ACTIVITIES
The 13th Mercosul Biennial will host the seminar "Zones of Contact " from July to November 2022 in the Multipurpose Hall of the Ling Institute, the event's cultural sponsor. Six meetings will bring together artists with diverse backgrounds and experiences for an active dialogue based on the conceptual framework of this edition of the exhibition, titled Trauma, Dream, and Escape. Organized by the 13th Biennial's Educational Project, the activities will be free and held on Saturdays, with a sign language interpreter. Registration is available on the Ling Institute website .
"Instead of the traditional lecture format, with one person speaking to an audience, the seminar will provide opportunities for community exchange through participatory dynamics. We will thus have perspectives to be debated and sensorially experienced, using the three key concepts that form the narrative line of this Biennial as triggers," says Germana Konrath, curator and coordinator of the Educational Project.
The seminar's title borrows the concept of "contact zones" coined by linguist Mary Louise Pratt and explored by anthropologist James Clifford in the context of museums to analyze social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and struggle, often in asymmetrical contexts of power, resulting in different possibilities for dissenting and transformative relationships.
PROGRAM OF THE SEMINAR “CONTACT ZONES”
July 23, 10am to noon
The dreamlike dimension of forest peoples
Speaker: Kaká Werá Jecupé, educator, therapist and writer
We are bombarded by a wide variety of sensations and impressions in our daily lives, which influence our personal unconscious, which in turn influences our behaviors and emotions. Given the "trash" of devastating news and the tensions surrounding the global situation during this pandemic, stimulating in each of us emotions of fear, anxiety, anger, and a feeling of hindrance in some aspects of our routine, we are challenged to care for and pay greater attention to our psyche and treat it appropriately. The ancestral wisdom of the forest peoples recognizes the dream dimension as a portal through which we can remove this "psychic garbage" and penetrate other, more subtle levels of reality. In this meeting, we will discuss the principles that govern dreams and how we can guide them.
Kaká Werá Jecupé is an educator, therapist, and writer. He has been providing activities and training for over 30 years, both in Brazil and abroad, focusing on the ancestral knowledge of Tupi culture.
July 23, 2pm to 4pm
The mythological and imagetic universe of Afro-Brazilian rituals
Speakers: Denise Camargo, visual artist, and Reginaldo Prandi, sociologist
The meeting promotes a question-and-answer dialogue that presents seminal readings and artistic productions, among other strategies. The goal is to explore the themes of Trauma, Dream, and Escape, drawing on the mythological and imagery of Afro-Brazilian rituals, such as Candomblé.
Reginaldo Prandi is a sociologist, writer, professor emeritus at the University of São Paulo, and a senior researcher at the National Council of Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). He has published over 30 books, including works on sociology, Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous mythology, children's literature, and fiction. Among his other works are "Mythology of the Orishas," "Kept Secrets," "My Dear Haunting," "Tales and Legends of the Amazon," "Death in the Cowrie Shells," "Aimó," and "Motives and Reasons to Kill and Die."
Denise Camargo is a visual artist, teacher, curator, and a Black woman who has been moved by the call of drums since a young age. She discovered the material for her artistic production in writing and photographic images and developed a taste for the narratives and experiences that guide creative processes. Her questions permeate the poetics of relationships, the ancestral roots of the Black diaspora, and bodies in territories of social and political resistance. With an autobiographical approach, these questions serve as vectors for her artistic practice: in her classroom, in project management at Ateliê Oju, in performative writing and reading, and in her own life. She is a professor in the Department of Visual Arts and the Graduate Program in Visual Arts at the University of Brasília.
August 27, 10am to noon
Art as a practice of connection
Speakers: Iaci Lomonaco (in-person) and Tino Sehgal (online)
The workshop aims to work the body and its full potential (speech, voice, movement) to access various energetic states that allow for a deep connection with the self, others, and everything around us. For Tino Sehgal, the living, awake body is fundamental to building new paths and new narratives. Working on our potential to feel and be in deep connection shows that it is possible to produce meaning and value through the transformation of actions, rather than the transformation of materials. Different elements of Tino Sehgal's work will be put into practice, focusing on meditative states and connection practices.
