In theatre, as in cinema — but also in painting, engraving, and photography, in images related to narrative contexts — the scene comprises a certain dramatic unity of narrative, of theatrical or filmic montage. If at the origins of theatre amongst the Hellenes the scene (skene) was a central physical apparatus in the zone where performance unfolded, over time the term's meaning came to designate the entire stage area and, subsequently, through further extension, the imaginary, dramatic locus, so to speak, of staged events — that is, of action. In Antropocenica, we take the concept for what the word conveys, drawing both from the ancient sense —stage-place of action — and from the theoretical field of theatre and audiovisual arts, the scene considered also in its temporal quality, that is, as a certain unity (or dynamic) recognised within the scope of narrative. Here the relationship we establish with landscape becomes evident, or rather, with a particular moment of this landscape in history: the skyline of a contemporary metropolis, for instance, as a specific scene of urban form and life, emblematic of the hegemonic civilisation of the present time.
Silvio Luiz Cordeiro