Indigenous Voices, Collections and Architecture: notes on a Collaborative Project

Abstract

Between 2020-2021, the project The Intangible Dimension of Building and Inhabiting of Indigenous Peoples was carried out as part of a public research grant. The proposal consisted of an encounter between subjects from Xetá, Kanhgág and Mbyá-Guarani peoples and old photographs of indigenous architectural contexts collected at the Museu Paranaense, culminating in sound and textual documentation, transcriptions and socio-architectural analyses. In the development of the project, procedural issues were raised and informed by indigenous and anthropological knowledge, emphasizing ethical challenges in the practice of dialogue and also the contemporaneity of theoretical-methodological perspectives on collaborative work with traditional populations. The awareness that not only formal knowledge about techniques, materials, uses and other aspects of the constructions would be at stake, but also countless affectations that are specific to the relationships that each indigenous person or collective has with the collections, was fundamental. It turns out that the project promoted, first hand, an arrangement of architectural narratives originated from the voices of representatives of the peoples involved, not so much concerned with qualifying them, but with providing opportunities to know what they generate for these peoples, from their own concepts, contexts and sensations.