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Down in the Bog in Klassenkampen

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This collage, by ensayista Randi Nygård, was published in Klassekampen, the leading left intellectual newspaper in Norway, 23.03.24, as an announcement for the environmental NGO, SABIMA.

Sabima also helped Nygård with her research for «The Gift of Scent – Wolves in the Mire», where Simon Daniel Tegnander Wenzel and Nygård produced a scent representing Norwegian bogs for Turba Tol, at the Chilean Pavillion at The Venice Biennale.

It says:

«The artwork is a gift from Randi Nygård to Sabimas work for protections of peatlands. It can be seen at the exhibition «Down in the bog: Hibernation» at Tromsø Kunstforening, Norway.

To build on bogs is going to be prohibited. It is a great victory for nature and for the future. Right now the government is working on writing the text of the law. Let it be strict enough! Let the bog breathe water!»

Retratos en Serie – Ensayo #1

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WHEN

March 10 – 17, 2024

WHERE

Borikén, Puerto Rico

WHAT

A weeklong post-production intensive to continue editing, color correcting, and mastering the self-portraits made by the Ensayistas who participated in the primary and secondary narratives workshop offered by Llaima Sanfiorenzo as part of The Retirement.

Joined by Marie Alicia González (editor), Camila Marambio and Llaima Sanfiorenzo meet again at Las Lunas for an editing intensive of the film “Ensayando el Fin”.

WHY

Because it matters how we end things.

WHO

Marie Alicia González (editor) / Camila Marambio (co-director) / Llaima Sanfiorenzo (co-director)

HOW

Thanks to Para La Naturaleza

–photos by Camila Marambio and Llaima Sanfiorenzo

Encuentro de Arte y Ciencia en Punta Arenas

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Ensayos, WCS-Chile y Hach Saye participan del Primer Encuentro de Arte y Ciencia de Punta Arenas.

FECHA DE REALIZACIÓN
Del 15 al 17 de marzo de 2024

HORARIOS
09:00-13:30 y 18:00-20:30

MODALIDAD
Presencial y remota

CONVOCA
Fundación Suiza en Puerto Yartou y la Casa-Museo Alberto Baeriswyl, con el apoyo del Ministerio de las Culturas, las Artes y el Patrimonio FONDART Regional Magallanes, Convocatoria 2023, y el patrocinio del Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología, Conocimiento e Innovación.

OBJETIVO
Este encuentro busca reflexionar sobre la importancia del desarrollo del vínculo entre las ciencias, las artes y las disciplinas que investigan, conservan y piensan el patrimonio cultural y el conocimiento en nuestro país. También pretende potenciar la construcción de redes de colaboración inter y transdisciplinarias, fomentando el intercambio entre profesionales interesados/as en compartir experiencias donde el arte y la ciencia coexisten y evolucionan.

DIRIGIDO A
Investigador@s, artistas, curador@s, biólog@s, arqueólog@s, filósof@s, estudiantes, técnicos y profesionales en intereses afines y/o a cargo de instituciones ligadas al arte y la ciencia. Podrá participar personal de instituciones culturales públicas o privadas y profesionales con experiencia, conocimientos y/o trabajos de investigación en la temática. Público general.

PROGRAMA-WEB-ENCUENTRO2024

Down in the Bog: Hibernation opening soon at Tromsø Kunstforening

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The upcoming exhibition ‘Down in the Bog: Hibernation’ will take you on a deep dive into the curious ecosystem of peatlands.

Opening Friday March 22, 6 – 9pm
Open March 22 – May 12

With exhibited works by Ingrid Bjørnaali, Fabian Lanzmaier & Maria Simmons, Ensayos, Søssa Jørgensen, Concordia Klar, Enn Kärmas & Villu Järmut, Kristina Norman, Randi Nygård and Laura Põld, in addition to a discursive program with a range of Peatland workers from across the arts and science community, and live concerts by Elina Waage Mikalsen and Eva Väljaots & more.

‘Down in the Bog: Hibernation’ is an exhibition and a place for learning and sharing from peatlands around the world, arguing for the need of increased attention and care. ‘Hibernation’ is the first of the three chapters of the overall project ‘Down in the Bog – Thinking with Peatlands’. Slowly growing, like peat forming, this project-in-process is composed by Karolin Tampere. The works on display, the discursive and live program, aim at large to give poetic, imaginative and dreamlike nutrition to more sturdy layers of awareness, knowledge and care. To together learn from the ecosystems of Peatlands.

‘Down in the Bog – Thinking with Peatlands’ is led by an ambition to create cross-pollinating meeting grounds for art, environmental issues and the public. The exhibition project emphasizes the sharing and embodying of knowledge and awareness to create attention towards the need for increased care of peatland areas, locally, nationally and internationally. Practically and conceptually the topic of Peatlands will act as a guiding map and compass to learn about historical, cultural and contemporary changes in the environments around us in Sápmi, Northern Norway, Estonia and selected locations internationally.

The project will continue its second chapter Sporulation presented at EKKM (Estonian Contemporary Art Museum) in Tallinn June 14 – September 1, 2024, to return to Tromsø with the third and deepest layer. The symposium ‘Thinking with Peatlands’ will respond to the resonances activated alongside the forming of the previous chapters. Save the date for the 3-day symposium September 27-29 2024

Stay tuned! More information will follow!

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Hold av datoen! Vår neste utstilling, ‘Ned i myra: Dvale’ tar deg med på et dypdykk ned i myras økosystem.

Med arbeider av Ingrid Bjørnaali, Fabian Lanzmaier & Maria Simmons, Ensayos, Søssa Jørgensen, Concordia Klar, Enn Kärmas & Villu Järmut, Kristina Norman, Randi Nygård og Laura Põld i tillegg til et diskursivt program med en rekke myrarbeidere fra kunst- og forskningsmiljøer og live konserter med Elina Waage Mikalsen og Eva Väljaots.
Flere navn vil bli annonsert.

Åpning fredag 22. Mars kl 18 – 21
Utstillingen står fra 22. Mars til 12. Mai

‘Ned i myra: Dvale’ er en utstilling og et sted for å dele kunnskap og lære om myrområder rundt i verden og deres behov for vår beskyttelse og omsorg. Dvale er det første av tre kapitler i prosjektet ‘Down in the Bog: Thinking with Peatlands’, et mangefasettert utstillingsprosjekt i prosess komponert av Karolin Tampere. De utstilte arbeidene søker sammen med et live og diskursivt program å gi poetisk, fantasifull og drømmeaktig næring til de mer robuste lagene i vår bevissthet, kunnskap og omsorg. Sammen inviteres vi til å lære av myras økosystem.

‘Down in the Bog – Thinking with Peatlands’ er drevet av et ønske om å skape krysspollinerende møter mellom kunst, miljøspørsmål og offentligheten. Utstillingsprosjektet legger vekt på kroppsforankrende bevisstgjøring for å rette oppmerksomhet mot behovet for økt omsorg for myrområder lokalt, nasjonalt og internasjonalt. Myra vil her både praktisk og konseptuelt fungere som kart og kompass for å undersøke historiske, kulturelle og pågående endringer i naturen og miljøet rundt oss i Nord-Norge, Sápmi, Estland og flere steder i verden.

‘Down in the Bog – Thinking with Peatlands’ vil fortsette med sitt andre kapittel ‘Sporulation’ som presenteres hos EKKM (Estonian Contemporary Art Museum) i Tallinn fra 14.6 – 1.9.2024, for siden å vende tilbake til Tromsø med det tredje og dypeste laget. Det tre dagers symposiet ‘Thinking with Peatlands’ vil informeres av og komponeres i dialog med de to forestående kapitlene. Noter datoen: 27.-29. September 2024, og følg med for mer informasjon!

Save the Date: Odorant Peatlands / Turberas Olorosas Publication Launch

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Join us on April 27 for an introduction to our publication Odorant Peatlands / Turberas Olorosas: an edition representing the wetlands and peatlands of Karokynká, Tierra del Fuego; Bog Hollow, New York; Bogerudmyra, Oslo; and Minjerribah, Quandamooka Country. The edition includes four scent vials representing each location as well as a booklet with texts by Camila Marambio and agustine zegers, Hsuan L. Hsu, and Kashina.

The event will begin at 2pm Central Time / 3pm Eastern Time on April 27 and have simultaneous English/Spanish translation. Please fill out this form to register.

Produced with generous support from Anonymous Was a Woman in partnership with The New York Foundation for the Arts.

Retirement Party – Ensayo #1

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WHEN

February 10 – 19, 2024

WHERE

Borikén, Puerto Rico

WHAT

Editing, organizing, laughing, remembering. For the past few months, Puerto Rican filmmaker Llaima Sanfiorenzo has led Ensayistas through an intensive and comprehensive film workshop where each participant embarks on a reflective journey to tell the story of their part in the collective work. Sanfiorenzo’s method, the Self Portrait Factory, focuses on reaffirming a participant’s strengths while building solidarity, trust, and collective thinking. Workshops were conducted virtually, and the editorial team consisting of Camila Marambio, Bárbara Saavedra, Karolin Tampere and Christy Gast met at Para La Naturaleza (PLN), where Camila has been artist in residence, to conceptualize and edit a final film featuring many voices.

WHY

If we view the cycles of growth and decay, movement and stagnation, progress and retreat in a cosmic way, withdrawal is not defeat or injustice, but an essential part of the game and the wisdom of life.

  • To celebrate our Ensayos methodologies and the ecosystems and ancestors to which they are dedicated.
  • And a final proposition; consider The Retreat as an Ensayos exercise in learning when and how to end things well, a practice of answering the question, what comes after Ensayos?

WHO

Christy Gast / Camila Marambio / Bárbara Saavedra / Llaima Sanfiorenzo / Karolin Tampere

HOW

Thanks to Para La Naturaleza

–photos by Camila Marambio, Bárbara Saavedra, Llaima Sanfiorenzo, Karolin Tampere

“Ciclos Infinitos”, una última Olla Común

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La curadora Camila Marambio se despide de su residencia artística en Para La Naturaleza con una última Olla Común en el Área Natural Protegida Las Lunas. Invitando a una reflexión sobre ciclos que acaban y otros que abren, el programa del día incluye la participación de la ecóloga Bárbara Saavedra, el artista sonoro Joel “Yoyo” Rodríguez, integrantes del colectivo eco-cultura Ensayos, liderado por Marambio; el presidente de Para la Naturaleza, Fernando Lloveras; y la nueva artista en residencia 2024, Llaima Suwani Sanfiorenzo. Además, se ofrecerán diferentes recorridos por el área natural protegida.

Fecha: Sábado, 17 de febrero de 2024
Horario: 11am – 3pm
Lugar: Área Natural Protegida Las Lunas, Caguas

Para leer más sobre Ciclos Infinitos: reflexiones acerca de la Residencia de Investigación en Ciencia, Arte y Naturaleza.

New perspectives and approaches to understanding peatlands

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Ensayiste agustine zegers will be leading a free online workshop titled “New perspectives and approaches to understanding peatlands” organized by Canelo Estudio. It will be held on Fridays in October and we will have three other luxury guests: Annie Mar Forrester – illustrator – , Sol Rezza sound designer and Kate Foster – environmental artist – , who will be sharing their work and creative processes. Space is limited. There is time to register until September 30th at workshopstdf@gmail.com

Turba de Mangle Seminar at ICA Miami

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Camila Marambio and Christy Gast of Ensayos presented a seminar called “Turba de Mangle” at the ICA in Miami for their Swamp Ecologies seminar. The seminar drew on the creative practices and research methodologies related to Ensayo #6 on peatland conservation. We spent three afternoons diving deep into tropical mangrove peatland ecology and sharing writing, mapping and movement methodologies with a group of 24 Miami-based artists and researchers. The seminar culminated with a field trip to the Deering Estate where historically the Everglades flowed into Biscayne Bay. There we attuned to the mangroves during a quiet session of studio time / situated research. Mucking around in the mangroves left lasting impressions on all senses, and allowed for an embodied experience of the course readings. We were delighted by the passion, creativity, and multiple ways in which the seminar participants think about Miami’s ecological future. As artists and thinkers tied to Miami, they are on the front lines of climate change—their vision and activism can foster generous, ethical, and careful new ways of being. 

We invited participants to send in some of their field notes, and are pleased to share them here:

Amalia Caputo

CAPUTO_TURBADEMANGLE_NOTES_2023

Isabella Marie Garcia

isabella-marie-garcia-field-notes-ensayos-ica-swamp-ecologies-symposium

Celeste Landeros

Kim Moore

IMG_20230831_2056543812

Lauren Schapiro

Lauren-Shapiro_fieldnote

TURBA TOL HOL-HOL THE BOOK

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Read the Book

Edited by Carla Macchiavello Cornejo and Camila Marambio Turba Tol Hol-Hol-the book is a compendium of the extensive eco-cultural thought of Latin American and Caribbean authors who center their attention on struggles, ways of doing, and experiences of care from the South.

Ebook downloads here: https://turbatol.org/turba-book.html

PDF of the book here: https://turbatol.org/book/Turba_Tol_Hol-Hol_(eng).pdf

The book is a multidisciplinary, collaborative, scientific-poetic-artistic effort that recognizes itself as material/sensual and aspires to be downloadable, scribbleable, accessible, referenceable. It is designed to accompany different processes of biodiversity conservation, of strengthening care practices that are specific, multinational, cross-cultural, decidedly anticolonial, participative, and feminist. The book is a desire and an act, a collective plea, a place for gathering, for divergences, for different ways of doing in pursuit of a society of care.

The book brings together many voices that participate from their local practices and knowledge. Some are germinal texts, a rich and damp humus for environmental and eco-feminist thought from Abya Yala. Others are commissioned texts from artists, scientists, academics, writers, and activists who focused their attention on the peatlands of Tierra del Fuego and the eco-aesthetics that drive “Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol” (the pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia). Alongside the commissioned essays and the germinal texts, the Venice Agreement stands as a poetic text co-authored by peatland custodians from around the world during a global gathering held in Venice on June 2, 2022. This Agreement is inspired by the wild and wise voices of poets from the end of the world, the southern tip of South America, whose words shake us and remind us not to forget. Each voice reproduced here is a seed that the book plants for the future. Others are new texts on peatland science and conservation, experiences filled with knowledge regarding these ancestral ecosystems that require the attention and care of many. There are also voices and bodies that come together from near and far to accompany and feel-think it from a variety of places and practices. Finally, there are a series of visual essays, an olfactory offering and of course, the rumors, deep, sonorous, textual tremors that pass from body to body and that anticipated what was to come. The vulnerability of our lives, of our bodies, of peatlands, during the times of political struggle, of climate crisis and of the strengthening of tongues, of yours, of mine, of those which we have yet to perceive.

The digital edition of Turba Tol Hol-Hol is available as PDF, ePub and flipbook here and on the websites of the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage of Chile and Ensayos. The printed version will be published by the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage in September 2023 and distributed to libraries and cultural centers throughout Chile.

