Masking is a tactic used by communities to protect their identities – and sometimes to provoke a change of perspective. During our exchanges with the Salve Saracura collective in São Paulo, we learned Saracura is an indigenous name for a water bird after which the river was named. Masking is a tactic used by the Salve Saracura collective, which carries the name of the river/bird. The mask is used during activities for calling the veiled river into public consciousness.

In 2020, the Salve Saracura collective used the bird masks for the first time during a carnival parade for the river. Later, during our encounters, riparians from the Saracura have shared with us their reflections on the right to opacity, as voiced by the Martinican poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant. It has helped us understand how we can make political claims for environmental justice and against the erasure of rivers and of the stories of those who live with it – while simultaneously asking for respect for those Other stories and practices that shall not be controlled or comprehended.

In 2023, Indra from Labtek visited São Paulo and assisted Salve Saracura with mask making for another tactic of riparian struggles: parading. During a joint action, the river collective overflowed the streets of downtown São Paulo with members of a local theatre struggling for the un-covering of the Bixiga river, and representatives of Afro-Brazilian religions and Black movements who used the river waters in a washing ritual. By the way, the bird is also a symbol for another Saracura movement, the Saracura Vai-Vai, which claims memory for the Quilombo (a settlement of formerly enslaved, freed people) Saracura in São Paulo. It is associated with the Adinkra symbol Sankofa and printed on T-shirts as the one worn by Ute on the picture below.

The Saracura mask travelled to Berlin and was used by Ute during a workshop with children at Floating Kidsuni. Ute transformed into the bird to tell the stories of the birds at Saracura river in Brazil and the monkeys at Citarum river in Indonesia.

In 2024, Endira from Labtek Apung Jakarta brought us mangrove weaving techniques to create a new mask, made of the reeds that grow at Floating’s water basin. We used the juice of wild berries from the site to dye the masks and looked through the openings to observe the riparian ecologies with new perspective.

The mask became something that enabled new and unexpected encounters. During the preparations of Planetary Confluences Festival, riparians from Labtek, Saracura and Floating put on insect eyes and antennas/feelers to sharpen their sense of solidarity.

Through our correspondences, the mask became part of a collage of stories on tactics. We have placed a bird mask at the center of a map of the covered river, adding Taioba ears for it to listen to the riparian ecologies