças (The Lion Has Seven Heads) (1970) and A Idade da Terra (The Age of the Earth) (1980)—alongside his two manifestos, Uma Estética da Fome (An Aesthetic of Hunger) (1965) and Eztetyka do Sonho (Eztetyka of the Dream) (1971), incite reflection upon conflicts that, at diverse levels and within various contexts, express the violence of power in exploited territories, whilst also revealing the potency of the imaginary and mythical dimensions within human societies.
In its third and concluding encounter, the series brought together in 2024 participants of ten nationalities (Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Germany, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe, Spain and United States of America). Throughout its collective three-year journey, the Antropocénica series strengthens itself as a site of critical and creative encounter, as a strategy of resistance, as a proposition for re-existence within landscapes profoundly transformed by capitalism in this epoch of ruin production, in the world we inhabit.
See the complete programme in the sphere below:
Co-Creators
Philosopher
Artist, Architect and Archaeologist
Co-Founders
Writer and Philosopher
Philosopher
Archaeologist
Artist, Architect and Archaeologist
Coordination Antropocenica 3
Earth: Resistance and Re-Existence
Portugal and Cabo Verde 2024
Visual Artist
Philosopher . Centro de Filosofia . Universidade de Lisboa
Archaeologist . Centro de Estudos em Arqueologia, Artes e Ciências do Património . Universidade de Coimbra
Political Scientist, Internationalist, and Sociologist . Universidade de Cabo Verde
Artist, Architect and Archaeologist . Centro de Estudos em Arqueologia, Artes e Ciências do Património . Universidade de Coimbra
Special Participation
Teatro de Encruzilhada | Núcleo do Teat(r)o Oficina
São Paulo - Brasil
Ayomi Domênica
Cafira Zoé
Camila Mota
Fefê Camilo
Joel Carlos
Letícia Coura
Rodrigo Andreolli
Sylvia Prado
Vick Nefertiti
Participants
Executive Director . Associação Lantuna
Visual Artist, Poet, Actress and Director . Teat(r)o Oficina . Universidade Antropófaga
Visual Artist, Singer, Actress and Director . Teat(r)o Oficina . Universidade Antropófaga
Faculty of Letters . Centre for Social Studies . University of Coimbra
Visual Artist
Philosopher . Centre for Philosophy . University of Lisbon
Filmmaker . Mediateca Onshore . HfG Karlsruhe
Philosopher . Independent Researcher
Literary Critic . Centre for Comparative Studies . Faculty of Letters . University of Lisbon
Archaeologist . Museu de Lisboa - Teatro Romano
Luanda Francine Garcia da Costa
Psychoanalyst . Centre for Philosophy . University of Lisbon
Marine Biologist . Faculty of Sciences and Technology . University of Cape Verde
Archaeologist . Centre for Studies in Archaeology, Arts and Heritage Sciences . University of Coimbra
Storyteller . Mediateca Onshore . DINÂMIA'CET-ISCTE
Anthropologist . Programme in Anthropology and Archaeology . Federal University of Western Pará
Political Scientist, Internationalist and Sociologist . University of Cape Verde
Internationalist and Political Scientist . University of Santiago - Cape Verde
Sociologist . Doctoral Candidate in Urban Studies . FCSH-UNL and ISCTE-IUL
Doctoral Candidate in Political Science . ISCTE-IUL
Artist, Architect and Archaeologist . Centre for Studies in Archaeology, Arts and Heritage Sciences . University of Coimbra
Art
Visual Identity and Website Design
Nômade
Silvio Luiz Cordeiro
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