The meeting brought together researchers around Neil Safier’s presentation, entitled “Amazon(s) in the World – from the Colonial Period to the Present Day”, and discussed the multiple perspectives and arbitrariness associated with the term Amazon. It was pointed out that the concept does not have a fixed definition, but varies according to historical contexts, spatial and temporal scales and the perspectives of those who use it. The idea of the Amazon is therefore plural and fluid, constructed from external and internal narratives that reflect different political, economic and cultural interests. Despite this, the use of the term, within the scope of the project, deliberately assumes its arbitrariness as a way of incorporating its historical complexity and accounting for its multiple layers of meaning.

A central point of the discussion was the deconstruction of the vision of an isolated territory. During the colonial period, the Amazon was already deeply connected to international circuits through the products of its native flora and fauna, as well as feeding global imaginaries about the territory. Maps from the 16th century, travel accounts and other historical sources, such as those produced by the Ottomans and Germans, among many others, bear witness to this intense dialogue between the local and the global. However, these narratives often fail to engage with the lived experiences of local populations, creating a gap between the external representations and the Amazonian reality.

The analysis of material culture thus emerges as a promising way of understanding this relationship between the local and the global. Amazonian objects, their original contexts, how they circulated the world and the places where they are today are seen as testimonies to historical processes and the construction of images about the Amazon. With this in mind, Neil sets out to study Amazonian collections in museum institutions in Lisbon, Hamburg, Rio de Janeiro and Madrid and assess how these objects have fed different perceptions over time and contributed to crystallizing imaginaries about the region.

Another aspect mentioned was the articulation between art and the concept of artivism, proposed by Vicenzo Trione, as tools for thinking about alternatives for the future. Contemporary art, especially indigenous art, has emerged with a proposal to reflect on the present, past and future based on the challenges faced by humanity. In this sense, the idea of an “ancestral future”, which recovers traditional knowledge and perspectives to face global crisis scenarios, fuels the thinking of researchers who also seek to contribute to an alternative vision of the future, reconciling historicity, material culture and artistic practices to understand the Amazon in a broad and connected way.

The meeting concluded that the Amazon, more than a geographical space, is a concept full of varied meanings, built up over time and in different contexts. The interdisciplinary approach, which combines history, geography, art and material culture, among other perspectives, was seen as essential for exploring the richness of this theme and proposing new ways of thinking about the relationship between the territory, its inhabitants and the globalized world.