AMAZONAS – A theater-music in three parts

This page is a record of the opera Amazon – Music Theatre in Three Parts production process  and presents my reflection on such cross-cultural experiment.

The project had Artist’s conception of Peter Ruzicka, Peter Weibel, Laymert Garcia dos Santos; Consulting Bruce Albert, David Kopenawa, Siegfried Mauser; Initiative Joachim Bernauer, José Wagner Garcia. By SESC São Paulo, Goethe Institute, Munich Biennale (Ale), ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe (Ger), Hutukara Yanomami Association, National Theater of Sao Carlos in Lisbon (Por);

All texts presented here are excerpts from the article Prolegômenos da ópera multimídia Amazônia originally published in Cadernos de Subjetividade (PUCSP), v. 13, p. 28-53, 2011; and the book Transcultural Amazonas: shamanism and technoscience in the opera, published in two languages by Editora n-1 in 2014, which records the process, says the show and reflects on his aesthetic and political implications more broadly.

For more reviews held in the show itself, with description of its three parts, click here.

AMAZONAS – A theater-music in three parts

Prolegomenon

Conceptual considerations regarding an aesthetico-political transcultural experiment

On May 8, 2010, in the Munich Reithalle, during the Twelfth Biennial of Contemporary Music Theatre a series of five performances of the opera Amazonas – Music Theatre in Three Parts was held – to be repeated later, between July 21 and July 25 at Sesc Pompeia, in São Paulo. The work, more than four years in the making, deserves critical reflection because, unless I am mistaken, it inaugurated a new type of international cooperation and transcultural experimentation, whose unprecedented character and relevance raise aesthetico-political questions of the highest order. Having had the opportunity to participate in the creative process since the very beginning, I am writing this book with the aim of preserving the memory of a dynamic that involved more than 200 European and Brazilian professionals, as well as the Yanomami village of Watoriki. Likewise, in considering the very process of realizing the opera as material, in the sense in which Heiner Müller used that term – that is, as the expression of a set of historical and transhistorical forces and powers that traverse our experience of the contemporary world and which, worked out by actors from diverse cultures (European, Brazilian, and Yanomami) have produced a piece that in my view, reconfigures the relations among these cultures and may well be a harbinger of future becomings.

Amazonas was a collective creation in which, since 2006, what matters most has been to create, not an opera about the people, but an opera with the forest and its people. This orientation implied, from the outset, the possibility of opening a transcultural dialogue, and not merely an intercultural or multicultural one. That is to say, it was a wager on the ability to create common ground in which cultural differences over the creation of the opera were proposed and counterproposed, not in the search for a common denominator, a synthesis, or a negotiated accord, but so that the sharing of knowledge and practices could establish parameters to help us work with diverse visions of the forest in a productive manner. As anthropologist, Bruce Albert, who contributed significally to the project, once said: “[it is a matter of] transforming misunderstandings into productive misunderstandings.”

Nevertheless, sharing, or the holding of things in common, has as a prerequisite the acknowledgement that the relation among different cultures in our transcultural experiment cannot be assymetrical. Relations of subjugation cannot be tolerated. Otherwise, one culture would emerge as the dominant one, treating the others as subalterns and imposing on them a secondary role. Working with requires that constant attention be paid to the quality of cooperation that develops over the course of the creative process. Working together must become the motor of the experiment, not merely an aspiration or a declaration of intent. (…)

Everything seems to point to the conclusion that such sharing is nearly impossible, if not entirely so. But if this is true, it would be necessary to admit that the intransigence and prejudice of the European and Brazilian cultures with respect to indigenous peoples are absolute, and that the only future in view for the Indians is to disappear completely. But even supposing that this was the case, and there are powerful reasons to believe this may be so, what does it mean in terms of the future of the forests? (…)

In other words: It would be necessary to place the two cosmologies and two cultures on an equal footing, without forgetting their differences and respecting each of them in terms of their own mode of enunciation. This is exactly what happened.

Because we achieved this, we are able to say that the opera project was a form of transcultural creation in which, for the first time, the Portuguese, German, English and Yanomami languages would be mixed together and translated from some to the others, in order to establish the parameters and the space of a dialogue over the tropical rain forest. It would be the first time that European, Brazilian and Yanomami institutions – the Munich Biennale, the Goethe-Institut, the Art and Media Center of Karlsruhe, the National Theater of São Carlos de Lisboa, Sesc São Paulo, and the Hutukara Yanomami Association – joined forces under the enthusiastic and tireless coordination of Joachim Bernauer of the Goethe-Institut São Paulo to prove the possibility of realizing a transcultural program on such a grand scale (…).

For all these reasons, I believe it is no exaggeration to claim that the production of the opera Amazonas should be viewed as a transcultural paradigm to be followed by future projects involving international cultural cooperation. Its premises, procedures, methods and results should be observed, analyzed and evaluated because they were consistently fed by the conviction that no culture should be considered superior to any other, in an abstract sense, much less when we are dealing with Amazonia, and by the certitude that all living cultures are contemporary, each in its own way, in that they express their own senses of time that coexist in space and time and demonstrate that the World is made of many worlds.

