Marcela Armas in Buenos Aires

The Mexican artist at ProgramaPresente.org. Marcela Armas gave the masterclass Elusive Languages ​​of the Earth. Approaches to an Ethics of the Mineral World and the seminar Desiring the Existence of the Other: Essays on Decolonial Navigation of the Waters.

The training provided by Armas to the participants began with a group expedition along the Riachuelo facilitated by the geographer and urban planner Andrea Cuestas Ferrarazzio. An approach to the tributary as an association of entities and materialities with agency, history and affection, starting from an exercise of alterity and complex thinking to reinterpret and resignify the signs of catastrophe and deterioration as portals for the reconstruction of our imaginaries, relationships and modes of perception in a highly technological era.

The activity aimed to reflect on the environmental crisis. Navigating the waters, traversing notions of territory, environmental humanities, political ecology, and decoding art and its relationship with science, technology and other areas of knowledge as platforms for observation, critical listening - and interpellation - to speculate and imagine alternative routes, rebellious and tangential readings, drifts, poetic cartographies, activism, among other traces of potential paths towards an emancipatory and decolonial vision of waters. "Drinking from the waters of the Riachuelo, it is about activating a laboratory to address the act of exploring as a practical matter and as a catapult for the development of projects that incorporate diverse media and languages" defined the Mexican artist.

After exploring the Riachuelo, the participants in the program organized their first impressions and, through teams, began to outline possible lines of research and/or activation. For three days, the participants reflected and worked around the notion of art linked to technology, territory, identity, performativity and sound.