SHOWCASE: COLLABORATIVE MULTIMEDIA EXPERIMENTS

UCL MAL, Kunangue Aty Guasu and IDAC are proud to present our end of year virtual showcase, where we will be sharing some of the work we have developed together this year in our ongoing Experiments in Collaborative Heritage project. Join us on Thursday the 9th of December for a multimedia presentation of the project's three core strands: a Guarani and Kaiowá Virtual Museum curated and directed by community shamans, a Collaborative Multimedia Archive filmed and recorded by Guarani and Kaiowa filmmakers, and an Interactive Map of Gender-Based Violence presenting data gathered by Guarani and Kaiowá women. The event will take place online, and will include simultaneous translation in English, Portuguese, and Spanish.

This collaboration draws together the Guarani and Kaiowa women of the Kunangue Aty Guasu, anthropologists, computer scientists and interdisciplinary practitioners at UCL MAL, along with members of the arts & culture Institute IDAC, in a global partnership which aims to rethink and reshape the relations through which we conduct research, produce knowledge, and collect/preserve/display cultural heritage archives. The project is supported by the Endangered Material Knowledge Programme at the British Museum, UCL Grand Challenges and the UCL Global Engagement Fund.

A FUTURE IN FLAMES

2021 was a particularly violent year for Indigenous communities in Brazil. This year six Guarani and Kaiowá Ceremonial houses - Oga Pysy - were burnt down in series of arson attacks that mark an escalation of violence in the region. These spaces of Guarani and Kaiowa culture and spiritual practice are at risk, threatened by the hate and violence incited by discourses circulated by new religious movements which demonise traditional shamans and cast female shamans as witches.

Spearheading a violent modern-day witch-hunt, these groups preach that indigenous elders are witches and responsible for the deaths and illnesses that affect the Tekohas, legitimising and condoning physical attacks against the Guarani and Kaiowá women and burning down their Oga Pysy. The attacks that are reported include public lynchings, beatings, stonings, and torture, evoking scenes of medieval violence and religious extremism that characterise a contemporary war.

"To build an Oga Pysy is a means both to resist and to exist" - Jaqueline Aranduha

The Kunangue Aty Guasu are currently rebuilding ceremonial houses across Guarani and Kaiowa territories, thanks to support from the International Artists Solidarity network and a fundraiser led by Joe Duplantier, and the first three Oga Pysy are currently being built. In an effort to ensure that traditional knowledge is not lost, the Kunangue Aty Guasu are collaborating with UCL MAL to document the technical practices through which these Oga Pysy are constructed, creating a multimedia archive which will be included in the British Museum's EMKP permanent repository.

While this archive is an important step towards preserving Guarani and Kaiowa culture, we wanted to present this archive in an exhibit that could be curated by community elders themselves, and which would be accessible to community members. To do this, we initiated a Guarani and Kaiowá Virtual Museum project, supported by UCL Grand Challenges, where the Kunangue Aty Guasu and UCL MAL opened a dialogue between community shamans and 3D modellers, to build a VR exhibit that was designed and directed by Guarani and Kaiowa Nhanderus and Nhandesys.

Finally, although the documentation/preservation/display of cultural heritage is an urgent measure in the current context, if Guarani and Kaiowa communities are to survive then steps must be taken to mitigate the violence itself. In 2020 the Kunangue Aty Guasu initiated a Violence Mapping project, led by indigenous women who gathered first-hand reports of violence experienced by members of their community. This year, in a project supported by UCL Global Engagement, the UCL MAL team joined forces with Guarani and Kaiowa women to create an interactive map of gender based violence in their territories, visualise their reports and support community efforts to monitor and mitigate violence.

EVENT SCHEDULE

Join us on Thursday the 9th of December at 6pm (GMT) for an overview of these projects, showcasing the achievements that have resulted from our global partnership and our plans for next year. The event will include a presentation of selected works from UCL MAL's sound, video, 3D modelling and VR design teams, and a showreel of the latest recordings filmed by Guarani and Kaiowá filmmakers Luan Iturve and Scott Hill.

6pm (GMT) : Opening Ceremony led by Guarani & Kaiowa shaman Dona Roseli

Confirmed Speakers:

- Jaqueline Aranduha - Kunangue Aty Guasu

- Fabiana Fernandes - IDAC

- Raffaella Fryer-Moreira - UCL MAL

More speakers TBC.

UCL MAL | A GLOBAL INTERDISCIPLINARY NETWORK

The UCL MAL research network is proud to be composed of a global team with over 100 members from 30 different countries around the world, drawing together the diverse expertise of 22 different disciplines. While in previous years MAL has focussed on hosting conversations and discussions about multimedia methods with researchers and practitioners through seminars and conferences, this year we focussed our efforts on putting these ideas into practice, and our collaborative projects with Guarani and Kaiowá communities offer a concrete case study through which to examine the possibilities of multimedia anthropology in both theory and practice.

THE KUNANGUE ATY GUASU | THE GREAT ASSEMBLY OF GUARANI & KAIOWA WOMEN

The Kunãngue Aty Guasu, the Guarani and Kaiowá Indigenous Women’s Council, of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, is a community organisation who support women across Guarani and Kaiowa territories. The Kunangue Aty Guasu annual assmebly is an important space for indigenous women to exchange knowledge and develop shared proposals for action, and is a key site for Guarani and Kaiowá political mobilisation.

IDAC | INCLUSIVE ART AND CULTURE IN DOURADOS

The Institute for the Development of Art and Culture( IDAC) is based in Dourados, Brazil. Directed by Fabiana Fernandes, IDAC has a ten year relationship acting as institutional, financial and legal representative of the Kuñangue Aty Guasu, and supports Guarani and Kaiwa projects across the arts and culture sector.

The UCL MAL End of Year Showcase will start at 18:00 (GMT) on Thursday 9th of December, and it will be live streamed on the following platforms:

• UCL MAL Facebook (in English): https://fb.me/e/1ueAcIrgs

• Kuñangue Aty Guasu Facebook (in Portuguese): https://fb.me/e/1YeLhg9D0

• UCL MAL Youtube (in English): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT3z65SB_yz3PAqLW774sDw

• Kuñangue Aty Guasu Youtube (in Portuguese): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCunxml4DhCMBQcPKoDajwfA

• UCL MAL Instagram (in English): https://www.instagram.com/ucl_mal/?hl=en

• Zoom (in English, Portuguese and Spanish): https://ucl.zoom.us/j/97807839874?pwd=WlU2MjBVSEVTOStVTWJmTWIzNjhwdz09