Technological Sapucaia and the collection of white things

Abstract

This article narrates the transformations in the landscape of Ilha de Sapucaia, a territory now incorporated into the land upon which the campus of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro was established. Ilha de Sapucaia was the first major garbage dump in the city of Rio de Janeiro and, later, was one of the islands filled in to carry out the modernist project of the University of Brazil. These two images of the same island, one corresponding to the territory that receives what reaches the end of its useful life and the other to the ideal base upon which a utopia is built, are brought together through the figure and gesture of the ragpicker, who, walking amidst landscapes devastated by waste, collects the rags (fragments) that will be transformed into paper (plan). The action Coleta de Coisas Brancas carried out in the cove of the Parque Tecnológico where garbage still arrives through the waters of Baía de Guanabara, is presented as an expedition to the now-extinct Ilha de Sapucaia, accessed through the ragpicker's gesture (the act of collecting), in order to narrate Ilha de Sapucaia as a dump of things and memories.