Ancestral Future, Ailton Krenak (2022) (EMPIRE LINES x Arika, Tramway)

Artist and curator Amilcar Packer unpacks ideas of decolonisation and anti-colonialism in education, thinking through the works of Ailton Krenak, a leading activist in the Brazilian indigenous movement.

Born in Santiago de Chile, and based in São Paulo, Brazil since the 1980s, artist and curator Amilcar Packer locates his life and work ‘between’ the Pacific and Atlantic. An organiser and participant in Episode 11: To End The World As We Know It, five days of revolutionary art, discussions and performances at Tramway in Glasgow, run by Edinburgh-based collective, Arika, he shares some personal connections between South America and Scotland.

Amilcar details the work of Ailton Krenak, a leading anti-colonial activist in the Brazilian indigenous movement, who joins the programme along with transnational thinkers like Denise Ferreira da Silva, Geni Núñez, and Françoise Vergès. We discuss his practice in popular culture, including literature and radio, and environmental activism. Amilcar describes Ailton as ‘one of the knots in a net’ of entangled counterpolitical and liberation movements, sharing the struggles of Brazil’s Black and maroon communities, descendants of escaped African slaves, and many peoples of the Amazon forest and river.

As one of many contemporary thinkers in the programme, Ailton’s work provokes conversations about history, and time as a colonial, imperial, and capitalist construct. We explore his engagement with the pluriverse or multiverse, and possibility of jumping between alternative worlds. We also discuss the temporal othering of indigenous and aboriginal identities in different contexts, from the reclamation of the Americas as Turtle Island, to Karrabing Film Collective from Arson Bay, Darwin, Australia, and their presentation of The Ancestral Present - connecting with Ailton’s 2022 book, Ancestral Future.

Challenging the monoculture of Western/European thought - and simplistic understandings of religion and spirituality, sexuality, and gender, which often lack relevance or utility with respect to indigenous worldviews - Amilcar talks about cosmology, and the constructive force of ‘tensions’. We discuss the ‘human archive’ of violence and brutality, and ongoing conflicts in Gaza, Palestine, and over the definition of land rights. Amilcar shares where assimilation, making indigenous people Brazilians, has been used to ensure indigenous people lose their relations with their land, which makes it easier to dispossess. We consider whether the decolonisation of institutions like museums or universities is possible, and active forms of resistance. Exploring a plurality of approaches to study, learning, and education, Amilcar shares the ideas of Fred Moten, Stefano Harney, Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, and the importance of multiplicity, in constructing and realising other ways of being with the world and each other. Episode 11: To End the World As We Know It, presented by Arika, ran at Tramway in Glasgow and online through November 2024. The full programme, including the conversation with Ailton Krenak, is available online.

Hear more about Françoise Vergès with Professor Paul Gilroy, recorded live in conversation at The Black Atlantic Symposium in Plymouth (2023): ⁠pod.link/1533637675/episode/90a9fc4efeef69e879b7b77e79659f3f⁠

For more about the temporal othering of indigenous and aboriginal identities, hear artist and curator Tony Albert in the EMPIRE LINES episode about Story, Place (2023) at Frieze London: pod.link/1533637675/episode/f1c35ebd23ea579c7741305bba2e6c4e

And for more about Afro-Brazilian cultures, hear writer and musician Kalaf Epalanga on kizomba and kuduro music, in the episode on Whites Can Dance Too (2023), recorded at Africa Writes 2023 at the British Library in London: pod.link/1533637675/episode/0a7191316798c30ed1494e5fb2c3e798

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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