University of Kent student, Carlos Valero, created a video essay in response to the issues explored by Brazil Footprint 0.0., a week-long festival that explored Brazil’s specific perspective in the context of the UN’s conference COP26 global mobilisation against climate inequalities. Curated by Francesca Laura Cavallo for the Centre for Indigenous and Settler Colonial Studies at the University of Kent in partnership with the Barbican Centre, the programme consisted of multiple online events, film screenings and culminated in an online panel discussion to coincide with the exhibition Claudia Andujar: The Yanomami Struggle in the Curve. Carlos writes:
‘The Amazon As A Garden’ is a film that was born out of necessity – in this maelstrom of climate change – to bring faraway places closer together. I believe that to begin taking meaningful action to save places such as the Amazon Rainforest, the first step is to properly understand it, and relate to it. At heart, the video essay, ‘The Amazon As A Garden,’ points out the illusions of scale that exist between different natural places on Earth and shows them as just that: illusions. The ‘garden’ term is more than just a metaphor; it acts as an umbrella term for all the spaces where we interact and deal with nature – in homes, public parks, and grand rainforests. Here in the West, gardens can sometimes be seen as a secret companion. Over in the Amazon, the garden engulfs all aspects of life. The principles behind each of them, however, are fundamentally the same. This film is my best attempt at bringing to light those principles.
Carlos Valero, School of Arts, University of Kent