LEE EL LIBRO TURBA TOL HOL-HOL

Hojear el libro

PDF español: https://turbatol.org/book/Turba_Tol_Hol-Hol_(esp).pdf

Ebooks: https://turbatol.org/turba-book.html

Editado por Carla Macchiavello Cornejo y Camila Marambio el libro Turba Tol Hol-Hol es un esfuerzo multidisciplinario, colaborativo y científico-poético-artístico que reúne nuevos y antiguos modelos ecológicos que emergen desde Latinoamérica y el Caribe.

Es un experimento para acompañar distintos procesos de conservación de biodiversidad y de fortalecimiento de prácticas de cuidado decididamente anticoloniales, participativas y feministas. El libro es un deseo y un acto, un llamado a muchas voces, un lugar de encuentro, de divergencias y de invitaciones a un hacer distinto en pos de una sociedad del cuidado.

El libro reúne muchas voces que participan desde sus prácticas y saberes situados. Algunos son textos germinales, un humus rico y húmedo para el pensamiento medioambiental y eco-feminista desde Abya Yala. Otros son nuevos textos comisionados a artistas, científicas, escritoras, académicas y activistas, que pusieron su atención en las turberas de Tierra del Fuego y las eco-estéticas de “Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol” (el pabellón en la 59a Exposición Internacional de Arte – La Biennale di Venezia). A estos ensayos se suma el Acuerdo de Venecia que en junio de 2022 reunió a científicos, artistas y activistas para el manejo ecológico y cultural de humedales y turberas a escala planetaria. Todo ello sostenido por las voces de poetas visionarias que desde el fin del mundo nos sacuden y nos recuerdan no olvidar. También se presentan ensayos visuales, textos sobre el proceso de creación de “Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol,” una ofrenda olfativa y rumores: estremecimientos profundos, sonoros y textuales, esos que se pasan de cuerpo a cuerpo y que han ido anticipando lo por venir. O eso que ya está sucediendo. Aquí, allá. En la vulnerabilidad de nuestras vidas, de nuestros cuerpos, de las turberas, en la colaboración solidaria, en la participación en este tejido del que somos hilos, en los cambios políticos, en el fortalecimiento de las lenguas, la tuya, la mía, la que estamos aún por percibir.

La edición digital de Turba Tol Hol-Hol está disponible en formato PDF, ePub y flipbook en las plataformas del Ministerio de las Culturas, las Artes y el Patrimonio y el Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Chile a través de la Secretaría Ejecutiva de Artes de la Visualidad y la División de las Culturas, las Artes, el Patrimonio y Diplomacia Pública respectivamente, turbatol.org y ensayostierradelfuego.net. La versión impresa será publicada por el Ministerio de las Culturas, las Artes y el Patrimonio en septiembre de 2023 para ser distribuida en bibliotecas y centros culturales del país.

Loss and Wonder at the World’s End

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Loss and Wonder at the World’s End by anthropologist and writer Laura A. Ogden has been published by Duke University Press. In a chapter on “Speculative Wonder,” Dr. Ogden discusses collaborating with Ensayos on Ensayo #2: Asunto Castor.

From Duke University Press:

In Loss and Wonder at the World’s End, Laura A. Ogden brings together animals, people, and things—from beavers, stolen photographs, lichen, American explorers, and birdsong—to catalog the ways environmental change and colonial history are entangled in the Fuegian Archipelago of southernmost Chile and Argentina. Repeated algal blooms have closed fisheries in the archipelago. Glaciers are in retreat. Extractive industries such as commercial forestry, natural gas production, and salmon farming along with the introduction of nonnative species are rapidly transforming assemblages of life. Ogden archives forms of loss—including territory, language, sovereignty, and life itself—as well as forms of wonder, or moments when life continues to flourish even in the ruins of these devastations. Her account draws on long-term ethnographic research with settler and Indigenous communities; archival photographs; explorer journals; and experiments in natural history and performance studies. Loss and Wonder at the World’s End frames environmental change as imperialism’s shadow, a darkness cast over the earth in the wake of other losses.

In Chapter Five, Dreamworlds of Beavers, after an interlude on Lewis Henry Morgan’s fascination with the architectural industry of beavers, Laura recalls a series of collaborative thought experiments with feminist artists and filmmakers Christy Gast and Camila Marambio. In these pieces of performance art or “undisciplined research,” the artists strive to make beavers visible participants in the “decision-making about their own future.”

“Throughout, I track the surprising ways in which a pair of human-sized beaver costumes attune their wearers to beaver life,” Laura writes.

This project has been supported by Karukinka Nature Park on Isla Grande, within Chilean Tierra del Fuego.  Karukinka is managed by the Wildlife Conservation Society, a North American environmental organization.  The project (“called Ensayos”) was developed to bring artists, social scientists, and natural scientists together to think about conservation problems at the park. The National Science Foundation’s Coupled Natural and Human (CNH) Systems program provided additional support for this project (PI Chris Anderson), as did support from the Claire Garber Goodman Fund at Dartmouth College.

Anonymous Was A Woman (AWAW) Environmental Art Grants recipient

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Ensayos is proud to be an Anonymous Was A Woman (AWAW) Environmental Art Grants recipient, and excited to continue the work on Humedales Olorosos | Odorant Wetlands, which aims to create a scent-based publication that expands access to the smell of peatlands—offering a somatic immersion into their carbon-capturing depths. The project builds on the Gift of Scent that Ensayos gave to Turba Tol Hol-Hol the Chilean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2022. 

Thanks to @AWasAWoman & @nyfacurrent for the support! More: https://www.nyfa.org/blog/anonymous-was-a-woman-and-new-york-foundation-for-the-arts-nyfa-announce-2023-environmental-art-grants-recipients/

Project lead: agustine zegers

Lanzamiento Turba Tol Hol-Hol en Punta Arenas y Porvenir

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El lanzamiento de Turba Tol Hol-Hol se realizará a través de dos conversatorios. El primero tendrá lugar en Cinema Porvenir (Porvenir, Tierra del Fuego) el 16 de agosto a las 17:00; y el segundo en el Auditorio Ernesto Livacic de la Universidad de Magallanes el 18 del mismo mes a las 15:00.

En la ocasión participarán Carla Macchiavello Cornejo, coeditora del libro, Hema’ny Molina y Fernanda Olivares, autoras e integrantes de la Fundación Hach Saye, Melissa Carmody, directora del Parque Karukinka (WCS Chile), el Colectivo Últimaesperanza, Aymara Zegers del Museo de Historia Natural de Río Seco (MHNRS) y Alessandra Burotto, Secretaria Ejecutiva de Artes de la Visualidad del Ministerio de las Culturas, las Artes y el Patrimonio.

Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol, que significa “corazón de las turberas” en lengua Selk’nam, fue el proyecto que representó a Chile en la 59ª Bienal de Arte de Venecia 2022, que en agosto de este año arriba a la Región de Magallanes y la Antártica Chilena transformado en una publicación experimental.

A partir de una vocación ecoestética, las autoras dieron forma al libro Turba Tol Hol-Hol, editado por Carla Macchiavello Cornejo y Camila Marambio, con el diseño de Rosario Ureta y la coordinación de Constanza Güell. Además de exponer los ejes que guiaron al proyecto en Venecia, el libro presenta nuevos modelos ecológicos inspirados en el Abya Yala –el pueblo Kuna de Centroamérica nombraba así al continente americano aludiendo a “tierra florecida” o “tierra madura”– apoyándose en la ciencia, los saberes tradicionales, las prácticas artísticas, el pensamiento anticolonial y las perspectivas feministas no hegemónicas.

Con miras a contribuir al pensamiento ecocultural en Latinoamérica, nuevos textos fueron comisionados a artistas, científicas, escritoras, académicas y activistas, que pusieron su atención en las turberas de Tierra de Fuego y las ecoestéticas de Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol (el pabellón). A estos ensayos se suma el Acuerdo de Venecia, que en junio de 2022 reunió a científicos, artistas y activistas para el manejo ecológico y cultural de humedales y turberas a escala planetaria. También reúne poesía desde el fin del mundo, ensayos visuales y una ofrenda olfativa. Esta vasta compilación de ensayos comisionados, reimpresiones y poemas cuenta con más de 50 autoras latinoamericanas y del Caribe.

El proyecto presentado en Venecia fue curado por Camila Marambio y contó con la participación de Ariel Bustamante, artista sonoro, Carla Macchiavello Cornejo, historiadora del arte, Dominga Sotomayor, cineasta, Alfredo Thiermann, arquitecto, y Juan Pablo Vergara en el rol de gestor. Este anillo de trabajo y colaboración incluyó a científicos y organizaciones como el colectivo Ensayos, Wildlife Conservation Society Chile (WCS Chile) y la Fundación Hach Saye.

La propuesta fue seleccionada para representar a Chile en la 59ª Bienal de Arte de Venecia, en un esfuerzo conjunto entre el Ministerio de las Culturas, las Artes y el Patrimonio y el Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, a través de la Secretaría de Artes de la Visualidad y la División de las Culturas, las Artes, el Patrimonio y Diplomacia Pública, respectivamente.

El libro también recoge los viajes por la región de Magallanes, donde compartieron saberes y miradas a través de la escucha y la convivencia con colaboradores locales, como la escritora Hema’ny Molina, presidenta de la Corporación Selk’nam-Chile y co-fundadora de Fundación Hach Saye; Fernanda Olivares, presidenta de Fundación Hach Saye; Cecilia Soto, secretaria de Fundación Hach Saye; Bárbara Saavedra, directora de WCS Chile; Nicole Püschel, encargada de Cambio Climático y Biodiversidad de la misma entidad; y Rodrigo Munzenmayer, guardaparque, a quienes se sumaron colaboradores artísticos como Benjamín Echazarreta, director de fotografía; Ricardo Gallo, compositor y músico colombiano; Rosario Ureta, diseñadora; Isabel Torres, artista; Sebastián Cruz, arquitecto; y Carolina Caycedo artista colombiana como invitada especial. Las experiencias de estos viajes fueron utilizadas en el pabellón con el fin de poner en evidencia la capacidad de los musgos de las turberas para equilibrar el efecto invernadero del planeta proponiendo un nuevo régimen de sobrevivencia.

La edición digital de Turba Tol Hol-Hol estará disponible en formato PDF, ePub y flipbook en las plataformas de Mincap, Dirac, turbatol.org y ensayostierradelfuego.net. La versión impresa será publicada por el Ministerio de las Culturas, las Artes y el Patrimonio de Chile en septiembre para ser distribuida en bibliotecas y centros culturales del país.

Swamp Ecologies: Weeklong Intensive and Symposium @ ICA Miami

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Enrollment is now open for the Swamp Ecologies: Weeklong Intensive and Symposium of the Knight Foundation Art + Research Center!

This summer, ICA-Miami’s Knight Foundation Art + Research Center presents a weeklong seminar series on Swamp Ecologies led by Zachary Caple, Christy Gast, and Camila Marambio who will offer scholarly and artistic approaches that engage the ecological landscapes and biodiversity of the Everglades and the broader ecosystems of Florida. These seminars will include a day-long excursion for students to conduct on the ground fieldwork in the Florida mangroves. This program will be concluded by a daylong symposium open to the public with scholarly talks by scholars including Dr. Zachary Caple, Dr. Jessica Cattelino, and Dr. Laura Ogden, who will speak on their research in the Everglades and with swamp ecologies as a way of knowing.

Weeklong Intensive and Symposium will take place August 22–26, 2023. On Friday, Aug 25th, there will be a Field Trip led by Christy Gast and Camila Marambio.

Please review seminar descriptions, times, and dates prior to applying. Seminars are free for participants accepted into the program. Advanced reading and course materials may be required.

Image: Three Wicked Crocs 1982. Oil on canvas. 80 1/8 x 120 1/4 in. Photo: Mark Blower. Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.

Raíz Común

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WHEN

July 2021-June 2024

WHERE

Virtual, meeting every two weeks

WHAT

Raíz Común is engaged in slow sisterly translation. Meetings begin with study of the Selk’nam language (indigenous to and re-emergining in Tierra del Fuego) led by poet and Selk’nam woman Hema’ny Molina. This common root connects to ideas about care, ecology and art, and a practice of translation that both includes and transcends poetry.

WHY

Hema’ny has been leading the Selk’nam community’s effort to gain recognition from the Chilean state–an effort that winds unendingly through the halls of bureaucracy. During this time, in Hema’ny’s words, Raíz Común has offered a space where she has been able to exist without proving herself and share her learnings about ancestral culture. In her words, Raíz Común is “a space created by a group of dreamers. All of us women. Where we, the Selk’nam women, exist from a place of inexistence. It is a space to share the advances of the strengthening of our culture, and also the advances of the social and legislative strengthening of the processes that will lead us to be legally recognized as an existing people by the Chilean state. But this space is also more than that. It’s a nook that we go to where we can be seen, accompany each other, be held and share our feelings. So, it is a space for therapy without being one. Es todo y nada. I imagine a map in which there is not a single territory but a route–we can’t quite see the beginning but it is a common root. There are different stops along the way where concepts and sentiments, are drawn out as guiding principles through which people like us, the Selk’nam, who do not have national permission to be, can be…without the need to explain who we are. Where we all are, and from our very beings we share different paths, our emotional routes to better understand the complex situation that affects us as people, but mainly as women, beyond nationality and identity. This whole route is being drawn at the same time that Selk’nam culture is being drawn into universal culture–the right to live, respecting difference and diversity, knowing it and understanding it but never disrupting it. I imagine a guide with different routes like common threads to a single refuge that is itself the right to exist.”

WHO

Hema’ny Molina / Fernanda Olivares / Bárbara Saavedra / Melissa Carmody / Camila Marambio / Carla Macchiavello / Christy Gast

HOW

Thanks to Tamaas Foundation for Media and Art

Fens & Friends: Enacting the Venice Agreement

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Ensayos collaborated with the Wassaic Project and the Town of Amenia’s Conservation Advisory Council and Climate Smart Task Force to offer the Fens & Friends workshop on June 29 and 30, 2023. The workshop enacted the Venice Agreement’s call to protect global peatlands at the local level.

Amenia is home to thirteen kinds of wetlands, including fens and circumneutral bog lakes, both of which are peat producing. It is important to get to know and conserve peatlands because, although they cover just 3% of the world’s surface, they capture more carbon than all of the Earth’s terrestrial forests combined. Much of Amenia’s wetlands are covered by a hybirdized, invasive plant called Phragmites australis (common reed), which colonizes the wetlands and crowds out native plants. Although Phragmites causes problems for the ecosystem as a whole, it is also peat-producing. The Fens & Friends workshop gave participants the opportunity to get to know part of the wetland along Wassaic Creek intimately. We learned to spin Phragmites leaves that were harvested from that wetland into cordage, and in the process we practiced thinking-through-making, weaving in new connections and knowledge about how wetlands function and the international significance of protecting the watershed in our own back yard. The group of participants included teachers, gardeners, and weavers.

