The Elementary Alchemy of Financial Particles
What does the atmosphere mean from a financial perspective?
Greenhouse gases travel through our skies, disregarding geopolitical borders – much like the financial transactions that enable them.
For the next six months, Brazilian artist Luiza Crosman proposes a curatorial framework that investigates the intricate relationship between our planet’s atmospheric chemistry and the global economy.
Brazil is at the centre of many ecological entanglements — large scale agricultural systems, cattle farming, marking indigenous territories and energy transition. Its centrality to these questions was exemplified at COP28 (2023), hosted in Dubai by the fossil fuel titan Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber. Brazil was one of the leading participants in the event, with the largest delegation in attendance. Though it presented steep deforestation reductions in the Amazon, the country’s internal politics and socio-economic dynamics are still marred by contradictions. This is evident in Brazil joining OPEC+ just months before COP28, signalling its interest to become a major force in the fossil fuel industry. The country is also set to host COP30 in 2025.
The Brazil Financescape will focus on the economics of atmospheric manipulation, on local and global scales. This will include technologies of geoengineering, the carbon offsetting industry, current conversations around degrowth, food systems, and the necessity of decarbonising the economy: measures that aim to find a better transmutation between productivity and mitigation, nature and culture, present and future.
On the one hand, these global transformative processes currently seem like the once dreamt alchemical promises, transmuting base metals into gold or finding the elixir of immortality: an impossible task. On the other hand, a complex set of economic tools seems to be the most elementary form of manipulating carbon particles in order to revert our atmosphere away from its current crisis and under a 1.5ºC heating limit.
The project will be presented in different outputs and media, some of which will be published on Weird Economies platform, and others will take place on-site in São Paulo, Brazil.
Forthcoming Programme:
Forest Partners Screening, by Partnership for Forests
Forest Partners highlights an often unseen side of forests – the economic ecosystems thriving between public and private organisations and local communities. Travelling the tropics, the film showcases successful innovations in sustainable production systems worldwide, proving it is possible to obtain social, environmental, and economic benefits by preserving or restoring forest landscapes. The initiatives featured over 45-minutes are based in South America, Africa, and Asia, in regions where there are still preserved forest landscapes, but where the impacts of deforestation and forest degradation are already widely felt. These solutions combine technology and traditional knowledge to protect tropical forests, with shared benefits – and they need to be scaled.
Agouro – from the feet soles to the respiratory system: the population of Xiapú-Xingu and the 2026 attacks, by Maíra Dietrich & Rekonζtrua Dosiero
As a contribution to the Brazil Financescape, the artist and researcher of Rekonζtrua Dosiero, presents the details of the accidental creation of the substance P+I+quat in 2026, when the laboratories of the Ministry of Brazil, with the intention of creating an air attack weapon, conducted the mixture of Napalm derivatives with pesticide residues in an airplane spray tank. The text explores the chemical nuances of the substance’s construction, the details of the 2026 event that generated the contagion, and analyzes the general characteristics of INCS Syndrome (Insufficiency of Neuro-Capacitor Stimuli), triggered by the substance in the human body.
Financialization of the Amazon: poison, viruses and infrastructure, by Fábio Zuker
In the Lower Tapajós (Pará state - Brazil) The process of financialization of the Amazon forest goes hand in hand with the expansion of soybean plantations. The advance of monoculture promotes the clearing of multispecies forests, and agrochemicals (particularly glyphosate) play a central role in destroying the complex webs of human and non-human life that form the forest and its multiethnic territories. In this presentation, I intend to show how glyphosate is used as a kind of chemical weapon, a political technology to empty these territories so that soybeans can advance. This process of deforestation and ecological simplification (reduction in the number of species), favors contact between rodents carrying viruses that do not circulate between humans (hantavirus) and people - leading to a higher incidence of contamination located around highway Cuiabá-Santarém, with pandemic potential. To complete the presentation, I will bring some elements regarding the infrastructure being built to increase the capacity of the region to export grains. Financed by large agribusiness multinationals and the Brazilian State, they include river ports, silos, and highway paving that, in the face of a virtually infinite demand for grains from China, increase the incentive for deforestation for grain production. In this text, Zuker invites listeners to dive into this nebulous and intricate multicausal chain between finance, grains, agrochemicals, and viruses in the Amazon.
The technological dynamics of Brazilian agriculture and its impact on territory occupation, by João Adrien
In his contribution João Adrien will discuss the historical context of brazilian agro farming development, local specificities of territorial occupation and the challenges regarding environmental conservation. Furthermore, he will approach technological transformations that are shaping new paradigms in agriculture development specially regarding biological inputs.
Speculative Design to Redefine Boundaries, by Paulina Cho
Climate change is a pressing issue that requires urgent action. Adopting innovative and imaginative solutions is crucial to addressing this problem. This article explores how speculative narratives and design-driven solutions can play a transformative role in tackling climate change and shaping a sustainable future. Through real-life examples of successful initiatives, we demonstrate how speculative narratives can serve as blueprints for change. They challenge conventional wisdom and push boundaries to envision carbon-negative cities and rewild urban landscapes.
Program of screenings will be announced at a later date.
Durante os próximos seis meses, durante a residência curatorial do Weird Economies, a artista brasileira e membro do conselho do projeto, Luiza Crosman propõe uma investigação sobre a intrincada relação entre a química atmosférica do nosso planeta e os emaranhados econômicos da globalização.
Emaranhados que recentemente puderam ser observados na COP28 (2023), sediada em Dubai e que teve como presidente o sultão Ahmed al Jaber, megaempresário dos combustíveis fósseis. O Brasil foi uma das principais presenças no evento, com o maior grupo entre as delegações participantes. Embora o país tenha apresentado resultados positivos em sua política de combate ao desmatamento na Amazônia (com uma queda DE 40% desde o início do mandato do governo Lula, em janeiro de 2023), seus posicionamentos ainda parecem repletos de contradições: logo antes do início da COP28, o Brasil aceitou o convite para fazer parte da OPEP+, sinalizando seu interesse em se tornar uma liderança na exportação de petróleo.
O Brasil também ocupa o centro de muitos outros debates relacionados ao clima, como os relativos a sistemas agrícolas e pecuaristas de larga escala, demarcação de territórios indígenas e transição energética. Além disso, o país vai sediar a COP30 (2025), na qual se espera que os participantes apresentem suas novas NDCs (Contribuições Nacionalmente Determinadas), os parâmetros e ações que cada país se compromete a realizar no combate à crise climática.
A partir desse cenário, o programa vai refletir sobre sistemas econômicos que lidam com ideias de manipulação atmosférica, tanto local quanto globalmente, como, por exemplo, através de tecnologias de geoengenharia, o setor de compensação de carbono, os discursos atuais sobre decrescimento, sistemas alimentares e a necessidade de descarbonizar a economia. Medidas que buscam encontrar uma melhor transmutação entre produtividade e mitigação, natureza e cultura, presente e futuro.
Por um lado, esses processos globais de transformação química se assemelham às antigas promessas alquímicas, tão sonhadas e almejadas, de transmutar metais comuns em ouro ou encontrar o elixir da imortalidade: uma tarefa impossível. Por outro, um conjunto complexo de ferramentas econômicas parece ser a uma forma possível e elementar para manipular partículas de carbono a fim de fazer com que nossa atmosfera saia do estado de crise atual e não ultrapasse o limite de 1.5ºC de superaquecimento.
A proposta será apresentada em diferentes mídias, com atividades publicadas em nosso site on-line, e outras acontecendo em locais institucionais em São Paulo, Brasil.