Culture and Climate: Rainforest Utopias

The rainforest is on fire. Profiteering and greed are destroying one of the world's most important ecosystems. The Amazon, the green lung of the planet, has itself become a CO2 emitter, fueling climate change.

What answers does art have for the fragile state of the world? Art can be a warning, shake things up, and look for solutions. Arts.21 travels to Brazil and Cameroon to meet artists and show projects with a vision for a better future.

Emerson Pontes is a performer and scientist with both European and Indigenous roots. As the alter ego Uýra Sodoma, Emerson morphs into a hybrid creature to draw attention to the complex connections between our environment and ecosystems, and direct the western European gaze towards the way Indigenous people see the world.  

Emerson was born in Mojuí dos Campos, a village in the Amazonian region of Pará in northern Brazil. At the age of five, their family moved to the rainforest metropolis of Manaus. Here, Emerson studied biology and earned a master's degree in Ecology.

As Uýra Sodoma, Emerson combines academic knowledge with Indigenous spiritual knowledge – and their experiences as a non-binary trans person. For Emerson, art is an attempt to represent the interconnectedness of the world, life, and nature. 

The destruction of the rainforests has dramatic consequences for the world – and directly impacts the lives of indigenous people.

In southwestern Cameroon, near the coastal town of Kribi, a better future is under construction. Warka Village is being built in harmony with nature, using traditional materials and construction methods. The project’s central feature is a tower that can collect up to 25,000 liters of condensation and rainwater and filter it into drinking water. Clean water is scarce here.

The village is being built with the help of local communities, under the direction of project manager Barbara Edmonda Guessen from Cameroon and Italian architect Antonio Vittori. He has worked on similar projects before, integrating scientific research to create better solutions, and is familiar with difficult environmental conditions.

Warka Village is intended to be a place where people can live in harmony with nature and be self-sufficient. The Bagyeli people, who were driven out of the rainforests because of deforestation, could be among its future residents.

Warka Village should be ready to welcome residents in two years’ time. The project is also an attempt to preserve the Bagyelis’ traditional knowledge of sustainable building materials and techniques, and to share this with the global North.

That’s a concern that is also dear to Kay Sara. She was born in Iauaretê, Brazil, on the border with Colombia in the state of Amazonas. Her mother belongs to the indigenous Tariana and her father, the Tukano. When Kay Sara was seven, her family moved to Manaus. Today, she lives in São Paulo, and speaks up for indigenous issues as an actress and activist. As early as the 1990s, Kay Sara’s grandparents starred in films, followed by her parents, and now she and her siblings are actors as well. The films tell stories of straddling two worlds, of the struggle for survival and of disappearing cultures.

Rainforest preservation is an existential matter. Indigenous people, climate researchers and environmentalists, but also activists and human rights advocates such as Swiss playwright and filmmaker Milo Rau, are fighting for this. He has made the Amazon the setting for a new production of the ancient tragedy "Antigone." It’s the story of the struggle of divine law versus human rights.

Antigone is also a symbol of the ongoing culture war in Brazil between the government and the indigenous people who have to fight for their land and for survival. More rainforest is being destroyed than ever before: for mining projects, for agriculture and the timber industry. Instead of protecting the rainforest - as climate experts demand and the laws intend - the government is trying to drive out indigenous people in order to make way for yet more deforestation.

"For us," says Kay Sara, "it's always been about how we can live in harmony with nature. You take something from it, but you also give something back, in the shared interest of living together. That´s not the case anymore. People just take. As a result, we are experiencing a global catastrophe. Indigenous people can teach the world to live more sustainably."

 

 

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