ABOUT


Barbara Marcel
(she/her)
b. 1985, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Lives and works in Berlin and Rio de Janeiro.


EDUCATION

2015-2021 BAUHAUS-Universität Weimar, Ph.D. Fine Arts - Artistic Research (Prof. Dr. Phil Michael Lüthy, Prof. Livia Flores UFRJ-EBA).

2014-2016 UdK, Universität der Künste Berlin, Guest Student (Klasse Hito Steyerl).

2011-2014 UdK, Universität der Künste Berlin, MA in Art in Context.

2005-2007 UFRJ, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, BA in Philosophy.

2004-2006 Unesa, Universidade Estácio de Sá, BA in Film Studies.

2000-2004 Technical Gymnasium in Public Health, EPSJV, FIOCRUZ.


EXHIBITIONS AND SCREENINGS

2023 (Coming soon) My Precious Exhibition at Werkleitz Festival.

2022 The Parable of Progress (Sesc Pompéia SP Brazil).  Link

2022  Wild Palms, Düsseldorf (Current).

2022 7th ORANGE - Cultivating Humility. Collective exhibition in Saint-Hyacinthe, Canada. Curated by Elise Anne LaPlante and Véronique Leblanc.

2022 AL CONJURO DE ESTE CÓDIGO - Tecnofeminismos para reescribir el mundo. Collective exhibition curated by Alma Laprida, Ana Mora, Jenny Maritza Ramírez Osorio, Maia Navas and Tania Puente, at CASo - Centro de Arte Sonoro in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

2022 WEATHER ENGINES. Collective exhibition curated by Daphne Dragona & Jussi Parikka at Onassis Stegi, Athens, Greece.

2022 MORE PLANETS LESS PAIN - Constellations of artistic research. Collective exhibition at Kunsthalle Erfurt and ACC Weimar (Germany), curated by Anne Brannys.

2021 UMBRALES. Collective exhibition at IFA Gallery in Stuttgart (Germany) in collaboration with BIENAL DE ARTE MEDIALES, Santiago de Chile, curated by Bettina Korintenberg and Enrique Rivera.

2021 solo exhibition at Gemeinde, Cologne, Germany.

2021 FLUIDE REALITÄTEN. Collective exhibition at Kunstbrücke am Wildenbruch, part of the Kommunale Galerien Berlin, Germany. Curatiorial team: Dorothee Bienert, Yolanda Kaddu-Mulindwa, Daniela Nadwornicek, Isabelle Stamm; Plakatwand: Uwe Jonas.

2021 BIRDS AND BUOYS. Duo exhibition by Barbara Marcel and Nadja Abt. Curated by Katja Knast at Bärenzwinger Berlin, Germany.

2021 SÜDSTELLIUM. A project by Matheus Rocha Pitta, Ana Hupe, Barbara Marcel at Kottbusser Tor Subway station in Berlin, Germany. Funded by the Projektförderung Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg 2020.

2020-2022 CRITICAL ZONES. Observatory for Earthy Politics. Curated by Bruno Latour, Peter Weibel, Bettina Korintenberg and Martin Guinard. Zentrum für Kunst und Media ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany.

2020 BERLINISCHE GALERIE, IBB-Video Space, curated by Nuno De Brito Rocha, Berlin, Germany.

2020 MAC – Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói – Rio de janeiro. Screenings of videoart curated by Raphael Fonseca, Brazil.

2020 AGROPOETICS at Inland — art, agriculture & territory, Madrid, Spain.

2020 FOSSO #15, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

2020 GOETHE Institute Concepción. Screening of Humo sobre los Humedales, Chile.

2019 (solo) HUMO SOBRE LOS HUMEDALES. Solo exhibition resulting from the Goethe Institute Residency Artivism, curated by Luis Alarcón and Ana María Saavedra. GALERIA METROPOLITANA, Santiago de Chile.

2019 SOIL IS AN INSCRIBED BODY. Curated by Elena Agudio Marleen Boschen. SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, Germany.

2019 LICHT LUFT SCHEIßE [Light Air Shit], Perspectives on Ecology and Modernity. Curated by Florian Wüst and Marco Clausen. Nachbarschaftsakademie, nGbK and Prinzessinengarten, Berlin, Germany.

2019 AS REAL BECOME SURREAL, Screenings Running parallel to the 16th Istanbul Biennial of the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV) at Kundura Cinema, Istanbul, Turkey.

2019 FIRE FAÍSCA FUNKE, financed by the Cultural Office Berlin District Office Friedrichain - Kreuzberg, Gallery Mario Kreuzberg, Berlin, Germany.

2019 FRACTURED LANDSCAPES: Broad Underground Film Series, Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, USA.

2018 DISAPPEARING LEGACIES: THE WORLD AS FOREST, Zentralmagazin Naturwissenschaftlicher Sammlungen, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Halle/Saale, Germany.

2018 La VOLUNTAD DE LA FORMA, Espacio Pla. Buenos Aires, Argentine.

2018 DISAPPEARING LEGACIES: THE WORLD AS FOREST, Tieranatomische Theater, Humboldt University Berlin, Germany.

2018 REENCONTRES INTERNATIONALES: New cinema and Contemporary Arts, screening at Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Berlin, Germany.

2018 REENCONTRES INTERNATIONALES: New cinema and Contemporary Arts, screening at Luminor Hôtel de Ville. Paris, France.

2017 LANDSCAPES OF EXCESS, screening at Kispas. Brussels, Belgium.

2017 LANDSCAPES OF EXCESS, screening at Teatro Munganga, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

2017 12 TEORÍA MODERNAS EN LA COLONIA. Col. Moderna, Guadalajara, México.

2017 DISAPPEARING LEGACIES: THE WORLD AS FOREST, CeNak - Zoologisches Museum Hamburg, Germany.

2017 FIT FRAME TO CONTENT, Urlaub Projects. Berlin, Germany.

2017 UNIVERSIDAD DESCONOCIDA, Standard Deluxe. Lausanne, Switzerland.

2017 PLATFORMS PROJECT 2017, with Campus Novel. Athens, Greece.

2017 solo show TROPIC MATTERS at V240, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

2016 THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS, GMK, Berlin, Germany.

2016 OMONOIA ATHENS BIENNALE, Athens, Greece.

2016 INTUITIVE QUADRANTS, Luis Leu Ausstellungsraum für zeitgenössische Kunst, Karlsruhe, Germany.

2016 WE DO THE VOODOO (One minute Project). 62. Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen. Oberhausen, Germany.

2016 WE DO THE VOODOO (One minute Project). Eye Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

2015 PHOTOGRAPHY, HISTORY AND MEMORY WITH ARNO GISINGER, Mar at the Academy - Museum of Art Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

2015 LUMINOUS FLUX - REFLECTED OVERLAYS ON LOCATIVE NORMS, Syros, Greece.

2015 VISION AND FEAR STATION, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, Germany.

2015 ON PROJECTION, Kühlhaus Berlin, Germany.

2015 THROUGH THE LOOKING SCREEN, 175 Gallery, Seoul, South Korea.

2014 REPRESENTATIVES. Altes Finanzamt, Berlin, Germany.

2014 BRASILIEN TRIFFT BERLIN, Blockbuster Exhibitions, Berlin, Germany.

2014 RUNDGANG MASTERARBEITEN 2013/2014 Institut für Kunst im Kontext. Universität der Künste Berlin, Germany.

2013 DESVENDA, Marta Traba Gallery, Fundação Memorial da América Latina, São Paulo, Brazil.

2013 SPRINGS AND SOURCES, Andros, Greece.

2013 230.000 CM: Part 2, Karl Marx Studio, Art Festival “Nacht und Nebel”, Berlin, Germany.

2013 COLOGNE OFF India II, CeC: Carnival of eCreativity, Sattal, India.

2013 230.000 CM: Part 1, Karl Marx Studio, Art Festival “48 Horas Neukölln”, Berlin, Germany.

2013 PIC: PIECES IN CHAIN, MPAB - Month of Performance Berlim, Altes Finanzamt, Berlin, Germany.

2013 RETURN TO FOREVER, TZB Gallery of the Czech Centre Berlin, Germany.

2012 25 INSTANTS VIDEO, Alexandria Art Center Library, Alexandria, Egypt.