Please note: The audience will be invited to move, sing, and interact in body movements proposed by the speakers. Comfortable clothing and shoes are recommended. Participants should bring their own cushions, as chairs will not be available at the event, except in cases where necessary for health reasons.
Iaci Lomonaco is a multidisciplinary Brazilian woman. With degrees in Business Administration and Economics (FGV-EAESP), Performing Arts (Angel Viana - RJ), and a Master's in Strategy and Sustainability (Universitá Commerciale Luigi Bocconi), she has worked internationally in the financial market and as a senior consultant for the United Nations, helping to create, develop, and implement sustainable strategies for companies and local communities. Since 2014, she has directed and produced interdisciplinary projects that aim to create new ways of relating to the world through experiences that are not merely rational and reasoned, but that can also permeate and be permeated by current social, cultural, economic, and political contexts. During this process, she met Tino Sehgal, with whom she has worked strategically since 2014, directing, managing, installing, and producing her work in museums, art institutions, and public spaces worldwide, connecting art, embodiment, and sustainability.
Tino Sehgal was born in 1976 in London, England. He currently lives and works in Berlin. Recognized as one of the most important artists of his generation, Tino Sehgal's critical acclaim stems from his radical artistic practice, which takes the form of "constructed situations": live encounters between visitors and those performing the work. Their ephemeral beauty lies in the fleeting specificity of the encounter, where the performers often engage visitors with their active participation in the construction of the piece. Sehgal's abandonment of material production in favor of lived experience is, however, achieved with a sensitivity to classical considerations of form, composition, and space, grounded not only in the history of dance but also in Western traditions of sculpture and painting.
September 17, 10am to noon
Dream and adaptation
Speaker: Sidarta Ribeiro, neuroscientist
Since ancient times, our ancestors have known the fear of death and the trauma caused by aversive experiences, which lead to recurring nightmares. With each Sun and each Moon, our ancestors experienced the fierce struggle for survival and its fundamental dichotomy: fight or flight, kill or be killed. About 220 million years ago, among the animals that gave rise to our mammalian ancestors, a mental state evolved focused not on the external, real, and dangerous world, but on the internal, virtual, and harmless world, an ocean of recombinable memories we call the "unconscious," whose activation during sleep creates dreams. Competing for ecological space with countless fearsome species of dinosaurs, mammals evolved dreams for about 220 million years as a simulator of possible situations, capable of reverberating negative memories to form premonitory nightmares, as threatening as they are effective in modifying behaviors, generating learning and adaptation. During dreams, from the ocean of unconscious memories, creative ideas emerge capable of inferring the probabilities of the future, helping us navigate what has not yet been. In an environment marked by fierce competition for scarce resources, the evolution of dreams has created a renewable source of adaptive psychic energy, originating from the unconscious. The meeting will address this topic within the context of the social and environmental crisis facing the planet.
Note: The audience will be invited to move and interact in body dynamics proposed by the presenter. Comfortable clothing and shoes are recommended. Participants should bring their own cushions, as chairs will not be available at the event, except in cases where necessary for health reasons.
Sidarta Ribeiro is a capoeirista, a full professor of neuroscience, and one of the founders of the Brain Institute at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. His interests include memory, sleep, and dreams; neuronal plasticity; vocal communication; symbolic competence in nonhuman animals; computational psychiatry; neuroeducation; medicinal cannabis; psychedelics and drug policy. He is the author of over 100 scientific articles and six books, including *The Oracle of the Night* and *Manifest Dream*.
