Project development: Colombia, Brazil, USA
Emerging technologies have the potential to disrupt human nature, social life, and the natural world at a fundamental level. As “deep technologies,” the essence of nature is reconfigured for human purposes. This exhibition’s triptych poses fundamental questions about deep technology associated with material invention, material cultures, and material substitution as a product of interconnected global modernist socioeconomic, political, and architectural agendas in the Amazon Trapezium, where Brazil, Colombia, and Peru converge. The designs surrounding the region’s traditional woven palm, harvested over centuries, indicate the inherited material cultures and complex sociotechnological processes that have occurred since the mid-20th century in the Amazon Trapezium. These substantial transformations in material culture over the past hundred years cannot be understood as an isolated phenomenon that led to a radical loss of the material culture of palm thatch through strategically imposed material sovereignties. In principle, the democratization of 3D printing of native palms can open pathways for the recovery of material culture. The triptych in this exhibition addresses this perspective by discussing material productions, perspectives on value, and scalability. The work presented was developed by Dr. Maria Paz Gutierrez, Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, through material, typological, and ethnographic research with six indigenous communities. The palm tree research was accompanied by collaborations with visual artist Donald Gensler. The exhibition presents the culmination of this research, articulating questions about the future role of technological innovations in the construction of this region.