2012 A PARADISE IS A PARADISE IS A PARADISE, Karl Marx Studio, 48-Stunden Neukölln Art Festival, Berlin, Germany.

2012 ANIMATE COLOGNE ART AND ANIMATION FILM, Cologne, Germany.

2012 DESVENDA, Museum Murillo La Greca, Recife, Brazil.

2012 FELDFORSCHUNG AM EINSTEINUFER, Institut Art in Context, Berlin, Germany.

2012 VIDEO ART FESTIVAL MIDEN, Kalamata, Greece.

2012 ATHENS VIDEO ART FESTIVAL, Athens, Greece.

2011 DESVENDA, Casa M de Mercosul, Porto Alegre, Brazil.

2011 ALTES FINANZAMT, Berlin, Germany.

2011 FIEBER, Marzia Frozen Gallery, Berlin, Germany.


ARTISTS RESIDENCIES AND AWARDS

2022-2023 BERLIN ARTISTIC RESEARCH GRANT PROGRAMME Fellow 2022-23. link

2021 Art Residency as part of the YANGO! Art Biennale of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

2020-2021 BEZIRKSKULTURFONDS BERLIN: Kreuzberg Friedrichshain, Project “Südstellium“, initiated by Matheus Rocha Pitta, Ana Hupe and Barbara Marcel. Funding for an Exhibition, Berlin (DE).

2018-2021 HEINRICH BÖLL STIFTUNG. Three years Scholarship for PhD at the Bauhaus University Weimar.

2019 GOETHE INSTITUTE RESIDENCY in Concepción, Chile (CHL).

2019 JESSICA-BILZ-FOND, Project “Situiertes Wissen / Globale Ökologien: ein kollaborativer Walkshop Ramble“, Berlin (DE).

2019 BEZIRKSKULTURFONDS BERLIN: Kreuzberg Friedrichshain, Project „Der Süd ist unser Norden“. Funding for an Exhibition, Berlin (DE).

2017 UNIVERSIDAD DESCONOCIDA. Two weeks artistic residency at the Music and Theater Festival at the Tuquet, Monpton, France.

2017 UNIVERSIDAD DESCONOCIDA, Standard Deluxe. Two weeks artistic residency in the Alps, Evolène, Switzerland.

2016 IFA - INSTITUT FÜR AUSLÄNDSBEZIEHUNG BERLIN. Prize for support on Solo Exhibition in Amsterdam 2017.

2016 LABverde ART IMMERSION PROGRAM IN THE AMAZON. Artistic residency in the Reserve Adolpho Ducke (INPA), Manaus, Brazil. Founded by the Bauhaus University Weimar IPID4all (DAAD) Program for artistic research abroad.

2016 FRAUENFOND BAUHAUS UNIVERSITY WEIMAR. Funding for young artists: "The Archival Garden: Balcony Dialogues", Athens Biennale.

2015 SYROS INSTITUTE - Artistic residence about Lighthouses on the island of Syros, Greece.

2013 SPRING AND SOURCES - Artistic residence on the island of Andros, Greece.


WORK EXPERIENCE

2021 PRACTICE TUTOR. MA Ecology Futures at St. Joost School of Art & Design in 's-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands.

2015-2017 ARTIST ASSISTANT. Artist: Filipa César. Berlin, Germany.

2017 IMAGE AND SOUND EDITOR. “Vierte Welt Woman”, Ana Hupe. (Berlin, 16min)

2016-2017 PRODUCTION AND EDITING ASSISTANT. “Spell Reel”, Filipa César (Germany / Portugal / France / Guinea-Bissau, Documentary form, 96 min). Screenings: Berlinale - Forum 2017.

2015 DIRECTOR ASSISTANT. “Transmission from the Liberated Zones”, Filipa César (Portugal / France / Germany / Sweden, 30 min). Screenings: Berlinale - Forum Expanded 2016; Tempo Documentary Festival, Stockholm, Sweden; Indielisboa, Portugal; Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Germany.

2014 PRODUCER AND PRODUCTION DESIGNER. “Escape from my eyes”, Felipe Bragança (Brazil/Germany, 33 min, 2015). Screenings: Berlinale - Forum Expanded 2015; Curitiba Intl' Film Festival; Rio de Janeiro Intl' Film Festival, São Paulo short film festival.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

2021 DESILHA 3. Organized by Michelle Sommer and Lívia Flores. Original Essay, co-written with Andreas Döpke and Tom Nóbrega, called “canário azul: 5 fragmentos” (blue canary: 5 fragments).

2021 THESE BIRDS OF TEMPTATION: intercalations 6. Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin (eds.). Co-published by K. Verlag and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. , Berlin. Made possible by the Schering Stiftung. Original Essay, co-written with Andreas Döpke, called “Des Goldes Klang” (The Golden Tone).

2020 THE WORK OF THE WIND: LAND. Christine Shaw & Etienne Turpin (eds.). Co-published by K. Verlag in partnership with the University of Toronto Mississauga. Original Essay called “The gardener, the rubber-tapper and the herbalist: a ciné-cipó”.

2017 THE EVER-GARDEN EFFECT. Artist Book. Berlin/Athens.

2015 LUMINOUS FLUX. Booklet of the Exhibition at Syros Institut. Syros, Greece.

2015 ON PROJECTION. Booklet of the Exhibition at Kühlhaus Berlin, Germany.

2014 AUS DEM KONTEXT. Catalogue of the exhibition “Masterarbeiten 2013/2014” from the Institut für Kunst im Kontext. Universität der Künste Berlin, Germany.

2013 LANGUAGE IS AN INVISIBLE LANDSCAPE. Artist Book. Drawings “Humaitá and A pedra agora é preta”. Collective publication curated by artist Marta Leite. Berlin, Germany.

2013 230 000 CM. Artist Book. Collective publication of photos and original texts. Project funded by Quartier Donaukiez of Neukölln, organized by Marta Leite, Barbara and Marcel Senli in the Karl Marx Studio, Berlin, Germany.


ARTISTIC TALKS, LECTURES, WORKSHOPS AND SEMINARS (selection)

2021 ON LATEX - Critical Inflections on (Neo)Extractivism in Latin America. Conference organized by the Institute of Cultural Inquiry Berlin ICI in cooperation with Stanford University. Lecture Performance artist presentantion, 27-28.09.21, Berlin (DE).

2021 LANDSCAPE EXERCISES. 3rd Research Seminar on Art and City_DESILHA 2021, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (BR) Lecture Performance and Artist Talk on-line in collaboration with Tom Nóbrega. Roundtable: Mineral Landscapes, 10.06.21, UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro (BR).

2021 ANDERE WÄLDER. Lecture Performance and Artist Talk at the Kunstuniversität Linz (AT) in cooperation with the art festival FMR21, 06.05.21.

2021 BIRDS AND BUOYS. Artist Talk On-Line. Paz Guevara in conversation with Nadja Abt, Barbara Marcel, Katja Kynast, as part of the exhibition »Birds and Buoys« at the Bärenzwinger in Berlin (DE), 28.4.21.

2021 ZUM DIGITALEN REGIME DER KUNST IN ZEITEN DER PANDEMIE. Artist Talk, film screening and studio visits with students of the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, 14-15.01.21.

2020 TERRESTRIAL UNIVERSTITY: Ciné-Cipó – Cine-Liana at Amazon Tall Tower Observatory. ARTIST TALK with curator Bettina Korintenberg, as part of the exhibition CRITICAL ZONES - Observatory for Earthy Politics, curated by Bruno Latour, Peter Weibel, Bettina Korintenberg and Martin Guinard at the Zentrum für Kunst und Media ZKM, Karlsruhe (DE), 08.10.20.

2020 OPEN AIR VIDEO ART. Screening night of Barbara Marcel & Ana Hupe and artist talk with the Director Dr. Thomas Köhler at BERLINISCHE GALERIE, 28.08.20 (DE).

2020 ÉL ENSAYO Y LA EXPERIMENTACIÓN COMO FORMA Y LENGUAJE: CUERPO, ARCHIVO, TESTIMONIO. (Lecture: The essay and experimentation as form and language: Body, Archive, Testimony). III Jornadas Internationales de Estéticas y políticas contemporâneas nuestro-americanas (III International Conference on Aesthetics and Contemporary Politics in Latin America). 29.08.20, Universidad de Avellaneda (ARG).

2020 THE GARDENER, THE RUBBER TAPPER AND THE HERBALIST. Lecture Performance and Artist Talk at FOSSO 15, Rio de Janeiro (BR), 08.02.20.

2019 HUMO SOBRE LOS HUMEDALES. Lecture Performance of an ongoing project. Event organized by the GOETHE Institute of Santiago de Chile in collaboration with Galeria Metropolitana (CH), 14.12.19.

2019 WHAT ELSE BURNS WHEN THE AMAZON BURNS? Artist Talk initiated by Barbara Marcel and Camila Nóbrega with Alessandra Munduruku and Vândria Borari. Parallel event to the Exhibition AGROPOETICS at Savvy Contemporary Berlin (DE), 22.09.19.

2019 WOMEN IN MOVEMENT / The Patriarchy of Land. On Agrarian Movements and Their Internal Struggles. INVOCATIONS discursive program as part of the exhibition AGROPOETICS: Soil is an Inscribed Body. ON SOVEREIGNTY AND AGROPOETICS, at Savvy Contemporary Berlin (DE), 14.09.2019.

