PANEL 7: Zé Kleber: Mycelium

With Jorge Ferreira and Merlin Sheldrake

Host: Alice Worcman is part of the Organicidade collective, which promotes edible gardening in urban areas; she has a special research interest in PANCs [Non-Conventional Food Plants]

The Zé Kleber Panels – an annual tribute by Flip to the poet and writer who was a kind of cultural ambassador to Paraty in the 1960s through the 80s – always feature people who bear connection with the city and surroundings as a conversation starter. This time, the guest is Jorge Ferreira, who grew up here, on his parents’ farm right inside the forest where they got food from. Soon he learned, as a kind of inheritance, to observe the backyard with the eyes of a botanist, starting his autonomous scientific studies. At this talk, Jorge is joined by mycologist Merlin Sheldrake, author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, so that they can wander – even if virtually – through the Atlantic Forest in search of the mushrooms that inhabit it. Sheldrake endorses that life in the world starts with the fungal network, in intimate connection with plants. If so, what can Nhe’éry species reveal about the future of the territory?