Trans - Architecture

Architectural design by Anthony Rafes

Genipapo-Urucum [TransArchitecture]

For Jorge Varella Maltz

Healing, Monitoring & Reforestation Center with NYC/ Berlin Extension 

Project Description:

TransArchitecture with NYC/ Berlin Extension is a trans-national public art project that seeks to actively support indigenous resistance against the multinational corporations’ destruction of the forest and its ecosystems. We believe that indigenous cultures and knowledge are a fundamental participant in forest ecosystems and a major force in its health, protection, and survival. 

Violent raids by government and private militias on indigenous communities in the Mato Grosso do Sul region are a primary tactic these interests are pursuing in order to open up for exploitation, especially for mining, logging and agriculture

If the indigenous communities fail, there will be nothing to slow the transition of the forest into the hands of corporations. Reports continue to emerge daily about indigenous community leaders and activists being murdered, communities terrorized, and essential indigenous resources like water, fish, and soil poisoned for human and animal use. 

In our ongoing and substantial conversation with indigenous leaders groups (Aranduha from Guarani-Kaiowa and others), we have come to understand the catastrophic toll this violence is taking on indigenous peoples physically, psychologically, culturally, and spiritually. 

Yet this is not only a genocidal violence against indigenous -- it is also a defacto suicidal mission its destruction ensures climate catastrophe on a scale never before seen.

The public art project described here is committed to the imagination and development of autonomous centers of support and communication between indigenous communities in Mato Grosso do Sul, and to the development of mechanisms for transnational awareness and solidarity that do not rely on the vicissitudes of mass media coverage and interpretation, which is often beholden to the very interests that are destroying the Forest and its peoples. In the tradition of mutual aid, we seek to offer resources and skills to make it easier for indigenous communities to both protect and to represent their struggles and lives directly and autonomously. 

Toward this end,

TransArchitecture consists of three central elements:

• Community Healing and Reforestation Center Dourados, Mato Grosso do Sul

• Prototype Monitoring Centers Dourados, Mato Grosso do Sul

• NYC/ Berlin Extension that will act as a direct mode of communication from indigenous communities to people and communities beyond Brazil’s borders

Video clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4CcX720DW4

Campaign: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDPDJ7AcpZ8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncYDrez3xew&t=1s

https://vimeo.com/588161290

  https://www.gojira-music.com/amazonia?ref=https://www.google.com/

STAGE ONE

Community Healing and Reforestation Center

Located in Dourados, Mato Grosso do Sul

Materials: Wood, vines, local vegetable materials, solar panels. Notches in the structures facilitate assembly using indigenouse practices and techniques.

Architecture Project made by Guarani Kaiowa Indigenous from Mato Grosso do Sul

                          with financial support by Gojira metal band campaign [2021] 

STAGE TWO

(Located in Mato Grosso do Sul (Guarani Kaiowa)

Prototype Monitoring Centers

 It should be emphasized that the monitoring centers will be run and maintained by Kaiowa communities themselves -- this is not a outside monitoring of the forest, but an autonomous internal process. Our role is to deliver the equipment, to bring people with technological knowledge to help set up the surveillance lab, to help install cameras in key locations along forest roads and rivers, and to train community members in use and maintenance of the equipment.

Once the Monitoring Centers are functioning, villages can use the information to aid in their internal decision.

The Prototype Monitoring Centers are the first stage of the TransArchitecture project, and they will be located in many villages of Guarani Kaiowa in Mato Grosso, these areas that are on the front-lines of illegal logging, violent raids, agribusiness and deforestation initiatives. These areas are vast, making it difficult for local indigenous communities to keep track of what is happening to their territories in real time.

The Monitoring Centers are conceived to allow real-time monitoring of indigenous lands and forests by indigenous communities themselves. By delivering, installing, and providing training in the use of equipment such as cameras (photo and video), drones, mobile phones, computers, screens, manual batteries, and GPS devices, communities can be alert to real-time invasions by illegal loggers, miners and militias. The idea is that this will allow the communities agency in the development of informed strategies for resisting such incursions, and as importantly, to move people to safer ground in order to avoid violence when necessary. 

