What if Brasília was taken over by the Cerrado that it once destroyed? This long article by Carlos (Vazio S/A) describes an imaginary capital now integrated into this biome. Because Brasilia did not take possession of the Central Plateau: in fact, the biome is trickily recovering an apparently lost territory.
“Cerrado-city?
“There is very likely a Brasília mythology that remains to be told. The blue sky and red land will someday birth a new prose, a new ecology: those of the unending grasses. No monument, no exuberances. And yet, what is it that makes the Cerrado so fascinating? It must be the power of its sheer territorial expanse. The murmuring of its endangered immensity. The end of the heroic distinction between nature and culture. The unplanned clash between Brazilian architecture and the Central Tableland. The succession of rigid functions of modern urbanism (hotel sector, commercial sector, banking sector, etc.) corrupted by the free succession of thick-barked trees (stryphnodendrons, kielmeyeras, Machaerium villosum, etc.). The organic writhing of twisted trunks muddying the geometric curves of the vaults and the arches. The modern capital as incontrovertible proof that Brazil is not a modern country, but a place where nature still reigns with crushing ease. The negation of the nation’s baroque and colonial heritage and an ode to the primary vitality of the earth, not to mention the perfect expression of our culpability: after all, why isn’t Brasília a Cerrado-city?”
The excerpt above (and the complete text) was published in Nonument, a thought-provoking international platform that maps, researches and archives public spaces in Slovenia and in the rest of the world. Link available here (Brasilia, Cerrado-city; Nonument site).