***

The idea of creating an opera with Amazonia as its theme was proposed by artist José Wagner Garcia to Joachim Bernauer, who at the time was in charge of cultural affairs at the Goethe-Institut São Paulo, in the latter half of 2005. The conversation quickly evolved thanks to the initiative of Bernauer, and the scope of the project was broadened after it attracted the interest of the Munich Biennial, ZKM, Sesc São Paulo and others, including the author of the present work. ^[1]

[1] For a detailed report of the process up to December 2008, see J. Bernauer, “O Amazonas como ópera: onde artemídia e teatro musical contemporâneo se encontram como os rios Negro e Solimões” [Amazonas as opera: Where media art and contemporary theatre music mee like the Rivers Negro and Solimões]. In E. Bolle, E. Castro, M. Vejmelka (org.) Amazônia – Região Universal e teatro do mundo. Ed. Globo, São Paulo, 2010, pp. 279-301. I refer the reader to the text, in order not to repeat information and details which have been documented by Bernauer.

After the drafting of some preliminary plans, in November 2006, in a meeting with various partners at ZKM, in Karlsruhe, a proposal signed by Laymert Garcia dos Santos and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro was discussed. In the preamble to this plan, we addressed the question of why we should produce an Amazonia-themed opera in the following terms:

“In a fascinating text, Alexander Kluge reminds us that opera is an artistic medium based on the European principle that sentiments that cannot be expressed in words must be sung. In approaching an opera about Amazonia, there is a strong temptation, following Jacques Rancière, to add that the proposal was justified because ‘the real must be fictionalized in order to be thought.’ It was relevant, therefore, to ask: Why did this theme ‘demand’ treatment as an opera? It seems to us that we had run afoul of the contemporary difficulty of formulating and learning what is at stake in Amazonia and what needs to be dramatized.

The erudite international public must be made to perceive that in this part of the world (whose geostrategic dimension is expressed in the fact that its ranked number one in terms of biological megadiversity; that it contains the largest water reserves in the world, and that it has a dramatic effect on climate on a worldwide scale) there is a clash between two visions of the relations between nature and culture, two dimensions that merit an intensive aesthetic treatment because this may be the only possible way to convert this failure of mutual understanding into a dialogue that will be critical for the future of the human species, and other species as well.

The opera would attempt, therefore, to show the conflict between these visions in its first two acts and then, in the third act, return to the possibility of converting this mutual understanding into something positive. In this way, the dynamic of the work would consist of treating two lines of force – one that operates from the outside in and another that irradiates outwardly from within, configuring the dyad One Nature, Many Cultures versus One Culture, Many Natures – and another virtual line of force, whose potential lies in a plan common to both terms of the dyad and is encountered only in implicit form, making it worth the effort of elaborating it poetically.” ^[2]

[2] L. G. dos Santos e E. V. de Castro, Initial project for an opera about Amazonia. Document presented to the Goethe-Institut São Paulo in March 2006.

Starting from this principle, the proposed work was structured in three acts, conceived in terms of the three lines of force. The first act would focus on the Western perspective, in which technology understands and explores the forest as information. Here the work can deal with issues emerging from the relationship between biodiversity and biotechnology, starting with the scientific study of the forest and moving on to the bioprospecting of plant, animal and human resources. The same Act One can be used to deal with the geostrategic nature of the region, expressed in terms of mapping and prospecting, and with the devastation caused by predatory development, as well its insertion into national and global contexts. The second act will move forward towards a dislocation and inversion of this perspective. Here, the central figure is the shaman and, through him, the problem of the Amerindian perspective: One Culture, Many Natures. In Act Two, for example, we will be able to touch on the centuries-old incomprehension of indigenous society, on genocide and assimilation, on the erosion of traditional knowledge, but also, and principally, on the richness of the Amerindian perspective on forest, plants, animals, and human beings. Evidently, the conception of this act will require the maximum possible ethnographic precision, lest the complexity of his perspective be treated without a single concession to exoticism and Western clichés regarding the Noble Savage, etc. In short, it is a matter of causing the spectator to experience, in his own perception, the change of perspective and to assume momentarily the point of view of the other. What will be staged, then, is not “indigenous culture,” considered as one among other cultures, but the power of myth and the creation of multiple natures. Finally, Act Three will explore the possibilities of converting the conflict of perspectives into an open dialogue, based on the potential of the virtual, and the processes of creative invention and individuation. Here, the technologist-philosopher will be able to encounter the shaman in a conversation about magic and technology as operations of a dialogue with nature(s).