Our teacher was Alejandra Ortiz de Zevallos, an artist based in Lima, Peru, who has adapted an ancestral cordage-making technique used for millennia to create Inca rope bridges. She teaches this technique as part of her experimental weaving practice and often uses the leaves of Phragmites plants harvested from streams and ditches in Lima, Peru, where it is also a non-native colonizer. Alejandra connected with Ensayos through her studies at the University of New Mexico’s Confluence MFA program, where Christy Gast and Camila Marambio of Ensayos are professors.

Dr. Stuart Findlay of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies led the group on a walk to identify Phragmites and discuss the ecology of the wetlands around Wassaic Creek. The group noticed how resilient the Phragmites is, as it pushed up through an asphalt parking lot of the Wassaic Train station and colonized the swale. In the wetland, it was evident that the Phragmites was spreading and that areas that hadn’t been colonized had far greater plant diversity–native cattails, sedges, milkweed, goldenrod, spicebush and jewelweed abounded as well as non-natives like honeysuckle and mugwort. The group discussed the ethics of human intervention and different management strategies including chemical versus physical barriers, and eco-cultural encounters.

Camila Marambio, the founder of Ensayos (curator, based in Puerto Rico) led a presentation and discussion on the Venice Agreement as the group practiced the cordage technique. On the second day of the workshop, the air was thick with smoke from the wildfires far north in Quebec, Canada. The fires are burning in forests as well as peatlands, releasing millennia of stored carbon into the atmosphere. The first day of the workshop was held outdoors and the second was moved inside due to the low air quality.

At the opening of the second day, when the group worked inside the historic Gridley Chapel, organizer Christy Gast opened with a reflection on belonging, community and adaptability building through the lens of “queering” language, practices and places. The two days were passed in meditative work and deep conversations about ecology, the value in connecting science and art, ancestral maker practices, and community-building. Making the q’eswa or rope is an opportunity to slow down and pay attention to our bodies. After a couple of hours, the hands have memorized the twisting movement, each person at their own learning rhythm. We ended the workshop with beautiful art pieces made with care and with words of gratitude.

This program was supported in part by a New York State Council on the Arts Support for Artists grant.

The Scent of Pine Can Create Rain

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As Norwegian Ensayista Randi Nygård did research for The Gift of Scent, she was looking into scents relating to peatlands in Norway, and she came across an article about cloud formation from the scientific centre CERN. There the scientists had studied biogenic materials’ role in forming clouds, and found that one of the molecules that we recognize as the scent of pine forests, alpha-pinene, can be a vital ingredient in the first steps of vapor travelling in the air. 

So she and collaborato Simon D. T. Wenzel produced a new scent, called “The Scent of Pine Can Create Rain”. The scent contains geosmin which is the scent of wet soil, molecules smelling like wet grass, and ozone scents, like the ones in the air just before rain fall. It was part of Nygårds show, with the same name, “The Scent of Pine Can Create Rain”, at Leveld Kunstnartun in Norway, taking place in an old barn at a bog from June to October 2023.

The science program at CERN is part of the global effort of building large climate models. To Nygård, the concrete meeting with the invisible molecule in the forest, with the scent, in our noses, is made even more poetic as the knowledge of its role in seeding clouds is added to the sense of smelling. What comes into our nostrils can later travel far up in the air and help hold a cloud together. 

https://home.cern/science/experiments/cloud

Ensayos @ Norwegian Science Conference

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The Norwegian Gift of Scent – “Wolves in The Mire”, produced by Randi Nygård and Simon Daniel Tegnander Wenzel for the Turba Tol at the 2022 Venice Biennale, was part of a Nordic STS conference at the University in Oslo in June 2023. 

The Venice Agreement poster was shown together with the scent in an exhibition curated by Nora Sørensen Vaage, from NOBA. 

The artists also took part in a panel discussion at the conference.

Vamos Pal Pantano

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Para celebrar el 2 de junio, Día Mundial de las Turberas, la artista en residencia de Para La Naturaleza, Camila Marambio, invitó a un grupo de artistas, biólogos y trabajadores del arte a pasar la tarde en un pantano de Pterocarpus dentro del Área Natural Los Frailes con la intención de conocer este humedal y comenzar un estudio transdisciplinario en torno a la identificación de turberas tropicales en Puerto Rico. Hasta el momento, se desconoce qué humedales de la isla son turberas y qué tipo de protección específica necesitan. Para ello es necesario estudiar, mapear, recorrer y distinguir tipos de suelo y su composición, sumándole al estudio del suelo la observación de la biodiversidad específica que albergan y sus dinámicas actuales con el entorno ecológico, sociocultural y el clima. 

Las turberas producen turba. La turba es materia muerta, parcialmente descompuesta y almacenada durante un largo período de tiempo en condiciones de saturación de agua. Los humedales que producen turba capturan y almacenan carbono, ayudan a regular los ciclos del agua, la purifican y sustentan una gran biodiversidad. Se estima que cubren un 3 por ciento de la superficie terrestre del planeta y, sin embargo, contienen el doble de carbono que la biomasa forestal del mundo. A pesar de su gran función ecológica, está habiendo una pérdida y degradación de las turberas. Las turberas tropicales, en particular, siguen siendo drenadas para la producción de combustible, alimentos y fibras, lo que da lugar a emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero, incendios, hundimientos de tierras, degradación de los suelos y deterioro de la calidad de las aguas superficiales. Saber dónde se encuentran las turberas tropicales facilitará su conservación, uso racional y manejo. Se considera que las turberas tropicales representan entre el 10 y el 12 por ciento del total de los recursos mundiales en materia de turberas, pero la información con relación a su extensión y ubicación dista mucho de ser completa (Joosten, 2016).

Camila Marambio introdujo la pregunta por la presencia de turberas tropicales en Puerto Rico apenas llegó a la residencia en enero del 2023. Esto debido a que ella lidera un grupo de investigación nómade llamado Ensayos que por los últimos años se ha dedicado a reconocer, estudiar, valorar y visibilizar el rol de turberas locales a nivel global, en especial por ser sumideros de carbono, repositorios de agua dulce y ancestres. El trabajo de campo lo inició junto al biólogo herpetólogo Carlos Andrés Rodríguez y el equipo de Ecodetours de Para La Naturaleza. Tras visitas a los bosques de mangle enano en Medio Mundo y Daguao, el bosque de Pterocarpus de Dorado, Zanja Fría en el Caño Tiburones , y el bosque de Pterocarpus de Los Frailes, Camila y Carlos decidieron enfocarse en este último. Hace dos semanas visitaron el Área Natural Protegida Finca Los Frailes, en el municipio costero de Loíza junto a los biólogos Edwin Figueroa y Wesley Torres. Los Frailes se encuentra en la zona de vida de bosque húmedo subtropical y provee hábitats para unas 95 especies de plantas y 49 especies de fauna, incluyendo varias especies endémicas clasificadas como de preocupación, elementos críticos o en peligro de extinción. En su primera visita ellos dejaron grabadoras de sonido con la intención de determinar si el coquí llanero habita en este humedal y quedaron de volver dos semanas después con un grupo de artistas boricuas cuyas prácticas son afines al estudio y cuidado de los ecosistemas de la isla. 

El 1 de junio, el grupo compuesto por la agroceramista, artista y activista ambiental Amara Abdal, el artista Jorge González, el artista sonoro Joel Rodríguez, la bailarina Miriam López, la historiadora del arte chilena y Ensayista Carla Macchiavello, el herpetólogo Carlos Andrés Rodriguez, el especialista en crustáceos y ecología riverina Wesley Torres, el planificador ambiental Edwin Figueroa y Camila Marambio, visitó el sitio con la intención de recoger las grabadoras y hacer la primera extracción de un núcleo de turba, para así iniciar un mapeo sonoro, visual y arcilloso del lugar. Antes de entrar al pantano se preparó una mesa al borde de la vereda y realizó una challa, un ritual de agradecimiento de origen aymara, en que cada participante fue presentándose y a los instrumentos de trabajo que traía. Grabadoras de sonido, hidrófonos, cámaras fotográficas, cuadernos, mapas, maderas, conchas, pulseras, mambe, rapé, frutos, oídos y ojos, aguas fueron ofrecidos en agradecimiento y compromiso con el cuidado de las turberas. Una vez adentrados en las aguas del pantano, caminando entre palos pata de pollo y materia orgánica en descomposición hasta encontrar una zona alta más seca, se realizó una muestra del núcleo de turba. En el trayecto se fueron compartiendo conocimientos de la biodiversidad de turberas, la arcilla y los suelos, los bosques, la historia de las haciendas en la zona y el cimarronaje en los manglares. Jorge González compartió una carta de María del Rosario, mujer esclavizada que en 1871 pide su liberación. 

La visita al pantano concluyó con un trabajo de escritura en torno a los sueños de la turbera y una lectura del Acuerdo de Venecia. Esta es una declaración que busca proteger las turberas alrededor del mundo a nivel local, y reconocer que cada turbera local tiene un impacto global en la mitigación del cambio climático y el bienestar de los ecosistemas.

The Venice Agreement: Year One Update

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A year ago, celebrating World Peatlands Day, 118 people from 20 countries gathered together to sign a historic agreement to protect global peatlands, collectively shaping the Venice Agreement. This interdisciplinary effort seeks to change the conservation trajectory of these vital ecosystems, recognizing the incredible power of both local and global efforts as well as the hyper-specific needs that arise from this work in all the geographies in which it unfolds. We agree to care for global peatlands globally and locally. Do you? #PeatlandsMatter #conservation #wcschile #VeniceAgreement

Fens & Friends: Weaving with Phragmites

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When: June 29–30, 1-5 pm
Where: Wassac Project / Maxon Mills, 37 Furnace Bank Road, Wassaic, NY 12592
Who: Adults and teens
Cost: Free
Register Here

Fens & Friends is a series of workshops about art and ecology inspired by The Venice Agreement’s ethics of local wetland management. Fens & Friends combines walks with scientists and ecologists with hands-on art projects using natural materials. The common reed (Phragmites australis) is an introduced species that grows prolifically in the wetlands around Wassaic, NY. Peruvian artist Alejandra Ortiz de Zevallos has been working with this material for several years, and will teach us how to harvest and create experimental woven structures with it. Dr. Stuart Findlay of the Cary Institute for Ecological Studies will lead a walk along the Harlem Valley Rail Trail and share research and knowledge about aquatic plants and wetland ecology.

This series is organized by Ensayista Christy Gast with support from the New York State Council on the Arts.

Photo: Alejandra Ortiz de Zevallos

Turba Tol Hol-Hol: The Book

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In 2014 Carla Macchiavello joins Ensayos. That year Carla Macchiavello and Camila Marambio initiate their creative collaboration as the editorial duo CM2.

CM2 has developed an experimental editorial practice based on radical place-based pedagogies, performative writing, and eco-cultural collaborations that aim to generate bridges across cultural and disciplinary contexts and promote better care editorial work. As part of the nomadic research collective Ensayos, CM2 has published the periodical Más allá del fin (2014-Kadist, Paris; 2015-Bruce High Quality Foundation, NYC; 2019-Discipline, Melbourne; 2020-New Museum, NYC), bringing news from the practices of Ensayos in Tierra del Fuego and its environmental collaborations across continents and the greater ocean. Characterized by its hybrid, playful, embodied, and collaborative nature, the Más allá del fin periodical has adopted an array of formats to serve different pedagogical purposes that respond to its hosting environments: newspaper, glossaries, interior booklets and inserts within, interactive components to be used as masks and mediate as technologies of communication across species, among others.

In 2022, CM2 edited a book on environmental thought and decolonial practices of care from Latin America and Abya Yala for Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol, the Chilean pavilion at the 59th Venice Art Biennale. Inspired by the eco-aesthetics of Ensayos and the pavilion’s interdisciplinary efforts to bring awareness to peatland protection, the book brought together science, traditional knowledge, and poetry by Latin American authors who have not been translated and are mostly unknown in dominant academic circles. In an attempt to decenter the current circuits of environmental thought, the book reprinted in Spanish and English essays on matters of ecofeminism, anticolonial practices, popular art, conservation of biodiversity, while centering the writing and voices of women, and also published commissioned essays on the new ecological models promoted by the Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol project at the Biennale.The book Turba Tol Hol-Hol brings together new ecological models from Abya Yala, supported by science, traditional knowledge, artistic practices, anticolonial thought, and nonhegemonic feminist perspectives, and aims to be employed as a pedagogical tool within environmental education settings, while helping build and strengthen networks of solidarity across Latin America, the Caribbean, and its diasporas. The book’s development, design (by Rosario Ureta) and the printing of the first edition (500 copies) was paid for by the Chilean Ministry of Culture, Arts and Patrimony and private donations, and will be freely distributed among cultural institutions, libraries, and collaborators in Chile. There will also be a pdf version in Spanish and English, downloadable free of charge from this website as of August 2023.

Turba de Mangle: Humedades Unides Jamás Serán Vencides

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Desde la isla de Borikén, Puerto Rico se levanta la protesta del manglar, una colaboración gráfica entre Camila Marambio y Elisita Punto.

Los manglares son ecosistemas propios de latitudes tropicales y subtropicales de vital importancia para el medio ambiente. Están presentes en más de 100 países, pero solo cubren un 0,1% de la superficie de la Tierra. La deforestación, la actividad industrial y la descarga de residuos en manglares están poniendo en peligro la existencia de estos valiosos ecosistemas. Según datos de la Organización de Naciones Unidas, más de un tercio de los manglares del mundo ha desaparecido en los últimos 100 años. Por ello, proteger los manglares se ha convertido en uno de los retos medioambientales más importantes de los últimos años. Entre 1980 y 2005 se han perdido más del 40% de los manglares del mundo, principalmente por la creciente urbanización y el desarrollo de las zonas costeras.*

Cada 26 de julio se celebra el Día Internacional de la defensa del Ecosistema Manglar con el objetivo de reivindicar la protección y conservación de este tipo de entornos y ciertamente se merecen su día propio pero acercándose el 2 de junio, el Día Mundial de las Turberas queríamos abrazar a los manglares, unirnos a su protesta y protección, reconociéndolos como grandes productores de turba.

Los manglares son conocidos como «bosques azules». Esto se debe a que son increíblemente eficientes para almacenar carbono. Esto los convierte en una solución natural en la lucha contra el cambio climático, al ser capaces de absorber hasta 10 veces más gases de efecto invernadero que otros bosques tropicales o ecosistemas terrestres. Esto de debe, en parte, a que los manglares producen turba pero no son sólo importantes por su función en la lucha contra el cambio climático, sino porque son un ecosistema que manifiesta inteligencia, sintiencia y biodiversidad.

