GOJ TỸ URUSSANGA

More than 500 years mark the arrival of colonization in Latin America. Since then, Latin American territories, acknowledged for their mineral wealth, have been exploited and suffocated by extractive activities. Yet who holds the autonomy over this wealth? And what is left for us under the name of "progress"?
At the Urussanga River watershed, in Santa Catarina, Southern Brazil, the ongoing exploitation of coal ore has left and continues to leave its trails of contamination in the soil, air, rivers (which flow into the ocean), and aquifers. Mountains and more mountains of tailings, roads created with the tailings, ruins of mining companies, abandoned mines, and orange-colored rivers – completely dead, contaminated by sulfur, mercury, and all other sulfates released from the coal ore dumps - compose the landscape of this region.
Goj tỹ Urussanga*– Urussanga River was a research activity developed in this hydrographic basin, especially on the margins of the Carvão River and the Urussanga River. Having the participation of local residents and artists, we launched ourselves in a dive into the veins and traces of mining. To look. To feel. To smell. To listen. The emergence of the forces and voices silenced, stifled, and decimated by a colonial and colonizing system. To act, individually and collectively, against a system, re-sensibilizing and liberating our body-territories so that they may protect the territories-body that still remain for us.
*Translation for Portuguese from Kaingang|Xokleng

YOU CAN'T TOUCH IT, IT'S IN ME, IT'S IN US

You can't touch it, it's in me, it's in us is a performance and video installation, which brings as central aesthetic-political issue the mineral extractivism and contemporary ways of life. Based on an immersive performative research conducted in areas of coal ore tailings in the hydrographic basin of the Urussanga river, in southern Brazil, as part of the project Sensitive Territories - Goj tỹ Urussanga, we launched ourselves into the field of memory embodied in the poetic construction of an invitation to collective reflection.
The unbridled exploitation of natural resources impacts soil, rivers, groundwater, air, and sea. The consequences and sensations are in our bodies, sickened by contamination and suffocated in a systemic context that robs us of our sensibilities, exposing us to violence already incorporated in our daily lives. How, then, can we re-sensitize our bodies, creating possible forms of survival amidst the tracks and open veins of the Anthropocene?

Datasheet
Co-creation: Walmeri Ribeiro, Ana Emerich, Sofia Mussolin, and Eloisa Brantes Performance, research, and field shooting: Walmeri Ribeiro Stage direction and dramaturgy: Eloisa Brantes Direction of photography, camerawork, edition, and finalization: Sofia Mussolin Research, original sounds, and sound design: Ana Emerich Obra comissionada por Itaú Cultural, projeto Cena Agora, 2021.
Work commissioned by Itaú Cultural, Cena Agora project, 2021.

YOU CAN'T TOUCH IT, IT'S IN ME, IT'S IN US | Performance and Video installation

You can't touch it, it's in me, it's in us - Performance and Video Installation - was presented live at NOTE Gallery, in Lisbon, invited by the curator and director Bárbara Silva. In this development of the audiovisual work, - initially created for the project Cena Agora: Arte e Ciência, of Itáu Cultural - we created an intimate scene where the bodies present could be affected by the "waste" of coal thrown there, moreover, the performance had a corporeality and sound of the scene in dialogue with images and sounds of video.
**This exhibition was supported by FAPERJ.

You can't touch it, it's in me, it's in us
Performance and Video installation
Galeria Note | Lisbon | Portugal | 2022