(…)

But this is not the time for us to discuss at length the mode in which technoscience perceives the forest in terms of information. Suffice it to recall that, according to experts in this area, starting with the “cybernetic turn” of the 1950s, technology establishes – first in the laboratory and later in social life itself – a deepening of modern relations of dominance in mankind’s relations with nature, on one hand, and on the other, a new understanding of the relations between nature and culture, a situation that led Serge Moscovici to coin the phrases “Nature-as-information” and “Culture-as-information”. This is an instrumental point of view that deconstructs plants, animals, and microorganisms and treats both nature and cultures – all cultures – as raw material for biotechnology, the operating principle of which is recombining molecules and reconfiguring evolution. In this way, the technoscientific perspective breaks with the past when the cybernetic frame of reference inaugurates a vision of the forests and all who inhabit it, including traditional peoples, as information. It prolongs the past, however, when it postulates that Nature-as-information must be dominated and appropriated by a specific culture, the technoscientific.

(…) both modern and contemporary “civilizers” base their perspective on a commonly held ontological and epistemological system created by science: That there is one nature and many cultures. But this is not a perspective shared by the indigenous peoples of Amazonia, Brazil or, perhaps, anywhere in the Americas. In fact, from the perspective of these peoples, myth creates an opposite viewpoint: There is one culture, human culture, and many natures. As the anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro writes:

“(…) If there is a concept that is virtually universal in the thinking of the Amerindian, it is that of an original lack of difference between man and animals, as described in myth.” “The original condition common to all humans and animals is not animality, but humanity. The great mythic divide has less to do with how culture emerges from nature and more to do with how natures separate from culture: The myths retell how the animals lost their attributes, which are inherited or adopted by humans. Humans are those who remain the same: Animals are ex-humans, rather than the other way around. ^[3] “(…) the common reference point of all the beings in nature is not the human species, but humanity as a mode of being.” ^[4]

[3] E. V. de Castro, “Perspectivismo e multinaturalismo na América indígena”. In A inconstância… op. cit., pp. 354 and 355 (underlined by the author).

[4] P. Descola apud Viveiros de Castro, op. cit. p.356.

When we pass from “civilized” to “savage” peoples in present-day Amazonia we bear witness to the creation of very different worlds. It is true that in quantitative terms, the disproportion between the millions of “whites” who live according to Western standards and the thousands of Indians who live according to a native perspective is enormous. We must remember, however, that indigenous reserves occupy nearly 10% of the Brazilian Amazon and that it is here that the greatest reserves of bio and sociodiversity are located. It is also indispensable to remember, above all, that there exists, perhaps for the first time in history, a possibility of transforming a conflict that opposes two worldviews into a dialogue that is productive for all parties, so long as we perceive that both contemporary science and Amerindian myth have contributions to make toward a new understanding of the human and the “non-human” (animals and machines). This is because, paradoxically, the cybernetic concept of nature and culture, according to the very concept of “information,” generates an interface that resonates intensely with the structure of animism, in which “both men and animals” once participated in the primordial beginning – that is, a kind of metaphysical continuity common to all. This interface was established by the philosopher Gilbert Simondon when, as he studied the question of invention based on the technological paradigm and the concept of information, discovered that the ontogenesis of individuation in the fields of physics, biology and technology could be thought of as a unique reference point capable of comprehending pre-individual reality based on which beings underwent individuation. In each of these scientific disciplines, invention occurs when information acts on this pre-individual, intermediary reality, which the philosopher calls “the consistent center of being,” a natural, pre-vital reality that is pre-physical and bears witness to a certain continuity between living beings and inert matter, as well as acting in technical operations.

As Simondon says:

“The technical object, thought of and built by man, is not restricted to creating a mediation between man and nature; it is a stable mixture of that which is human and that which is natural, it contains the human and the natural (…) technical activity (…) binds man to nature.” ^[5] “The technical being can only be defined in terms of information and transformation of the different types of energy or information, in other words, on the one hand as a vehicle for action that stems from man to the universe, and on the other hand as a vehicle for information that stems from the universe to man.” ^[6]

[5] G. Simondon. Du mode d’existence des objets techniques. Aubien-Montaigne, Paris, 1969, p. 245.

[6] G. Simondon. L’individuation psychique et collective [Psychic and collective individuation], Aubier, Paris, 1989, p.283.

Simondo’s analysis establishes information as a real singularity that confers consistency on inert matter, on living being (plant, animal, human being) and on the technical object. It would not be inappropriate to compare the work of this philosopher with the luminous thinking of Gregory Bateson, who defined information as “a difference that makes a difference.” However, the possibility of conceiving of a substrate common to inert matter, the living being and the technical object depends on progressively blurring the boundaries established by modern society between nature and culture. Moreover: everything comes to pass as though there existed a plane of reality in which matter and the human spirit could meet and communicate, not as external realities placed in contact but as systems that integrate themselves into a process of resolution that is immanent to the original plane. If the technical is the vehicle of an action directed by human being at the universe and a piece of information directed by the universe to the human being, it is a factor in the resolution of an intense dialogue typified by interaction and the productive character of intermediation, but not of pre-existing parts. The basis of the “cybernetic turn” is found, therefore, in the capacity of the human being to “speak” the language of the “consistent center of being.”