Los Manglares:

  • Producen una gran cantidad de materia orgánica como hojarasca.
  • Además de retener los sedimentos, pueden filtrar las aguas que abastecen a los mantos freáticos, reteniendo desechos y sustancias tóxicas para que no lleguen al mar.
  • Desalinizan las aguas que ingresan en tierra firme y forman así reservorios en las zonas interiores.
  • Protegen las zonas costeras de la erosión por el agua y el viento y retienen la arena sobre las playas.
  • Ayuda a estabilizar los climas locales.

Desde su llegada a La Residencia en Para La Naturaleza Camila Marambio esta haciendo trabajo de campo en varios manglares, escuchando la protesta, con otres. Más sobre ese trabajo en el siguiente post, ahora a unir humedades.

Afiches descargables fueron originalmente impresos en Community Graphics, un taller abierto DIY de estampado serigráfico y textil en Caguas. Gracias Popa!

turba-de-mangle-2

turba-de-mangle-3

turba-de-mangle-1

*Datos científicos aportados por la Fundación Aquae.

La Retirada / Retirement

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Querides Ensayistas y cercanes (for English scroll down),

Les saludo con el corazón hinchado de amor y admiración por cada une de ustedes. Desde que llegué a Borikén hace casi tres meses les he estado pensando con mucha dedicación. He recorrido en mi memoria nuestra historia compartida y por medio de la escritura creativa, la meditación, y el canto he ido cultivando y pidiendo claridad sobre el futuro de Ensayos y cómo actuar en el presente. Gracias a este sostenido ejercicio de reflexión en-amor es que finalmente supe que La Retirada de Ensayos había llegado. 

En el I Ching se repite persistentemente y enfáticamente que sólo el cambio es eterno en el universo. Todo lo que existe pasa por las fases de crecimiento y decadencia, actividad y pasividad, avance y retroceso. 

Si vemos los ciclos de crecimiento y deterioro, movimiento y estancamiento (pienso en las turberas), progreso y regreso de  manera cósmica, La Retirada no es una derrota o una injusticia, sino una parte esencial del juego y de la sabiduría de la vida.  

Este es el hexagrama de La RETIRADA:

“En ciertos períodos una retirada a tiempo nos ofrece seguridad; esto no significa debilidad sino madurez, y demuestra adaptación a los cambios (cósmicos). En un período de crecimiento y expansión hay que avanzar para estar de acuerdo con los movimientos cósmicos. De la misma manera, cuando el flujo es bajo, con el fin de permanecer de acuerdo con las tendencias cósmicas, debemos consolidar nuestra posición de retirada… La retirada es una estrategia que requiere de ofrendas y sacrificios.”

Es en este espíritu que les invito a considerar lo que queda del año 2023 como La Retirada de Ensayos, y al llegar diciembre están todes invitades a La(mi) Fiesta de Retiro. No quiero asumir que mi retiro significa el fin de Ensayos, quizás hay algunes que quieran tomar la dirección, y cabe decir que hay proyectos en curso que no se acaban en el 2023 (Raíz Común tiene financiamiento hasta el 2024 y ¡Larga vida al Acuerdo de Venecia! ¿Hay algún otro?). Por cierto, cada une también tiene total libertad de seguir relacionándose con todas las entidades (humanas y no-humanas), principios, y éticas que hemos desarrollado a lo largo de los años. ¡Que se multipliquen las bondades y amistades formadas!

Para celebrar esas bondades y amistades, todas esas metodologías de Ensayos y a los ecosistemas, ancestres y territorios a los que las dedicamos, La Fiesta de Retiro será una instancia para recordar con risas, llantos, y baile nuestros andar, y para plasmar nuestra experiencia en una especie de autorretrato creativo que se pueda compartir con el mundo y que espero nos sirva a cada une en su propio camino de autoconocimiento.  

El proceso de crear el autorretrato de Ensayos será guiado por la cineteleasta boricua, Llaima Sanfiorenzo. En los meses que vienen, Llaima Sanfiorenzo y yo estaremos desarrollando distintas maneras  para que quienes no puedan venir a la Isla puedan de todos modos participar del autorretrato, como también podrán hacerlo Ensayistas del pasado y otres colaboradores y amigues. Para ensayistas más nueves, que les pueda parecer abrupta La Retirada, espero que con el ejercicio de autorretrato ese sentimiento se resuelva. Por ahora, sólo guarden las fechas: Entre el 1 y 16 de diciembre de 2023. Lugar: Las Lunas, Cayey, Borikén, Puerto Rico.  

No es necesario que vengan todo el tiempo, de hecho comenzaremos con las Ensayistas fundadoras e iremos haciendo algo como una posta ya que aquí en Las Lunas hay sólo 8 camas (con espacio para carpas y colchones en el suelo, etc), pero están todes invitades a la fiesta… lo único que falta es “conseguir los chavos”. Pero me adelanto… Tenemos 9 meses para procesar y madurar todos los pensamientos, emociones, ideas, y preguntas que surjan con La Retirada. Muches de nosotres nos estamos viendo regularmente en las múltiples reuniones de los distintos grupos de trabajo que tenemos, pero si a alguien le dan ganas de hablar antes, aquí estoy ¡a la orden! con el corazón abierto y la paila parada. 

En fin, les dejo un par de preguntas para reflexionar y una proposición para saborear: ¿Hasta cuándo se ensaya algo? y ¿Qué le sigue al Ensayo?  La Retirada es un último ensayo para aprender cuándo y  cómo terminar bien.  

Descansen,

Camila

ENGLISH

Dearest Ensayistas and collaborators,

Since I arrived in Borikén, Puerto Rico almost three months ago, I have been thinking about each and everyone of you with profound love and admiration. I have retraced our shared history in my memory and through creative writing, meditation and singing I have asked to be granted clarity about the present and future of Ensayos. During, and thanks to, this sustained, dedicated exercise in-love I finally came to know that it is time to Retreat.

In the I Ching it is persistently and emphatically repeated that only change is eternal in the universe. Everything that exists passes through the phases of growth and decay, activity and passivity, advance and retreat. If we view the cycles of growth and decay, movement and stagnation, progress and retreat in a cosmic way, withdrawal is not defeat or injustice, but an essential part of the game and the wisdom of life.

This is the RETREAT or RETIRE hexagram :

“In certain periods, a timely withdrawal offers us security; this does not mean weakness, but maturity and demonstrates adaptation to (cosmic) changes. In a period of growth and expansion, one must move forward to be in accordance with cosmic movements. Likewise, in periods of low flow, it is imperative to retire. Retirement is a strategy that requires offerings and sacrifice.”

It is in this spirit that I invite you to consider the remainder of 2023 as the Retreat of Ensayos and come December you are cordially invited to The(my) Retirement Party. I don’t want to assume that my retirement means the end of Ensayos, maybe one of you or a pod wants to continue the direction? And it should be said that there are some in-progress projects that will not end in 2023 (Raíz Común has funding until 2024 and, long live The Venice Agreement! Are there others I am not aware of?) and that, of course, each of you is free to continue realting with all the entities (human and non-human), principles, and ethics that we have all developed over the years. May the friendships and multi-layered collaborations multiply!!!  

To celebrate our Ensayos methodologies and the ecosystems and ancestors to which they are dedicated, you are invited in December to the(my) Retirement Party,  a celebratory event I hope to use to memorialize with laughter and tears the stories of our collaborations and to creatively capture our experience in a kind of self-portrait that can be shared with other. 

We will be guided in this Ensayos self-portraiture process by a Puerto Rican filmmaker, Llaima Sanfiorenzo. As always, everyone is invited, and as always the challenge continues to be to find the funds to make it to the party. For now, however, mark your calendars: December 1 to 16, 2023 at Las Lunas, Cayey, Borikén, Puerto Rico. It is not necessary to come  the whole time, in fact l propose to start with the founding Ensayistas and then will do something like a relay party because there are only 8 beds here, but there is room for tents and mattresses on the ground etc. For younger or newer ensayistas, this Retreat or Retirement may seem abrupt, but I hope that through the Ensayos self-portraiture exercise those feelings will be resolved. Llaima Sanfiorenzo and I are developing ways to include those who cannot come to the Island  in the self-portraiture process and I will also reach out to people who were Ensayistas in the past and friends. More on all of this will come soon(ish). For now, save the dates and let me know if you think it will be possible for you to come to the Caribbean at the end of the year.

We have 9 months to sift through and sort out all the thoughts, emotions and questions that will arise with retirement, and many of us will be seeing each other in the meetings of the different working groups we have, but if anything comes up, just reach out! In the meantime, I’ll leave you with two questions (I’ll use the english translation Rehearsals to stand for Ensayos): When to stop rehearsing? What follows the end of a rehearsal period? and a final proposition: consider The Retreat as an Ensayos exercise in learning when and how to end things well. 

With an open heart and a listening ear,

Camila

Eco-Lógicas Latinas

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Founding director of Ensayos Camila Marambio was interviewed for the book Eco-Lógicas Latinas. The book was organized by Fernando Ticoulat and João Paulo Siqueira Lopes, and establishes a cartography of Latin American initiatives and artists that reflects deeply on the exchange between art, ecology and science and the resonances that the human-nature relationship have in contemporary art practice. The trilingual publication (Portuguese, English and Spanish) is composed as an exhibition in book format. The project is curated by Beatriz Lemos, with profiles on projects and artists central to the subject, previously unpublished interviews with curators and specialists, as well as a glossary of the main terms that interconnect the universes of art and ecology.

Organization
Fernando Ticoulat and João Paulo Siqueira Lopes

Texts and editing
Fernando Ticoulat, Marina Dias Teixeira, Yasmin Abdalla

Guest Curator
Beatriz Lemos

Artists and Projects
Adrian Villar Rojas
Ana Teresa Barboza
Living Arts
Camilla Marambio
Elvira Espejo Ayca
Giselle Beiguelman
Green Art Lab Alliance
Maria Thereza Alves
Hong Kong Museum
Silo – Art and Rural Latitude
Uyra Sodom
Vivian Suter

Datasheet
Title: Latin Eco-Logics
ISBN: 978-85-471-0653-9
Edition: 1st
Year: 2022
Act. Publishing company
Area of ​​Interest: Art, Contemporary Art, Ecology
Binding: Hard cover
Format: 21.9 x 31 x 2.3 cm
Number of pages: 232 p.
Weight: 1.3kg
Language: Portuguese / English / Spanish

Bogwater – Ensayo #6

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WHEN

February 22, 2023 – February 26, 2023

WHAT

Sniffing around Bog Hollow Pond in Wassaic, and Thompson Pond in Pine Plains, two circumneutral bog lakes in Dutchess County, NY. Making a sludgy brew, pulling paper, finessing design, testing scent-holding media for Ensayos’ contribution to “Turba Tol Hol-Hol the Book.”

WHY

Ensayos supported Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol, the Chilean pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale, with a smellscape–olfactory gifts from peatlands in North America, Norway and Australia. “Turba Tol Hol-Hol the Book” will launch in 2023, and Ensayos pods from the Americas, Norway and Australia are creating limited edition olfactory inserts so that readers can experience the multisensory dimension of peatlands.

Our research into peatlands in the area surrounding Amenia, NY (where Ensayista Christy Gast is based) indicated that they have often been illegally mined, inundated due to dams, or are little-known locally. Both the scent that agustine created to send to Venice, and the inserts we are making for the book, reflect this complexity.

Circumneutral bog ponds are rare in the region, but have been documented by Hudsonia, a nonprofit organization whose work aims to protect the ecological heritage of the region. Hudsonia’s report on the habitats of Amenia identifies two circumneutral bog lakes within the town (Bog Hollow Pond and Swift Pond). Bog Hollow is a large wetland complex near the town’s eastern border with Connecticut. There is an excellent description of circumneutral bog lakes, and of Bog Hollow Pond, on page 59 of Hudsonia’s “Significant Habitats in the Town of Amenia” report.

Bog Hollow Pond and Thompson Pond in Pine Plains (described on page 59 of the Pine Plains Hudsonia report) both occur on the western slopes of small mountains. Bog Hollow Pond is on private property with part of the shore accessible from the road, and Thompson Pond is part of a nature preserve and is ringed by a walking path. We found at least two varieties of Sphagnum growing at Thompson Pond, which looked similar to the chunky Sphagnum palustre and more fine Sphagnum fallax cultivated in the SphagnumLAB part of the project in Venice.

In the studio, we finalized the ingredient list for the paper blotters that will be included in the book insert: water from Bog Hollow Pond, cotton recycled from Sappho Room bedsheets, phragmites (native to European peatlands but invasive in the U.S. and choking Amenia’s wetlands) and a preciously small amount of Sphagnum moss.

As Christy pulled the paper sheets, agustine experimented with various decoctions of the scent to determine what would be best suitable to the blotter paper. agustine adjusted the design so that each insert will contain a small glassine envelope with a scented bog paper blotter, and we tore the paper to fit.

WHO

agustine zegers / Christy Gast

HOW

Thanks to the Sappho Room residency and the Wassaic Project; funding from an Adjunct Faculty Grant for research/creative work from Virginia Commonwealth University Arts and a New York State Council on the Arts Artist Support Grant

–photos by agustine zegers, Penelope Gong & Christy Gast

Gifts of Scent- Olfactory Offerings

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Inspired by the Patagonian Peatland Initiative and Ensayos transdisciplinary research practice, the peatlands of Patagonia represented Chile at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022. The collective project Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol, led by curator Camila Marambio, sought an experimental path toward raising awareness of, and preserving, peatlands. 

“Hol-Hol Tol” means “the heart of the peat bogs” in the language of the Selk’nam people, one of the original inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego. The curatorial project offered an immersion into the material and ancestral experience of the peat bogs. This included a residency in Tierra del Fuego, a series of rumors, a website, a multi-sensorial installation created by Ariel Bustamante, Carla Macchiavello, Dominga Sotomayor, Alfredo Thierman and Camila Marambio that house the functioning peatland science experiment, SphagnumLAB, and a book all highlighting an aesthetic of care and art as a conductor of real commitments to advance on the path of ecological action.

As a result of creative fieldwork and monthly online meetings across continents, Ensayos pods in New York (Amenia), Norway (Oslo) and Australia (Minjerribah/Terrangeri), made perfumes, incense and unique vessels as gifts of scent from their local peatlands to contribute to the multisensory experience of Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol. The scents were gifted to the Chilean Pavilion  to enhance the experience of the immersiveness. 

The bogs and fens of New York, Oslo and Minjerribah/Terrangeri are diverse in their ecologies, cultural meanings, and conservation status. With these olfactory offerings Ensayos invited speculative dives into the depths of peatlands—sniffing and thinking with all of the hidden layers, stored matter, and lively interspecies relations that make them crucial sites of eco-cultural heritage.

Turba Tol Hol-Hol the book, edited by Carla Macchiavello and Camila Marambio, is a compendium of the extensive eco-cultural thought of Latin American authors who center their attention on struggles, ways of doing, and experiences of care from the South. Included in the book is an olfactory offering by Ensayos and a text by Ensayista Denise Milstein based on her experience and conversations about the scent gifts. The book will be available for download in August 2023. Its paper version in Spanish will be launched in Tierra del Fuego during August and will be distributed for free to libraries, schools, and cultural centers in all 13 regions of Chile. 