2019 NARRATIVES OF SOCIO-ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE IN BRAZIL: ON THE RIGHT TO THE TERRITORIES AND IMAGINARIES. Artist Talk initiated by Barbara Marcel and Camila Nóbrega with Brazilian grassroot movement activists Silvia Baptista (TEIA - Women agroecology collective BR) and Luana Carvalho (MST - Landless Workers' Movement BR), 04.09.2019. Discursive program as part of the exhibition “Licht, Luft und Scheisse”, [Light Air Shit]. Perspectives on Ecology and Modernity« – a joint production of: Botanischer Garten und Botanisches Museum der Freien Universität Berlin (BGBM), Martin-Elsaesser-Stiftung, Nachbarschaftsakademie im Prinzessinnengarten Kreuzberg and neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK).

2021 SITUATED KNOWLEDGE / GLOBAL ECOLOGIES: A Collaborative Walkshop Ramble, on social-ecological justice, initiated by Barbara Marcel and Camila Nóbrega, between September 2nd - 4th at the Prinzessinnengarten, Berlin. During three days, the project brought together academic researchers with environmental activists, journalists and artists, for an experimental format of knowledge exchange. Founded by the Jessica-Bilz-Stiftung Berlin (DE).

2018 CHANGING CLIMATES Conference. Engaging Citizens with Local Environments and Ecologies through Digital Interventions. Presentation at the Conference, Lecture performance. Nov 22-24, 2018, University of Skövde (SE).

2018 THE OPEN FOREST, lecture Performance at the International Conference POLITICS OF NATURE. University of St. Gallen, 11-13 of October 2018. Organized by Federico Luisetti and Emmanuel Alloa. School for Humanities and Social Sciences, Universität St. Gallen (CH).

2018 12 SCHNITTE UND EIN LOCH IM TAL [12 Steps and a whole in the Valley]. A Walkshop Ramble initiated by Barbara Marcel in collaboration with the geographer Andreas Döpke, with the support of TRAFFO – UNESCO and the participation of students of University of Hamburg and University of Hildesheim.

2018 HOW ON EARTH? Consuming a planet. Lecture Performance on the 29.04.18 as part of the exhibition Disappearing Legacies: The World as Forest, at the Tieranatomisches Theather Berlin (DE).

2017 PLATFORMS PROJECT. Artist Talk in collaboration with Campus Novel, as part of the publication release of the artist publication “The ever-garden effect”. 19.05, Athens (GR).

2016 THE EVER-GARDEN EFFECT one week workshop initiated by Barbara Marcel in collaboration with the Greek Artist Collective Campus Novel as part of the OMONOIA Athens Biennial 01-05.05.16, (GR).

2016 NAFAE Symposium of the National Association of Fine Arts Education (UK) at the University of Cumbria Institute of the Arts in Lancaster, 15-16.07.16. Presentation of Artistic Research methodologies at the Conference.
THE CHANGE IN PATTERNS

(THE CHANGE IN PATTERNS/ PT I. WATER MINING )

From January 15th 2023, at WildPalms, Düsseldorf, Germany.

Barbara Marcel, Mario Asef, Hans Baumann, Felipe Castelblanco.

 



Climate patterns have changed. We enter in the era of the extraordinary. Every year, every month, another record is broken. While this exhibition is happening, California floodings are at record levels and we experience the warmest winter in Europe. Yes, it is about a way to conceive the climate change that is at our doorsteps, but we constantly forget.

We may not like to think about it, because it is inextricably linked to how we live our lives today.

The basis of our contemporary society is built upon extraction of natural resources in large quantities. For the extraction, water plays an important role. For fracking or to attain lithium, both processes are denominated by water mining.

In Brandenburg, the Tesla factory demands of a large amount of water. Electric cars, new clean energy, thanks to water and drying out the land, an area that is still entangled with the history of dirty energy coal in the region. The abandoned coal mines are pools of an iron mud that contaminates the water.

California has experienced drought conditions in recent years, which has affected the state’s lakes and reservoirs. Low rainfall and high temperatures have led to decreased water levels in many of the state’s lakes and reservoirs, making them less able to provide water for irrigation and drinking water supplies.

Chile and Argentina are home to a number of wetlands, which play important roles in the ecological and economic well-being of the region. These wetlands include marshes, swamps, and peatlands, and are home to a wide variety of plant and animal species.

However, both countries have faced problems with the destruction of wetlands due to human activities such as agriculture and urbanization based on water mining, which has lead to the loss of biodiversity and the destruction of habitats for wildlife.

Water scarcity is a growing concern around the world and has the potential to lead to conflicts, particularly in regions where water resources are limited and populations are increasing. Climate change is also exacerbating the problem by altering precipitation patterns and increasing the risk of droughts. Can we see the water bodies as something universal, away from territorial fights while crossing the ocean with smallest raft that can hold a human being?

We can change the future: especially by being aware that in the past, constantly there was the intent to write our future differently.
- “Wildpalms“





Barbara Marcel. Humo Sobre los Humedales Still.




A PARÁBOLA DO PROGRESSO

(THE PARABLE OF PROGRESS)

From 26/10/22 to 02/04/23, Tuesday to Sunday at SESC Pompéia, São Paulo, Brazil.

Curatorial coordination by Lisete Lagnado and assistant curatorship by André Pitol and Yudi Rafael

 




The exhibition reflects on the country's ideals of modernity and independence, seeking inclusive and diverse projects. With five dialogic territories, the show brings together social forces in welcoming environments for its communities. These five spaces celebrate the 40th anniversary of SESC Pompeia, inaugurated in 1982, which is a stage for culture, leisure, social welfare, and health - qualities and values to be rescued in this moment of global dystopia.

The event also coincides with the bicentennial of Brazil's Independence (1822) and the centennial of the São Paulo Modern Art Week (1922), two historical dates that cut across the conception of the project, part of Sesc São Paulo's "Diverse 22" program. The curatorial coordination is by the critic Lisette Lagnado, with associate curators André Pitol and Yudi Rafael.

Aiming to discuss Lina Bo Bardi's legacy to Sesc Pompeia, one of the city's most vibrant architectural icons, the curators bring other references to add experiential and social layers to the project. Thus, five "dialogic spaces" participate in the exhibition, each with its own singularity: Acervo da Laje (railway suburb of Salvador, BA), Aldeia Kalipety (São Paulo, SP), Casa do Povo (São Paulo, SP), Quilombo Santa Rosa dos Pretos (Itapecuru Mirim, MA), and Savvy Contemporary - the Laboratory of form-ideas (Berlin, Germany).

In opposition to authoritarian and demagogic drifts, different social forces have managed in the meantime to organize themselves and generate spaces of hospitality able to support their community. Knowing how to articulate cultural production within a perspective of care, sensitization and conviviality, these five meeting centers, now implemented within the Sesc Pompeia's Living Space, reinforce its transformation into a "village", amplifying Sesc São Paulo's wish when it invited Lina Bo Bardi and her team to recover the former drum factory: "to build another reality". They operate as conductors of hope within the parable of Positivism, called to illustrate the mythical relationship of this "country of the future", since its colonization and the Afro-Atlantic traffic, through various migratory flows that built the idyllic image of a hospitable nation, a land blessed with exuberant nature, the generosity and emotional expansiveness of a people that would have found its happiness in the mestization of its roots. Known for her appreciation of popular culture, Lina Bo Bardi's work also acquires new inflections today in the wake of decolonial studies attentive to the recognition of different degrees of extractivism and silencing.





























AL CONJURO DE ESTE CÓDIGO

Tecnofeminismos para reescribir el mundo. (TO THE SPELL OF THIS CODE. Technofeminisms to rewrite the world.)

11.03 - 26.02.2022, at CASo - Centro de Arte Sonoro in Buenos Aires.

Exhibition participants: Abril Carissimo, Barbara Marcel, Candela del Valle, Cucu Trash, Electrobiota, Minga and Victoria Papagni. Curatorial team: Alma Laprida, Ana Mora, Jenny Maritza Ramírez Osorio, Maia Navas and Tania Puente.



The exhibition approaches technology from a feminist, decolonial and communitarian perspective. It is made up of a selection of works by artists from Argentina and Latin America that includes audiovisual pieces, installations, sound sculptures and an interactive virtual space.

“Al conjuro de este código” presents practices that subvert the uses of technological devices to deconstruct them, reterritorialize them and turn them into digital earth machines. It is conceived as a “pro-posición” (pro-position) rather than an “ex-posición” (ex-hibition), since it does not try to expose positions taken beforehand, but tries to encourage collective ways of thinking and acting on a diverse set of issues.









