Sacatar Open Call Group Projects 2021

WAIA’MU : Body-Forest Cartography”

Proposal: The Tupi term waia’mu refers to a dark bluish crab that we will follow into the mangrove forests of Itaparica to create a publication composed in two volumes: an e-book and a virtual music album. The e-book is a travel book where the trip is the book itself, composed of photographs and photograms in cyanotype, drawings, and short texts. The musical album is composed of sounds from the forests of Itaparica Island along with eco-futuristic electronic sounds.

Our project was the creation of an eBook and a musical album with the figure of Guaiamum (ed: cardisoma guanhumi) as our guide for the development of the work. We haven’t finished the work yet, but we accomplished much of what we had planned… The fact that we were in Sacatar and in contact with another group affected the work in a positive way, given the great willingness of everyone to collaborate and share experiences.

I’m from Bahia: a native of Salvador. Nonetheless, I have had relatively little access to the island’s history and social contexts. Being here put me in touch with just that, which was the purpose of coming here too. This gave me a deeper understanding of this place which is so important even for Salvador itself.

João Milet Meirelles (Music & Photography / Bahia, Brasil)

Walking as an aesthetic act in itself and, at the same time, we took advantage of the walks through the island’s mangrove forests as an opportunity to record sounds, collect botanical samples, and take photographs, from which we composed acoustic and visual works. With the contacts established through Sacatar, it was possible to establish a network of exchanges with the island’s inhabitants and this significantly enriched and deepened our research.

Lia Cunha (Visual Arts / Bahia, Brasil)