For the launch of “Turba Tol Hol-Hol”, the Ensayos pods have created limited edition olfactory inserts so that readers of the hard copies can experience the multisensory dimension of peatlands.

Amenia, New York, United States

The bogs and fens of this region are marked by loss—either exploited a century ago or lost to contemporary eyes that are not yet attuned to their depth and importance to climate-future. This project marks their coming out as extraordinary, carbon-sequestering hydrological engineers of immense cultural and ecological value. We have created two scents, presented in blown glass vessels, that represent speculative olfactory tours of the living upper layer and fossil peat below. 

DAMP A full-body submersion into the damp ecosystem of vital, water-retaining mosses, and waterlogged flora. An invitation to imagine the uneven contours of Sphagnum capitula as perfectly designed aqueous carrier bags. A call to drip, pour, leak, slip, slide, and become slippery. This scent is included in the North American scent insert.

RICH A dense meshwork of the musky, malted, medicinal, and tarry saps, excretions, and notes that connect peatland life through the aromatic molecules they produce within their digestive, root, and trunk systems. They are knotted together by an acidic note mimicking the uniquely low pH of the bog that makes all this richness possible. 

Participants: Carina Cheung (glass fabrication), Christy Gast (artist), Camila Marambio (curator), Denise Milstein (writer/sociologist); Agustine Zegers (olfactory artist).

Bogerudmyra, Oslo, Norway

Do the odors of bogs carry meaning? And what do they smell like? With these questions in mind the artists Randi Nygård and Simon Daniel Tegnander Wenzel have visited a number of bogs in Norway. At Bogerudmyra, a bog in a protected wetland area in the city of Oslo, they developed their gift of scent – Wolves in The Mire. 

At the bog the artists felt strong whiffs of wet soil, ocean, dried grass and pine trees. The odors were not rotten, as some might expect. The bog had an earthy, heavy, resinous, fertile and rich scent. It seemed dark, but still it was fresh and clear. There were hints of wet wool and animals, like the smell of a wet dog. Or maybe a wolf?

Ten percent of  Norway consists of bogs, which partly are protected by law. But, even if we know how important bogs are, for water, life and climate, exceptions from the protection are still made. Wetlands are ditched and drained, made into garden peat, turned into farmland or demolished to build highways, houses, shopping malls or cabins.

In Scandinavia there is a saying; owls in the moss. The expression is strange, but frequently used. It means that something is not quite right, or that a danger is lurking. It was originally a Danish expression saying that there are wolves in the mire. Owls and wolves, moss and mire are very similar words, and even more so in Danish. The wording changed as the surrounding world changed, the wolves went extinct and the bogs were drained. 

What comes forth if we continue the development of “the owls in the moss”- expression, by adding words with similar sounds? Can these words, together with the scents, tell us something about the future and the past of our bogs?

The bog itself is a deep culture-nature carbon archive, conserving the memories of how humans and animals interacted with the landscape, through thousands of years back in time.

​​In and near many bogs there are seemingly dead pine trees, called tyrived. These grey, crooked, dry and old trees may still have all their sap in the roots. Wood from these roots is often gifted, as they are full of resinous scent and you can use them to light a fire on rainy days in the forest. The trees are alive, they have retreated underground, into their roots, into the bog. And one day they may shoot up again, as a new vital sapling.

Participants: Randi Nygård (artist), Simon Daniel Tegnander Wenzel (olfactory artist), Karolin Tampere (curator/artist), Camila Marambio (curator)

Minjerribah/Terrangeri, Queensland, Australia

Minjerribah/Terrangeri in Moreton Bay, the traditional lands and waters of the Quandamooka People, has been a local site of inquiry, connection and rest for the Australian pod. Bringing together our experiences as a group that includes Quandamooka lineage, we have sought connections within the swampy ecosystems, to each other and to the histories embedded in botanical and fire archives of peat. 

Unlike the rain absorbing mossy bogs of Tierra del Fuego, the sandy patterned fens are fed mostly by groundwater and are dominated by grasses, sedge and rushes. They are formed by peat accumulating at varying rates in different places, leading to a patterning of black pools and vegetated risings. Fire has been a part of fen development on the sand islands for millennia. Peat core samples from the island tell stories of major climatic shifts and human activity. They tell of a transition from frequent low intensity fires linked to traditional fire management practices to lower frequency burns in the post-colonial settlement period. Existing between the fossilised lines of pollen and charcoal lies a message, where traditional knowledge was being practised there was greater biodiversity. This continues to be understood by the Quandamooka people today who are working, together with fire ecologists, to reinstate regular low intensity burning and maintain health of the peatlands.

Standing tall in many of the island’s peatlands is Ungaire, a reed and cultural weaving fibre with distinct pink and cream hues. The Carmichael women have been working alongside their family, Elders, and community members on the regeneration of Quandamooka weaving practices. Our scent marker offers pink hues of Mangrove root dye swirling beneath the hands of Quandamooka artist, Sonja Carmichael, collecting Ungaire – the same hands that continue to remember and revive her family’s heritage through traditional weaving techniques and contemporary adaptations.

Our gift of scent is titled ‘Jalo Gaba’ which is Jandai language (a dialect specific to Quandamooka people) for ‘good fire’. It was first gifted to Turba Tol as an incense and a ritual to honour the continuum of cultural land management practices on Minjerribah, including weaving and fire management practices that are intertwined with the peatlands. With this card, there is also a soft smokey base underlying vegetal notes – an invitation to imagine the possibility of fire as care. 

Participants: Elisa Jane Carmichael (Quandamooka artist), Sonja Carmichael (Quandamooka artist), Freja Carmichael (Quandamooka curator), Jasper Coleman (ceramicist), Renee Rossini (ecologist), Caitlin Franzmann (artist), Camila Marambio (curator). 

The Afterlife of SphagnumLAB – Ensayo #6

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WHEN

November 28, 29, 39 (Venice) and December 8 (Greifswald)

WHAT

Carla Macchiavello, Nico Arze and Christy Gast of Ensayos packed the 60 square meter Sphagnum carpet from the “Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol” installation in the Chilean Pavilion of the 59th Venice Art Biennale, which was curated by Ensayos founder Camila Marambio, created by the artists Ariel Bustamante, Carla Macchiavello, Dominga Sotomayor and Alfredo Thiermann with numerous collaborations from a talented group of creatives and institutions (WCS-Chile, Hach Saye and Greifsweild Mire Center and Ensayos),  and produced by Juan Pablo Vergara. The pavilion was organized by the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage of Chile and the Division for Cultures, Arts, Heritage and Public Diplomacy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile. Vittorio da Mosto and Maria Costan Davara assisted with the de-installation work.

Sphagnum moss from the five test plots was removed and dried, and will be analyzed at Greifswald Mire Center to determine how the moss fared in the pond at the pavilion, and how much carbon was captured during the eight months that the exhibition was on view. The team also photographed all of the varieties of plants growing in the Sphagnum pond for later identification.

Most of the Sphagnum, which was grown and harvested in Germany thanks to the experimental Sphagnum grower Torfwerk Moorkultur Ramsloh, was delivered to Punta Sabbioni (Cavallino Treporti), in the Venice region, by barge. Carla Macchiavello and Christy Gast escorted the delivery, and met Stefano Valleri and Dr. Olga Crosera from Azienda Agricola Valleri, who will use the ethically harvested/produced moss as a horticultural substrate and for vertical gardening experiments. Stefano Valleri toured Macchiavello and Gast through Azienda Agricola Valleri’s facility, and explained that it is a three-generation family business specializing in organic agricultural products such as fresh herbs and vegetables that are sold in regional supermarkets.

Additionally, ten crates of Sphagnum will be used by We are here Venice to support soil regeneration for a public garden in Venice.

WHY

Ensayos is one of the collaborating institutions of the Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol project in the Chilean pavilion. Ensayos supports ongoing eco-cultural research and ecological maintenance work related to SphagnumLAB specifically, and peatland conservation in general.

WHO

Carla Macchiavello, Nico Arze and Christy Gast.

HOW

Jane da Mosto and the team at We are here Venice carried out research and consultation with a broad variety of local businesses to ensure that the afterlife of the pavilion resulted in a productive new life for the moss while supporting GMC in its pursuit of new markets for farmed Sphagnum. Thanks to Torfwerk Moorkultur Ramsloh, the Greifswald Mire Centre and TBA 21’s Ocean Space, as well as Azienda Agricola Valleri.

Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol @ Venice Biennale, Chilean Pavilion

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The Chilean pavilion representing Chile at the 59th Venice Art Biennale is hosting the collective and interdisciplinary project Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol, curated by Camila Marambio. Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol is a collective project illuminating a wet fiction, an experimental path towards conserving the peatlands of Patagonia. It brings together a multidisciplinary team of Chilean creatives: Ariel Bustamante, sound artist; Dominga Sotomayor, filmmaker; Carla Macchiavello, art historian; Alfredo Thiermann, architect and Juan Pablo Vergara, management as well as scientists, indigenous activists, and other multinational collaborators.

Based on over a decade of eco-cultural cooperation in Tierra del Fuego, Turba Tol comes from the trans-disciplinary research practice of Ensayos and rethinks the role of art, creating growing communities oriented towards biodiversity conservation and coherent environmental actions. Ensayos’ Patagonian peatland research began some years before TurbaTol Hol-Hol Tol was conceived, but once the project was officially selected to represent Chile at the 59th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia it took on a life of its own—inspired by the Ensayos platform and informed by new participants and visions.

Ensayos’ contributions to the project include the Smellscape, SphagnumLAB and the Venice Agreement.

Smellscape: There are many smells, intra-actions, and life forms within all of these peatlands that we are not privy to. From our limited verticality and perception, we can usually only experience a fragment of peatlands from their watery surface. The bogs and fens of Australia, North America, and Norway are diverse in their ecologies, cultural meanings, and conservation status. They were sites of inquiry, connection, and meditation during Ensayos residencies with artists, indigenous activists, and scientists. As a result of this creative fieldwork, three international Ensayos “pods” conjured gifts of scent from their local peatlands to contribute to the multisensory experience of Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol.

SphagnumLAB: SphagnumLAB is a functional scientific experiment within Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol that builds on research undertaken at the Greifswald Mire Centre (GMC), the world’s leading peatland research institution. SphagnumLAB consists of a 60-square-metre field of Sphagnum palustre that was harvested from a paludiculture (wet peatland utilization for agriculture and forestry) research field at Hankhausen Moor in Lower Saxony, Germany. Within the pavilion, the field is installed in a pond with a water filtration system and appropriate lighting to ensure that the Sphagnum can thrive. Data regarding Sphagnum growth (length, height, weight) will be collected during the exhibition in order to calculate the amount of carbon that was absorbed during the exhibition.

The Venice Agreement: Signed during a historic assembly on June 2, 2022, the Venice Agreement represents a commitment by peatland custodians from around the world to change the trajectory of the ecological and cultural management of these wetland ecosystems towards effective conservation. By taking a bottom-up approach that recognizes local initiatives as key collaborators in the international process of peatland conservation, The Venice Agreement sets a new standard for the valuation and practice of protecting and restoring our planet’s peatlands at the local level.

Ensayos is proud to have contributed to this project, along with an illustrious group of indigenous and ecological activists, artists, scientists, writers, designers and land managers. All contributors are accurately credited here: https://turbatol.org/about.html

Slideshow photo credits: 1 & 2: Ugo Carmeni; 3 & 4: Benjamín Echazarreta; 5: Denise Milstein; 6: Benjamin Echazarreta; 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 & 12: Christy Gast; 13 & 14: Camila Marambio; Featured image: Randi Nygård

Wolves in the Mire– Ensayo #6

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WHEN

June 2021

WHERE

Bogerudmyra, a protected bog in Oslo, Norway, as well as peatlands in the mountains.

WHO

Randi Nygård and Simon Daniel Tegnander Wenzel

WHAT

Randi Nygård started doing fieldwork at bogs in different parts of Norway in June 2021. First she visited a large area of peatlands in the mountains of Norway where she smelled the bogs with her son and nephews. To them the scent was like soil and pine trees, and wet dogs and the ocean. 

Together with her collaborator, artist Simon Daniel Tegnander Wenzel, Randi went to a protected bog in Oslo, Bogerudmyra. As they touched and sniffed the ground, strong scents of wet soil, dried grass and pine wood appeared. It was not rotten, as some might expect. The bog had an earthy, heavy, resinous, fertile and rich odor. It seemed dark, but still it was fresh and clear. And oceanic. There were hints of wet wool or fur – perhaps the scent of a wolf? 

Following this fieldwork, Simon experimented in his laboratory and produced the scent titled ‘Wolves in the Mire’. One of the ingredients is geosmin, a substance produced by bacteria in the earth, known to humans as the scent of wet soil. This scent is a sign of micro-organisms in the soil, which tells us that it is alive. This is probably also what the bog has in common with the ocean: its water is the home of algae and organisms which produce distinct, almost erotic, odors. Our sense of smell is important for knowing our surroundings, for bonding to others, humans and animals, and for feeling at home. Imagine putting your nose into the fur or hair of your loved ones or into the moist moss and dark peat of a bog. 

WHY

In Norway bogs have traditionally been seen as deep, dark and dangerous. They were places with shapeshifting water spirits like the nixie or huldra that lured people into the dark waters. Bogs were portals into the world of the gods in ancient times. The norse goddesses Frigg and Saga dwelled in swamps, fens and bogs. Bogs served as fridges and roads in the winter, the Sphagnum moss was used as mulch in farms, an absorbent liner within shoes and diapers and as an antiseptic dressing on cuts. Sheep grazed on the bogs and hay was harvested. Peat was extracted and burned to heat houses. Today we know that bogs are great carbon sinks, water filters, water suppliers and flood preventers, and to some extent they are protected in Norway. 

Bogs are archives of both natural and cultural histories, storing information of how humans, plants and animals interacted and formed the landscape over thousands of years. Its stories can be told through pollen, charcoal, remains of plants, trees, animals and artifacts buried and partly conserved in the peat. The paradox is that excavations would kill the bog, puncture it and drain it, and so most of this matter should remain in the dark. Their stories can be shared in less tangible ways – oral, oracular, olfactory.

In Scandinavian languages there is a common saying: ‘owls in the moss’. It means that something is not quite right, a danger is lurking. Bogs are still being turned into farmland or roads. The saying was originally a Danish expression saying that there are wolves in the mire. Owls and wolves, moss and mire are very similar words in Danish, and as wolves went extinct in Denmark hundreds of years ago, the wording changed. Today there are still a few wolves in Norway and there are reports of their return to Denmark.

Our languages are thought to have evolved over so many thousands of years that the link between how a word sounds and what it represents has been broken. Still, if one compares the meaning of words that begin with the same sounds, they may sometimes have something in common, a movement or a visual form. We can sometimes also intuit a connection between them, like a poetic relation or memory we cannot fully grasp.