WEATHER ENGINES

01.04 — 15.05.2022, at Onassis Stegi, Athens

Curators: Daphne Dragona & Jussi Parikka

Exhibition participants: Kat Austen, Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan, Felipe Castelblanco, Kent Chan, Coti K., Denise Ferreira da Silva & Arjuna Neuman, DESIGN EARTH, Matthias Fritsch, Geocinema, Abelardo Gil-Fournier & Jussi Parikka, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Hypercomf, Lito Kattou, Zisis Kotionis, Manifest Data Lab, Barbara Marcel, Matterlurgy, Petros Moris, Sybille Neumeyer, Afroditi Psarra & Audrey Briot, Susan Schuppli, Rachel Shearer & Cathy Livermore, Stefania Strouza, Superflux, Paky Vlassopoulou, Thomas Wrede



“Weather Engines” explores the poetics, politics, and technologies of the environment from the ground to the sky, and from soil to atmosphere.

The weather is a dynamic system of pressure, temperature and humidity. It manifests through maps, media, and simulations while it touches the skin. Weather is felt unevenly, from extremes to mundane mildness of a breeze. Some are exposed, some are sheltered; weather wears some down, some gain profit.

“Weather Engines” is an art exhibition and a program of talks, performances and workshops taking place at ONASSIS STEGI and the National Observatory of ATHENS (Thissio). It explores weather as a complex system, as observation and control, and as a lived experience. The projects and events refer to natural phenomena and climate change, past and contemporary strategies of engineering the weather, as well as to different sociopolitical atmospheres related to breathing and living. Approaching the models and systems of art as techniques of knowledge, “Weather Engines” addresses the need for climate justice, and for embracing the surrounding more-than-human world(s).

The exhibition is accompanied by the publication “Words of Weather: A glossary” that maps terms for a political ecology of experience.

Link to the exhibition.






GOLDEN TONE in WEIMAR and ERFURT

as part of the exhibition “More Planets Less Pain - Constellations of artistic research”

06.03.2022 – 01.05.2022, Kunsthalle Erfurt
06.03.2022 - 22.05.2022, ACC Weimar

Opening: 05.03.2022 | 16:00 Kunsthalle Erfurt | 19:00 ACC Galerie Weimar

Collective exhibition. Artists and initiators: Francis Hunger, Edith Kollath, Lukas Kretschmer, Jeanne Lefin, María Linares, Barbara Marcel, Emanuel Mathias, Grit Ruhland, Markus Schlaffke, Katja Marie Voigt. Curator: Anne Brannys



What does art know? How does it find it out? And how does it pass on its knowledge? These questions are raised in the field of artistic research, and they arise in the exhibition project "More Planets Less Pain. Constellations of Artistic Research". All of the positions presented here were developed in the doctoral program at the Bauhaus University Weimar and deal with pressing questions of the present, using both scientific and artistic methods and modes of expression. For the first time since the program's founding in 2008, projects by Weimar's doctoral and post-doctoral artists are presented collectively in an exhibition.

The question of what artistic research is and what can be achieved with it is discussed in the exhibition in many different ways. For this art is not for art alone, it takes its questions from life-worldliness and science and radiates back there in the best case. Not infrequently, the interweaving of theory and practice and also of ethical questions, politics and aesthetics results in a tangle that wants to be untangled without losing the thread and the attitude.

To face these questions, to argue about them is not always easy; because we live in a complex reality and are confronted with the - often surprising - results of a very young discipline. And in all this, the sensual experience should not be neglected!

The desire to look, to think and to discuss is the reason for this exhibition. It offers the individual positions a lot of space to unfold and the visitors the possibility to dive into the spanned universes or to follow the floating particles that buzz between the fixed stars. Each position is associated with permeable floating boxes that present contextualizing materials such as working tools, literature, associations, will-o'-the-wisps, linked works, as well as theoretical works by the artists, allowing visitors to gain more comprehensive insights.

Finally, when we have experienced the visual and experiential worlds of the researching artists and have productively lost our way in the thicket of thoughts in their works with the shared moment of knowledge as our goal, we are challenged to find our own attitude: Sensuality or intellect? Ivory tower or everyday happenings? Activism or aesthetics? High air or heavy seas? More planets or less pain? Or for a change, all of the above, please?

Link to the exhibition in Erfurt.

Link to the exhibition in Weimar.

























MARLENE

2022, DR Congo-Germany. Video, color, sound, approx. 46min


During an artist residency in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as part of the YANGO! biennial of visual arts, the German-based Brazilian filmmaker Barbara Marcel, proposes a workshop on Third Cinema for local students of the Kinshasa Fine Arts faculty. Among the films discussed by the group is "Der Leone Have Sept Cabezas" by Brazilian filmmaker Glauber Rocha, a key figure of the Brazilian New Cinema (Cinema Novo Brasileiro). Filmed in Congo Brazzaville in 1969, just across the river, the film is part of Glauber's Tricontinental Cinema project, elaborated between 1967 and 1975, by converging some of Rocha’s films and articles in the same direction and integrating political analysis, aesthetic renewal, and the creation of utopias of liberation of the so- called “Third World” countries. Marlene is the result of the screening and reception of Glauber's film today, the debates about militant cinema, the tricontinental project, and the new encounters produced in the Kinshasa workshop.





Film credits

WITH
Maité Moseka Botembe
Sephora Mianda
Pascoal Francisco Konde
Azgard Wenga Itambo
Wezam Moimi

WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS
Dikamba Bénédicte
Moyo Merdie
Kasangati Daniel
Amanda Daniella-Richess
Ndungi Landry
Nzembeyo Emmanuel
Batupe Bryan
Holy Jonathan
Chris Shongo Loody
Bitshilualua Hancy
Samuel Mwani Ngange
Silas Nsilulu Nloko
Aris Likonda
John Dewitt Makengo
Joyce Lukoki Nsimba
Paulvi Ngimbi
Isaac Sahani Dato

DIRECTING AND IMAGE
Barbara Marcel

EDITING
Diogo Oliveira

SCRIPT
Barbara Marcel and Diogo Oliveira

DIRECT SOUND
John DeWitt Makengo

SECOND CAMERA
Azgard Wenga Itambo

SOUND MIXING
Thierry Bertomeu - Nova Pista

COLOR CORRECTION
Antoine d’Artemare

EDITING ASSISTANT
Beatriz Krieger

SET PRODUCTION AND TRANSLATION
Maité Moseka Botembe
Isaac Sahani
Paulvi Ngimbi

TRANSPORT AND GUIDE
Cedrik Tshimbalanga

SUBTITLES
John DeWitt Makengo
Paulina Hupe
Beatriz Krieger

PRODUCTION
Barbara Marcel

ASSOCIATE PRODUCERS
ifa - Institut für Ausländische Beziehungen
YANGO! Biennale
Matière Revue Studio

This film was produced during an artistic residency in Kinshasa, as part of the YANGO! Biennal of Arts.

YANGO! Biennale Team
Sara Alonso Gómez
Nadia Yala Kisukidi
Sinzo Aanza
Dada Kahindo
Isaac Sahani
Paulvi Ngimbi
Muriel Babandisha
Michel Mayoyo
Patrick Wassy
Wendy Bashi
Hélène Ballis
Robert Mumbala

Fragment of MESSAGE TO THE TRICONTINENTAL by Ernesto Che Guevara.
Speech given in Havana, April 16, 1967.

Extracts from the film DER LEONE HAVE SEPT CABEÇAS
by Glauber Rocha, Congo Brazzaville, 1970.
© Herdeiros de Glauber Rocha / Copyrights Consultoria

Music OXOSSI by Guga Stroeter.

THANKS TO
Ruy Gardnier
Lisette Lagnado
Luiza Prado
Felipe Frozza
Lydia Schellhammer
Christ Mukenge
Marian Kaiser
Astrid Matron
Hermani Heffner
Joyce Soares
Ava Rocha
Paloma Rocha
Juliana Perdigão
Jérôme Chazeix
Felipe Campos




VULTURE

20.04.2021-20.05.2021, Berlin. Artistic intervention on billboards at U1 Kottbusser Tor subway station (Kreuzberg - Berlin)


SÜDSTELLIUM is a project conceived by Matheus Rocha Pitta, Ana Hupe and Barbara Marcel, which proposes transmissions and collaborations with artists based in Brazil. As a fruit of these dialogues, three images will occupy billboards of the U1 subway at the Kottbusser Tor station in Berlin between 20.04 and 10.05.2021.

In a dialogue with Vândria Borari, Barbara Marcel wonders how it is possible to imagine the sky of Alter do Chão from the city of Berlin.

