Amada Verde

Participating artists:

Forests all over the world are vanishing at an alarming rate, there is no doubt about it. Just a mere 20 years ago, more than one-third of our planet was covered by forests. Since then, the number has dropped to an alarming low: to only a quarter of the land. This loss of forests threatens the economic and ecological basis at local, regional, and global levels. How will all of this affect our lives, our future, and our survival?

The exhibition Amada Verde shows a selection of Artists who participated in different parts of the international residency program LABVERDE, which was created to strengthen the limits of art through a broad array of experiences, knowledge sets, and cultural perspectives involving art, science, and nature. By participating in an intensive program in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, the artists developed work about environmental issues and their experiences in the Amazon rainforest. 

All of the artists deal with similar ideas and views on nature, sustainability, and the future of our planet, but they all approach the subject from different angles, hence creating a dense and lush “jungle” of artworks altogether. From humorous approaches and performative works to poetic artistic depictions of decay and the ever-repeating cycle of life, the show will invite the visitors to emerge themselves into the Amazon, the forest, the sounds, the smells …

Live Stream, 22nd of January 2022

On the 22nd of January, we had a live stream at Haus am Lützowplatz. Here are some video excerpts of the day…

Music by Lisa Schonberg.

Talk with Marte Kiessling and Lisa Schonberg about her work and methods.

Talk with Tina Ribarits and Luzia Simons about their work.

Exhibition Tour with Marte Kiessling

On the 22nd of Januar, from 3pm to 5 pm, there was a stream live from the exhibition “Amada Verde” at Studiogalerie of Haus am Lützowplatz (HaL). First, there was a tour through the exhibition with the curator Marte Kiessling, followed by a zoom talk with the artists Tina Ribarits and Luzia Simons. After a short compilation of videos by all participating artists, there was a talk and music by Lisa Schonberg.

with special thanks to Filomeno Fusco for the technical support and the supervision of the stream.

What the artists say …

Nathalia Favaro and Miki Yui: FLUX

The short film (25min) is a poetic essay, tracing the journey of Nathalia through the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest and her meetings with protagonists from the forest and the river. Images of the forest and the river in their infinite dimension, stories of people who live in mutual exchange with their environment, the film reflects both micro and macro views on life within the forest, showing the intertwined ecosystem we are part of.
The protagonists tell their unique stories of their lives while working strongly connected to nature. The poet on the boat explains our life emerging from the water, and the meteorologist (INPA / Max Planck Institute) who researches at ATTO (Amazon Tall Tower Observatory) explains the cycle of water and the relationship between our life and climate change from a scientific point of view. A student of UFP – Unconventional Food Plants (PANCS in Portuguese) talks about the impact of food production and consumption in our daily lives, which are inseparable from the environment.
All the stories circulate the flow of energy: the cycle of carbon and water. These elements are not only the primary source of life but also regulate the condition of the planet. The environment is a synthesis of all factors including ourselves.
The film questions our view of life on this planet in its entirety and invites the audience to learn about life in its true form: in flux.

Production
This film is made possible through kind support from Goethe Institute São Paulo, and is exhibited at Humboldtjahr 2019 – the event for the 250th anniversary of Alexander von Humboldt in Bogotá, Colombia.
The collaboration emerged after the LABVERDE artistic residency in which both artists participated. It took place in Adolfo Ducke Forest Reserve in Manaus Brazil and at the Rio Negro River, in August 2018. http://www.labverde.com

http://www.fluxproject.net/

Tina Ribarits: the other planet

At the center of the other planet, both spatially and conceptually, there is a lush, green forest. A camera moves slowly through giant leaves, examining every angle, immersing the viewer in this overwhelming space. The image does what it can to prove to us: that this is real. Or, implicating our bodies: you are here. This very insistence comes off as suspicious, undermining its claims. As in other works by Tina Ribarits, though, there is a twist. This seeming simulation gestures towards computer-generated, stereoscopic 3D imaging, but is the result of Ribarits’ genuine time spent in the Brazilian Amazon. You may not be there, but she has been. Really. Virtual reality aims to convince. It is a form of fiction geared fundamentally towards the construction of evidence. the other planet produces a simulation of this form – a virtual virtuality. However, in doing so, it does not return us to some unsullied, prelapsarian real (the video may have been truly shot in the rain forest, but the image is not non-manipulated). Rather, it calls attention to the modes by which evidence is produced. The Brazilian Amazon is not an abstract or arbitrary site for this investigation; this focus on evidence references, in part, the rain forest’s status as a research laboratory, with its supreme biodiversity and precarious future. In this sense, the work resists the reductive view of science as a practice of pinning things down and containing them. Knowledge can make the world bigger, more connected, and more varied. This is not, though, to ignore the colonial histories of the Amazon forest basin, or the colonial implications of pitting the real against the other. A video composed of one long, slow take along the Amazon River is a clear, if multi-purpose, reference to a range of sources that call to mind these histories, from Heart of Darkness to Apocalypse Now, to Fitzcarraldo. The Congo, Vietnam, the Peruvian, and Brazilian Amazon are collapsed into a single colonial viewpoint, inside the boat, moving on the water, part of the scene but also outside it.
Text by Johanna Linsley

https://tinaribarits.com

Stig Marlon Weston

“Empirical”  is a photographic exploration of the Amazon rainforest landscape, investigating how the scientific method of looking at climate change can be depicted as a way in which to see and sense the natural environment from a local perspective.

Stig Marlon Weston has traveled through both rainforest nature reserves and industrially developed areas to document and collect visual samples of how human activity has inflicted changes upon the natural landscape.

Working with cameraless photography Weston makes what is called «lumen prints» by exposing light-sensitive analog photographic paper to sunlight. The paper reacts to the light and a shadow imprint is formed as a direct photograph of the subject placed on the paper. The paper also reacts to temperature, humidity, physical touch, and chemical contact. To make his prints Weston dips sheets of paper in the river, sticks the paper into the ground, or attaches small pieces of paper onto jungle plants.
Using this process to make photographs of the water, soil, and plant life Weston collects statistical sets of images that can be used to look for information to interpret and then compare between the different parts of the rainforest landscape. Together the images visualize statistical material and inspire one to look for similarities and differences without the viewer having to be familiar with scientific terminology and methods of measurement.

https://www.weston.no

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Mit freundlicher Unterstützung / With kind support