Still from “Retomada” (2020).

In Portuguese: Retomada

The “Resumption” project is based on the need and urgency to imagine possible futures in this present moment. A vision of what “humanity” could be, within the realm of a colonizing western interpretation, no longer serves us. 

The humanity we envision cannot be thought of without being close to the earth. In fact, it has never been free to be appropriated and lost. It is the extension of our bodies. The idea of “natural resources” is no longer supported, nature is neither a “resource” nor an “object” of appropriation. The human being is not the only subject on the planet.

In the three virtual worlds that we created, the separation between areas of accumulation of natural “wealth,” and areas of land exploration, are connected visually by tractors and ants. The former represents the order of what is called “progress,” which actually creates inequalities and scars in the earth-bodies of the world. 

Ants suggest an opposite path, they are the ones that indicate other possibilities of experiences, and cures. They are present in the three spaces created, they remain representing micropolitics wherever they go, while the tractors do not support each other, going only part of the way.

We understand that decolonizing is a project, as well as a process. That is why we created three worlds: that of the present, that of the imagined future, and that which is between these two poles. Between the world we live in (which seems unsustainable to us) and another, which represents a possible path of permanence. Through this space between worlds we are able to access the imagined future, and the voices present in this one announce that a possible path to the future is done through the return gesture itself. Davi Kopenawa and Ailton Krenak, Brazilian indigenous leaders and thinkers, represent this knowledge. The same thing that does not disassociate the land from being. We built this space based on what they, among others, tell us.

The world to come, in this project, is not considered something so distant and utopian. Examples of actions coming from our own continent already blur the boundaries between the imagined and the real, which we played with. After all, it is more than necessary to dilute all types of borders that insist on presenting themselves. As stated before, decolonization is a process and it is what we believe in.

https://www.aaibrazil.com/exhibition/retomada

Community Project Members:

  • Wenderson Carneira
  • Guidyon Augusto Almeida Lima
  • Beatriz Correia Campos
  • Artur Souza
  • Mariana Fonseca Machado
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