This one-day workshop brings together Brazilian anthropologist Priscila Santos da Costa (IT University of Copenhagen) and Italian artist Sergio Racanati (Italian Council fellow), to explore, both critically and creatively, different research practices engaging the forest, and more particularly the Amazon forest, as a multidimensional articulation — imaginary, real, cultural and economic.

The work of Priscila Santos da Costa, based at IT University in Copenhagen, analyzes the intricate relationships between technoscientific approaches to the forest and its resources, often branded as sustainable, and capitalist modes of extraction of materials and knowledges.

The question of epistemic extractivism — and the shaping of imaginative modes of relationship with the forest and its human and beyond-human inhabitants — is also at stake in Sergio Racanati’s artistic research around the notion of ‘debris’. In 2022, thanks to the support of the Italian Council, the artist spent a period of time working in the Amazon region, close to the city of Santarém, in the Brazilian state of Pará.

The workshop will be in English, Portuguese and Italian and will include presentations by Priscila Santos da Costa and Sergio Racanati, discussions and activities.

11h–13h | Presentations and discussion

13h–14h30 | Lunch

14h30–16h30 | Activities, led by Sergio Racanati