The Centers will be prototypes in that they will allow for development of skills and experience that may potentially be moved beyond the initial villages. The idea for such centers was collaboratively developed during months of conversation with indigenous leaders in these areas and reflects the need to level profound disparities between access to information that ons. They can also choose to share live footage of the forest, of pollution and fires, of incursions, or of other village activities and events at their own discretion through the NYC/ Berlin Extension (see below).

STAGE THREE

NYC/ Berlin Extension

Located in a NYC/ Belin Public Park 

The Community Healing and Reforestation Center is the primary architectural dimension of the TransArchitecture project, and it will be built in Dourados as a site for the support of indigenous communal health and healing. The stress and pain of withstanding the current onslaught on their cultures, bodies, and way of life cannot be overestimated. In conversation with community leaders, it has become clear that to sustain the will to resist and even to live has become of dire importance in indigenous. The Center is conceived to be a place of refuge, a place to imagine and recharge, a place to safely store cultural artifacts and knowledges, and to practice, develop, and exchange collective knowledge.

The Healing Center will include multiple separate but clustered spaces that focus on different healing practices, and it is meant to put community healing into the hands of the community. The details of these practices will be determined by the communities themselves, but in conversation several possible ideas have been suggested already, including rooms for: oral histories and cultural archives; preparation and use of herbal medicinal knowledge; energetic work and somatic practices; art therapy and communal art projects (including visual art, music, movement and story-telling/poetry); a communal bath; treatments and support for substance abuse; a vegetable garden with communal kitchen and dining room; as well as a hall for public meetings, planning and conversation. A final central component of the Healing Center will be the development of reforestation techniques for areas of the forests that have been destroyed.

The design of the Center incorporates the traditional indigenous OCA architectural style with newer technologies and materials such as solar panels and insulation. It also raises the OCA into the trees, and clusters them together with connecting walkways and platforms that work to construct a plaza-like open space beneath the structures that can be used for vegetable gardens, permaculture projects, reforestation preparation, and/or gatherings. The suspension of the Ocas is defensive, in that it ensures that potentially unfriendly visitors will be visible. But it is also aesthetically important, in that the spaces are literally nestled in and surrounded by trees, birds, and vegetation, creating a peaceful and healing atmosphere for the important work and rest that will take place here.

 The design features and concept of the Healing Center emerges from a larger conceptual project that involves the development of what I am calling transarchitecture (see more on this in the TransArchitecture as Practice and Concept below).

NYC/ Berlin Park Extension 

The NYC/ Berlin Extension is conceived as a point of access for Guarani Kaiowa groups to people on the ground beyond Brazil’s borders. As such it aims to act as a real-time bridge between locales, enabling indigenous self-representation of daily life, struggles to survive, and efforts to protect the forest and their communities from exploitation. 

Connecting digitally to the Monitoring Centers and the Community Healing Center, indigenous communities decide themselves which transmissions they want to send to the NYC/ Berlin Extension (direct video messages, footage of invasions, encounters with illegal loggers, village activities and events, cultural perspectives and knowledges, medicinal practices, sites of fire and pollution, etc).

 The Extension’s mission is not only to stimulate an exchange of experiences and fields of knowledge, but also to foster support for reforestation, creating a continuous dialogue with the artistic, activist, and environmental communities both in Mato Grosso do Sul and in New York/ Berlin. 

As such, the NYC / Berlin Extension might be seen not as a monument to a genocide of a people (of the past), but as an anti-monument that aims to stop one in the present. The extension transmits and documents indigenous calls for specific kinds of trans-local solidarity and support. It is a tool for the analysis of crimes being committed against indigenous people, it is a mechanism by which indigenous perspectives on forest health and sustainability can be transmitted and shared, and it is a potential deterrent to forces on the ground who are pursuing illegal tactics.

For visitors to the Extension, real-time encounters build awareness of Indigenous perspectives and experience, without the filters of the media apparatus or of politicians. In a sense, the Extension is an invitation for New YorkerS to respond to specific indigenous requests, to gain insight into the complexity and severity of the current moment, and in doing so to become, through encounter and response, collaborative guardians of the forest.