So what comes forth if one continues the evolution of “the owls in the moss” expression, by adding words with similar sounds?

wolves in the mire
owls in the moss
howls in the mass
wool in the mess
wombs in the mist
wounds in the moors
wood in the murk
wonders in the matter

Hach Saye en la 59° versión de la Bienal de Venecia

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Hema’ny Molina escribe sobre la participación de Hach Saye en la Bienal de Venecia 2022.

“…Hach Saye es una Fundación familiar compuesta por miembros de la comunidad indígena Selk’nam Covadonga Ona, y socios de la Corporación Selk’nam Chile, que nace por la gran necesidad de trabajar para el fortalecimiento cultural en el territorio, en karokynká. Como fundación, abarcamos todas las áreas posibles que enriquezcan la cultura Selk’nam desde la perspectiva de lo cotidiano y sin financiamiento estatal, sólo la auto gestión y aportes de donantes que empatizan y se identifican con nuestro trabajo, hacen posible que se materialicen diversos proyectos y actividades culturales, educativas y artísticas, que benefician a la Comunidad Covadonga Ona, así como a la sociedad civil que nos rodea.

Entre estas áreas de fortalecimiento se encuentra el arte que es casi el espíritu mismo de nuestra cultura, y fue así como el 2018, fui invitada a participar de una actividad de Ensayos, organización que existe desde el 2012 y que trabaja en cooperación con WCS Chile para incentivar la conciencia y el cuidado de la biodiversidad en Tierra del Fuego, desde el arte.

Como escritora indígena Selk’nam, tuve la oportunidad de llegar a aportar no solo con mi trabajo literario, también con los conocimientos de la cultura que me son revelados tanto de estudiar como de dejar fluir mi propia naturaleza impregnada de enseñanzas y de recuerdos familiares, que se alojan en mi memoria genética y que frente al más sutil estímulo afloran. Entre ellos esa fascinación amorosa con las turberas que me desborda desde lo más profundo de mis sentidos.”

Para leer el artículo completo pinchar aquí.

Learning from Bogs in Norway: The Gift of Scent–Wolves in the Mire

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By Randi Nygard (Oslo)

Peatland conservation is critical to Ensayos’ collaborators from Hache Saye and Parque Karukinka in Teirra del Fuego, so those of us who live and work elsewhere have been getting to know the peatlands in our own regions. Ensayistas in Norway, Australia and North America have contributed gifts of scent to Turba Tol Hol Hol Tol, the Chilean pavilion at the Venice Biennale, which puts Tierra del Fuego’s peatlands front and center.

What could a gift of scent from a local bog be? Do the odors of a bog carry meaning? And what does it smell like? To discuss these questions and to sense the scents of a bog together, my collaborator–the scent artist Simon Daniel Tegnander Wenzel–and I visited Bogerudmyra, a bog in a protected wetland area near Østensjøvannet in the city of Oslo, Norway.

After a long walk, we reached a clearing in the swamp forest by a lake and saw lots of peat moss under the grass tufts. We had found the bog. The air was heavy and cold with whiffs of nearby pine trees, and of mud and dry grass. We wanted to smell more of the bog, so we crouched down and put our fingers carefully into the wet peat moss. As the matter opened up and showed us its dark peat, we detected strong scents of wet soil, ocean, dried grass and pine. It was not rotten, as some might expect. The bog had an earthy, heavy, resinous, fertile and rich odor. It seemed dark to us, but still it was fresh and clear. There were hints of wet wool and animals, like the smell of a wet dog–or maybe a wolf?

We wondered why the smell from the bog reminded us of animals.

And why does the scent of earth seem so fresh?

What do the bog and the ocean have in common?

The fresh smell of wet soil or rock after rain is well known to most humans. It contains molecules of a substance called geosmin, which is one of the aromatic molecules that our human noses are best at detecting. Even in very minute amounts in the air we can feel the scent. And we are deeply attracted to. It is created by bacteria in the soil, and there is some evidence that it might work as an antidepressant. Springtails are also very attracted to the substance. They follow the scent to find geosmin. In this way they help spread the bacteria so they can reproduce in new places.

But the scent of wet soil also contains other molecules. Plants produce oils in the earth to prevent their roots from growing in dry periods, and as it rains, parts of these oils are lifted up into air currents and into our noses. Maybe it seems so fresh to us, because it is signal of a healthy and fertile soil with microbes and plants. It is the scent of possible growth.

Smelling is tied to breathing, and a scent can be as short-lived as a breath.

In Østensjøvannet there is a wetland center educating children about bogs and their importance. There they call the bog itself a lung, an enormous lung breathing water. The bog sucks in water in the spring when the snow and ice is melting, and in autumn as the rain is falling. The bog lets it out again during dry summer days, watering surrounding plants and trees, and during winter, releasing small streams of water under the ice so that fish can survive and not freeze into the ice. The breathing bogs also filter and clean the water, preventing floods. Peat moss can suck up enormous amounts of liquid, ten times its own weight. The filtering is an important part of larger water systems. Lakes, fjords and oceans get less dirty brown water, less pollution and runoff from farming, if the rivers are filtered through healthy wetlands.

We tend to say that the scent of ocean is salty. But salt, being a mineral, does not smell much. What we can smell from the ocean is mostly seaweed and different substances that plankton and algae produce.We think that the oceanic smell on the bog probably comes from some compounds that algae in the water produce. In this way, the scent of the bog reminds us about being alive, and related–even to the living ocean.

We find the scents of the bog, the humus, the animal and the ocean, highly attractive and familiar. To me, it also tells an old story about belonging and connections, where nature is our home and where there are strong but sometimes forgotten bonds between animals, plants and humans.

Why do we feel like we know how a wolf would smell to us, never having met one? Do the fur of dogs and wolves give off some of the same musky molecules as the wet peat? And being wild–does it have a smell?

Archaeologists think that bogs, which often create clearings in forests, were holy places a few thousand years back in time, places where people made offerings to the gods. The bogs were also seen as threshold worlds, places were one could pass down into the dark and over to the world of the gods.

The philosopher Giorgio Agamben writes about such sacred places and clearings in the forests, where people in the ancient times lit fires and prayed, in his book The Fire and the Tale. He writes that as the knowledge and mystical use of these places disappeared, and only the myths or tales prevailed. Agamben thinks that as we lost the mystical fire and sacred place, we invented tales, tales about what we can no longer reach, like mystical experiences that are gone when they are talked or written about.

In Scandinavia there is a saying; owls in the moss. The expression is strange, but well known and frequently used. It means that something is not quiet right, or that a danger is lurking. It was originally a Danish expression saying that there are wolves in the mire. Owls and wolves, moss and mire are very similar words in Danish, and wolves went extinct in Denmark hundreds of years ago. The words morphed as the surrounding world changed: the wolf and the bog disappeared. Today, wolves are wandering back to Denmark.

Our languages are thought to have evolved over so many thousands of years that the link between how a word sounds and what it represents is broken. Still, if one compares the meaning of words that begin with the same sounds, they may sometimes have something in common, a movement or a visual form, for instance. In Germanic languages words starting on str often stand for something long and thin, while words on kn are representing small and rounded objects.

kn are representing small and rounded objects.

So what comes forth if I continue the development of “the owls in the moss”- expression, by adding words with similar sounds?

wolves in the mire

owls in the moss

howls in the mass

wool in the mess

wombs in the mist

wounds in the moors

wood in the murk

wonders in the matter

Can these words, together with the scents, tell us something about the future and the past of our bogs?

In Norway, ten percent of our land consists of bogs. But, even if we by now should know how important bogs are for water, life and climate, they are still ditched and drained, made in to garden peat, turned into farmland or demolished to build roads, houses, shopping malls or cabins.

So there are owls in the moss. Also actual owls, short-eared owls are nesting in bogs, as do many other birds. It is vital to spread knowledge about the bogs’ importance and to experience the connections we have. Can that be gifted?

The bog itself is a deep culture-nature carbon archive, conserving the memories of how humans and animals interacted with the landscape thousands of years back in time. The stories of the archives can be told through pollen, charcoal, plants, trees, birds, insects, animals and artifacts buried and partly conserved in the acidic peat. But excavations would kill the bog, puncture it and drain it. It would make the peat rot and release all its carbon into the atmosphere. So, hopefully, the archives will remain in the murk. The invisible organic molecules that we can sense as odorants are often carbon based and also the building blocks of living organisms. The molecules are so lightweight that they can fly. Some of them can take part in forming clouds by helping droplets condense, and thereby create rain. Scientists in CERN have looked at how alpha-pine, a substance produced by pine trees, which most of us would know as the pleasing scent of pine, together with cosmic rays, is part of forming clouds in the atmosphere, and thereby cooling the earth. (1)

Many bogs in Norway used to be haymaking bogs, slåttemyrer, where farmers cut the grass in late summer for extra winter fodder, and where sheep grazed. These kinds of bogs, where people and animals interacted with the wetland and its plants, were the most biological diverse bogs of all. They are now in danger of extinction, since to cut grass in the traditional way, with a knife, a scythe, is not practiced any longer. Some plants only grow on these kind of bogs, where the feet of humans and animals and the knives kept the grass low, stirred the soil and water and let the sun come deeper into the vegetation and down to the peat. I imagine them giving off lots of scents, as the water and molecules from the ground evaporated.

The word for a woman’s genitals is fitte in Norwegian. It might originally have been describing wetlands. Midwifes still use their sense of smell to be able to tell if the newborn and the mother are in good health during birth.

In and near many bogs there are seemingly dead pine trees, called tyrived. These old, crooked, dry, grey trees may still have all their sap in the roots. Wood from these roots is often gifted, as it is full of scent and you can use them to light a fire on rainy days in the forest. The trees are alive, they have retreated underground, into their roots, into the bog. And one day they may shoot up again, as a new vital sapling.

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This project is supported by Arts Council Norway, Office of Contemporary Art and Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond.

Thanks to Simon for teaching me about the stories and pleasures of the aromatic world and for making a dark, rich and fertile scent to be gifted during the Biennale. Many thanks to my son Rikoll and my nephews Olav, Nils and Bjarne, for smelling the bogs with me. Thanks to my mother, Marita Kråkevik Nygård, for the grass, and my aunt, Anna Åkre Kråkevik, for the wool.

Many thanks to the generous and engaged people who shared their knowledge and stories with me, Amund Kveim from Besøkssenter våtmark Oslo Østensjøvannet, biologist Even Woldstad Hanssen from the environmental organisation Sabima, and Christin E. Jensen associate professor in paleobotany at the Dept. of Cultural Heritage, Arkeologisk museum, UiS. 

1          . Ion-induced nucleation of pure biogenic particles, Nature 2016, Kirby and others.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature17953

SphagnumLAB in Venice– Ensayo#6

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WHEN

March 15-May 1, 2022

WHAT

Nico Arze and Christy Gast set up the conditions for the 60-square-meter Sphagnum carpet to thrive within the “Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol” installation in the Chilean Pavilion of the Venice Biennale. The Sphagnum, which was harvested in Germany thanks to the experimental Sphagnum grower Torfwerk Moorkultur Ramsloh, arrived at the shipping terminal on March 16th, and was transported across the Venitian lagoon the following day. Once it was unloaded at the Arsenale, the crates were organized behind the Chilean pavilion and the team cleaned agricultural grasses out of each section of living turf. This process took place during the two weeks when the pond was being constructed, and during this time Arze began to build the filtering and pumping system in the pavilion’s backstage area. When the pond was ready, the team carried the crates inside and Gast wove the material–a layer of brown peat and growing moss and other plant matter–back together into an unbroken, undulating green carpet. The team ensured that the pond held sufficient water, and Arze perfected the filter and pump so that more filtered water could be added daily. The experimental protocols developed in collaboration with scientists from the Greifswald Mire Centre were put into place, and Arze and Gast trained pavilion staff as to how to care for the moss and collect data. They supported the larger team on many other aspects of the pavilion’s build-out.

WHY

Installation of SphagnumLAB portion of the “Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol” project in the Chilean Pavilion of the 59th Venice Biennale, curated by Ensayos founder Camila Marambio, created by the artists Ariel Bustamante, Carla Macchiavello, Dominga Sotomayor, and Alfredo Thiermann, produced by Juan Pablo Vergara and organized by the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage of Chile and the Division for Cultures, Arts, Heritage and Public Diplomacy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile.

WHO

Nico Arze and Christy Gast.

HOW

Blood, sweat, pickles and tears (of joy).

Greifswald Mire Centre – Ensayo #6

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WHEN

February 21-March 15, 2022

WHAT

Ensayos artist Christy Gast was an artist in residence at the Greifswald Mire Centre for three weeks, during which time she learned about the care and feeding of sphagnum mosses from Dr. Anja Prager and several other researchers, dove deep into technical and theoretical research being carried out in the paleoecology laboratory, toured the Moor & More paludiculture facility for a future collaboration, and traveled to Hankhausen Moor in Lower Saxony to harvest Sphagnum for the SphagnumLAB portion of the Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol project at the Venice Biennale 59th International Art Exhibition. The residency also focused on the work of romantic-era painter Caspar David Friedrich, who depicted moors and peatlands using innovative technologies of seeing and representation. Dr Birte Frenssen, senior curator at the Pomeranian State Museum, offered a tour of the museum’s collection of Friedrich’s paintings, and Greifswald-based artist and performer Jana Nedorost collaborated on a multi-sensory exploration of Eldena Abbey and other historical moorland sites that figured in Friedrich’s work.

WHY

Research and development of the SphagnumLAB project and an upcoming project in Grefiswald associated with the Caspar David Friedrich 250 Year celebration.

WHO

Christy Gast, with special thanks to Susanne Abel, Anja Prager, and everyone at the Greifswald Mire Centre.

HOW

The residency was organized by the Greifswald Mire Centre with funding support from Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien2, Caspar-David-Friedrich-Jubiläum and the Universitäts- und Hansestadt Greifswald.

CUÁNDO

21 de febrero-15 de marzo de 2022

QUÉ

La artista de Ensayos, Christy Gast, fue artista residente en el Greifswald Mire Centre durante tres semanas, tiempo durante el cual aprendió sobre el cuidado y la alimentación de los musgos sphagnum de la Dra. Anja Prager y varios otros investigadores, y se sumergió profundamente en la investigación técnica y teórica que se estaba llevando a cabo. en el laboratorio de paleoecología, visitó las instalaciones de paludicultura de Moor & More para una futura colaboración y viajó a Hankhausen Moor en Baja Sajonia para recolectar Sphagnum para la parte SphagnumLAB del proyecto Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol en la Bienal de Venecia 59a Exposición Internacional de Arte. La residencia también se centró en la obra del pintor de la era romántica Caspar David Friedrich, quien representó páramos y turberas utilizando tecnologías innovadoras de visión y representación. La Dra. Birte Frenssen, curadora sénior del Museo Estatal de Pomerania, ofreció un recorrido por la colección de pinturas de Friedrich del museo, y la artista e intérprete con sede en Greifswald, Jana Nedorost, colaboró ​​en una exploración multisensorial de Eldena Abbey y otros sitios históricos de páramos que figuraron en obra de Federico.

