"Can you see us? Do we exist? How does something that doesn't exist come to be extinct?
I feel small like a seed.
I want to dissapear
desappear
disappear?
and then I feel ashamed.
I have everything and I am free. Shouldn’t
I want to live? To stay?
I feel too much.
Many tears
Much water
I am drowning.
I am angry.
Selfish
Selfish
Selfish
My face is burning.
I feel the void.
Lack of matter, what literally doesn’t matter - how Karen Barad states.
But there is so much.
It is burning and floating. It matters, the inner space.
Physical, material, ethereal.
Sources, ressources, more than work: labor.
May we be able to dream
as a way to exist, we dream. Pray, wish, magical thinking.
We keep believing.
The water that drowns our dreams and the fire that burns our wishes, we use them to keep dreaming (drinking?)
wishing (praying)
I don’t know much about the sertao, the seaside, hunger. I know the dry season - a bit. I don’t know poverty, flood, lack of energy but I know sadness. I don’t know about the speed, the public, but I know revelry and melancholy - loneliness in the crowd. Holy Mother and Oxum, I know both, but I feel more than I know. I know that waterfall water is cold and I respect the sea but the river is what carries my tears and my heart. September is when the soil is red as my blood on my pillow.
This is the place from where I speak and I can only talk about myself. I hope to make others feel what is so cherished to me as I can feel what I’ve heard people say, sing, paint, write on writings by people I never met. I hope it reaches the interior."
Extinction only comes after existence. Being born in Cerrado, the Brazilian savannah, provides the perspective that ecological awareness is deeply related to culture.
This performative ritual celebrates the Cerrado's existence by exploring its distinctive contorted trees and summoning the seeds of knowledge from Distrito Federal, one of the areas where the biome persists.
May we learn the teachings of this biome that nourishes itself with fire.
Credits
Research: Geovanna Belizze.
Documentation: Camille Simon Baudry, Manuel Bellotto e Mark Nicolic