What if to see the fallen skies of the Amazon one had to look at the soil, look at the clay and ceramics found on the shores of the Tapajós River? On a visit to the Berlin Ethnographic Museum in 2019, at the invitation of Barbara Marcel, the also artist, lawyer and indigenous activist Vândria Borari had for the first time contact with the collection of pre-Columbian art located in Berlin. Amidst the museum's large collection of South Amerindian pieces, Vândria encountered Tapajonic vases, amulets and ceramic fragments, material culture of her ancestors. The collage resulting from the dialogues between the two brings together one of the vases from Berlin's collection; drawings by German-Brazilian ethnologist Curt Niemuendajú of one of the oldest cave paintings in the Amazon, located at the archeological site of Monte Alegre, Pará; and a photograph by Barbara Marcel of vultures sunbathing on Carauarí beach in Alter do Chão. According to Tapajonic cosmology, vultures are animals capable of connecting the immanent world with the transcendental realm. Regarded as funerary agents in some cultures around the world, they continue to be important interspecies caretakers in the ecological balance of the Amazon biomes, as well as sacred animals for the Borari indigenous people. In the Tapajonic ceramic vase acquired by the Berlin Museum in 1932 by the museum's former director, art historian Erich Wiese, we see female figures of caryatid women supporting the base of the vase and vultures on top of the piece. The collaborative project between Vândria Borari and Barbara Marcel is part of a long-term project on Tapajonic ceramics in European museums and a film to come.



















CINE LIANA

2020, Ciné-Cipó – Cine-Liana: ATTO – Amazon Tall Tower Observatory. Multichannel video installation, 126 min.


The artistic project Ciné-Cipó / Cine Liana at ATTO Tower (2020) shows in a video installation the production and exchange of different types of knowledge – scientific knowledge from the international scientific community as well as traditional knowledge of the people living in the Amazon rainforest. The largest tower in Latin America, the Amazon Tall Tower (ATTO), aims to study the interactions between the forest, soils and atmosphere of the region in order to understand the role of the Amazon basin for the Earth system. The tower is part of an international cooperation between Brazil and Germany, built and financed by INPA - Amazon Research Institute and Max-Planck Institute. For the project, the tower was temporarily occupied and transformed into a community radio under the command of Natalina Oliveira and Milena Raquel Tupinambá. Produced in collaboration with the ZKM - Zentrum für Kunst und Medien Karlsruhe for the exhibition "Critical Zones - Observatories for Earthly Politics", curated by Bruno Latour, Peter Weibel, Martin Guinar and Bettina Korintenberg, the project's proposal was to create a meeting between two popular radio communicators from Pará and research scientists from ATTO.




How is the scientific knowledge produced at ATTO democratized? How does this knowledge impact and dialogue with indigenous quilombolas and riverside communities? Making data accessible to the global scientific community is as challenging as communicating it to more people. The artist therefore proposes a collaboration between scientists and local radio communicators of Resex Tapajós-Arapiuns river. The scientific results and traditional knowledge are set in relation, forming an alliance for the defense of the Amazonian biodiversity. Atmospheric and earthly data are translated into popular communication via a radio show with spots, interviews and songs, what means a gesture of empowering of the local communities as the information gets distributed in an accessible way. During the process, scientific evidence and ancestral knowledges sometimes intersect, occasionally disconnect, while the scientific community listens and also learns more about the struggles in defence of the territories and local livelihoods of the Amazonian populations, demystifying universalizing assumptions. The dialogue between scientists and local inhabitants gets going in a transmission and acknowledgment of other than scientific forms of knowledge, addressing a core question of the actual debates around the environmental crisis we are living: How is the public debate about the socioenvironmental crisis conducted? Who speaks from which point and where do the different discourses enter into dialogue?

The 4-Channel installation is on display between Sat, 23.05.2020 - Sun, 09.01.2022 at the ZKM in Karlsruhe. A partial online version at the Critical Zones exhibition site can be accessed through the following direct link: https://critical-zones.zkm.de/#!/detail:cine-cipo-cine-liana-atto-amazon-tall-tower-observatory






























Technical Specifications

Produced in collaboration with the ZKM | Karlsruhe

Barbara Marcel with Natalina do Carmo Oliveira, Milena Raquel Tupinambá

Presenting Natalina do Carmo Oliveira, Milena Raquel Tupinambá; Direction and Production: Barbara Marcel; Image: Felipe Frozza, Barbara Marcel; Direct Sound: Anne Santos; Set Production: Kandyê Medina, Thais Helena Medeiros, Bruna Bichara; Editing: Célia Freitas, edt.; Editing Assistance: Beatriz Krieger, Felipe Frozza; Sound Mixing: Sarah Lelièvre; Colorist: Guilherme Begué; Finishing Editor: Beatriz Krieger; Music: Suraras do Tapajós

Funded by: Instituto Serrapilheira, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry Jena
Supported by: INPA-National Institute of Amazonian Research, Goethe-Institut São Paulo, Casa Bicho
The ATTO project is funded by: German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovations, Max Planck Society, Finep, Fapeam, and Fundação Eliseu Alves.











HUMO SOBRE HUMEDALES

2019-21, Chile. Video, color, sound, approx. 90min.


Following the work of environmentalists and communicators involved in social movements in the city of Concepción, the video portrays the role of women in the uprising that took to the streets of Santiago and all the cities of Chile between October and December 2019. HUMO SOBRE LOS HUMEDALES takes as a starting point the defense of local wetland ecosystems called Humedales – interconnected hydrological systems with a transitional morphology between land and water –, and shows how environmental struggles are indissociated from social mobilizations for basic rights such as access to clean water. The video depicts transmissions by a local Community Radio and the Latin American Ecofeminist debates during the Carpa de las Mujeres in Santiago, a meeting parallel to the Climate Conference 25 in Madrid 2019. Narrated with the artist's voice off in the tone of a travel diary, the film contrasts the individual gaze and the many voices of the crowd clamoring for a new national constitution.

The video was produced in Laguna Grande de San Pedro, Concepción and Santiago de Chile between November 18 and December 17, 2019. The project is the result of the Artistic Residence ARTIVISM, initiated by the Goethe Institute Chile and Galeria Metropolitana in Santiago. Supported by Kummer-Vanotti Stiftung.






















Film credits

With
Radio Humedales: Paloma Bello, Carla Duran, Alejandra Fuentes, Pierina Pondanelli, Paula Sepulveda, Katherina Venegas
Red Humedales Bío Bío: Jo Varela, Luisa Valenzuela (La Guardiana), Eve Soto
March at the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women in Concepción, 25.11.2019
Chilean collective "Las Tesis", at the a performance "Un violador en tu camino"
Women participanting in the Cumbre de los Pueblos y Carpa de las Mujeres, 2-6.11.2019 at the Escuela de Artes y Oficios (OEA) of the Universidad de Santiago de Chile:
Speakers (in order of appearance): Juana Vera, Francisca Rodríguez, Yayo Herrero

Production, Camera, Editing
Barbara Marcel

Research, Set Production
Ana Maria Saavedra and Flavia Hechen

Editing Assistance, Subtitling
Beatriz Krieger

Drone Images
Nicolas Salazar

Sound Design and Mix
Sarah Lelièvre

Original Soundtrack
Lea Taragona

Audio Excerpts
AOIR Cartografía Sonora - Octubre (Chile Despertó), Valentina Villarroel
Radio Humedales
Podcast Cacerola Informativa #DespertamosdelShock - Episodios 30.10 / 03.12 / 06.12.2019

Music
Humedales la cabeza a los pájaros, Fabiano-Kueva y Valentina Villarroel
Grabaciones de campo/Cerro caracol, Valentina Villarroel
Nos tienen miedo, Liliana Felipe (Mil Veces Mil, 2008)
Contra Todo, iLe (Almadura, 2019)
Las Golondrinas, Evelyn Cornejo (La Chusma Inconsciente, 2017)
Octubre 19, Indomitamorfosis (2019)

Supported by Goethe Chile, Galeria Metropolitana, Kummer-Vanotti Stiftung.




GOLDEN TONE

2018-2021, Berlin / Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Harz. Original essay in collaboration with Andreas Döpke and 4-channel video installation, colour, full HD format, approx. 120 min.


The project GOLDEN TONE is derived from Barbara Marcel's research into the historic and cultural landscape of Harz, the western mountain region of Germany, where many of the mining technologies of mineral soil extraction were first developed and later exported across the world. The video installation reflects on the intersections of the past, present and future of this anthropogenic landscape through the particular history of the breeding, training and trading of canary birds in the region. In a video assemblage featuring hands and machines, silver and serinettes, contaminated heavy metal hills and falling spruce trees, touristic tours and intimate interviews, the iconic landscape of the German Harz gradually reveals its many hybrid layers, giving way to an open field of transformative sonic flights.

GOLDEN TONE is a film about the Harz Roller canary birds, the domestication of mines and the queering of nature.

Click here for more info on the book THESE BIRDS OF TEMPTATION












QUALÉ, MANÉ?

