Visualizing Critiques of Monoculture Across Pan-Amazonia: Reflections on Multispecies Resistance with Jamille Pinheiro Dias

"Visualizing Critiques of Monoculture Across Pan-Amazonia: Reflections on Multispecies Resistance" with Jamille Pinheiro Dias (Craig M. Cogut Visiting Professor, Brown University/University of London). Part of the Brazilian Studies Lunchtime Series.

In an era marked by intensified civilizational crises and planetary destruction driven by colonial modernity and its continuities through extractive and racial capitalism, Amazonian Indigenous artists have played an important role in revitalizing life and transforming physically and epistemically damaged territories. This presentation will provide a comparative analysis of two recent short films by Amazonian Indigenous artists from Brazil and Peru: "Children of the Corn" (2021-2022) by Denilson Baniwa and "Bakish Rao: Plant Resistance" (2024), produced by Denilson in collaboration with the Comando Matico collective from the Shipibo-Conibo people. Both films, in which I was involved in the joint creation, address concerns around monoculture. They offer warnings about this issue through the lens of Amerindian cosmological perspectives on the legacy of Anthropocene violence. These works emphasize the inseparability of physical, vegetal, and spiritual health, proposing multispecies resistance against the homogenization of life. This comparative exercise highlights the importance of creative coalitions among Indigenous artists from different peoples as a pedagogical and cosmopolitical tool in times of ecological and social crisis.