19 de novembro, 10h ao meio-dia
Estados expandidos de consciência: trauma, tabu, fuga, reconexão e expressão artística
Ministrantes: Antonio Pedro Goulart e Karin Grunwald, facilitadores de respiração holotrópica
Mergulharemos no universo dos estados expandidos de consciência: sua história, potenciais, riscos, polêmicas e abordagens terapêuticas. Veremos como os estados expandidos de consciência, parte fundamental da cultura de praticamente todos os povos desde o início da humanidade, passaram a ser desprezados, temidos e vilanizados pela civilização industrial ocidental, até ressurgirem com grande interesse científico nos dias atuais. Em seguida, abordaremos o potencial terapêutico dos estados ampliados de consciência e sua relação com os diversos tipos de trauma, explorando o tabu que envolve essa temática e a ligação entre fuga e reconexão. Também falaremos sobre os cuidados necessários para criar um ambiente apropriado (set and setting) para o trabalho com esses estados de consciência. Em especial, apresentaremos uma abordagem de autodescoberta e terapia, segura e poderosa, que trabalha com estados expandidos de consciência sem o uso de substâncias: a respiração holotrópica. Por último, veremos a importância de integrar as experiências vividas nesses estados expandidos, aproximando-as do dia a dia consensual e concreto. Como proposta de exercício com o público, vamos oferecer uma atividade com meditação guiada e expressão artística para entrarmos em um estado levemente expandido para acessarmos aspectos internos da nossa psique, conhecê-los e expressá-los por meio do desenho.
Karin Grunwald é designer, facilitadora certificada de respiração holotrópica desde 2017 e codiretora do Grof Legacy Training Brasil. Também é diretora da editora Numina, selo editorial que publicou os cinco últimos livros de Stanislav Grof no Brasil. Atua como terapeuta de Internal Family Systems (IFS), com formação pelo IFS Institute. Mora com seu marido, Antonio Pedro Goulart, na Fazenda Sítio Velho, refúgio ecológico entre Rio e São Paulo administrado por eles, onde são realizados os cursos de formação de facilitadores de Grof Breathwork (respiração holotrópica) e outros eventos e projetos ligados a terapia, sustentabilidade e expressão criativa. Karin também trabalhou por muitos anos como cenógrafa, sendo responsável por diversos projetos de museus, óperas e exposições.
Antonio Pedro Goulart é mestre em filosofia, facilitador certificado de respiração holotrópica desde 2015 e codiretor do Grof Legacy Training Brasil. Também é editor e diretor da Numina, selo editorial que publicou os cinco últimos livros de Stanislav Grof no Brasil. Atua como terapeuta de Internal Family Systems (IFS), com formação pelo IFS Institute. Mora com sua mulher, Karin Grunwald, na Fazenda Sítio Velho, refúgio ecológico entre Rio e São Paulo administrado por eles, onde são realizados os cursos de formação de facilitadores de Grof Breathwork (respiração holotrópica) e outros eventos e projetos ligados a terapia, sustentabilidade e expressão criativa.
22 de outubro, 10h ao meio-dia
Corpo_soma | Tecnologia travesti – Da puberdade sintética à evolução da espécie
Ministrante: Nídia Aranha, artista
O corpo é uma produção histórica, cultural e política, sempre em mudança. Portanto, não possui uma natureza transcendental ou universal, mas é uma materialidade provisória, mutável. Está sujeito às mais diversas transformações produzidas por diferentes tecnologias: jurídica, política, cultural, médica etc. “O corpo é uma falsa evidência, não é um dado inequívoco, mas o efeito de uma elaboração social e cultural”, afirma David Le Breton (2006). É plástico e relacional, pode ser feito e desfeito através do uso de hormônios, cirurgias, outras estratégias e uma série de modificações corporais pode ser realizada e ressignificada. A experiência travesti nos mostra que até a matéria molecular é temporária e artificial, podendo ser moldada através de diferentes tecnologias. Tudo é uma questão de doses, de hábito e miligramas.
Nídia Aranha é artista visual, estudou Design de Produto & Comunicação Visual na Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro e atua como diretora de arte e pesquisadora em Antropologia Visual. Sua prática artística passa pela construção de narrativas visuais subversivas com elementos ficcionais e documentais, que tangenciam relações de desobediência de gênero; pelo design crítico e especulativo – assumindo os mais variados suportes: dispositivos laboratoriais, protéticos e instrumental cirúrgicos fazendo uso de técnicas de ourivesaria –; e por práticas de biohacking, tendo a performatividade e seus registros (pintura, fotografia, manipulação digital e videografia) enquanto afirmação dessas metodologias científicas experimentais.