03.09. – 10.10.2021
The impenetrable expanse of the Amazon rainforest and the proximity of locally accessible airwaves of a community radio station, scientific knowledge and traditional knowledge, global and regional processes – Barbara Marcel’s artistic work is an attempt to sensitize people to the complex interaction of life processes in the Amazon region.
The Amazon rainforest is of global significance: it produces a large part of the planet’s oxygen, filters and reprocesses the world´s harmful carbon dioxide, impacts the water cycle affecting ocean cycles and stabilize the climate. Located in the middle of the Amazon rainforest the Amazon Tall Tower (ATTO) aims to study the interactions between the forest, soils and atmosphere of the region in order to understand the role of the Amazon basin for the Earth system. The tower is part of an international cooperation between Brazil and Germany, built and financed by INPA (Amazon Research Institute) and Max-Planck Institute.
In the artistic project »Ciné-Cipó – Cine-Liana« (2020) the Brazilian artist Barbara Marcel proposes a temporary transformation of the tower into a community radio workspace for a collaborative piece between natural scientists and two local activists and popular communicators of the Tapajós-Arapiuns river Extractive Reserve (Reserva Extrativista/ Resex Tapajós-Arapiuns). The scientific results and traditional knowledges are set in relation, forming an alliance for the defense of the Amazonian biodiversity. Atmospheric and earthly data are translated into popular communication via a radio show with spots, interviews and songs. During the process, scientific evidence and ancestral knowledges sometimes intersect and occasionally disconnect, while the scientific community listens and also learns more about the struggles in defence of the territories and local livelihoods of the Amazonian populations, demystifying universalizing assumptions.
Four-channel video installation, color, sound, ca. 90 min., dimensions variable.
Produced in collaboration with the ZKM | Karlsruhe
Barbara Marcel with Natalina do Carmo Oliveira, Milena Raquel Tupinambá
Presenting Natalina do Carmo Oliveira, Milena Raquel Tupinambá; Direction and Production: Barbara Marcel; Image: Felipe Frozza, Barbara Marcel; Direct Sound: Anne Santos; Set Production: Kandyê Medina, Thais Helena Medeiros, Bruna Bichara; Editing: Célia Freitas, edt.; Editing Assistance: Beatriz Krieger, Felipe Frozza; Sound Mixing: Sarah Lelièvre; Colorist: Guilherme Begué; Finishing Editor: Beatriz Krieger; Music: Suraras do Tapajós
Funded by: Instituto Serrapilheira, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry Jena
Supported by: INPA-National Institute of Amazonian Research, Goethe-Institut São Paulo, Casa Bicho
The ATTO project is funded by: German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovations, Max Planck Society, Finep, Fapeam, and Fundação Eliseu Alves.
Barbara Marcel (*1985, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) studied at the Bauhaus University Weimar, the Institute for Art in Context at the University of the Arts in Berlin and at the Universidade Estácio de Sá in Rio de Janeiro. Her work has been shown at ZKM, Karlsruhe; nGbK, Berlin; Savvy Contemporary Berlin; Espacio Pla, Buenos Aires; Tieranatomisches Theater, Humboldt University Berlin; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; CeNak – Zoological Museum Hamburg; Athens Biennale and Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig, among others. She is a fellow of the Heinrich Böll Foundation and has lived in Berlin since 2009.
https://www.barbaramarcel.com.br/
Curated by Agustina Andreoletti
The exhibition is part of the program of *WELL at Ebertplatz.
Funding
Kulturamt der Stadt Köln, Stiftung Kunstfonds, Neustart Kultur