Sommersemester 2025, MA Raumstrategien Ausstellungen , Raumstrategien_Startseite

Várzea, Spaces for Relief - Participation in the 36th São Paulo Bienal

In the frame of the public program Conjugações of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, students of the MA Spatial Strategies at Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin (Germany) present the project Várzea: Spaces for Relief.

Rooted in the poetics and politics of bodies of water, this is a collective open-air drift through the várzea: a floodplain, both natural and social, where life, multiplicity, and tension coexist. As a biome that channels the river’s traces—its containments and overflows—the várzea becomes a threshold where the wounds and contradictions we carry encounter the generative force of chaos; a site where, in complicity, we conjure forms of relief. Through performance, sound, installation, shared food (Food Strategies), live radio transmission (Strategies Radio*), and publishing practices, the project braids São Paulo and Berlin into a polyphonic practice—inviting other rhythms of listening, sensing, and response.

Strategies Radio was transmitted live thanks to the support of lumbung radio and Station of Commons. More programming will also be played throughout the biennial.

Contributors:

Amanda Bobadilla · Ana Júlia Fortes · Ana Gabriela García · Anne Nascimiento · Araiké Da Silva · Beo Da Silva · Bruno De Marco · Cau Silva · Eddie Choo Wen Yi · Emma Lang · Fernanda Aloi · Farokh Falsafi · Franco Marcucci · Kathleen Bomani · Jian Langjie · Luan Caja · Manuel Tozzi · Mariana García Mejía · MN Reyna · Moa May · Montserrat Andrade A · Nathalia Favaro · Nina Cavalcanti · Patricia Black · Pedro André · Svantje Woltersdorf · Sumona Dhakal · Viviane Letayf · Xiao Zhang · Xindi Zhou · Yupanqui Ramos

Faculty:

Prof. Dr. Bonaventure Ndikung · Prof. Pauline Doutreluingne · Paz Guevara · Tonderai Koschke · Manuela Garcia Aldana · Viron Erol Vert · Dr. Anton Kats · Dr. Marianna Liosi · Lerato Shadi

Documentation:

Thiago Namur · Fabiana Won

Spatial Strategies:

The MA Spatial Strategies at Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin brings together practitioners from diverse disciplines and geopolitical contexts to chart the vulnerabilities of space. Their practices explore how to think-feel-sound-act with multiplicity through radical pedagogies. Framed by decolonial and land/water epistemologies, the program inquires into the politics of memory, architectures of power, exhibition research, spatial hierarchies, sonic activism, and durational and interactive performativity. Várzea: Espaços para Desafogo has been conceived as part of the course Exhibition Histories (led by Paz Guevara) and developed throughout the MA program’s yearly cycle.