The possibility of conforming, by means of information, to the pre-individual plane of reality, a plane that others qualify as a virtual dimension of reality, makes possible another way of understanding the processes of individuation. Plants, animals, humans and machines come to be seen as the result of an evolution that progresses, not through adaptation, but through invention, through the realization of potential, through a difference that makes a difference. In this way, the old frontiers between nature and culture are superseded, so that it becomes possible to make technological invention compatible with the role of invention in nature, in that both proceed from common ground that even permits us to think of nature as “design.” On the other hand, it also becomes possible to make invention, as technology understands it, compatible with invention as it is understood by the shaman. In fact, as Geraldo Andrello writes in his study of mythic narrative among the Tukano Indians, “The world as it is lived by these Indians could well be described based on the categories proposed by Simondon:” “Their thematization of the long period preceding the appearance of the first humans corresponds to a pre-individual reality, a world of potentialities understood by means of a demiurgic ontology whose resolution is a process of individuation.” The anthropologist believes that the role reserved for information by Simondon seems to be the same role played by difference in the Amazonian ontology-arising as it does from this virtual reservoir of potential affinity. He concludes: “Thus we arrive at the central question: If Simondon deserves to be reread today, certain manners of living, including that of the Indians of Amazonia, deserve to be admired and protected, because they use ideas very similar to the philosopher’s as the foundation of their societies and cultures. They do not practice philosophy, but they do offer for our admiration, among other things, a lived mythology that transports a message on how to cope with the virtual, with difference, and possibly also with information.”

The conversion of a confrontation between Western and Amerindian perspectives into dialogue would therefore prove to be an ultracontemporary understanding of technology and technical operations. At the same time, surprisingly, this technical operation can also be understood as an operation that brings the people together, if we recall that the technician qualified for the task is the descendent of the remote shaman. Practically speaking, the shaman is the principal technician, the medicine man, who emerges from the most distant origins of the relation between man and the world. As Simondon writes: “We may call this first phase the magical phase, taking the word in its most general sense, and considering the magical mode of existence as being pre-technical and pre-religious, just above a relation that would be simply that of living within its milieu.” ^[7]

[7] G. Simondon, Du mode… op. cit. p. 156.

What does the first technician do, then? The philosopher reveals that he has brought to his village an indispensable new element, produced through a direct dialogue with the world, an element that is kept hidden from or inaccessible to the community. The shaman is therefore the first technician. Perhaps as an echo of this feat, there is a tribe in New Zealand that believes the airplane was built by its ancestors, much as Xavante José Luís Tsereté and other Xingu Indians proclaim that their people were the inventors of all sorts of technical objects.

***

(…)

What does the first technician do, then? The philosopher reveals that he has brought to his village an indispensable new element, produced through a direct dialogue with the world, an element that is kept hidden from or inaccessible to the community. The shaman is therefore the first technician. Perhaps as an echo of this feat, there is a tribe in New Zealand that believes the airplane was built by its ancestors, much as Xavante José Luís Tsereté and other Xingu Indians proclaim that their people were the inventors of all sorts of technical objects.

The departure of Viveiros obviously left the project at a crossroads, in that the conceptual framework of the work was founded on the two perspectives already mentioned – and Viveiros was the thinker whose perspectivism elaborated the fundamental cosmological difference between: One Nature, Many Cultures versus One Culture, Many Natures. His departure implied either the formulation of a new project or else the abandonment of the opera. After consultations among São Paulo, Munich and Karlsruhe, it was agreed that we would attempt to produce a new proposal, because the project was worth fighting for, given the assets already mobilized, the clues already followed, and the desire to risk a transcultural dialogue, despite the risk of failure.

Having been assigned the task of drafting a new proposal, I traveled to Boa Vista intending to meet with Carlo Zacquini and with the Yanomami leader and shaman Davi Kopenawa. I wanted to ask Davi if the Yanomami wouldaccept becoming partners in the process of producing an opera, given that artistic expression was something totally alien to their culture. What led me to undertake such an ambitious project was my longstanding relations with the Yanomami (I had been president of the Pro-Yanomani Commission) and my acquaintance with Davi and his allies, who led the struggle for the demarcation of their territory (Carlo Zacquini, the photographer Claudia Andujar and anthropologist Bruce Albert). On the other hand, I knew that Davi Kopenawa was not unfamiliar with the power of art as a strong ally in the struggle for the recognition of the rights to land and culture – the images of Claudia Andujar (exhibited in gallery shows and books over the years) and the exhibition L’esprit de la forêt at the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris, in 2003 had shown that aesthetics and politics could work together in publicizing the Yanomami cause, all of which led me to believe that my invitation would not be received as irrelevant.

I invited not only Davi but the entire Watoriki community and the Hutukara Yanomami Association, based in Boa Vista. My proposal was accepted with generosity and interest, and the shaman, in a gesture of reciprocity, invited the opera team to his village for the Pupunha Festival, which generally takes place in March. When I returned to São Paulo, I met with Bruce Albert, in an attempt to involve him in the project. With his deep knowledge of Yanomami culture after having worked among them for the last three decades, the anthropologist was finishing a seminal book with Davi Kopenawa, fruit of a collaboration of nearly twenty years and published in Paris under the title La chute du ciel – The Falling Sky (Plon: September 2010).

