“Shoal”, Ziel Karapotó at the Venice Biennale. Photo: Fernanda Rennó
Fertilizing science and art
“Science can create an accurate and detailed portrait of a territory from data. But a territory goes beyond data, it is made up of stories , by perceptions, by dreams, by power relations. To balance our limited rationality we need a lot of sensitivity, we need culture
By Fernanda Rennó”
(Re)Knowing cultural practices is an inseparable path to sustainability.” The article “The Gardens of Venice and the Amazons” ends with that phrase, and this one begins with it. In a way, the next lines are a reflective continuity, a variation on the same theme: the Amazons and Brazil.
“The Amazon puts Brazil in the world and today’s Amazon takes Brazil out of the world. From a political point of view, there is no climate security without a protected Amazon” (Izabella Teixeira).
That Brazil should be in this scenario seems obvious, and to do so it is necessary to build an ambition for the Amazons. An ambition that can reconcile natural capital and social justice, which makes it possible to conserve the forest and improve the quality of life of the people who live in this territory by integrating different visions and perceptions, considering its immense territorial and sociocultural diversity.
Science can create an accurate and detailed portrait of a territory based on data. But a territory goes beyond data, it is made up of stories, perceptions, dreams, power relations. To balance our limited rationality we need a lot of sensitivity, we need culture.
Culture plays a fundamental role in the relationship between Brazilian society and the Amazon, covering aspects of identity, knowledge, conservation and development.
The presence of the forest and its diverse incorporation, as an object or as a subject, as an antagonist or as a partner, for example, imposes a first layer of meanings and cultural practices that guide the socioeconomic activities, their representations and their values. Culture is simultaneously the symbolic capacity – customs, ideas, beliefs and representations and the material structures – institutions, forms of material reproduction, patterns of behavior and coexistence regimes – transmitted and reinvented intergenerationally in a creative way by social groups to maintain their being and being in the world.
Cultures are permeated with historicity which, once assumed and investigated, allow us to uncover oppositions and conflicts between groups and within each social group. Culture can help to better understand the social context, anxieties, desires, conflicts and thus support the formulation of strategies and policies.
“Culture is key to placing the Amazon at the center of Brazil, at the center of the Brazilian mental universe. The Amazon needs to be part of the Brazilian identity, Brazilians have to be proud to be the country of the Amazon. It is necessary to break stereotypes and update imaginaries, presenting a more complex and respectful vision of this territory.”
Recognizing the Amazon as a shared heritage of all Brazilians reinforces the collective responsibility for its preservation and respect. Promoting Amazonian culture on the international stage can strengthen Brazil’s image as a diverse country committed to preserving its cultures and environment.
There are different possible ways to bring culture and science together, but, without a doubt, art is a very efficient gateway to this. Opening this door, two movements are essential: bringing science closer to art and bringing art closer to science. They are inverse but complementary movements, of tolerance and porosity of knowledge, visions and worldviews.
Bringing science closer to art
Art can be thought of and absorbed beyond aesthetics and delight, as information capable of raising awareness, enhancing and engaging. What does art say about contemporary and urgent themes? What does it provoke about different views? How does it present the relationships between people, space and time? How can all of this reconstitute, together with scientific data, a landscape, a more grounded narrative, capable of showing and engaging more people on contemporary and urgent topics?
The first step to bringing science closer to art is (re)knowledge. This is a complex effort that requires a multidisciplinary, collaborative and ongoing approach. The production is a bold and contemporary platform, an approach tool capable of giving visibility to the density, complexity and sociocultural riches of this territory, something that functions as a kind of atlas.
The creation of a Cultural Atlas of the Amazons manages to take the Amazons to Brazil and bring Brazil to the Amazons. An atlas with the value and historical weight of this concept, and the lightness and infinity of possibilities of the present and the future can reach the Amazon. Going means this, but it also means knowing.
Bringing art closer to science
New representations, new arts, new symbols are essential to illuminate provocations to the dynamism of the world based on important themes with scientific support.
Bringing art closer to science means inviting. It means invading technical and scientific environments with art, taking artists to main events and discussions about climate, nature and society to feed on data and facts, and, from a mixture of their cultural and artistic background, producing art. These arts will reach a much larger and diverse number of people, opening dialogues, bringing worlds together, raising awareness of visions, processes and actions.
The future of the world is linked to the future of the Amazon. There is no future without science, just as there is no world without art. The world of the future needs the fertilization of art with science and science with art.
*Fernanda Rennó has a PhD in Territorial Planning – Environment and Landscape, from the Université de Toulouse/UFMG. She is currently a member of the Governance Center of the initiative Uma Concertação pela Amazônia where she is also responsible for the Culture and Bioeconomy fronts