. Adriana Varella, website www.adrianavarella.net , Trans media, Public Art, Visual Artist -

Trans-architecture Healing/ Monitoring/ Reforestation Center to be built in Mato Grosso do Sul with a public art extension to NYC/ Berlin. Public Art and Architecture Site-Specific Project. (In Process)

(Images of the Project)

Social and Environmental Demands Through the Art of Transarchitecture Project – Deterritorializing and Building Networks

TransArchitecture in Decolonial Politics: Indigenous Bodies in TransSpace Project

by Natasha Marzliak

TransArchitecture collaborates with indigenous communities that want to work on architectural projects that have a real impact on community life. The first plan calls for the construction of two interconnected buildings: a community healing, communication, and reforestation center in Brazil; and a global communication support center in New York City. The project foresees the construction of collective spaces for leisure, coexistence and indigenous health, in addition to maintenance of ecosystems, a primary source of global biodiversity, and the insertion of technological devices for independent communication. Being a collaborative project, the use of indigenous knowledge's architectural solutions is necessary in order to build these structures. These constructions can also includes sustainable non-indigenous technologies, such as solar panels, some thermal insulation materials, rainwater harvesting systems and energy mills technology.

TransArchitecture is focused on adapting to the environment and community identity where the architectural project will be developed, in contrast to the architecture used in Brazil since colonization, which frequently conflicts with our unique climatic conditions and social indigenous traits. The Amazon region is renowned for its hot and humid climate. Indigenous communities possess traditional construction skills and utilize local materials and techniques. Indigenous houses in the Amazon region may vary according to culture and location, but typically employ natural materials such as thatch, wood, and mud, and are adapted to the local climate. Many indigenous houses in this region feature high-pitched roofs that facilitate ventilation and prevent heat buildup. Moreover, walls are frequently made of materials that permit air circulation, such as woven thatch or bamboo.

Regarding social living, many indigenous ethnic groups consider the house as a communal space, where multiple families can share the same area and divide resources. This notion of a communal house is distinct from the Western model of a house divided into private spaces for each nuclear family. In indigenous cultures, the division of space is based on the needs of the community. The communal house may serve as a space for social, cultural, and religious activities and is often a site for exchange and sharing among community members. This spatial organization reflects the significance of collectivism and solidarity in indigenous culture.

Unfortunately, indigenous populations were subjected to colonization and now to coloniality, labor exploitation, social marginalization, extreme violence and cultural silencing, which resulted in the loss of their lands and the erasure of their culture and traditional practices. According to Pedro Paulo Gómez, through coloniality “it was possible to combine hierarchy and the establishment of borders between peoples, places, languages, knowledge, actions, teachings, memories, races, etc”. In this way, human beings humans are separated into two categories: humanitas and anthropos, the latter being considered inferior, “a being stripped of human attributes, including reason and sensibility. And as a result of this lack, the anthropos will not be able to cultivate civility, culture, moral development and material progress; and by its inability to create destined to be an imitator of the practices and attributes of humanitas.” (Gómez, Pedro Pablo. “Decolonialidad estética: geopolíticas del sentir el pensar y el hacer.” Revista GEARTE, Porto Alegre, (6) n. 2, (2019): 369-389. http://dx.doi.org/10.22456/2357-9854.92910).

Square houses with square interior divisions and small windows may be common in indigenous and non-indigenous communities in the Amazon, but these architectural features may not be the most adequate to deal with the local climate and social identity. The government frequently constructs residences for indigenous communities. These dwellings are often based on prefabricated models and are not tailored to the individual demands of communities. It is critical to recognize the historical and continuing injustices faced by indigenous peoples and support them in their struggle to secure their knowledge, culture, land, and sovereignty, taking into account their needs, culture and traditions. TransArchitecture opts for decoloniality because it seeks to challenge the ongoing legacies of colonialism, imperialism, and Eurocentrism, in the unequivocal desire to encourage the coexistence - in networks - of worlds. The decolonial option “allows for a conception of the reproduction of life that starts from the damnés, in Frantz Fanon's terminology, that is, from the perspective of the majority of people on the planet whose lives have been declared expendable, whose dignity has been humiliated, whose bodies have been used as labor force: the reproduction of life here is a concept that emerges from indigenous and enslaved Afros in the formation of a capitalist economy, and that extends to the reproduction of death through western imperial expansion and the growth of a capitalist economy. " (Mignolo, Walter D. “Epistemic Disobedience: The De-Colonial Option and the Meaning of Identity in Politics”. Gragoatá 12 v. 22 (2007): 17-18. https://periodicos.uff.br/gragoata/article/view/33191.)

