The show 'POPEROPERA TRANSATLÂNTICA', with the MEXA Group. Photo: Mar Aberto Produtora/Vitor Dias
The show 'POPEROPERA TRANSATLÂNTICA', with the MEXA Group. Photo: Mar Aberto Produtora/Vitor Dias

Eamong the various actions implemented by Paranaense Museum Since the arrival of its new management team in 2019, its Public Program has been one of the initiatives that best summarizes its proposals: a free, biennial project with the aim of inviting the community to come closer, reflect and engage with a subject in an extended and interdisciplinary way. It is no surprise that between the first edition, held in 2022, and the second, which took place between May and August, visitation increased by almost 30%, with the public jumping from 20.088 to 27.520 people.

The closing of this year's Public Program, entitled Bodies ― Evidence, Matrices ― Species, took place between August 23rd and August 8th, respectively with a workshop and a presentation by the MEXA Group, from São Paulo. Created in 24, MEXA explores and debates the distances and proximities between the street and the museum, life and art, politics and aesthetics, through improvisation, documentary theater and collective creation, among others. In Curitiba, the group presented the performance Transatlantic Opera, a show that combines elements of opera and 1990s nightlife culture to tell stories inspired by Homer's Odyssey.

Director of MUPA, Gabriela Bettega emphasizes that, among the institution's ongoing projects, the Public Program is the one that best translates “our desire to make the museum a space for relationships, where differences can be negotiated, where different points of view can be expressed on various subjects, without any restrictions”, she argues.

For Gabriela, the diversity of the audience that attends the Program ends up creating an interconnection with different temporalities, a very rich process. “You are discussing a specific topic, reflecting on the past, questioning or inquiring about the present and trying to find paths for a possible future. In this sense, it is a very special project”, she ponders.

To design each edition of the Public Program, MUPA brings together all the coordinators of the institution's scientific departments to initially discuss the project's theme and then determine what the programming schedule will be, seeking a balance between discussion panels, performances, theatrical presentations and small exhibitions. In 2022, between 40 and 50 events were held; this year, 60.

Some of the activities surprised the audience that attended MUPA. One example was the participation of the Brazilian artist living in Germany Stefanie Egedy, who in July presented the sound installation BODIES AND SUBWOOFES (BAS). According to Gabriela, Stefanie created a composition that became an installation with low-frequency sound waves that every hour, for 10 minutes, “shook the entire museum” with very low sounds, she says.

“There was a huge concern about the collection. We didn’t know exactly how this vibration would impact the facilities and infrastructure. We called someone to do an analysis, and it was concluded that the installation was not interfering with the state of conservation,” he recalls. “So we overcame this possible obstacle and the public loved the experience.”

The Public Program also leaves an important legacy for MUPA: all meetings, performances, and presentations are recorded and incorporated into the museum's documentary collection and database. They are available on social media and on YouTube.

Gabriela emphasizes that there were four months of many meetings, with people from different parts of Brazil, beyond the borders of MUPA. “Motivated by the theme of the body, in these exciting meetings that the Public Program promoted, we discussed everything from art to sports, from ancestral knowledge to science,” she points out.

“The importance of this project lies in the possibility of providing visitors to the Museu Paranaense with a multi-format and dialogic program in different fields of knowledge. It is a project that prioritizes exhibitions focused on intangible culture and the role of the museum as a space for relationships.”

It is worth noting that the activities of the Public Program are marked by interdisciplinarity and a significant variation in types of events. Some of them mobilize the community because they take place outside the museum, like the example ofthe performance ADAPT, which took place in this edition; and the performance of Uyra, presented in 2022. Both took place at Praça João Cândido, in front of MUPA. It is also important to highlight that MUPA carries out dozens of educational actions for children and adolescents, developed in connection with the Public Program.

