Busão das Artes | Itinerant Exhibition

Busão das Artes

Bus circulates through the squares of Rio de Janeiro to show,

with art and science, the diversity that exists in every human being

The universe of fungi and bacteria is explored

in an interactive exhibition that deals with the condition of life itself

The painter Paul Klee defined art as a way of "making visible the invisible". The phrase takes on a different meaning in Arts Buswhich is actually a 15-metre truck adapted to receive interactive experiments of scientific approach and visual arts projects, which begins to circulate through the streets of Rio on November of November 22nd.

Conceived by the curator and interdisciplinary creator Marcello Dantas in partnership with physicist Luiz Alberto Rezende de Oliveira, ex-curator of the Museum of Tomorrow. O Busão is a project carried out by three women: Renata Limawho directs Das Lima Produções; and the duo Luciana Levacov e Lilian Pieronifrom Carioca DNA.

The initiative has two strands: an environmental one, which deals with bacteria and their role in our ecosystem; and a scientific one, which deals with our knowledge of the human organism. And who guides the visitor through this rich and little explored universe is invisible to the eye: fungi and bacteria.

Those who go on the "Busão" will discover, with a pinch of humour, that there are more than four trillion bacteria on Earth, of which 100 billion inhabit the human body, and 99.99% have not even been discovered yet. Among the stopping points planned are Mauá Square, Madureira Park, Santos Dumont Square and the Complexo da Maré.

"The Busão das Artes was born from the will of CariocaDNA and Das Lima to educate, humanise and raise awareness, addressing two urgent and current issues, science and the environment. This project takes place in squares and other public spaces, free of charge, and is open to all. A trained team of mediators and art educators will attend and expand on the content presented. We always seek to improve quality of life and make the city a living environment," says Luciana Levacov.

Dantas highlights that, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, people ended up learning more about a series of processes that are not perceptible to the naked eye, but that change the course of history. This microbial dimension, whether of fungus, bacteria or virus, is active and has a lot to tell us: "It is necessary to inoculate in people's minds the awareness about these dynamics and use art as a platform to understand the forces that are in constant relation", says the curator.

Oliveira adds: "In this game of the dynamics of existence proposed by Dantas, the main force is the ancestral struggle between fungi and bacteria, which are related to the beginning and the end of life. And it is this concept that Busão intends to divulge in a playful and humorous way. We don't realise that we have more bacteria in our bodies than there are stars in the sky," he says.

In other words, when talking about fungi and bacteria, the Busão brings diversity to the centre of the discussion, starting from the very concept of existence. Oliveira recalls that, until 1995, biologists thought that a forest was a collection of trees and that individual trees were defined by their singularity, independent of everything around them. Today, science ensures that there is an underground network of fungi that connects the plants and transforms this collection into a society, in such a way that the older trees take care of the younger ones and the healthy ones help the sick ones. And this is true for any living being, according to the physicist.

"We not only belong to an ecosystem, but each one of us is an ecosystem in itself. The Busão brings the proposal to work as a kind of sensory and cognitive realfabetization, to present an original concept of the 21st century: diversity integrates units. We cannot only talk about diverse beings. Each one of these beings is, in itself, a source of diversity", Dantas analyzes.

How does this translate into practice? Whoever goes to Busão will be able to check out, for example, the most complete biometry of a human being: the microflora of the navel (more identifying than any other way of making an individual unique). It is represented in photographs by artist Vik Muniz who, in partnership with the biomedical engineer Tal Danino, made bacteriological portraits of Brazilian personalities.

The artist Jaider Esbellfrom the Macuxi ethnic group, presents the work "Life comes from the invisible light - The people who live in our body". Produced especially for Busãowith 120x140 cm, the work alludes to the constant metamorphosis that is life.

"It's a work that makes you think that, beyond our lives and our thinking, there are a myriad of other forms of life that are so complex and interactive in the world without us realising it," reflects Esbell, who is competing for the Pipa Prize this year after receiving it in 2016.

Another artist, Susana Queirogaproposes a dive into the habitat of bacteria, with an installation that will allow the visitor to interact with a simulation of the environment of these microscopic beings. Using cut-outs in honeycomb polycarbonate plates adhered in transparent colours, she has constructed a work which will measure approximately 300x210x240m. Susana merged the concept of Petri dishes - used for the cultivation and analysis of microorganisms in laboratories - with the proposal of her series "The world remains indifferent to us". Through the superposition of layers of colored papers, the visual artist from Rio de Janeiro works the idea of diverse networks, from neurons to the weft of cities, the flow of liquids, the diversity of molecular drawings, microbiology and cosmic tissue.

