Terrestrial University: Ciné-Cipó – Cine-Liana at Amazon Tall Tower Observatory

Critical Zones | Terrestrische Universität


[08.10.2020]


Barbara Marcel in conversation


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.


The conversation between the artist and the curator, Bettina
Korintenberg, will focus on the development process of the
artistic inquiry evolving around encounters with the scientists
and the local activists which sensitize for the complexity and
heterogeneity of an interplay of life processes in the Amazon
beyond set concepts of nature, environment and climate crisis.


The artist and director Barbara Marcel, who was born in Rio de
Janeiro and earned her doctorate at the Bauhaus University
Weimar, has for many years been engaged in interdisciplinary
projects that investigate contemporary ecological and social
problems and issues in an artistic and scientific way.