To listen to other possibilities of time and life. Not to save ourselves, but because it is unavoidable. That’s our premise, our main gesture here. What we are trying to do.
THE PLANTS TRILOGY started from a dream that Denilson Daniwa remembered during a hot summer afternoon conversation in Rio. A dream revolving around the idea of a person who didn’t know if they were human or tree, animal or plant, who, in their dreams, sensed some kind of end of the world.
An end of the world that came from the narratives of the Baniwa people (from the north of the Amazon forest): mixing germination and anger, fruition and rupture. A revolution brought by non-verbal voices, by gestures not mapped as “language”. In this sense, the work of the Italian philosopher and friend Emanuele Coccia emerged as a guide that helped us intuit the structure of the trilogy.
Part 1, DESPERTAR (AROUSE), is a video-performance where we see an artist-entity somehow evoking the dreamlike presence of a woman in a hammock. From this pictorial dream arises the feeling of the rupture that is to come.
Part 2, O JARDIM (THE GARDEN) is a video installation for 3 monitors that delves into the idea of a plant apocalypse, a revolution of plants, that would wrest hegemony over the planet’s narratives from the hands of animals (including humans).
Part 3, the short film FLORESTA DO FIM DO MUNDO, part of this year’s Forum Expanded programme, is, in some ways, the affective and symbolic bridge that connects the dream and the revolution, Part 1 and 2, in a cyclical structure where the imminence of a transformative outcome lies in the subtext, in the small deviations, in the dances interrupted in a bar on the outskirts of a large city...
THE PLANTS TRILOGY is, therefore, a fragmented portrait of 3 moments of an intuition of a revolution rooted in elements that deviates from the hegemonic images of mankind as the centre of the planet narratives. In this not-human riot, first comes the dream, then the abandonment of the world, then its reinvention. Removing the idea of nature and any sense of passivity. This forest desires, wants, seeks, dreams and longs. As all forms of life do.
Below you can see the first gesture of the trilogy. We suggest good headphones and high volume. So the dream can come visible.
DESPERTAR/AROUSE (A PLANT’S DREAM)
TRILOGIA DAS PLANTAS 1 / PLANTS TRILOGY 1
A video-performance created by Denilson Baniwa and Felipe M. Bragança
10 minutes / Brasil
Supported by: FUNARTE
