A Trail of Amazonia Time
Site: Monte Alegre, Brazil
Date of Project: May. 2021
Advisor: Angelo Bucci, Xhulio Binjaku
Apart from being evidence of human civilization in Amazonia, rupestrian art is also the first hand documentation of the Anthropocene of indigenous ancestors. Knowledge of cosmology, geometry, biology can be found in the rupestrian art. They are all branches of the ecology at that time. From the rupestrian art, we can have a glimpse of the prehistory Amazonia from thousands of years away.
This project aims to accentuate the connection between rupestrian art and its ecological context by continuing the pre-colonization climate and hydrology and foregrounding the current ecological crisis. Rupestrian art will be physically protected and culturally prolonged, making indigenous ancestors’ knowledge and experience still applicable even today. By constructing a trail of exhition space, this project connects the water and the relic, and invites tourists to think over the ecological logic for the accumulation of Amazonia’s image: how nature and human, organism and artifacts, past and now interact on the vast land of Amazonia.
The water level of the Amazon river has been fluctuating in the past forty years. The lake next to the Monte Alegre park used to be a marshland, and has significantly changed in area. In 2000, a river formed between Monte Alegre city and Monte Alegre park. After that, tourists need to take a long detour from the north if they would like to pay a visit to the park. Alternatively, tourists can take a ferry to this dock called Santana from an adjacent upstream city. However, the waterway connection between Monte Alegre city and park has not been developed. This project started with thinking at a larger urban scale over the relationship between Monte Alegre park and Monte Alegre city. The sightseeing experience will be reshaped by starting from the water side.