Mostra TransAmazônias

Exhibition

TransAmazônias: Zonas Imaginárias

(TransAmazonias: Imaginary Zones)

Museu de Lisboa - Teatro Romano / Lisbon

Cinema -fora- dos Leões / Évora

Ruins of the Roman Villa of São Cucufate / Vila de Frades, Vidigueira

TransAmazônias: Zonas Imaginárias

Amazonian Dystopia | Catalogue

During the first encounter of the Antropocenica series in Portugal, the exhibition TransAmazônias: Zonas Imaginárias (TransAmazonias: Imaginary Zones) formed part of the programme as an artistic-cultural event, initiated especially in Lisbon.

Within the broader context that motivates the Antropocenica series itself, we elected the Amazon as the central theme of the exhibition in 2022: a vast territory of South America where original peoples (some still in relative isolation) coexist alongside the impacts of economic activities across diverse fronts of exploitation (which advance even upon indigenous lands), impacts at various levels, many transcending borders, threatening the equilibrium of the biome and its interaction, on a global scale, with the biosphere in times of Climate Change. In this sense, we see the Amazon as a synthesis-territory of the complex questions involved in predatory dynamics under the Anthropocene, revealing the human and environmental drama expressed in contemporary Amazonian landscapes, in mutation, under the impulse of violence in exploitative forms, in contrast with the lived experience of indigenous cultures who inhabit the forest.

But would it be possible to comprehend this territory, considering only one Amazon, univocal?

Others coexist. From those that were named, without our knowing today how they were called, by names thus created by their first human inhabitants—who enquired of the environment and gave names to places, plants, creatures—to those experienced by ancient descendant ethnicities, who thus transformed the places once again into cultural landscapes; until that other Amazon—the one most widely diffused amongst urban societies—imagined and represented (textually and visually) by the first Europeans and all others who entered, by land and water, into the recesses of the great forest, transforming ancestral landscapes once more into other realities, through fronts of colonisation, old and new, in a process that, ultimately, still marches through the territory, centuries hence.

We might perhaps see the Amazon—and comprehend it—as a vast territory of imaginaries, which transcends any reductive vision that would define it—and confine it—to a single mode of existence.

From top left, clockwise: resident of the Arapixi Extractive Reserve, in Boca do Acre, Amazonas state, cuts vegetation for the passage of a canoe to the Brazil nut collection area in the interior of the forest; women and girls of the Pirahã ethnic group observe drivers passing along the Transamazon Highway, hoping to receive some food donation; a man of the Yawalapiti ethnic group walks in his village, enveloped by the smoke that covered the Xingu Indigenous Park, in the devastation of the forest by provoked fires; gold miners work in gold mining at one of the largest gold extraction zones in the northern region of Mato Grosso state. Photographs: Lalo de Almeida.

The exhibition began on 7 October 2022, with the sound-scenic piece A Última Árvore (The Last Tree), specially conceived by Silvio Luiz Cordeiro to introduce the presentation by photojournalist Lalo de Almeida, with projection of images from his award-winning photographic series Distopia Amazônica (Amazonian Dystopia) at the Museu de Lisboa - Teatro Romano, within the archaeological site itself where the Ruins of the Ancient Theatre (1st century AD) are visible, monumental structure component of the urban landscape in the times of Felicitas Iulia Olisipo (1st century AD), proceeding afterwards to Évora, on 8 October, with screenings of films by directors Jorge Bodanzky and Andrea Tonacci at Cinema -fora- dos Leões / Auditório Soror Mariana. On 9 October, films by Silvio Luiz Cordeiro about a riverside community in the Amazon and by artist Janaína Wagner, also made in the Amazon region, were screened, both viewed at the Ruins of the Roman Villa of São Cucufate, in Vidigueira, Vila de Frades.

In the exhibition thus proposed, the screened films and photographs projected amongst the ruins formed an expressive and hybrid ensemble of documentary images and multiple imaginaries unveiling, in the vast theatre of the Amazon, the tragedy present there, which actualises violent forms of colonisation established across time.

TransAmazônias: Zonas Imaginárias (TransAmazonias: Imaginary Zones) articulates itself as a conceptual proposition that transports temporalities and transits through images of this immense territory on the South American continent, in the curatorship of photographs produced by Lalo de Almeida, projected at an important archaeological and historical site in Lisbon, as well as in the selection of films by Tonacci and Bodanzky screened in Évora, alongside films by Silvio Luiz Cordeiro and artist Janaína Wagner, both in open-air projection at the archaeological site that houses the ruins from the times of Roman colonisation in Portugal.

