Tradition and Innovation | 2011

The performance was presented at the Tingui Park, in Curitiba, Brazil, in an autumn afternoon. Wearing loose clothes and five pieces of rope, I walk into an area of the park where predominantly the native pine tree Araucaria grows. I tie the ropes to the end of my legs and start to put branches and leaves of this tree into my pants. Once my clothes are filled, I tie the ropes to the end of my arms and around my waistline and throw more leaves and branches into my blouse collar. 

I walk with leaves and branches between my clothes and my body in the direction of another area of the park. After walking four hundred meters, I reach an area that has only native exotic maple trees. Under those trees, I untie the ropes and start taking out the leaves and branches from the Araucaria trees, mixing them with the native exotic leaves on the ground. After this I tie the ropes again to my belly and ankles and start filling the clothes with leafs from the native plants. After having filled all my clothes, I walk to the area of the park that has only the Araucarias, untie the ropes and begin mixing the exotic leaves with the Araucaria leaves and branches, ending the performance. 

This work is directly related to my studies in Philosophy, especially with the phenomenology of the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, more precisely to his dialectic of sedimentation and innovation. For the philosopher, tradition emerges from the relation between the new and the sediments. 

With this performance, I aimed to practically expand this concept through art. Even though these themes belong to culture, I make this relationship in nature, more specifically in the direct and intrinsic relation between culture and nature: in a Park in the city where I live, Curitiba.