Bruce Albert read the new proposal, whose digital file I called Opera 2.0, and agreed to act as a consultant with respect to the participation of the Yanomami in the creation of the work. Bruce’s acceptance made the project viable again, for the anthropologist brought to the table not only precious anthropological expertise but also an enormous reservoir of trust with the Indians, together with his experience in producing the Cartier exhibit – an exposition that in my view represented an unprecedented transcultural experiment in the realm of contemporary art, involving Indians and artists.

Proposal 2.0 reiterated the idea that the forest was effectively the principal character, and that idea had been consolidated throughout the process as a whole. Not only because the loss of the forest was our major concern, because Sloterdijk had sensed that it could become an Amazonian Orpheus, or because the rain and CO2 absorption machine described by Fearnside were crucial, but because, since the seminar Amazonian Essays, it was clear that the Amazonians themselves thought in this way. Practically speaking, the text prepared by Lúcio Flávio Pinto (whose fierce and unconditional passion for Amazonia impresses everyone who meets him) already asserted this as clearly as possible. We respected his point of view because as a sociologist and journalist, along with his substantial knowledge of the region, he was not afraid to face the forest, without disguises and in all its complexity. Lúcio Flávio was uncompromising: The central issue of Amazonia was, is and will be the rain forest. For this reason, it had to become a character in the opera. ^[8]

[8] Text sent by the author, still unpublished.

In the opera itself, the forest had to be a character both from the point of view of technoscience, the perspective of the “outsiders,” and the point of view of the “insiders,” the local population. At this point, however, it was already clear to us that there was problem regarding the relationship between technoscience and the forest. The inauguration of a new type of knowledge and a new focus (the forest as information) were not capable of promoting its preservation. A terrible situation had arisen: on one hand, the accumulated technoscientific knowledge about the forest and its destruction does not seem to have the power to influence decisively the course of predatory development carried out by civilized peoples, while on the other hand, traditional knowledge of the indigenous peoples turned out to be operative in the assurance, more than mere coexistence but also the sustainability of a positive relation between nature and culture. Even so, as the indigenous Colombian ex-senator, the Guambiano Lorenzo Muelas, observed in the plenary session of the Conference of the Parts, at the Convention on Biological Diversity, in Buenos Aires, the West does not act according to the evidence. Amerindians, he said, have practiced sustainable development for centuries. Then the “whites” arrived, destroyed traditional practices and had the audacity to preach “sustainable development” to the Indians.

There is, therefore, a contradiction, a conflict at the heart of the relations established with the forest that makes the game a negative one for all its players. The “whites,” it seems, are incapable of hearing what the indigenous peoples are saying. My Proposal 2.0 therefore admitted that at the center of an opera that has the forest as a principal character, the tragedy is the impossibility of hearing those who enunciate the crucial issue of the entire problematic. Not even the most precise technoscientific instruments and techniques are sufficient to cause the contemporary Western world to perceive its own blindness and deafness, which result from its lack of commitment to the future of the forest.

Contemporary technoscientific knowledge, for example, as a matter of principle, gives no credit to traditional knowledge, because its discourse by its very nature serves to negate all forms of knowledge that preceded it. Art, however, which emerges from different premises, may be less limited than science in its ability to risk hearing what indigenous peoples are saying. Art relates readily to myth, and the aesthetic has nothing to lose in opening itself to this dimension. It is here that the Yanomami enter the opera.

The Yanomami are one of the most traditional peoples of Amazonia and the world, and a people that fiercely maintain their way of life (Pierre Clastres called them, in a magnificent essay, “The Ultimate Circle”). Since the late 1980s, the shaman Davi Kopenawa has tirelessly reiterated, everywhere he travels – in Brazil and in foreign countries – that in order to protect his people and territory, the forest cannot die. In an interview with anthropologist Bruce Albert, the shaman observed:

“The pajés of the Yanomami who have died are many, and will want to be avenged. When the pajés die, their hekurabé, their auxiliary spirits, grow very angry. They see how the whites cause their pajés – their ‘fathers’ – to die. The hekurabé will want revenge, will want to cut the sky into pieces so that it falls onto the earth; they also will make the sun fall, and when the sun falls, everything will grow dark. When the stars and moon also fall, the sky will be completely dark. We want to tell the whites all this, but they do not listen. They are another people and do not understand. I think they do not want to pay attention. They think, ‘These people are simply lying.’ This is how they think. But we are not lying. They know nothing of these things.” Soon afterwards, continuing in the same train of thought, the shaman added: “We, the shamans, also work for you, the whites. That is why, when all the pajés are dead, you will not be able to free yourself from the dangers that they once knew how to drive away. You will be alone and will die too.” ^[9]

[9] Davi Kopenawa Yanomami & Bruce Albert, “Xawara: Das Kannibalengold und der Eisturz des Himmels – Ein Gespräch (Xawara: The cannibal gold and the fall of the sky), in Laymert Garcia dos Santos, Drucksache N.F. Düsseldorf: Richter Verlag/Internationale Heiner Muller Gesellschaft, 2001, pp. 52-53.