2022, Poetry, Performance and Image. A workshop by Érica Zíngano & Barbara Marcel, as part of the Festival "Língua à solta" at Instituto Guimarães Rosa / Centro Cultural Brasil Angola, 2022.

The workshop "Qualé, mané?", proposed by Érica Zíngano and Barbara Marcel, is based on the encounter between different artistic languages, in the use of words and images, to think about issues that often remain veiled in everyday language, especially oral, in an almost "unconscious" way. The artists' proposal with this workshop is to create a collective space for speaking and listening, sharing experiences of the Portuguese language in Brazil and Angola, in order to reflect together with the participants on possible links of the colonial experience and its reminiscences. Based on the discussion of excerpts from the work of poet Patrícia Lino and filmmaker Miguel Gomes, both contemporary Portuguese artists who are thinking about this experience from the colonizer's point of view, we intend to create texts/images that make us think about places of force, counter-narratives to be imagined, in an open conversation about the present time, full of pasts and futures.










THIRD CINEMA

2021-22, Workshop in Congo-Kinshasa as part of the YANGO! Biennial 2021-2022.

In this artistic project, I propose a contemporary revision of the film "Der Leone Have Sept Cabeças", by the Brazilian cinema novo filmmaker Glauber Rocha. As part of my of my participation in the Yango! Biennial in Kinshasa. The first stage of the project proposes the screening of the film made in 1970 in Congo-Brazzaville (now the Republic of Congo), in a public space in Kinshasa. The proposal is that both the projection and reception of Glauber's film be documented in the form of a video. The main point is to document how Glauber's film reaches the local public in Kinshasa today, and from there, to raise the following questions: What is the militant, anti-imperialist image today?
Is it possible to think of a tricontinental Latin American film alliance in 2021?

The second phase of the project proposes a rewriting of the script of the film in collaboration with locals in Kinshasa in a workshop with a local group of art students. The project starts from the idea that cinema is not only a physical space or a technical device, but a social space of projections, identifications, debate and creation of possible common worlds.











Invite Flyer Atelier de Cinema, YANGO! Kinshasa




Group Photo, Workshop Group.B&W 2022




















12 STEPS AND A HOLE IN THE VALLEY

2018, Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Harz. Walkshop in collaboration with Andreas Döpke.

We don’t need to see anything out of the ordinary, we already see so much. — Robert Walser, “A Little Walk”

What can you do with a hole in the valley? Where can you ramble when the earth no longer holds? Do the landscapes of non-cities and their seductive call to solitude remain compelling in times of urban disintegration? How can city-dwellers avoid the risks of escapism while attending to the real challenges of the rural-urban metabolic rift? Is there room to conceive of and create responsible and common futures that overcome the false dichotomies of nature-culture and rural-urban? What might be learned and unlearned in the augmented topographies of such ruined landscapes? How to wander over and under such unsteady ground?

This one-day walkshop, commissioned by the University of Hildesheim, is created by the artist Barbara Marcel, in collaboration with the geographer Andreas Döpke. It aims to bring together students of various disciplines, such as cultural studies, philosophy, geography and performing arts, in the historic, cultural landscape of the western Harz. Through a combination of collective and individual walking experiments, the world heritage region will be set up as a temporary and dynamic station for the collaborative imagining of past and future landscapes.



































SITUATED KNOWLEDGES, GLOBAL ECOLOGIES

2-4.09.2019 at NGBK and Prinzessinnengarten Berlin.

Situated knowledge / Global ecologies: a collaborative Walkshop Ramble was a three-day project on social-ecological justice, initiated by artist Barbara Marcel and journalist Camila Nóbrega, which took place between 2 and 4 September in the Prinzessinnengarten space in Berlin. The project brought together scientists and fellow scholars from the Heinrich-Böll Foundation with environmental activists, journalists and artists, for an experimental format of knowledge exchange. The main themes were guided by different understandings of what has been called ecology and the global dynamics of knowledge production and narratives about the territories, seeking decolonial and antipatriarchal views.

As a closing debate in collaboration with the project »Licht Luft Scheiße. Perspektiven auf Ökologie und Moderne«, the dialogue was open to the public, with the participation of the workshop participants, and the presence of the Brazilian urban farmer and researcher Sílvia Baptista, representative leader of the struggle for land rights in Brazil. The debate was mediated by Barbara Marcel and Camila Nóbrega, focusing on the ongoing narratives about social-environmental conflicts in Brazil and the situation of struggle of diverse social movements and forest peoples, not only for the right to land, but for the right to livelihoods, community practices and common imaginaries. From a local-global perspective and reflecting on what was produced throughout the Workshop, the aim was to discuss asymmetries related to land rights and, simultaneously, to the production of discourses. The role of patriarchy and coloniality in organizing bodies and territories were in the core of the discussion.

































Video documentation of the closing debate:





SENEGAMBIA BLEIBT

Video, one channel, Full HD, 2019.


SENEGAMBIA BLEIBT is a collaborative video focused on the connections between Brazilian and West African cultures in Europe. Senegambia is a West African restaurant located on Reichenberger Straße (the same street as Gallery Mario Kreuzberg), where a lot of different African communities meet to eat food from their home countries. Pa Modou Jah, the owner of the restaurant, talks about his migration history to Germany which happened over thirty years ago, the gentrification affecting Kreuzberg today, and the role of the manioc in connecting South America, Africa and Europe. Departing from the manioc dishes, the video also connects the gallery space to the local neighbourhood.

















UNKNOWN UNIVERSITY

2017, Hérens Valley and Standard/Deluxe Gallery, Lausanne, Switzerland. Artistic residency and durational collective performance.


After 10 days of retreat in the Hérens Valley, Switzerland, the founders of the Unknown University occupied Standard/Deluxe the 25th and 26th of August 2017. The space was open from 1 to 10 pm without interruption. The program, unknown until it happened, was based on the following values:
    • anonymity is a powerful tool
    • the transformation of the individual body affects the social body
    • studying is more important than producing
    • intellectual property is a fiction
    • to create is to study, to study is to play
    • there are no divisions between teachers and students, these roles are always interchangeable
    • vulnerability is a rewarding place

The Unknown University is a multilingual and interdisciplinary project of study, creation and individual and collective transformation. It takes its name from the idea of the Chilean poet Roberto Bolaño who affirmed that there existed in the formation of each writer an "unknown university guiding his steps and which, obviously, has no fixed place, it is a mobile university that is common to all ". The Universidad is a homeless research center that happens every time members summon it.

Curator: Valentina D'Avenia

Participants: Tom Nóbrega, João Meirelles, Jonas Van, Germano Dushá, Barbara Marcel, Mazyar Zarnadar, Léa Katharina Meier










THE HAIRY GODDESS MISSTORY

2017, Berlin. Collective project and performance by and with Érica Zíngano, Marion Breton, Barbara Marcel and Tom Nóbrega. Co-produced by and performed at Literaturhaus Lettrétage Berlin as a part of CON_TEXT event series, funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe.


»The day before yesterday. We mourn. The XXI century died, but we keep preparing its funeral. Look at your hands, both hands. On the one hand you have the story of apocalypse. As any story about time, of course it will end in a big climax, bing bang, bow wow wow. Of course the main character of this adventure is God, standing on the shoulders of their army of encrypted angels. On the other hand, there is the flipped version of this story: this one we could call revolution. A revolution reincarnated as a hairy goddess. S/he’s everywhere, everywhere feels as near as nowhere. Immanent in our messy backpacks, roaring in our inner jungles. This version changes the speed of the trains and cars and airplanes through which we perceive the world. Choose a word and hit the road. Mystery. Chaos. Smoke. Animals. Magic. Light another match. This is an ongoing story. It comes in a box delivered by DHL. The sun is the third sign on the road. A long road. On the tip of your fingers.«

The project is a collective study around the revolutionary potential of death experience and the idea of overcoming it. Loosely based on Vladimir Mayakovsky’s ‘Mystery-Bouffe‘ and the futuristic opera ‘Victory over the Sun‘, the performance is a free adaptation of both from the queer and migrant perspectives, with cross-references to the Russian Cosmism, Brazilian tropicalism, radical feminism and queer theory.

Music and sound by Katrina Burch aka Yoneda Lemma.
With support by Sam Langer, Bruno Siegrist and Lotto Thiessen. Technical support: Jure Kapun.
Documentation Photos by Ferid A. Barak/Lettrétage.


Video Documentation:












MYSTERY-BOUFFE ADAPTATION

2017, Montpon France. Collective project and performance by and with Érica Zíngano, Marion Breton, Barbara Marcel and Tom Nóbrega.

MYSTERY-BOUFFE is a collective project and performance by and with Érica Zíngano, Marion Breton, Barbara Marcel and Tom Nóbrega as part of the festival TROIS JOURS AU TUQUET during the summer of 2017. Based on Vladimir Maiakovski´s play „Mystery-Bouffe: A Heroic, Epic and Satiric Representation of our Era” (1918-21) and its adaptation from Jerzy Grotowski (1960).

