Artist Statement
June 14, MACBA – Convent dels Àngels. Session: Scale and the Politics of Other Living Systems
Keywords: art and design, interactive database, data visualization, geolocated and visual narrative
The work-in-progress “entre Margaridas” (“between Margaridas”) intends to operationalize female representations through the cartography of daisy family Asteraceae, as a common endemic flora in Brazil, which, when developing in unexpected places and adapting to different soils, it evokes the same strength and resistance built by the many Brazilian Margaridas.
On the structure of Google Maps, species of the Asteraceae family in extinction in Brazil will be mapped, according to the “Red Lists” database of the National Center for Flora Conservation. And in combination with those scientific information, personal stories will be located with the collaboration of different web users’ stories, sent by email [short life story, photography, location]. An affective cartography is going to be installed, which intends to map and disseminate the context of these endangered daisies and Margaridas in their botanical and socio-political dimensions, respectively. The work-in-progress “entre Margaridas” (between Margaridas”) rescues a scientific archive to organize an affective collection, which updates an urgent look at endangered species – an environmental and historical-cultural territory that has been gradually destroyed, to bring it closer to another socio-political reality, our Margaridas, which also have survived in different political and/or social Brazilian environments. A poetic collaborative database is going to be created according to web-users’ contributions and their Margarida’s personal narratives, that even they are not notorious ones, daisies and Margaridas share the same strength of adapting to survive. We understand that expanding and diversifying the actors involved in the establishment of this visual narrative implies formalizing technology awareness processes, which give visibility to the exercises and disputes of power in the technical choices that guide our technocratic society.
- Luisa Paraguai (BR) is Researcher, Professor and Coordinator of the Postgraduate Program in Languages, Media and Art at Pontifical Catholic University of Campinas. Vice-leader of the Research Group on Production and Research in Arts. She holds a degree in Civil Engineering at University of São Paulo, a master’s and doctorate in Multimedia, Institute of Arts at State University of Campinas, and a postdoctoral degree at the Planetary Collegium, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan and at Federal University of Goiás in Brazil. http://luisaparaguai.art.br