(…)

In his text Yanomami, l’esprit de la forêt [Yanomami, the Spirit of the Forest], Bruce Albert clearly states what the forest means to the Yanomami:

“The Yanomami word urihi a means both the tropical rain forest and the land over which it extends. It also refers, through successive enchasings, to the idea of an open and contextual territoriality. Thus, the term ipa urihi, “my land and forest”, may designate the region where the interlocutor is born or where he or she currently lives (based on usufruct), while yanomae thëpë urihipë, “the land-forest of the human beings (Yanomami)” is approximately equivalent to our notion of “Yanomami territory,” while urihi a pree, “the great land-forest” refers to a maximally inclusive space that echoes our own concept of “Earth.” An inexhaustible reservoir of resources necessary to the existence of the people, this “land-forest” is in no way viewed by the Yanomami as a mute and inert scenario that takes place outside of society and culture; it is not a “still life” subjugated to the will and exploitation of the human being. On the contrary, it is a living being, endowed with a shamanic image-spirit (urihinari), a vital breath (uixia) and an imminent power of growth (në rope). More, it is animated by a complex dynamic of exchanges, conflicts and transformations among the various categories of being that inhabit it, whether human or non-human, visible or invisible.” ^[10]

[10] Bruce Albert, “L’esprit de la forêt », in Yanomami l’esprit de la forêt, (Yanomami, the Spirit of the Forest), Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris: Actes Sud, 2003, p. 46.

Thus, this land-forest operates in a real dimension and a virtual dimension that are constantly interacting and which seem not to accept a separation between the transcendent and the immanent planes, as we understand them, at least, given that transcendence and immanence are part of a “single, unified economy of metamorphoses,” as Bruce Albert expresses it. In this respect, the land-forest cannot be mistaken for a landscape, a “medium” or an area objectified as a mere source of natural wealth whose existence is only justified because it provides humans with subsistence or wealth. The significance of the forest is in no way one-dimensional. This is why the words of the shaman complement those of the anthropologist:

“What you call nature, in our language is called urihi a, the land-forest, while its image, visible to shamans, is called urihinari. It is because this image exists that the trees are alive. What we call urihinari is the spirit of the forest; the spirits of the trees are huutihiripë, of the leaves, yaahanaripë, and of the lianas, thoothoxiripë. These spirits are very numerous and play together on the soil of the forest. We also call them urihi, “nature”, just as we call the spirit animals yaroripë, including even the bees, tortoises and snails. The fertility of the forest, në rope, is also nature in our eyes: it was born with it, it is the wealth of the forest.” ^[11]

[11] Davi Kopenawa, “Urihi a”, in Yanomami l’esprit de la forêt, op. cit., p. 51.

Nature, then, among the Yanomami, is urihi a, the land-forest, and urihinari, the spirit of the forest, is an image that the shamans can see. But it is also from this mythical nature that the chants of the Yanomami shamans are born. On this point, in a powerful narrative, Davi Kopenawa transmits to Bruce Albert, with a wealth of details, the manner in which the xapiripë spirits, which are the images of the ancestors that were transformed at the beginning of time, make themselves present to shamans during a shamanic trance, after the ingestion of yãkoana powder. Thus, after describing the beauty and dazzling quality of these images, Davi began to speak about his chanting. It is worthwhile to transcribe here an important part of Albert’s narrative, one that gives us a more precise notion of how, through shamans and xapiripë, the song of the mythical forest is received, and how, according to the Yanomami, even the music of the whites had its origins.

“The songs of the xapiripë are literally countless. They never cease, and it is from the amoahiki trees that the xapiripë gathers them. It was Omama [creator of contemporary humanity and its cultural rules] who created these trees of song, so that the xapiripë might come to learn their words. Thus, when the xapiripë descend from very, very far away, they pass by the trees of song in order to pick up the music that grows there, before launching into their dance of introduction. Next, all those who desire it stop near an amoahiki tree to harvest their infinite words. They incessantly fill various types of basket with these words. They never stop accumulating them. This is the activity of the melro spirit, the xexéu spirits and the sitiparisiri [viola tuner] spirits and the tãritãriaxiri [tanager] spirits. The songs of the xapiripë are as numerous as the fronds of the palm tree paa hanaki which is harvested for use as roofing for our ‘malocas’ – even more numerous than all the whites put together. This is why their speech is so endless. (…) Thus, the amoahiki tree never stops distributing its songs to all the xapiripë who draw near. Its language is intelligible, although some lose their power of speech and are capable only of ghost-speech, the speech of a specter. These are large trees covered with mouths that move one over the other, allowing magnificent melodies to escape. There, where Omama planted them at the beginning of time, the songs never cease. It is possible to hear them, one after another, without end, as numberless as the stars. Scarcely has one song finished when another immediately begins The words are never repeated and are never depleted. On the contrary, they continuously proliferate. (…) This place is where the xapiripë must descend to acquire their songs. And finally, when the shamans, their fathers, hear their words, they imitate them. In this way, the other Yanomami can hear them. Do not think that the shaman sings alone, for no reason. They sing what the spirits are singing. The songs penetrate his ears one by one, as through this microphone. (…) But there are also trees that sing in the confines of the Land of the Whites. Without them, the songs of the whites would lack for melody. But only the amoahiki trees offer beautiful sayings. It is these that are introduced into our language and our thought, but also into the memory of the whites. The xapiripë listen to the amoahiki trees, watching over them carefully. The sound of their songs penetrate their ears and lodge in their thinking. This is how they come to know. From the perspective of the Whites, the melro spirits yield leaves covered with designs for songs from the amoahiki tree. Their machines are transformed into skins made of paper which the singers look at.