As a socialist dramatic play written by the Russian avant-gardist artist Mayakovsky between 1918 and 1921, Mystery-Bouffe proposes in its prologue that “in the future, all persons performing, presenting, reading or publishing Mystery-Bouffe should change the content, making it contemporary, immediate, up-to-the-minute.” Such suggestion, was taken by the Polish author Grotowski, who directed an adaptation of the play, presenting it for the first time at the Theatre of 13 Rows in Opole on 31 July 1960. From the diverse artistic biographies of the four artists and their different migratory contexts in Europe, the adaptation focused on an interdisciplinary collaboration, based on performative and site-specific actions in dialogue with the bucolic landscape of southern rural France.

Documentation Photos by Marianne Wasowska.








230 000 cm

2013, Neukölln, Berlin. Collaborative project between artists in the neighborhood of Neukölln, for the 48 Stunden Neukölln Festival and Nacht und Nebel. PB photographs in public space, Publication and evening workshop opened with readings. Project funded by Quartier Donaukiez of Neukölln, organized by Marta Leite, Marcel and Barbara Anais Senli in the Karl Marx Studio.

230 000 cm corresponds to the diameter of the Quartier Donau, in the district of Neukölln in Berlin. The book resulting from this project brings together a collection of photos and stories that happen between spring and autumn 2013, within this diameter. The guiding thread of the project is the relationship between memory, subjectivity and experience of many residents of the neighborhood and its relationship with the artists who work in it. The process is divided into two stages. During the spring we invited several artists with Ateliers in the neighborhood, to take pictures of certain places that seem peculiar to them, in relation to the convivial in public space. For the "48 Hours Neukölln Festival", we printed the photos in b&w and exhibit near the places where they were originally taken. In our Atelier we distributed a map to the Festival audience, so they could see the photos on a walk around the block. In the second stage of the project, we invite artists to write narratives or free verses, that related to the images produced. The compilation of works was published with the help of Quartiermanagement, and launched into a night of readings in Karl Marx Studio during the Fall Festival, Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog). The result is a kaleidoscopic image of DonauKiez, narrated by people of different cultures, interests and experiences in the social space of the quartier. The book reflects the diverse and complex surface of one of the most multi-cultural neighborhoods of Berlin.










CHILE INTERNATIONAL II

2022. With contributions by: Colectivo Caput, Gonzalo Castro Colimil, Daniela Catrileo, Chawak, Elicura Chihuailaf, Mariairis Flores / Diego Parra, Valeria Fahrenkrog, Constanza Hermosilla, Barbara Marcel, Eva-Christina Meier, Galería Metropolitana, Dani Negri, Claudia Pacheco Araoz, Leonardo Portus, Radio Humedales, Danny Reveco, Alejandra Rojas del Canto, Maristella Svampa.
Edited by: Valeria Fahrenkrog, Eva-Christina Meier, Galería Metropolitana. Graphic design: Ernst und Mund, Leipzig.
In cooperation with nGbK Verlag.



Through massive protests, Chilean civil society succeeded in 2019 in initiating a comprehensive transformation process in the country. Since then, protagonists from the arts and culture have taken an active role in the social discourse on social participation, feminism and climate justice. „Chile International II“ presents artistic positions, collective practices, and current debates from different regions of the South American country. The bilingual volume expands on these with positions from Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil.

Link to the book.









DESILHA 3

2021. Book organized by Michelle Sommer and Lívia Flores with the participation of Aline Besouro, André Leal, Barbara Marcel, Andreas Doepke and Tom Nóbrega, Cecilia Cavalieri, Denilson Baniwa, Diambe da Silva, Flora Dias, Ismar Tirelli Neto, Juliana Fausto, Luiza Baldan, Mabe Bethônico, Mayra Martins Redin, Micaela Cyrino, Raquel Versieux and Sandra Benites


Rocks are inert elements produced deep in the earth's crust, a product of the deep time of geology. When they emerge, they are transformed by human action and converted into the materials that are the basis of our society. How can we access the stories that are deposited in the mineral layers on which we walk every day? How can we tell the stories inscribed in the stones, in certain places, in the paths we trace? These are some of the themes and questions that guided the presentations by Mabe Bethônico, Claudia M. Plens, Flora Dias, Barbara Marcel and Tom Nóbrega at the 3rd Seminar on art and city research_DESILHA 2021: MINERAL LANDSCAPES, revising and displacing these mineral landscapes in different ways, making visible the subterranean layers that compose the present. Now, the essay “canário azul: 5 fragmentos” (blue canary: 5 fragments), by Barbara Marcel, Andreas Doepke and Tom Nóbrega is part of the publication resulting from the seminar.

Link to the book.









BLUE CANARY

2021, Berlin / Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Harz. Original essayistic text written in collaboration with the geographer Andreas Döpke, to be published in the book THESE BIRDS OF TEMPTATION, as part of the series intercalations 6, co-published by K. Verlag and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.


The project GOLDEN TONE comes from a research on the historical, cultural landscape of the western Harz Mountain region of Germany, where many of the mining technologies of mineral soil extraction were first developed and then exported to the whole world. The essay reflects on the intersections of past, present and future of this anthropogenic landscape, through the particular history of breeding, training and trading of Canary birds in the region.

"...a queer refrain, populated with both acoustical lines of flight and the sorrows of captivity, wherein the reader-as-exhibition-viewer learns that the minor science of ornithology is as preoccupied with the flirtations and allopreening of avifauna as it is with their taxonomical domination."

THESE BIRDS OF TEMPTATION. With contributions by Ari Bayuaji, Bik Van der Pol, David Bonter, Bertolt Brecht, Lêna Bùi, Mark Dion, Andreas Döpke & Barbara Marcel, Anne Geene & Arjan de Nooy, Sophia Gräfe, Mary Ellen Hannibal, Lisa Hirmer, Nina Katchadourian, Anna-Katharina Laboissiere, Anaïs Nin, Megan Shaw Prelinger, Bruno Schulz, Anna-Sophie Springer, Frank Steinheimer, Anna Tsing, Etienne Turpin, and others.

Click here for more info on the book THESE BIRDS OF TEMPTATION




The essay was further developed into a 4-channel video installation (approx. 120min) named "GOLDEN TONE". In a video assemblage made of hands and machines, silver and serinettes, contaminated heavy metal hills and falling spruce trees, touristic tours and intimate interviews, the iconic landscape of the German Harz gradually reveals its many hybrid layers, giving way to an open field of transformative sonic flights. GOLDEN TONE is about the Harz Roller Canaries, domesticating mines and queering nature.

Click here for more information on the project GOLDEN TONE.


The video installation has recently been part of the exhibition Birds & Buoys at Bärenzwinger Berlin, between April and June 2021.

Click here for more information on the exhibition BIRDS & BUOYS.




FIRE, FAÍSCA, FUNKE

Vernissage: 25.05.2019, 7pm

Exhibition dates: 26.05 - 16.06, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays or by appointment.


The exhibition brought together works by Marina Camargo, Ana Hupe and Barbara Marcel, Brazilian artists living in Berlin. Their researches reflect on the gravitation of the idea of Centre, departing from Southern Hemisphere: relations of power elucidated in cartographies; extensive monocultures; colonial archives; and religious syncretisms in Brazil today. Manioc as a meeting point between Brazilian and African cultures in Europe is celebrated in a collective work with the participation of Senegambia, a West African food restaurant, located on the same street as Mario Kreuzberg Gallery's. The collaboration is shown in a video that documents an exchange of receipts made with manioc, cooked together in Senegambia's kitchen.

Cartography as a study of narratives of spaces and power relations permeates the works of Marina Camargo. Cartography expanded beyond its original function, being transformed into other visual narratives that question the objective data that forms the maps. The representation of the Southern Hemisphere appears in the erase action of a school map of Brazil that shows the regions of extractive exploitation and also in a sound work constructed from the political borders of South America.

Ana Hupe presented three works on the universe of Santería, Afro-Cuban religion with Yoruba origin. The guiding concept of the works is that of syncretism, which happens when the hidden creeds of two or more regions or religious traditions intermingle.

The port of Santarém (Pará-BR), dominated by the multinational Cargill since 2003, is the theme of the work 'BR 163 Cuiabá-Santarém' by Barbara Marcel. The packaging of products used in the processing of soybeans, upcycled into market bags in the market for manioc flour, are grouped together in one installation.

Mario Kreuzberg Gallery is a project space organized by Manuela Morales (Chile) and Santiago Mac Auliffe (Argentina) since 2015, at Reichenbergerstrasse 48 since July 2018, with focus on Latin-American Art.







