Mangrove World: game theory, symbiosis, and florestania for an environmental art-education

Abstract

This article shares my collaboration as a volunteer artist-researcher in Mundo Mangue, an ongoing workshop on mangrove ecosystems, coastal pollution, and the Guanabara Bay. The project was conducted in 2023 by Projeto Uçá, run by the NGO Guardiões do Mar, with high school students from Colégio Estadual Hilka de Araújo Peçanha, in Itaboraí. Alongside the project’s environmental education team, comprising biologists and educators, I proposed a series of practices in dialogue with the course program, in a movement that investigates an environmental art-education through the practice of games. Drawing from historical contributions to game theory by Johan Huizinga and Roger Caillois, as well as Viola Spolin’s theater games and Anne Bogart and Tina Landau’s viewpoints, I examine the workshop’s games as a way to embody concepts such as symbiosis, proposed by Lynn Margulis; florestania, proposed by Ailton Krenak; and bio-interaction, proposed by Antônio Bispo dos Santos. Furthermore, the article is intertwined with descriptions of some of the games from the workshop program, which can be practiced in various contexts.