This is how they learn to dance and sing. In this way, they imitate the nature of the spirit world. And that is how it is. The whites also get their songs from where Omama planted the amoahiki trees. There are many such trees within the limits of Indian land. They gaze at the drawings of their songs on ‘skins of paper’ in order to imitate and appropriate them. That is why there are so many singers, songs, recording labels, records and radios. But we, the shamans, do not need to examine the songs as they are written down; all we need is the words of the xapiripë to preserve them in our thinking.” ^[12]

[12] Davi Kopenawa e Bruce Albert, “Les ancêtres animaux” (The ancestral animals), in Yanomami l’esprit de la forêt, op. cit., pp. 68 e ss.

In that sense, the song has its origins in the mythic forest. And more: the knowledge that the Yanomami and their shamans acquire appears to flow from the songs of mythical trees. Living nature is precious, and is at the same time viewed as land-forest and as a visual and auditory image. That is to say: it can be viewed as an opera in which humans and non-humans interact within an economy of metamorphoses. It is this the shamans mean to say, even if no one seems to want to listen. If the central character of the opera is the forests of Amazonia, the Yanomami are the vector that can lead us to the spirit of the forest, and for that reason it is they who warn of the danger that the world might end. The threat of an irreparable loss to Indians and whites gives rise to the agonized wish of the Yanomami that everything possible be done to save the forest. What they are saying, however, is that the agony of the forest is something shared by both peoples.

***

On May 1, 2008, toward the end of the 11th Munich Biennial, the opera team gave a presentation on the project to a Munich audience, calling it Amazonas – Oper. To a certain degree, both the Brazilians – composer Tato Taborda and artists Leandro Lima and Gisela Motta, and Wagner Garcia – and the Europeans – Peter Weibel and the team from ZKM, the composer Klaus Schedl, the mezzo-soprano Mafalda de Lemos, the Austrian scenic designers Michael and Nora Scheidl – were willing to test reactions to the images, sounds, concepts and approaches that were being developed for the opera. Part of the presentation focused on the Yanomami – Davi Kopenawa and his son Dário Vitório Xiriana, and the shamans Ari Pakidari and Levi Hewakalaxima, accompanied by Bruce Albert and Carlo Zacquini.

The presentation, which took place in the Black Box of Gasteig, was a mixture of installations, projections and performances to be followed according to a script. The three Yanomami shamans – about whose performance we knew nothing, for they preferred not to comment on them, saying only that there would be singing and speaking – surprised everyone. Davi, Ari and Levi had asked to be left alone for an hour before curtain time, in the space in which they would perform. When the doors opened and the public entered, we realized that they were practicing shamanism. The execution of a ritual – we later learned it was a healing ritual – impressed everyone with the dramatic power of its gestures and movement, and by the power of the song. The public sensed immediately that it was not attending a representation, but lacked a sense of how to receive the unexpected ceremony it was watching and hearing. On the other hand, it was clear that the shamans, in their trance, met together in another space-time, very different from our own, so that the performance utterly ignored the conventions of “timing” and the rules of a Western theatrical event. There was also a risk that part of the audience, faced with the uniqueness of the event, might interpret it according to the commonplaces of prejudice: that these performers are “primitive,” that is to say, figures of folklore and exoticism. The following day, a discussion among all the participants, led by Peter Weibel (who had assumed responsibility for the multimedia dimension of the opera) and Peter Ruzicka, (responsible for the musical dimension of the show) found various aspects of the opera problematic. For many of us, it was quite clear that it would not be possible to maintain the presence of the shamans on the operatic stage. The complexity, beauty and power of shamanism, as the highest expression of cosmology and the Yanomami culture, had to be articulated in another manner.

(…)

From then on, the process of creation began to accelerate. Roland Quitt was hired as playwright and librettist and various encounters were held in which the Brazilian and European composers and directors outlined the configuration of the work, which the Munich Biennial had preferred to call theater-music due to a controversy in Germany over the term opera. Thus, Amazonas Musiktheater in drei Teilen/Amazônia Teatro música em três partes began to take shape.

