{"id":1964,"date":"2015-02-07T00:09:16","date_gmt":"2015-02-07T00:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/laymert.com.br\/wrfrm\/amazonia-teatro-musica-em-tres-partes-2\/"},"modified":"2022-08-29T11:29:09","modified_gmt":"2022-08-29T14:29:09","slug":"amazonia-teatro-musica-em-tres-partes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/laymert.com.br\/en\/amazonia-teatro-musica-em-tres-partes\/","title":{"rendered":"AMAZONAS \u2013 A theater-music in three parts"},"content":{"rendered":"
[vc_row tablet_fullwidth_cols=”yes” center_row=”yes” bg_type=”no_bg” style=”light” video_bg_overlay=”dark”][vc_column][vc_video link=”https:\/\/vimeo.com\/117124522″][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row center_row=”yes” bg_type=”no_bg”][vc_column width=”1\/3″ bg_color=”#efefef” padding_top=”30px” padding_bottom=”50px” padding_left=”30px” padding_right=”30px”][vc_column_text]This page is a record of the opera Amazon – Music Theatre in Three Parts<\/b> production process \u00a0and presents my reflection on such cross-cultural experiment.<\/span><\/p>\n

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, Jos\u00e9 Wagner Garcia. By SESC S\u00e3o 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);<\/span><\/p>\n

All texts presented here are excerpts from the article\u00a0Proleg\u00f4menos da \u00f3pera multim\u00eddia Amaz\u00f4nia<\/i>\u00a0originally published in\u00a0Cadernos de Subjetividade\u00a0<\/i>(PUCSP), v. 13, p. 28-53, 2011; and the book Transcultural Amazonas: shamanism and technoscience in the opera<\/a>, published in two languages by Editora n-1<\/a> in 2014, which records the process, says the show and reflects on his aesthetic and political implications more broadly.<\/span><\/p>\n

For more reviews held in the show itself, with description of its three parts, click here<\/a>.<\/span>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column width=”2\/3″]

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AMAZONAS \u2013 A theater-music in three parts<\/span><\/p>\n[\/vc_column_text]

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Prolegomenon<\/strong><\/p>\n

Conceptual considerations regarding an aesthetico-political transcultural experiment<\/strong><\/p>\n

On May 8, 2010, in the Munich Reithalle, during the Twelfth Biennial of Contemporary Music Theatre<\/a> a series of five performances of the opera Amazonas \u2013 Music Theatre in Three Parts<\/a> was held \u2013 to be repeated later, between July 21 and July 25 at Sesc Pompeia, in S\u00e3o 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 M\u00fcller used that term \u2013 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.<\/p>\n[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row center_row=”yes” bg_type=”no_bg”][vc_column]

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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: \u201c[it is a matter of] transforming misunderstandings into productive misunderstandings.\u201d<\/p>\n

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. (\u2026)<\/p>\n

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? (\u2026)<\/p>\n[\/vc_column_text]

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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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 the Munich Biennale, the Goethe-Institut, the Art and Media Center of Karlsruhe, the National Theater of S\u00e3o Carlos de Lisboa, Sesc S\u00e3o Paulo, and the Hutukara Yanomami Association \u2013 joined forces under the enthusiastic and tireless coordination of Joachim Bernauer of the Goethe-Institut S\u00e3o Paulo to prove the possibility of realizing a transcultural program on such a grand scale (\u2026).<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row center_row=”yes” bg_type=”no_bg”][vc_column]

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***<\/p>\n

The idea of creating an opera with Amazonia as its theme was proposed by artist Jos\u00e9 Wagner Garcia to Joachim Bernauer, who at the time was in charge of cultural affairs at the Goethe-Institut S\u00e3o 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 S\u00e3o Paulo and others, including the author of the present work. [1]<\/sup><\/p>\n

[1] For a detailed report of the process up to December 2008, see J. Bernauer, \u201cO Amazonas como \u00f3pera: onde artem\u00eddia e teatro musical contempor\u00e2neo se encontram como os rios Negro e Solim\u00f5es\u201d [Amazonas as opera: Where media art and contemporary theatre music mee like the Rivers Negro and Solim\u00f5es]. In E. Bolle, E. Castro, M. Vejmelka (org.) Amaz\u00f4nia \u2013 Regi\u00e3o Universal e teatro do mundo. Ed. Globo, S\u00e3o 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.<\/h6>\n[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row tablet_fullwidth_cols=”yes” center_row=”yes” bg_type=”no_bg”][vc_column]
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