Amazonas

The Amazon is a crucial factor in deciding global future. Huge areas of the world’s largest rain forest are being destroyed every day by slash-and-burn clearing for cattle breeding, and energy and natural resource production—with dramatic effects on climates throughout the world. An international art project takes this devastating development as its starting point: »Amazonas –Music Theatre in Three Parts.« The project linked media art, music theatre, technology, and science to an artistic whole and cast a hitherto non-existent gaze at the Amazonian world.

Amazonas music theatre had its world premiere on 8 May, 2010 at the Munich Biennale – International Festival of New Music Theatre.

The loss of the Amazonian rain forest likewise implies for numerous animal and plant species, the loss of their habitat and for Brazil’s indigenous people, the loss of their home. The Yanomami, one of the largest indigenous groups in South America, with a population of 33,000, live in the region along the border of Brazil and Venezuela. In collaboration with the Yanomami, European and Brazilian media artists, composers, sociologists, and anthropologists have been developing the concept for »Amazonas –Music theatre in three parts« since 2006.  The multimedia music theatre project, a co-production by the Goethe-Institute, Munich Biennale, ZKM Karlsruhe, SESC São Paulo, Hutukara Associação Yanomami, and Teatro Nacional de São Carlos included current scientific knowledge and Indian cosmology and spirituality as equal partners.