THE ENDOTIC READER N.1

2019, Reader with contributions by participants hosted at TIER - The Institute for Endotic Research. Contributors: Linda Zhang, Nelly Y. Pinkrah, Vanessa Gravenor, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Repec Segroeg, Lorenzo Sandoval, Barbara Marcel, Biko Mandela Gray, John Holten, Louis Henderson, Pia Chakraverti-Wuerthwein, Benjamin Busch, Ayami Awazuhara.

The endotic is a subtle but powerful tool to generate a situated practice of an institution. It is subtle because it looks to the imperceptible of the everyday life, to the visible but hidden details of the space and gestures of bodies around us. It rescues the astonishment from the forgotten obvious, trapped by its naturalization. It is a powerful tool because it leads us to read and listen to our surroundings, always looking from unexplored stances. From this immanent display, the very local traces a priceless threshold from which to approach the complex global. In its well-known methodology, Oulipo—the group to which Georges Perec belonged—was a great pioneer of crossing knowledge fields in order to practice a critical fascination. They developed a system in which constraints were an efficient driving force, merging mathematics, literature and artistic positions. These constraints can be translated from writing to cultural practice to think about spatial design, funding or ways of cooperation, looking for more sustainable practices.

To celebrate TIER’s first year at Donaustrasse 84 in Berlin-Neukölln, we published the first reader on the topic of the endotic, The Endotic Reader N.1. It brings together contributions by some of the participants we hosted over the year, as well as people we look forward to inviting to the space. The contributions explore some of the paths that the Perecquian word offers, as a way of approaching the territory of complexity that we live in and through. The topics explored in the reader range from a meditation on the practice of dis-othering to a reflection on trauma and on to thoughts on the future of reading.

This celebratory reader, available digitally as well as in the physical form of a limited, handmade print edition, is one of the first results of TIER’s collaboration with ON/OFF, whose Risograph machine, part of the Guerrilla Printing Press, we are hosting at the space.

Click here to read more on Barbara Marcel's contribuition: SEVEN CROSSROADS: A Berlin walkshop ramble

—> Download The Endotic Reader N.1



























LATEX: CRITICAL INFLECTIONS ON (NEO)EXTRACTIVISM IN LATIN AMERICA

Artist Talk – ‘Ciné-Cipó – Cine-Liana at Amazon Tall Tower Observatory’. Barbara Marcel (Bauhaus-Universität Weimar) in conversation with Delfina Cabrera, Ariadne Y. Collins, Marlon Miguel at the Symposium organized by Delfina Cabrera, Ariadne Collins and Marlon Miguel in collaboratio with materia – DLCL Focal Group (Stanford University) at ICI Berlin - Institute for Cultural Inquiry.
27.09.2021, 19h30



‘The things that white people work so hard toextract from the depths of the earth, minerals and oil, are not foods’, as shaman and Yanomami spokesperson Davi Kopenawa pointedly observes in The Falling Sky. Extraction has been historically associated with the removal of underground materials, whereas extractivism is a broader notion connoting a primarily white, colonial mode of accumulation of the West. For most Latin American countries, their natural wealth became their curse, permeating both the material and the symbolic realms. The extractive regime binds the environment and rules the lives of those subjugated to it by transforming them into mere commodities. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, rubber exemplified particularly well the devastating consequences of extractivism. Latex fulfilled the industrial dream of an ‘extraordinary substance’, the first material whose plasticity made it suitable to become everything else: waterproof garments, automobiles, communication infrastructure, mechanized warfare. Throughout its extraction boom, the Amazon Rainforest supplied around 60% of the world’s rubber demand. This hunger for rubber reflected the expanding omnipotence of global capitalism with ruinous consequences for the environment as well as for the local populations. During the overlooked genocide along the Putomayo River, according to John Tully, for every ton of rubber extracted and dispatched to the Global North, seven indigenous lives were lost.

The removal of large quantities of natural resources from the Global South has been foundational for meeting the increasing demand for goods of the centers of nascent capitalism. This logic never ceased and what one calls today neo-extractivism reproduces the colonial and subordinated condition of the so-called peripheral countries. Yet, this extractive rationality does not only secure the production of goods but extends itself to the production of knowledge and to the import of epistemic frameworks that explain local realities. Cognitive extractivism, claims Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, privileges the ‘center’ as the producer of theoretical and interpretative models whereas the ‘periphery’ remains relegated to the status of the illustrative case. Exported raw material are subsequently converted into concepts and shipped back to their places of provenance with added value. The symposium seeks to examine and question the different modes of extractivism that have marred and marked the histories of Latin America and the Caribbean. The distinctive qualities of rubber (plasticity, isolation, expansivity, erasure) are the starting point for a contemporary inquiry of (neo)extractivism. Its political, environmental, cultural and social facets are to be analyzed, in particular as they are critically undertaken by literature and the visual arts. Artists and scholars will explore this mode of accumulation in its intimate relationship to the production and circulation of theory and cultural capital; to epistemicide and necropolitics; and to a restrictive worldview of ‘nature’ as an inert reservoir for economic exploitation.

Link To The ICI Website



















DESILHA 2021

3rd Seminar on art and city research_DESILHA 2021: MINERAL LANDSCAPES
10.06.2021, 17h30

Presentation and mediation: André Leal

Rocks are inert elements produced deep in the earth's crust, a product of the deep time of geology. When they emerge, they are transformed by human action and converted into the materials that are the basis of our society. How can we access the stories that are deposited in the mineral layers on which we walk every day? How can we tell the stories inscribed in the stones, in certain places, in the paths we trace? These are some of the themes and questions that will guide the presentations that revise and displace these mineral landscapes in different ways. In the practices of Mabe Bethônico, Claudia M. Plens, Flora Dias, Barbara Marcel and Tom Nóbrega reside exercises of making visible the subterranean layers that compose the present.

Barbara Marcel and Tom Nóbrega
Conversation about the artistic project "Blue Canary, Golden Tone"

"Blue Canary, Golden Tone" is a video installation about canary birds, the domestication of mines and the denaturalization of nature. The project comes from a research on the historical and cultural landscape of the Harz mountains in Germany, where many of the technologies for extracting mineral soil were developed and then exported to various parts of the planet. In an essayistic way, the video reflects on the intersections of past, present and future of this anthropogenic landscape, through the particular history of domestication, breeding and trade of canary birds in the region. In a set of videos made of hands and machines, silver and serinets, heavy metal contaminated hills and fallen pine trees, sightseeing tours and intimate interviews, the iconic landscape of the German Harz gradually reveals its many hybrid layers, giving way to an open field of potentially transformative sonic flights.

Click here to watch the conversation.











BÄRENZWINGER - TAZ

09.06.2021 "People and Mountains and Animals", article in the German newspaper TAZ - Die Tageszeitung about the duo exhibition BIRDS AND BUOYS at Bärenzwinger Berlin.


Click here to read the article.

The double exhibition »Birds and Buoys«, with works by Nadja Abt and Barbara Marcel, brings two complex and long-standing artistic strands of research together and deals with transatlantic labour and the cultural history of shipping and mining from a feminist and queer perspective. Together, the works reference the architecture and history of the Bärenzwinger as well as its immediate neighborhood.

Click here to read more about the project.













BÄRENZWINGER - ARTIST TALK WITH PAZ GUEVARA

28.04.2021, Artist Talk with Paz Guevara about the duo exhibition BIRDS AND BUOYS at Bärenzwinger Berlin with works by Nadja Abt and Barbara Marcel.


Click here to watch the talk.

On 28 April 2021 from 6.30 to 8 pm, Bärenzwinger invited you to an online artist talk around the exhibition »Birds and Buoys«. The two participating artists, Nadja Abt and Barbara Marcel, each addressed their individual approach and presented some of the long-standing research that formed the background to their works on display at the Bärenzwinger. Abt and Marcel have independently of each other been working for many years on the transatlantic history of labour and culture in shipping, respectively mining.

Together with curator, researcher and author Paz Guevara and exhibition curator Katja Kynast, they explored the connections between their artistic works and questioned the ways in which they relate to the architecture and history of the Bärenzinger and its immediate neighbourhood including the historic harbour, the Marinehaus (former clubhouse of the Imperial Navy) and the Brazilian Embassy.

Click here to read more about the project.






SÜDSTELLIUM - TAZ

26.04.2021 "What's on the stars", article in the German newspaper TAZ - Die Tageszeitung about the project Südstellium.

Click here to read the article.

The exhibition project SÜDSTELLIUM includes artistic interventions on three subway boards located at the U1 Kottbusser Tor subway station and starts at Gallery Weekend Berlin. Berlin-based artists Ana Hupe, Barbara Marcel and Matheus Rocha Pitta have rented the platform boards for 20 days to deliver messages from the skies of the global south that are not so evident from Berlin.

Click here to read more about the project.








© 2021 Barbara Marcel