POR QUÉ

Investigación y desarrollo del proyecto SphagnumLAB y un próximo proyecto en Grefiswald asociado con la celebración de los 250 años de Caspar David Friedrich.

OMS

Christy Gast, con un agradecimiento especial a Susanne Abel, Anja Prager y todos en el Greifswald Mire Centre.

CÓMO

La residencia fue organizada por el Centro Greifswald Mire con el apoyo financiero de Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien2, Caspar-David-Friedrich-Jubiläum y Universitäts- und Hansestadt Greifswald.

Waiting as a Method – A Personal View

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Randi Nygård held a lecture about the project “The Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole” at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo for students from The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, before traveling with them as a guest teacher to Værøy, an island in Lofoten. // La ensayista Randi Nygård dio una conferencia sobre el proyecto “Los recursos marinos vivos salvajes pertenecen a la sociedad en su conjunto” en Kunstnernes Hus en Oslo para estudiantes de la Escuela de Arquitectura y Diseño de Oslo, antes de viajar con ellos como profesora invitada a Værøy, un isla en Lofoten.


Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo and Værøy, Nordland, Norway

Ensayista Randi Nygård held a lecture about the project “The Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole” at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo for students from The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, before traveling with them as a guest teacher to Værøy, an island in Lofoten. Nygård focused on how to perceive and represent our environment as dynamic and alive through talking about experiences that have changed her own views on nature–for example, when she read the legal sentence that the project was named after, “The wild living marine resources belong to society as a whole,” in the Norwegian Marine Resources Act and found it poetic, wondrous, ambiguous and strange. This sentence inspired a series of questions that grew into an exhibition and conversations at Kurant in Tromsø, an anthology, and a series of events at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo.

For the anthology, Nygård interviewed professor Arne Johan Vetlesen. As they sat by a large window at the University of Oslo, she asked the professor to imagine nature as a language that is constantly developing, and which expresses something that we cannot fully grasp, but rather sense or intuit. In response, the philosopher asked her to look at the trees that were moving in the wind and rain outside. He said that people normally think the wind moves the trees, even though we say that a tree is moving in the wind. In our mechanistic and simplistic worldview, we often see lifeless things being moved by external forces. And although she was searching for new ways to see plants and animals as more alive, she also viewed the trees like that-as static, only moved by the wind. Suddenly Nygård understood what is meant by a mechanistic worldview. Vetlesen went on to say that it is unlikely that the wind is the only force acting here, as we know that trees are living things capable of movement (for example, in their growth towards the sun). Could the tree put up resistance? Or was it moving with the wind so it wouldn’t break? How does it sense and perceive the rain and wind?

In 2019, Nygard did a project about gulls in Oslo and she spent hours watching them every day. She imagined how they saw the world, felt the world, and created the world through their movements, their body language, habits, and ways of life. Then one day she suddenly understood that some of their calls were directed toward her. She had been observing them closely and could recognize individuals. She had noticed their different ways of moving and appearing. But she hadn’t really opened herself up for contact of that kind. Nygård had imagined all their calls to be directed towards the other gulls. Now she suddenly discovered how limited her perception of them had been. As she met the intense eyes of the bird and perceived her calls as an attempt for communication, she sensed the bird in a very different way. It was as if she grew. They were in the same world. There was someone looking back at her, with whom she had suddenly made contact. They stared at each other in silence. There was a strong presence, unknown to her; but certainly vital. Alive. Perceiving. Making contact.

Nygård also talked about waiting as a method for experiencing the world in new and less automized ways. This was inspired by an article by her friend Bjørn Ola Tafjord, a professor at the University in Tromsø, about waiting as a way of doing fieldwork. Instead of using analytic concepts to form an analysis, or presenting a hypothesis, or preparing questions, one is present and waits and tries to openly perceive the environment. Tafjord learned this from his research among the Bribri people in Costa Rica, where he did a lot of waiting, and from his tutor at university, and he values “be still and silent until something or someone invites you in.”

Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo y Værøy, Nordland, Noruega

El ensayista Randi Nygård dio una conferencia sobre el proyecto “Los recursos marinos vivos salvajes pertenecen a la sociedad en su conjunto” en Kunstnernes Hus en Oslo para estudiantes de la Escuela de Arquitectura y Diseño de Oslo, antes de viajar con ellos como profesor invitado a Værøy, un isla en Lofoten. Nygård se centró en cómo percibir y representar nuestro entorno como dinámico y vivo al hablar de experiencias que han cambiado su propia visión de la naturaleza; por ejemplo, cuando leyó la sentencia legal que da nombre al proyecto, “Los recursos marinos vivos silvestres pertenecen a la sociedad en su conjunto”, en la Ley de Recursos Marinos de Noruega y lo encontró poético, maravilloso, ambiguo y extraño. Esta frase inspiró una serie de preguntas que se convirtieron en una exposición y conversaciones en Kurant en Tromsø y conversaciones en Kurant en Tromsø, una antología y una series de evetos en Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo.

Para la antología, Nygård entrevistó al profesor Arne Johan Vetlesen. Mientras estaban sentados junto a un gran ventanal en la Universidad de Oslo, le pidió al profesor que imaginara la naturaleza como un lenguaje en constante desarrollo y que expresa algo que no podemos comprender por completo, sino sentir o intuir. En respuesta, el filósofo le pidió que mirara los árboles que afuera se movían con el viento y la lluvia. Dijo que la gente normalmente piensa que el viento mueve los árboles, aunque nosotros decimos que un árbol se mueve con el viento. En nuestra cosmovisión mecanicista y simplista, a menudo vemos cosas sin vida que son movidas por fuerzas externas. Y aunque estaba buscando nuevas formas de ver las plantas y los animales como más vivos, también veía los árboles así, como estáticos, solo movidos por el viento. De repente, Nygård entendió lo que significa una cosmovisión mecanicista. Vetlesen continuó diciendo que es poco probable que el viento sea la única fuerza que actúa aquí, ya que sabemos que los árboles son seres vivos capaces de moverse (por ejemplo, en su crecimiento hacia el sol). ¿Podría el árbol oponer resistencia? ¿O se movía con el viento para que no se rompiera? ¿Cómo siente y percibe la lluvia y el viento?

En 2019, Nygard hizo un proyecto sobre gaviotas en Oslo y pasaba horas observándolas todos los días. Imaginó cómo veían el mundo, sentían el mundo y creaban el mundo a través de sus movimientos, su lenguaje corporal, hábitos y formas de vida. Entonces, un día, de repente comprendió que algunas de sus llamadas estaban dirigidas a ella. Ella los había estado observando de cerca y podía reconocer a los individuos. Había notado sus diferentes formas de moverse y aparecer. Pero ella realmente no se había abierto a un contacto de ese tipo. Nygård había imaginado que todas sus llamadas se dirigían hacia las otras gaviotas. Ahora, de repente, descubrió lo limitada que había sido su percepción de ellos. Cuando se encontró con los ojos intensos del ave y percibió sus llamadas como un intento de comunicación, sintió al ave de una manera muy diferente. Era como si creciera. Estaban en el mismo mundo. Había alguien mirándola, con quien de repente había hecho contacto. Se miraron el uno al otro en silencio. Había una presencia fuerte, desconocida para ella; pero ciertamente vital. Vivo. Percibiendo. Haciendo contacto.

Nygård también habló sobre la espera como un método para experimentar el mundo de formas nuevas y menos automatizadas. Esto se inspiró en un artículo de su amigo Bjørn Ola Tafjord, profesor de la Universidad de Tromsø, sobre la espera como forma de hacer trabajo de campo. En lugar de usar conceptos analíticos para formar un análisis, o presentar una hipótesis, o preparar preguntas, uno está presente y espera y trata de percibir abiertamente el entorno. Tafjord aprendió esto de su investigación entre la gente Bribri en Costa Rica, donde esperó mucho, y de su tutor en la universidad, y valora “estar quieto y en silencio hasta que algo o alguien te invite a entrar”.

Notas de Campo de Carolina Caycedo

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FEBRERO 2022

Cuando se abren los portales al sur, nunca se cierran, se multiplican como el capitulum del musgo magallánico, la roseta de hojas que capturan la energía del Sphagnum.  El Sphagnum como una clave visual para existir en el mundo, ser absorbente, ser poroso, ser unisexual y sensual, ser que manipula el ambiente para cuidarlo, humedecerlo. Ser de capas vivas y muertas, pero que aun en su fase muerta absorbe y captura el carbono que nos tiene recalentados.  Para llegar a las turberas de Karukinka hay que realizar varios palabreos y pasar un número de portales. En mi caso, este paso desde el desierto costero del territorio Tongva en el sur de lo que llamamos California, a las turberas y bosques del territorio Selknam. Porque ir a campo, hacer trabajo de campo no solo es lo que pasa en campo, si no también lo que haces para llegar allí, son los conjuros y las ganas necesarios para emprender el viaje, las redes de afectos que se mueven para invitarte y hospedarte, y las estructuras familiares que se quedan navegando el barco hogar donde cuidas de diversas formas de vida animal y vegetal, algunas totalmente dependientes de esos cuidados. Y lo que queda después de estar en campo, en forma de olor, sabor, sensación, recolección, curvas de pensamientos.

Siempre hay un palabreo familiar que superar, en este caso para un primero de enero arrancarse de compañero, retoños, abuelo, gatos y huerto; para acceder al portal cancerbero al sobremundo de las máquinas a propulsión jet, donde entras vivo pero sales medio muerto después de tanta hurgada de nariz, formas burocráticas, seguros médicos por pagar, sellos, papeleos, y requisas.

La ciudad de Santiago de Chile, un trans-portal-plural de pintadas, mensajes de rebeldía y ternura, denuncias, invitaciones, sucintos símbolos de una esperanza que entra por los ojos y un sin fin de colores y retos, palabraramas, e imágenes que te abren los poros. Santiago de Chile, y mi primer verano austral, el portal que me devuelve a la vida y me empapa de una frescura nunca sentida así, una cacofonía melódica de poemas algunos no vistos jamás, una energía que no había palpado en ningún otro lugar del mundo, un abrebocas de lo que es Chile, Mapu, Araucanía, los Andes, Karukinka, y me atrevería a decir América Latina hoy.

La llegada al estrecho y su cruce. El recalibrarse con unas personas que apenas conoces físicamente, pero con las que conectas rapidito porque si! Si hay unas historias memorias,  prácticas, redes y sphagnum-ansiedades comunes que nos han traído a juntarnos en el Sur. Pasar por un portal llamado estrecho, a pasar un paso de aguas juntas, para trenzarnos en tierra del fuego desde nuestros saberes y  habilidades, nuestros deseos e incógnitas y obvio nuestras necedades.

Pero el portal llamado estrecho me pareció todo lo contrario, es un paso que te amplifica al liberarte de todo aquello que el mundo moderno usa para des-concentrarnos, comenzando por la conexión telefónica internauta. En algún punto imaginé que al ir adentrándome en tierras magallánicas y cruzar el estrecho iba a sentirme eufórica, en awe, como dicen en inglés, o abrumada por la latitud, pero no. Fue un proceso de apaciguamiento, de relajación, de una sensación de retorno a lo comunal, a lo colectivo, a una ancestralidad que no me esperaba, pero que me hizo todo el sentido durante mi estancia en Karukinka. Un reverberar constante, con pocos altibajos, una sensación de acogida, de reconocimiento, de ciclo.

Hacer trabajo de campo en mi caso es siempre refugiarse en lo colectivo, es un proceso espiritual que apuntala una conexión con un lugar y con unas gentes. Me preguntaba que podía ser yo como invitada especial en esta juntanza de gente tan especial, y en un lugar tan especial como tierra del fuego? Resulta que no solo fuimos interlocutora, consejera, voz leyente y cuerpa de rebotar ideas, pero fui admiradora, cocinera, sphagnum adoradora, y receptora de consejos, pero ante todo testigo. Puedo atestiguar cómo se construyen procesos de tolerancia y democracia a partir de ensayos entre la ciencia de la conservación, el arte socialmente comprometido y el pensamiento crítico, la reafirmación del saber y ser Selk’nam a pesar de las retóricas de extinción, y los ecosistemas que abrazan estas prácticas intergeneracionales, y sobre todo, las sostienen.  Que importante es para mí ser testigo y cómplice de este ensayo tan especial, y ser privilegiada con la oportunidad de rumiar cómo aportar y componer una memoria histórica ambiental de este lugar y este momento, en relación a otros procesos democráticos tan singulares, especiales e intencionados que se vienen desarrollando en otros ecosistemas de Abya Ayala. Cuales son los puentes que podemos trenzar, los portales que podemos conectar, los palabreos por proponer, las juntanzas a organizar?

El fuego interrumpe estos rumiamientos y genera un pico inesperado en el continuo reverberar. Imagino las lengas, robles nobles fueguinos, ardiendo y sufriendo.  Imagino la turba soltando el carbono albergado por décadas, como una puñalada en el costado que emana sangre caliente. Imagino a Fernanda, a Camila, a Hemany y a Bárbara y a todas las guanacas y chulengas ardiendo de dolor y sangrando a la par.  La rogativa Selk´nam por la lluvia trae un respiro, la canalizamos a través de una clase con personas desde Utah y comprimimos juntos nuestros diafragmas al ritmo del  Hol’ Hol’ Hol’ para acompañar la rogativa.  El fuego, la turba, las lengas, el bosque, los canales marinos, los chulengos, el sphagnum, la lluvia y los Selk´nam como yo, son entidades con la agencia para cambiar el curso de los eventos.  Quiero compartir mis sueños con estas entidades, quiero hacer una espiral de sueños compartidos desde la punta de la costa Noroeste de Abya Ayala, hasta la tierra del fuego. El Sphagnum es el código visual que nos regala la turbera para imaginar esta espiral trenzada de sueños compartidos.

Peatlands Are Burning in Tierra del Fuego

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A forest fire that broke out in Tierra del Fuego on the 25th of January is directly threatening Karukinka Natural Park, administered by WCS Chile. This situation puts at risk valuable ecosystems that have for thousands of years been accumulating carbon, which could now be released into the atmosphere. This scenario would have repercussions not only for Chile–which has committed internationally to decreasing its emissions to reach a maximum of 95 million tons of greenhouse emissions by 2030­–but also globally, gravely affecting climate change.

Despite a significant rollout of local forces and the goodwill of regional authorities, the isolated location of the region, complex ecological systems of the island, and lack of precipitation due to a severe and prolonged drought have rapidly driven the fire out of control. It has destroyed over 1,250 hectares (February 3rd) of native forest and peatlands according to CONAF (National Forest Corporation of Chile).

