We're about to spread word about the Jumeleizhi project which I am working closely on with Vanessa Gocksch (Pata de Perro) in Colombia.  I was inspired earlier this year by her account of attending a meeting of shamans from across Latin America which can be read at her website - <http://intermundos.org> where you can also see more of the amazing photographs (right).

Vanessa has built up trust with a group of people called the Mamos in Colombia over many years. Since September we have been in close touch to see if we might be able to produce a work in co-operation with the  Mamos, who belong to the Kogis, part of the Tairona tribe,The image to the right is of a Kogi village in the Sierra Nevada mountains and the picture below shows Jorge Dib, who is one of the project collaborators on the beach with one of the Mamos whose way of life, described by Vanessa and Jorge, follows a complex system deeply entwined with natural forces. Among the many things they have lost in the past centuries, as a result of European marauding and subsequent displacements, are sacred relics and objects which they place in the landscape not only to guide others on trails across the Nevada but also to demarcate in a visual, material sense, the close ritualistic relationship they have with nature. They believe this intrinsic relationship has been damaged by the spoiling of their sacred territories and that this is also part of the world's current crisis in relation to environmental concerns. Vanessa and I have decided to work together to respond to their call which can be read at <www.tairona.myzen.co.uk/index.php/about/news> and to ask our friends and others for help to  track down the missing objects which are held it is believed in collections and museums across the world. We seek to use media tools and collaborative networks  to trace these sacred objects which have been displaced from their real context and to encourage their return. The websites www.jumeliezhi.org and jumeleizhi.net will soon be up and we'll be inviting friends and others to contribute whatever they can to this project.  Earlier this week down in Cornwall at the Tregmouth campus of Exeter University - where they have a new course, a MA In Writing Nature and Place, I heard Robert MacFarlane author of three excellent books - Mountains of the Mind, Original Copy and Wild Places - question if literature can have any role in raising public consciousness of environmental and ecological issues (or crises). We hope that somehow our project can avail of new writing options online and through social media/blogs etc to build awareness of the importance of the Tairona's quest. It is important to say though that their own message at the site noted above can't be bettered in terms of moving one to respond. Check it out. The project which is partly funded by Alt Art in Romania, as part of their e-tribal art initiative, will also have some offline manifestations including we hope at an exhibition in Transylvania in February next year.

After six days in Sao Paulo  with temperatures around 38 degrees - I have travelled south to Florianopolis on Santa Catarina  an island of high tech development mixed with mangroves and two universities - as well as free software activites unconnected with the 'creative industries'. It is cooler here and last night brought welcome rain.Tomorrow I will go out to the mangroves with Yara Guasque my host and Karla Brunet who will come down from Salvador for our talk together at the state university on Monday.

The events in Sao Paulo earlier this week were organised by the Institute Sergio Motta. Motta was a former Minister of Telecommunications in Brasil responsible for laying out the telephony network throughout the country and making television accessible throughout. He died young. His daughter, Renata Motta, who works at PUC SP University along with Giselle Beiglemann who leads the acclaimed  Semiotics and Communications course there has set up the institute which gives awards annually to talented practitioners specialising in work related to art and technology. Among the winners in the early stage career section this year was Fernando Rabelo, whose work I had known a little from the bricolabs list, and it was a pleasure for me to be invited to give feedback on his work which included his low tech vj control piece installed in a black box in the entrance foyer of the British Council building in Sao Paulo (a building which enshrines British influence in Brasil with a beautiful garden that acts as the perfect backdrop for conversations addressing multiple angles on the world).   Rabelo has programming as well as artistic skills and has been evolving an approach which takes the idea of minimalism into interesting directions related to behaviours and choices for presentation and production. He produced a panoramic piece in Amsterdam earlier in the year using one computer rather than multiple which goes against the grain of much artistic production using technologies and so is asking what can we do with less? Keynotes were given by Gerfried Stocker who was asked to describe the history and current direction of media culture in German speaking countries, Yukiko Shikata from ICC (who has worked in the past with Armin Mesodoch and with Dumb Type) who tackled the subject in relation to Japan starting with systems and robotic work in the 1950s bringing us through to exhibitions she is curating about media, architecture and ecological issues today; others attending included Sabine Himmelsbach from Haus fur Medienhunst in Oldenburg and Rosina Gomez-Baeza Tintura from laboral in Gijon, northern Spain. Giselle Beiglemann, who is combining curating/organising the Motta prize with her work as an academic and artist, gave a fascinating talk which she titled Technofagia - echoing anthrofagia - defining a new generation of Brasilian artists, activists and thinkers specialising in low tech, collaborative, DIY practices engaging with social and environmental questions in ways that she feels break significantly with the tactics evolved in the generation which she represents who were dependent on academic posts and relations with commercial companies to gain access to the high tech resources they felt neccessary for their work.

Next week Brasil continues to ripple with an intensive level of activity  in art/technology fields -  on 11th Mobilefest- Paulo Hartmann and Marcelo Godoy's annual extravaganza of screen based practices targeted at the general public will commence at the Museum of Image and Sound in Sao Paulo, on the same day as the artemov festival led by Lucas Bambozzi, Marcus Bastos and others will open in Belo Horizonte in advance of associated programmes over a course of month in three other cities - Salvador, Recife and Porto Alegre.  

A publication resuting from the Paralelo events held also at MIS earlier this year - with researchers practitioners  in art, technology, design, science and environment areas - from Brasil, the Netherlands and the UK, will be available by December in book form followed by a POD extended series of papers which will be found on the Virtueel Platform site.  The book's title - Paralelo, Unfolding Narratives in Art, Technology and Environment - will show how developments from this week-long network event are already spiralling off in many interesting ways.  Participant Rachel Jacons from Active Ingredient in Nottingham will spend time in Brasil this month continuing collaborations with Mobilefest and also with the Mobile Lab project curated by Ivan Henriques and Silvia Leal n Rio which is investigating environmental issues through artistic residencies in a van travelling around the Guanabara Bay. Later in the month Giles Lane from Proboscis will take part in the artemov events; in October James Wallbank and Mike Stubbs from England came back to Sao Paulo, to MIS, to contribute to a symposium in advance of hopefully future cooperation between these organisations.  James spoke about the connections between waste and media a live subject for bricos anywhere. Meantime, two hours away from Rio, on an eco reserve in Mata Atlantica forest, Jo Joelson and Bruce Gilchrist of London Fieldworks are now on a six week residency (with their one year son Jetson), through an Artists Links award from the British Council which will allow them to explore an ongoing project idea - relating to the idea of the Arctic tern bird, which flies from northern hemispheres including northern Scotland to the ice-capped south via the Brasilian coastline, annually, in search of maximum daylight.They hope to make links between their time here and a series of tree-houses which they are constructing in the Highlands of Scotland, which will be ready next year to host visitors, researchers in art, science and beyond - as temporary, nature-based studios.  Although Scotland will no doubt be colder than Brasil, we all feel we have to pay back somehow ....if not in warmth and light, then somehow....revealing the reverse path of those birds whose trajectory no doubt has meaning, waiting to be revealed.