The Brazilians worked in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and the Europeans in Munich, Karlsruhe, Vienna, Mannheim and, during the final stages, everybody met in Lisbon. In August 2009, a workshop with various Yanomami shamans, brought together by Davi Kopenawa in Watoriki, deepened our contact with the mythic perspective that would structure the second part of the opera, titled The Fall of the Sky. Several participants traveled to the village: Bruce Albert, Roland Quitt, Michael and Nora Scheidl, Laymert Garcia dos Santos, Leandro Lima, Tato Taborda, Moritz Büchner (ZKM) and Sérgio Pinto (Sesc São Paulo).

***

There followed five very intense days, with long hours of conversation with the pajés, the recording of the images and sounds of the rituals and the forest, and daily shamanism sessions that would last six to eight hours or more. One day, as we were taking part in a workshop, we experienced an incredible moment in which we had a deep insight into the complexity of the production of images and sounds by the Yanomami shaman – in a way, as the singular and extremely precious “technological application” that this culture had evolved in order to access the powers of the virtual dimension of reality.

As usual, the shamans were carrying out their ritual, inhaling yãkohana, singing, dancing, speaking… Suddenly, Levi Hewakalaxima (a pajé with a powerful voice and presence), whose performance had impressed everyone in Munich, in May 2008, approached anthropologist Bruce Albert, pointed to the rest of us, placed his hand on his chest and said, in Yanomami, “Tell them I am embodying the image of the song-words of the oropendola bird into my chest.” And with that, he “tuned back in” to the ritual, resuming his singing and dancing.

I was amazed. It seemed to me that during this sort of “download” of an audiovisual file, Levi’s body functioned at the same time as both “hardware” and “software,” processing a program that was being monitored by the shaman as the sound-song of the xapiripë, becoming an image that could be “read” as a sort of musical score for interpretation. In the words of Bruce Albert, “the sound-songs of the xapiripë come first: the mental images induced by yãkohana take shape based on auditory hallucinations, which entail the transformation of sound into imagery.”

This point struck us (Bruce and myself) as a genuinely possible link between the Yanomami universe and the technoscientific perspective explored by ZKM in Part Three. The question was this: Is it possible to establish a positive connection between the technology for transforming digital data into music and the embodiment of the mental images associated with the origins of the forest beings? This question, formulated by Bruce Albert, is most interesting because in both eventualities we find ourselves dealing with synesthesia, although in different ways. After all, it was conceivable that in both cases we were dealing with different manners of actualizing the potential of the virtual. Or should we say dealing with different technologies?

If we worked on a possible connection between the two perspectives incorporated in this two distinct technologies, perhaps we could begin a fantastic dialogue between the Yanomami and the cultures of the West. When I commented to anthropologist Geraldo Andrello regarding my attempt to gain understanding by means of a cybernetic analogy, he observed: “Can it be that the virtual Yanomami belongs to the same virtual space as projected by technoscience? I am not sure it is fitting to speak of different types of virtuality, however. (…) Some Indians have told me that what they do with their body and their thinking, the whites do with other tools, and especially with machines. I never quite understood whether this was a metaphorical or a literal statement, and it is the Tukano people who say this. A number of the Tukano already have Orkut accounts… It also seems to me that the Yanomami work very, very hard to make us understand a few of these matters that cannot be seen or heard. At some point in the future of this story, will the Yanomami appropriate digital technology – using it to draw their songs, for example?” ^[13]

[13] Geraldo Andrello. Re: valeu! (personnal message). Message received by Laymert Garcia dos Santos, October 19th 2009.

Andrello’s remarks are valuable because they help us to hone our understanding of the experiment and deepen our exploration of a parallel shamanism-technoscience that has to do with how different cultures access the virtual dimension of reality. It is precisely this relation that interests us, and I do not believe we should treat it as metaphor, for if we do, all is lost and we fall back into the language of representation, which behaves as a parasite, paralyzing and weakening the mental power needed in order to move forward.

Perhaps it makes sense to speak, not of different types of virtuality, but of distinct operative scientificities for dealing with the virtual, since each is ruled by a distinct logic that results in very different perceptions of the world. But even if that is true, we must not fail to acknowledge the convergence between the mythic perspective of the Yanomami and the scientific perspective sketched by Philip Fearnside, for example, with regards to the somber prospects that await us based on the effects of deforestation. For both the mythical machination and the technoscientific simulations serve – in Amazonas as in so-called “real life” –, as applications anticipating a catastrophe foretold. For this reason, we tried to construct, from the inside, a dialogue between the virtual world of the technological and the spiritual world of the shamans.

Histórico do seminário ensaios amazônicos

Ópera 2.0

Ópera proposta inicial

Relato da visita à Aldeia Watoriki – festa da pupunha

Programm Amazonas oper – Munique

Amazonas Oper – Amoahiki

Programa Ópera Amazônia – São Paulo

Bienale 2010 – Amazonas

Canto da Selva – Humboldt 97

Maps

Photos: Roland Quitt; Moritz Büchner
Video: Rudá K. Andrade