TransArchitecture starts from a place “where the humanities, arts and activities – often excluded or completely confined to reduced spaces in training institutions and curricula – can find a non-subordinate place for creation” (Gómez, Pedro Pablo. “Decolonialidad estética: geopolíticas del sentir el pensar y el hacer.” Revista GEARTE, Porto Alegre, (6) n. 2, (2019): 369-370. http://dx.doi.org/10.22456/2357-9854.92910). The project embodies two main linked traits that are worth exploring: it is based on the relationships between the potency of indigenous collective body and transSpace idea. The creation of autonomous, collective, and collaborative spaces to local social and political activities challenge the ocidental ones, offering alternatives to dominant modes of organization and control. The healing center can have modular spaces for rest, collective cooking, education, healthy practices, such as the preparation of medicine from plants, art projects, and chemical substance abuse treatment. The extension center is an independent mode of communication that can establish a permanent dialogue between indigenous leadership, activists, and scientific and artistic communities in NYC, in addition to being an anti-monument that will challenge white-patriarchal-capitalist architecture. Intercultural dialogue between indigenous and non-indigenous cultures is critical because it lifts the veil of illusions in Western narratives about other peoples, allowing indigenous bodies (their being, knowing, and power) to be reaffirmed and present in a plural world. This platform can also be a place to report crimes against the environment and against the indigenous population. These spaces are built according to the needs of each community working on the project, so they are just suggestions from artist Adrians Black.

Self-managed, collaborative, and non-hierarchical, the suggested TransSpaces are like the Bamyeh’s “lifeworlds”, witch are “a social space characterized by living dynamism, interaction, negotiations, and flux, a space to which one may contrast the rigid world of systems—that is, institutions (most importantly the state) that claim to stand in, embody, or represent such a lifeworld in stable, bureaucratic, and standard ways.” Disruptive, they move away from the individualistic and competitive mindset that often characterizes modern society, and towards a more collaborative, compassionate, and interconnected way of living.

Indigenous culture demonstrates a strong understanding of the interconnectedness of all living things. They have a wealth of ancestral wisdom and traditional customs that can teach us a lot about how to live more in solidarity with others, as well as more sustainably and in tune with nature, especially in light of the current humanitarian, environmental, and human situation. health problems. Supporting your community's endeavors benefits both the Earth and the future of humanity. TransSpace is a "two-way street". It is built by the indigenous collective body while increasing its power. TransArchitecture understands the importance of the body as territory – as a place with cultural, social and historical significance. Bodies are cultural constructions influenced by knowledge, traditions and practices. They can therefore be a tool of resistance against colonial exploitation and cultural exclusion. Indigenous communities can strengthen and recover their cultural identity by reinforcing the importance of indigenous bodies as cultural creations, rejecting forced cultural assimilation and preserving their knowledge and customs.

Natasha Marzliak is Associate Professor of Art History and Aesthetics at the Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM). She is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Free University of Berlin, where she researches the engaged social art. She holds a PhD in Visual Arts - Multimedia and Art from Campinas State University (UNICAMP), as well as a research exchange in Cinema and Audiovisual at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. She is Associate Editor at Art Style | Art & Culture International Magazine and member of the AnarkoArtLab collective. Aesthetics, Art History, Visual Culture, and Visual Arts are among her areas of competence. Her study focuses on the intersections of art and politics, exploring into radical democracy, post-anarchism, post-feminism, intersectionality, and decolonial criticisms. Email: natmarzliak@gmail.com