Catastrophe Project

This work examines the tensions brought into focus by the COVID-19 pandemic, tracing the ways in which the crisis exposed structural contradictions and systemic fragilities. Drawing connections between scientific models and artistic processes, it reflects on transformation, instability, and the emergence of new forms from moments of rupture.

Its conceptual framework is informed by Catastrophe Theory, which describes how continuous systems can undergo abrupt and irreversible change. A catastrophe begins as a steady chain of cause and effect until a disruptive element—a point of instability known as the germ (or perhaps the virus?)—alters its course. In an instant, what had appeared linear unfolds into a series of seemingly unpredictable curves whose overall behaviour nonetheless remains partially foreseeable.

Here, those curves take the form of twenty-six trajectories.

Twenty-six curves for Brazil's twenty-six states.