In the larger image, the indigenist Sydney Possuelo leads in 2002 a major three-month expedition to the Vale do Javari Indigenous Land, in the Amazon, an area with the highest concentration of isolated peoples in the world. In the adjacent image, above, Possuelo paddling along the Jutaí River with an indigenous person of the Matis ethnic group who was part of the team, in a canoe constructed during the expedition itself, utilising ancestral indigenous technique, as observed in the two images immediately below, which document part of the process. Images: Nicolas Reynard / National Geographic.

On 8 October, within the Cinema -fora- dos Leões of the University of Évora, we held two special sessions. The first was dedicated to Andrea Tonacci, Italian filmmaker established in Brazil, who passed away in 2016, honoured with the screening of Serras da Desordem, a masterpiece in contemporary Brazilian cinematography. In this tribute, participated filmmaker Cristina Amaral (through a personal account, recorded on video), editor of Serras da Desordem, and the indigenist Sydney Possuelo, character in the film, equally honoured at the event, above all for his work in defence of isolated peoples in the Amazon region. The second session was a tribute to Jorge Bodanzky, co-director of Iracema - Uma Transa Amazônica, a hybrid work, between documentary and fiction, which lays bare the human and environmental degradation of the region, filmed during the military dictatorship in Brazil, screening followed by a debate with Jorge Bodanzky, Sydney Possuelo and Lalo de Almeida.

Concluding the exhibition, on 9 October, a video was screened relating to human presence—past and contemporary—in the Amazon directed by Silvio Luiz Cordeiro and, finally, the film Curupira e a Máquina do Destino (Curupira and the Machine of Destiny), by artist Janaína Wagner, which closed the exhibition.

PROGRAMA 2

Mostra

TransAmazônias: Zonas Imaginárias

Dia 07/10/2022 - Lisboa

Museu de Lisboa - Teatro Romano

18:30 - 20:00 . Abertura da Mostra TransAmazônias: Zonas Imaginárias

Intervenção cênica no Museu de Lisboa - Teatro Romano: projeção de imagens da premiada série fotográfica Distopia Amazônica na presença do autor, o fotojornalista Lalo de Almeida, nas ruínas

Mediação de Dirk Michael Hennrich, Maria da Conceição Lopes e Silvio Luiz Cordeiro

Dia 08/10/2022 - Évora

Auditório Soror Mariana / Cinema -fora- dos Leões da Universidade de Évora

14:00 - 14:15 . Mostra TransAmazônias: Zonas Imaginárias

Recepção com Ana Paula Amendoeira, Dirk Michael Hennrich, Luís Ferro e Silvio Cordeiro

14:15 - 16:30 . Sessão Especial 1

Exibição de Serras da Desordem (Dir. Andrea Tonacci)

16:30 . 17:30 . Homenagem a Andrea Tonacci com a presença de Sydney Possuelo e participação especial (em vídeo) da cineasta Cristina Amaral, montadora de Serras da Desordem

Mediação de Alemberg Quindins

17:30 - 18:00 . Coffee Break

18:00 - 19:30 . Sessão Especial 2

Exibição de Iracema - uma Transa Amazônica (Dir. Jorge Bodanzky e Orlando Senna), homenagem a Jorge Bodanzky

19:30 - 21:00 . Debate com Jorge Bodanzky, Sydney Possuelo e Lalo de Almeida. Mediação de Luís Ferro

21:00 . Confraternização

Dia 09/10/2022 - Vila de Frades / Vidigueira

Ruínas da Villa Romana de São Cucufate

11:00 . Transferência coletiva de Évora para Vidigueira (convidados, participantes e ouvintes)

12:00 - 12:30 . Recepção com Rui Raposo, Presidente da Câmara Municipal de Vidigueira

12:30 - 15:00 . Almoço

15:30 . Transferência coletiva para as Ruínas da Villa Romana de São Cucufate (convidados, participantes e ouvintes)

16:00 - 16:15 . Recepção com Rui Raposo, Presidente da Câmara Municipal de Vidigueira

16:15 - 17:30 . Visita guiada às Ruínas da Villa Romana de São Cucufate com a arqueóloga Maria da Conceição Lopes

17:30 - 18:00 . Palestra de Adriana Veríssimo Serrão {Ruína Histórica e Ruína Metafísica}

18:00 - 19:30 . Confraternização

19:30 - 20:30 . Sessão Especial de Encerramento de Antropocênica 2022 com Dirk Michael Hennrich e exibição dos filmes Amanã (Dir. Silvio Cordeiro) e Curupira e a Máquina do Destino (Dir. Janaína Wagner)

20:30 - 21:30 . Debate com os autores

22:00 . Regresso para Évora