Uma experiência de extensão: discurso, poesia e imagem, A Cidade Biodiversa

Abstract

This undergraduate thesis presents a critical and sensitive reflection on the relationship between urban biodiversity, art, and environmental education, through the design, implementation, and analysis of the ACIEPE (Integrated Activity of Teaching, Research, and Extension) titled “Cidade Bio Diversa,” developed within the scope of the citizen science project “Biofuturo na Cidade” at UFSCar. The proposal emerged from the desire to conclude the undergraduate journey by integrating teaching, research, and extension in alignment with questions about how we relate to biodiversity and how new connections between people and urban environments can be created. Guided by a transdisciplinary and decolonial perspective, the ACIEPE was designed as an extension discipline that employed artistic languages — haiku, photography, collage, and theater — as tools to provoke both epistemic and affective displacements in how we perceive and inhabit the city. The theoretical framework draws from authors such as Ailton Krenak, Geni Núñez, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Suely Rolnik, engaging with concepts such as the coloniality of knowledge, regimes of visibility, and art as a device of resistance. The methodology prioritized collaborative and horizontal construction of the pedagogical space, embracing participant diversity and promoting active listening, collective creation, and critical reflection. The analysis of the ACIEPE experience revealed the potential of artistic practices as educational tools capable of re-enchanting the everyday and reconfiguring discourses around urban biodiversity. Through artistic expressions, participants were able to share personal experiences and memories, activating affective sensibilities often suppressed by urban rationality. The interdisciplinary articulation of art, science, and politics fostered new ways of seeing, feeling, and narrating the world, contributing to the development of an ecological consciousness. More than an academic endeavor, the ACIEPE functioned as a transformative and collective experience, aimed at cultivating future imaginaries rooted in diversity, affection, and sustainability through care, creativity, and shared knowledge. This study argues that art, in dialogue with citizen science, can serve as an epistemic force in reimagining relationships between humans and non-humans in contemporary urban contexts.