Author Archives: Clarissa Reche

Artist, educator and researcher, working on the frontier between science and art. Doctoral student in Social Sciences (UNICAMP, Brazil) developing research on menstruation and fieldwork in Ethnology. Interested in the relationship between body and knowledge production.
clari.reche@gmail.com
A photo of an eletronic chip with gray, balck and pink components

Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Entropy: Internet and Synthetic Biology Pioneer Randy Rettberg’s Story on How Information Was Forged

Clarissa Reche, Érico Sant Anna Perrella June 27, 2023
Este conteúdo também está disponível em português
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Our first encounter with Randy Rettberg was somewhat surreal. Not that the others weren’t—the sui generis atmosphere is always present—but that first meeting was set in a scenario so far from our everyday reality that it felt like we’d been thrown into a science fiction novel. It happened in 2022 and we were a bit disoriented after ten hours of transatlantic travel and two hours riding Bentleys to the British countryside. It was July, and we had left the cold and dry wind of our almost never rigorous Brazilian winter to find a pleasant summer sun that gently bathed the English lands. The people there were in a good mood and smiling. Someone told us that it was an atypical moment, that life was not so bright most of the time. We got lucky. At least the weather made us feel a little bit at home, but only that. (read more...)

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Image of an arapuca, woven in cane against a darker background. The thickness of the trap appears as a semi-circle on the top left hand corner of the image, and other components of the trap, some with purple, green, red and yellow shading, appear through the bottom corners.

Setting Traps: For an Insurgent and Joyful Science

Clarissa Reche May 25, 2023
Este conteúdo também está disponível em português.
Listen to a reading of this post.

While visiting the exhibition by the artist Xadalu Tupã Jekupé at the Museum of Indigenous Cultures in São Paulo, one of the works caught my attention. It was a monitor on the floor. On the screen was a modification of the game Free Fire, where it was possible to follow a virtual killing taking place from the point of view of an indigenous character wearing a headdress. For a while I couldn’t look away. I remembered a conversation I had with Anthony, a Guaraní-Mbyá professor that works with the youth of his territory. At the time I was also a teacher, working with marginalized youth. I remember Anthony’s distressed words—he was concerned about the time and attention young people were putting into games like Free Fire, creating a situation very similar to the one I lived when I worked with teenagers in the outskirts of São Paulo. (read more...)

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