Three Perspectives on the Amazon: The Forest in Arts and Culture

CULTURESCAPES 2021 Amazonia organizes in cooperation with Forum Aussenpolitik foraus and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation SDC the event series Three Perspectives on the Amazon: Three Topics, three Perspectives, three Cities - three panel discussions on topics related to the Amazon. The series kicks off in Basel on October 21 with THE FOREST IN ARTS AND CULTURE. Brazilian composers, musicians and sound artists Livio Tragtenberg and Marco Scarassatti present their performance of BIO - Burned Instruments Orchestra. In it they record the destructive process of the thousands of trees in the Amazon that are burned and deforested every day. They collect pieces of wood of all kinds and build instruments from them, whose history, sounds and intentions are the starting point for new musical creations. In the panel discussion, Vandria Borari (CULTURESCAPES 2021 artist in residency and first indigenous lawyer from the Borari people in the Brazilian Amazon), Martin Jaggi (former head of the SDC office in Peru, currently Chief of Staff, Swiss Humanitarian Aid) and Federico Cammelli (postdoctoral researcher at the Environmental Policy Lab ETHZ) talk with Kateryna Botanova (co-curator CULTURESCAPES) about the challenges in the Amazon and to what extent art and culture can contribute to build a bridge to the Amazon region and create a connection with the forest and its vulnerability. The audience will have the opportunity to ask the experts their questions, on site as well as online.