Semear cinzas - 14ᵃ Bienal Internacional de Arquitetura de São Paulo

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

The Semear cinzas (2024) initiative, conceived by artist Ana Lúcia Canetti, featured photographer Mariana Alves and was part of the Coordenadas […] event, held by the Graduate Program in Visual Arts at the University of Brasília. The event, which has been running for 10 years under the coordination of Professor Karina Dias, seeks to interrupt, even briefly, routine relationships with the landscape, reinventing connections with urban space through collective actions.

Ana Lúcia Canetti is a visual artist, ceramist and PhD candidate in Visual Arts at UnB. She holds a degree in Visual Arts from the Faculty of Arts of Paraná (2007), a master's degree in Psychology from UFSC (2010), in the research line "Ethical and aesthetic relationships and creative processes", and a degree in psychology from UFPR (2004).

For the work, the artist produced twenty ceramic pieces. Some were fired at high temperatures and glazed with ash; others were fired at low temperatures using the raku and raku nu techniques, in which soot from the vegetable firing is inscribed on the pieces, creating dots and lines.

Each participant chose one of these pieces and walked through a pine monoculture area in Brasília, DF, sowing plant ash harvested from different regions of the Cerrado. Some blew it, others spread it with their fingers or threw it into the air. Before the walk, they received instructions with the following instructions:

Choose a seed made of clay and fire
Try to read the messages left by the burning
What is written by soot in the earth's fractures?
What do the colors of the glazes reveal?

Walk in a group and sow ashes
Try to read what is advertised and fall to the ground
What do these little dust clouds tell us?

Being in the world is gardening other species
And also be the object of your sowings
What are we sowing? How are we being gardened?

I invite you to sow the glow of an extinguished fire,
Redistributing meanings of life in the darkness of the landscapes,
Bypassing repetitions,
Touching infertile soils,
Spreading sparks that can still light us up.

The work was inspired by the book *The Sower – On Contemporary Nature*, by Emanuele Coccia (2022). For the author, sowing is a form of illumination: a “distribution of astral light in terrestrial space,” created by fragments of matter that capture sunlight in the “mineral and gray flesh of the earth” (p. 30). Coccia proposes an analogy between the sower and the painter: both manipulate light as they attempt to redesign the world. The landscape, in this context, is less a geological figure and more an economy of light. Sowing and painting thus become a politics of light—“an act of setting the sun and its astral force elsewhere in the cosmos” (p. 45).

Participate in the program of debates, workshops and associated activities!

TODAY (10.10)

2:30 pm – table Risk-Free Periphery in the Context of Climate Change

4pm – table Knowing to Transform: Community Climate Risk Reduction and Adaptation Plans

6:30 pm – table Inclusive Adaptation: Nature-Based Solutions in the Peripheries

9am – Drawing Workshop: Oscar Niemeyer's Architecture in Ibirapuera Park and the Climate Challenge

IN THE NEXT DAYS (11 to 14.10)

ATTENTION the table Palmas: For 36 years, the ecological capital of Tocantins which would be held on 10/11 | 7pm was canceled.

11.10 and 12.10 | 9am – workshop Inventa(rio) Fronteiras: Playing for Multispecies Cities

11.10 | 10am – workshop Elémenterre teaching bag

11.10 | 11am – table Learning to inhabit the Anthropocene: the crisis of architecture

11.10 | 2pm – table Architecture for Learning and Civic Use

11.10 | 3pm – table Culture and Public Architecture

11.10 – 15h – workshop Elémenterre teaching bag

11.10 | 4pm – table Reconnecting with Nature & Circular Design

11.10 | 5pm – table Architecture of Belonging: Interpreting Heritage Through Place

12.10 | 10am – table Experience: Climate Refuges and Naturalized Public Spaces, with Eco-Neighborhood

12.10 | 10:30 am – table Childhoods and Climate: Climate Justice in Vulnerable Territories

12.10 | 10:30 am – Windsock Workshop with the Floating Collective

12.10 | 3pm – table Doing a lot with a little: architectures for a planet in transition with Esteban Benavides from Al Borde office

12.10 | 4:30 pm – table Earth – building a sustainable and democratic future

12.10 | 5:45 pm – table French presence at the Biennale and screening of the film AJAP – Albums of Young Architects and Landscape Architects

13.10 – activity Pantanal Action at IABsp

10/14 | 10am – table Urgent Panorama! Space as an act of permanence

14.10 | 6pm – Launch of the “Nature-Based Education” Guide

JOIN! IT'S ALL FREE!

And there's much more until October 19th!

NOTE OF CONDOLENCE

With deep sorrow, the Brazilian Institute of Architects – São Paulo Department (IABsp) mourns the passing of architect and landscape architect Kongjian Yu, a global leader in ecological urbanism, and the members of his team who accompanied him, tragically killed during the filming of a documentary. The institute is honored to have had him as a participant in the 14th São Paulo International Architecture Biennial, where his transformative vision strengthened the dialogue between global challenges and local realities. IABsp emphasizes that Yu's contribution, which transcends borders, will remain an inspiration for generations and expresses its condolences to China, to the families of all the deceased, to his friends, and to all those impacted by his genius and dedication. Read the full note here.

Sow ashes

Ana Lucia Canetti