There are also actions that bring together holders of traditional knowledge with university researchers, questioning the very conception of science, such as the table Plants, landscapes and conservation of life promoted by indigenous peoples, held in 2022, with archaeologist Eduardo Góes Neves, biologist Ariane Oliveira and indigenous researcher Sirlei Kaingang. This year, an example was the table Body cultures of masculinities, with anthropologists Osmundo Pinho and Waldemir Rosa, historian Fernando Botton, and dancer and choreographer Khalifa IDD, who gave a demonstration of the Passinho dance.

In a more practical sense, the Public Program invites the public to deal with the topics of each edition through, for example, workshops. In 2022, for example, MUPA hosted a rammed earth workshop, in which participants built a wall with earth, which was incorporated into the museum's garden. This year, there was a workshop Machine-body: a parallel between robotics and human anatomy, in which participants were introduced to robotics.

The Public Program also hosts dance shows, which in turn guide the topics chosen for each edition, but touch the public's sensibilities in other ways, such as Night Garden, from the Siamese Laboratory, presented in the first edition; and Hagoromo – the feather cloak, with butoh dancer Emilie Sugai, set in 2024.

THE FIRST EDITION 

The 2022 edition was titled If you put your feet on the ground: relationships between humans and plants. Over the course of 115 days, the Program focused on traditional, artistic and research practices involving plants and the humanities. Some verbs helped guide the program: care, inhabit, transform, know, nourish, regenerate and share. With these in mind, the MUPA team sought to list which activities between plants and humans they would like to highlight.

This resulted, for example, in the participation of the people Huni Kuin, whose shamanic chants enlivened the night of painting and performance by the MAHKU collective; and the painting of Mebegokre-Kayapó graphics made by Kokodjy Kayapó, Moxare Kayapó and Bekwynhtokti Kayapó with genipap. The inaugural edition of the Public Program also had a round table on scientific and artistic research on plants with anthropologist Karen Shiratori, artists Santídio Pereira and Alex Červený, and the curator of Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, Marie Perennès, via video.

In August, the catalogue of the inaugural edition of the Programa Público was launched, a publication of over 400 pages, which compiles the actions carried out: there are transcriptions of speeches by artists and researchers, recipes, lists of plants, reports and essays and other unpublished texts by participants and staff, as well as a large set of photographs. In addition to the physical version, the digital version is now available online on the MUPA website.

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS OF 2024

In the second edition of its Public Program, MUPA also hosted the presentation of the audiovisual work The fish, by Jonathas de Andrade, who also participated in a round table. In an interview with arte!brasileiros, Andrade states that The fish It speaks mainly of interspecies relations, and how we, as dominant beings on this planet, use nature irresponsibly and shamelessly.

“As if there were no tomorrow. This checkmate has been intensifying more and more in recent years, with so many signs such as torrential rains, global warming, etc. These disasters are directly related to policies that weaken protection of forests and their people, and allow endless deforestation and creation of pastures,” he says.

Andrade emphasizes that events like these at MUPA are fundamental opportunities to foster conversations around art, promoting encounters between artists and the public. “I hadn’t been to Curitiba in many years and I think that this type of exchange outside of the São Paulo and Rio axis is crucial for us to have a more diverse and decentralized national network,” he says. “I learn a lot from exchanges like this, from the comments and questions from the audience. Without a doubt, they help me to develop my next steps and projects.”

Another highlight of the project in this second edition was the exhibition Lenora de Barros: Fire in the Eye. On the opening day, there was also a Roundtable with Lenora, Pollyana Quintella (online) and mediation by Bruna Grinsztejn. In an interview with arte!brasileiros, Lenora says it was “a wonderful surprise”, that she was “enchanted” with MUPA and the work that the institution has been carrying out through the dialogue between the museum’s collection and contemporary art.

“It’s a shame it was only a few days, I plan to go back soon,” she says. “I was surprised, in the best way possible, by the participation of people, who were very interested and asked stimulating questions. I was also struck by the large number of activities and the beautiful publications. In short, everything was impeccable.”

 


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