About ants, cities and art

Starting this Wednesday, Porto Alegre will be infested by mischievous ants in the eighth edition of the Kino Beat Festival. Over three weeks, the festival continues the discussions and themes raised in its previous edition: the natural kingdoms and humanity’s role in the accelerated planetary environmental transition. In this year’s edition, the work will be based on two pillars: ants and cities. The anthill-residence will house seventeen artists, biologists, architects and urban planners who will exchange languages ​​and disciplines to create new artistic works.

Contemplated by the Circular Culture 2022 program with the British Council and support from Oi Futuro, the Festival seeks to stimulate the artistic making of local artists. Ants, which are part of the urban scene even if they go unnoticed by many, will be the focus of the event, and there will be no exterminator who can stop them. Residents will develop their projects, which will be exhibited from February 9th at MAC’s Sala Sotero Cosme, at Casa de Cultura Mario Quintana, and will be on display until March 26th.

The event is curated by Adauany Zimovski, artist and researcher, PhD student in Visual Arts at the Postgraduate Program in Visual Arts at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, in the area of ​​History, Theory and Criticism, and Gabriel Cevallos, Master’s student in Arts Visuals in the same area.

“We will leave Porto Alegre to observe and think together with the species of leaf-cutting ants a less abstract contour of the city. We cut out the capital and defined the space where the residency is located as a microcosm to think about the macro-city”, reveal Gabriel and Adauany . The Casa de Cultura Mario Quintana, with its various rooms, floors and walkways, as well as an anthill full of tunnels and chambers, will be the relational starting point with the rest of the city for the development of research and creations.

The anthill includes artists such as Fiona MacDonald, a researcher who works with humans and non-humans to create art projects and interdisciplinary events that develop ethical and imaginative connections across species boundaries; Leonardo Brawl Márquez, social activist, urban planner, architect, designer of civic processes, placemaker and musician; Hélio Soares Júnior, master and doctoral candidate in Animal Biology and self-taught photographer, with experience as coordinator in nature macrophotography courses; and Estêvão da Fontoura, multimedia artist and restless teacher.

Also present are Joana Burd, visual artist, teacher and researcher in haptic aesthetics; Coletivo Grupelho, which has been working with performance experiments in Porto Alegre since 2016; Livia Koeche, urbanist architect from Ufrgs and traditional frame-by-frame animation designer; Leo Caobelli, a visual artist who works mainly in the areas of photography, video and installation; Vicente Carcuchinski, photographer, cultural producer, director of photography and multimedia visual artist; Camila Leichter and Mauro Espíndola (Moinho Edições Limitadas), Tuane Eggers, doctoral student in Visual Poetics at Ufrgs and photographer of themes related to the flows and impermanence of life; and Beto Mohr, Master in Ecology, photographer and musician.

In addition to the results of the residencies, the program includes training activities and audiovisual performances carried out in partnership with the Farol.live project: on January 17th, the collaboration Espírito takes place, the work of the musician duo M Takara and Carla Boregas and the artist and programmer Dimitre Lima; on January 31, it’s Degelo’s turn, an audiovisual performance about global warming, performed using an instrument created by Henrique Roscoe. In February, on the 8th, some resident artists, led by the dance and scenic experimentation company Grupelho, will present a performance resulting from the residency research in Praça da Alfândega, and on the 25th, the public will be able to check out another performance derived from the residency in the Cine room. Santander.

The Kino Beat Festival was born over a decade ago in Porto Alegre and has been changing over time. Created in 2009 by Gabriel Cevallos, as Mostra Kino Beat of films related to music, the project has been changing, and incorporates new languages ​​and formats every year. Since its inception, the event has offered its programming free of charge to all, seeking to encourage the population’s contact with independent art.