The Forest of Mirrors

Endangered Human Movements Vol. 3

Performance

“The xapiripë animal spirits have danced for shamans since primordial times and so they continue to dance today. They look like human beings but they are as tiny as specks of sparkling dust. To be able to see them you must inhale the powder of the yãkõanahi tree many, many times. It takes as much time as Whites take to learn the design of their words. The yãkõanahi powder is the food of the spirits. Those who don’t ‘drink’ it remain with the eyes of ghosts and see nothing.”

— Davi Kopenawa, Yanomami thinker and political leader

The third Volume of the project Endangered Human Movements investigates Amerindian ontologies, cosmologies, mythologies, iconography, magic and art. During 2017, this research unfolds in different formats and constellations. Inspired by hybrid beings that populate Amerindian oral and visual imagery, the first edition of this 3rd volume entitled The Forest of Mirrors is an attempt at creating an affective, experiential bridge between ancestral indigenous knowledge, contemporary performance and posthumanist thought. The performance explores the way concepts such as “Human” and “Identity” are understood in Amerindian terms. “Human”, applying to all beings as an inner and stable form of self-consciousness, and “Identity” being understood as an unstable category, determined by the shape and attributes of the body and by its ability to transform. Between the forgotten and the still unknown, two performers — Amanda Piña and Linda Samaraweerová — work on challenging the relationship between animal, vegetal and human, friend and enemy, foreign and known.