"My desire is to make the universe of microbiology three-dimensional, specifically that of bacteria, and bring it to the urban scale and to the experience of the gaze. I want to work on the idea that we are walking ecosystems in which various kingdoms coexist in harmony, war and/or collaboration," explains the artist.

On Busãoit will also be possible to know how much the microbes in an individual's body weigh, using a scale that calculates the non-human weight. Not to mention the work of artist Walmor Correawhich involves mermaids and pikaias in a humorous way. Pikaias? Yes, a species of marine animal that lived around 500 million years ago, in the Cambrian period. From this curious cross between legend and science comes "The kiss of the pikaia".

"I imagined the meeting, on the high seas, between two pikayas; I imagined the contact of antennae and mouths; I even imagined a kiss or, in a less romantic approach, the first exchange of bacteria. It is interesting to think that in ten seconds of a kiss, we exchange about 80 million bacteria. And, according to specialists, this is almost always good, because the bacteria of the so-called microbiota guarantee a better functioning of the organism", says Corrêa.

With so many new concepts under discussion, it is possible that the Busão will leave more doubts than certainties. With this in mind, outside, there will be containers with questions, so that visitors can reflect on what they have seen and on the human condition itself: "We are only human, because we are inhuman", Luiz Alberto provokes.

Dantas observes that, in relations with another individual, a psychological, a social and a bacteriological event add up and cannot be ignored. A phrase by the poet Wally Salomão, installed in Busãogives the measure of what the curators want to say: "Between the being of another and my being, my border is broken".

"We are in a zone of profound questioning. If we don't understand this for better or worse, we won't understand anything about life," Marcello says.

For the creators of Busãothe idea of circulating through the city squares brings new elements of analysis. They consider these public spaces as a place for conversation in which, due to the diversity of its frequenters, there is an intense bacteriological exchange: '"This is the ethical and political dimension of Busão. By placing no boundaries between science and art, and creating dialogue with people, we are also proposing a revision of the very sense of citizenship", concluded Oliveira.

About Luiz Alberto Rezende de Oliveira

Physicist, PhD in Cosmology, was a researcher at the Institute of Cosmology, Relativity and Astrophysics (ICRA-BR) of the Brazilian Centre for Physics Research (CBPF/MCTI), where he also worked as a professor of History and Philosophy of Science. Professor, lecturer and consultant for various institutions, he was curator of the Museum of Tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro.

About Marcello Dantas

An interdisciplinary creator, he works on the border between art and technology, producing exhibitions, museums and multiple projects that seek to provide immersive experiences through the senses and perception. He has been behind the conception of various museums, including the Museum of the Portuguese Language and the Japan House, in São Paulo; the Museum of the American Man and the Museum of Nature, in Piauí; and the Museum of the Caribbean, in Colombia. He has curated exhibitions by renowned foreign artists such as Ai Weiwei, Anish Kapoor, Jenny Holzer, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Peter Greenaway, Rebecca Horn, Bill Viola and Laurie Anderson. He was also artistic director of the Brazil Pavilion at Expo Shanghai 2010; of the Brazil Pavilion at Rio+20; and of the Estação Pelé, in Berlin, at the 2006 World Cup. He has been part of the Vancouver Biennale's curatorial body since 2014.

SERVICE:

Arts Bus

Opening: 30 November 2021
Closing: 24 February 2022
Opening hours: from 9am to 5pm
Scheduled visiting hours: from 9am to 11am and from 3pm to 5pm

Free entry

Stop 1: Santos Dumont Square

30/Nov/2021 to 03/Dec/2021 - Tuesday to Friday
09/dec/2021 to 12/dec/2021 - thursday to sunday
14/dec/2021 to 17/dec/2021 - tuesday to friday

Stop 2: Madureira Park

06/jan/2022 to 09/jan/2022 - Thursday to Sunday
13/jan/2022 to 16/jan/2022 - Thursday to Sunday
27/jan/2022 to 30/jan/2022 - thursday to sunday
03/feb/2022 to 06/feb/2022 - thursday to sunday

Stop 3: Mauá Square

10-feb/2022 to 13-feb/2022 - thursday to sunday
16/feb/2022 to 19/feb/2022 - wednesday to saturday
21/feb/2022 to 24/feb/2022 - monday to thursday