Karukinka Natural Park, part of ancestral Selk’nam territory, is home to approximately 130,000 hectares of primary native forest (the most austral and best-conserved at this latitude on the planet) and over 80,000 hectares of peatlands (80% of the peatlands on the Province). These ecosystems are home to Patagonian animals and birds like the guanaco, the Andean fox, the Magellanic woodpecker and the cachaña, the most austral parakeet in the world, all of whose livelihoods are today threatened by the advancing flames.

Alongside the overwhelming ecological richness of this remote and southmost park, which is four times the size of Santiago and roughly the size of Yosemite or the state of Rhode Island, WCS data shows that its forests and peatlands store over 418 million tons of CO2. This means that they have the potential to release the equivalent of 3 years’ worth of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, according to the data obtained from the GEI (Chilean Greenhouse Gas Emissions Report 1990-2018).

More on Peatlands

Peatlands are a type of wetland of great value that contains and accumulates organic material in a state of semi-decomposition (peat), while also regulating the hydrological cycle that sustain forests. In this way, they conserve enormous reservoirs of freshwater that functions like a natural filter, reducing the transport of sediments to underground water sources. Peatlands are most efficient terrestrial carbon sink.

According to studies by Dr. Jorge Hoyos-Santillán and Dr. Armando Sepúlveda-Jauregui, researchers at the Environment Biogeochemistry Laboratory at the Universidad de Magallanes and the CR2, due to the lowering of the water table during summer months the level of water of the peatlands is below the surface. This leaves 1 to 2 meters of combustible organic matter at the surface level. When the fire reaches these wetlands, the destruction of even just one meter of peat will liberate up to 280 tons of carbon per affected hectare. This is equivalent to double the reservoir of carbon sequestered by a hectare of native Lenga forest. Nevertheless, if the fire penetrates deeper, the emissions will increase considerably, potentially reaching up to 623 tons per hectare.

Alongside the community of conservation ecologists of Chile, Turba Tol calls for the materialization of all the possible human effort, technical and financial, to combat fires and to focalize it in Tierra del Fuego with the outlook of extinguishing this threat. Once the emergency has passed, Turba Tol–in collaboration with numerous national and international partners including the WCS-Chile–will work towards the restoration of the damaged ecosystems and to establish an effective program of fire prevention so that we will never again have to face a disaster of this magnitude again on the island.

To support the emergency in any way please contact: info@turbatol.org

Un incendio forestal que se desató en Tierra del Fuego el pasado 25 de enero amenaza directamente al Parque Natural Karukinka, administrado por WCS Chile. Esta situación pone en riesgo valiosos ecosistemas que durante miles de años han estado acumulando carbono, que ahora podría ser liberado a la atmósfera. Este escenario tendría repercusiones no solo para Chile, que se ha comprometido internacionalmente a disminuir sus emisiones para alcanzar un máximo de 95 millones de toneladas de emisiones de efecto invernadero para 2030, sino también a nivel mundial, afectando gravemente el cambio climático.

A pesar de un importante despliegue de las fuerzas locales y la buena voluntad de las autoridades regionales, la ubicación aislada de la región, los complejos sistemas ecológicos de la isla y la falta de precipitaciones debido a una severa y prolongada sequía han hecho que el fuego se salga rápidamente de control. Ha destruido más de 1.250 hectáreas (3 de febrero) de bosque nativo y turberas según CONAF (Corporación Nacional Forestal de Chile).

El Parque Natural Karukinka, parte del territorio ancestral Selk’nam, alberga aproximadamente 130.000 hectáreas de bosque nativo primario (el más austral y mejor conservado a esta latitud del planeta) y más de 80.000 hectáreas de turberas (el 80% de las turberas del la provincia). Estos ecosistemas son el hogar de animales y aves patagónicas como el guanaco, el zorro andino, el pájaro carpintero de Magallanes y la cachaña, la cotorra más austral del mundo, todos cuyos medios de vida se ven hoy amenazados por el avance de las llamas.

Junto con la abrumadora riqueza ecológica de este parque remoto y más al sur, que es cuatro veces el tamaño de Santiago y aproximadamente el tamaño de Yosemite o el estado de Rhode Island, los datos de WCS muestran que sus bosques y turberas almacenan más de 418 millones de toneladas de CO2. Esto significa que tienen el potencial de liberar a la atmósfera el equivalente a 3 años de gases de efecto invernadero, según los datos obtenidos del GEI (Informe de Emisiones de Gases de Efecto Invernadero de Chile 1990-2018).

Más sobre las turberas

Las turberas son un tipo de humedal de gran valor que contiene y acumula materia orgánica en estado de semidescomposición (turba), a la vez que regula el ciclo hidrológico que sustenta los bosques. De esta forma, conservan enormes reservorios de agua dulce que funcionan como un filtro natural, reduciendo el transporte de sedimentos a las fuentes de agua subterránea. Las turberas son los sumideros terrestres de carbono más eficientes.

Según estudios del Dr. Jorge Hoyos-Santillán y el Dr. Armando Sepúlveda-Jauregui, investigadores del Laboratorio de Biogeoquímica Ambiental de la Universidad de Magallanes y del CR2, debido al descenso del nivel freático durante los meses de verano el nivel del agua de la turberas está debajo de la superficie. Esto deja de 1 a 2 metros de materia orgánica combustible a nivel superficial. Cuando el fuego alcance estos humedales, la destrucción de un metro de turba liberará hasta 280 toneladas de carbono por hectárea afectada. Esto equivale a duplicar el reservorio de carbono secuestrado por una hectárea de bosque nativo de Lenga. Sin embargo, si el fuego penetra más profundamente, las emisiones aumentarán considerablemente, llegando potencialmente a 623 toneladas por hectárea.

Junto a la comunidad de ecologistas conservacionistas de Chile, Turba Tol llama a materializar todo el esfuerzo humano, técnico y económico posible, para combatir los incendios y focalizarlo en Tierra del Fuego con miras a extinguir esta amenaza. Una vez superada la emergencia, Turba Tol, en colaboración con numerosos socios nacionales e internacionales, incluido WCS-Chile, trabajará en la restauración de los ecosistemas dañados y establecerá un programa eficaz de prevención de incendios para que nunca más tengamos que enfrentarnos. De nuevo un desastre de esta magnitud en la isla.

Para apoyar la emergencia de alguna manera por favor contactar: ​​info@turbatol.org

Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol at World Around Summit

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The 2022 World Around Summit took place at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City in partnership with Het Nieuwe Instituut on Saturday, February 5th. As the planet faces a climate emergency, the need for progressive, global and interdisciplinary ideas to rethink and reimagine our world has never been more urgent. The World Around 2022 Summit invites visitors to meet contemporary architecture and design’s now, near and next, with invited speakers from all over the world speaking to their recent and under-construction projects in the field of spatial and environmental practice, examining cutting edge ideas, critical thinking and visionary new work, technology and research. Camila’s presentation begins at 45:15.

“The 2022 World Around Summit” se llevó a cabo en el Museo Solomon R. Guggenheim en la ciudad de Nueva York en asociación con Het Nieuwe Instituut el sábado 5 de febrero. A medida que el planeta enfrenta una emergencia climática, la necesidad de ideas progresistas, globales e interdisciplinarias para repensar y reimaginar nuestro mundo nunca ha sido más urgente. “The 2022 World Around Summit” invita a los visitantes a conocer la arquitectura y el diseño contemporáneos ahora, cerca y en el futuro, con oradores invitados de todo el mundo que hablarán sobre sus proyectos recientes y en construcción en el campo de la práctica espacial y ambiental, examinando ideas de vanguardia, pensamiento crítico y nuevo trabajo visionario, tecnología e investigación. La presentación de Camila comienza a las 45:15.

Bog Is Good: Sensing Local Peatlands

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Video presentation for MEANDER presents: Ecological Thinking and Artistic Practice

By Caitlin Franzmann, Christy Gast and Randi Nygård

Ensayos is a collective research practice initiated on the archipelago of Tierra del Fuego in 2010. Ensayos’ issue-based research methodologies arise from archipelagic delirium and are characterized by their sensuality and precariousness. In partnership with the existing ecological and cultural conservation initiatives on the main isle of Tierra del Fuego (WCS Parque Karukinka, Caleta Maria, Fundación Hach Saye), Ensayos entangles artistic practices, social science methods and Indigenous movements with pressing environmental research. Dedicated to policy, care, and awareness of the ecosystemic importance of peat bogs, Ensayo #6 is committed to the biodiversity conservation processes of the new Patagonian Peatland Initiative and others like it around the world. Randi Nygård (Norway), Caitlin Franzmann (Australia) and Christy Gast (USA) will give presentations about poethical issues related to their local bogs.

Vídeo de presentación de MEANDER presents: Ecological Thinking and Artistic Practice

Por Caitlin Franzmann, Christy Gast y Randi Nygård

Ensayos es una práctica de investigación colectiva iniciada en el archipiélago de Tierra del Fuego en 2010. Las metodologías de investigación temática de Ensayos surgen del delirio archipelágico y se caracterizan por su sensualidad y precariedad. En asociación con las iniciativas de conservación ecológica y cultural existentes en la isla principal de Tierra del Fuego (WCS Parque Karukinka, Caleta María, Fundación Hach Saye), Ensayos entrelaza las prácticas artísticas, los métodos de las ciencias sociales y los movimientos indígenas con la investigación ambiental apremiante. Dedicado a la política, cuidado y concientización de la importancia ecosistémica de las turberas, Ensayo #6 está comprometido con los procesos de conservación de la biodiversidad de la nueva Iniciativa de Turberas Patagónicas y otras similares alrededor del mundo. Randi Nygård (Noruega), Caitlin Franzmann (Australia) y Christy Gast (EE. UU.) harán presentaciones sobre temas poéticos relacionados con sus pantanos locales.

Bog as Body + Bodies as Ruins + Ruins as Rebirth

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Video presentation for MEANDER presents: Ecological Thinking and Artistic Practice

By Teal Gardner, Morgan Kulas, Justin Moore, Rebecca Schultz, Natalie Stopka, Becca Zablocki, Alejandra Ortiz de Zavallos, Sarah Rutherford – Nomad Interdisciplinary MFA Students at the University of Hartford & Ensayos.

Students in the University of Hartford’s Nomad Interdisciplinary MFA took an Art & Ecology course with Christy Gast and Camila Marambio, who teach collaboratively as part of Ensayos, in June, 2021. The course focused on peatland conservation. Students participated in the Binational Seminar on the Peatlands of Patagonia and learned about peatland ecology through a field trip to the Crystal Peat Conservation Area in Tolland, CT. For their final project, students collaboratively responded to a prompt from the Patagonia Peatland Initiative to experiment with the ArcGIS StoryMap platform to create an interactive tool that creatively integrates art and science to tell the story of a (former) peatland. The students will present their StoryMap, which delves into the complex past, present and future of the Crystal Peat Conservation Area, followed by a Q & A.

Vídeo presentación para MEANDER presents: Ecological Thinking and Artistic Practice

Por Teal Gardner, Morgan Kulas, Justin Moore, Rebecca Schultz, Natalie Stopka, Becca Zablocki, Alejandra Ortiz de Zavallos, Sarah Rutherford – Estudiantes nómadas interdisciplinarios de MFA en la Universidad de Hartford y Ensayos.

Los estudiantes de la Maestría en Arte Interdisciplinario Nómada de la Universidad de Hartford tomaron un curso de Arte y Ecología con Christy Gast y Camila Marambio, quienes enseñan en colaboración como parte de Ensayos, en junio de 2021. El curso se centró en la conservación de las turberas. Los estudiantes participaron en el Seminario Binacional sobre las Turberas de la Patagonia y aprendieron sobre la ecología de las turberas a través de un viaje de campo al Área de Conservación Crystal Peat en Tolland, CT. Para su proyecto final, los estudiantes respondieron de manera colaborativa a un mensaje de Patagonia Peatland Initiative para experimentar con la plataforma ArcGIS StoryMap para crear una herramienta interactiva que integre de manera creativa el arte y la ciencia para contar la historia de una (antigua) turbera. Los estudiantes presentarán su StoryMap, que profundiza en el complejo pasado, presente y futuro del Área de Conservación Crystal Peat, seguido de una sesión de preguntas y respuestas.

MEANDER presents: Ecological Thinking and Artistic Practice

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MEANDER International Platform for Sustainable Art and Life Practices is pleased to offer a series of presentations by a cohort of international collectively-focused, multidisciplinary artists, activists and thinkers whose work in Brazil, Chile, Norway, Denmark, Australia and the United States explore why the commons is an important framework for understanding ecological emergency. Ensayos will share two presentations, one focused on peat bogs in Norway, Australia and New York, and one with our students from the Nomad MFA program who will present their StoryMap about Crystal Peat Conservation Area.

The event will stream online Saturday December 4 beginning at 4PM (Oslo), 12PM (Santos), 10AM (New York) on www.meanderinternational.org.

The program is co-produced by members of MEANDER International Platform with support from Arts Council Norway. 

PROGRAM: 

4 pm Oslo/ 12 pm Santos/ 10 am NY
Introduction by Meander Society

4:05 pm Oslo/ 12:05 pm Santos/ 10.05 am 
Mixture/ Choreographic and affective alliances between women and plants
By Marina Guzzo (Lab Corpo e Arte)
Mixture is a dispositiv that proposes an assembly game using elements that you have at hand. The game intends to forge a ritual between women and plants, and to think of a choreographic mixture – as a play on the words used by the Italian philosopher Emanuele Coccia (2018) which suggests a metaphysics of the mixture. Making alternative dance/choreography of interspecific, feral, non-human worlds, as a form of resistance to the anthropocene/ plantationcene/ Capitolocene, bringing together perspectives that point to cosmopolitics from other ways of being in the world: stem, roots, sap, leaves, flowers and fruits. A choreography of women interested in finding possible alliances between clothes, objects and plants. “Affective alliances” as Ailton Krenak would say, based on improbable daily life. Impossible relationships and neighborhoods. For this, the workshop has a score, which begins with a drift of “search”, of fallen plants, forgotten objects, cheerful costumes. Then assemble to transform. Transforming to make other arrangements and imagine futures and counter-domestication rituals.

4:20 pm Oslo/ 12:20 pm Santos/ 10:20 am NY
Bog Is Good: Sensing Local Peatlands
By Caitlin Franzmann, Christy Gast and Randi Nygård (Ensayos)
Ensayos is a collective research practice initiated on the archipelago of Tierra del Fuego in 2010. Ensayos’ issue-based research methodologies arise from archipelagic delirium and are characterized by their sensuality and precariousness. In partnership with the existing ecological and cultural conservation initiatives on the main isle of Tierra del Fuego (WCS Parque Karukinka, Caleta Maria, Fundación Hach Saye), Ensayos entangles artistic practices, social science methods and Indigenous movements with pressing environmental research. Dedicated to policy, care, and awareness of the ecosystemic importance of peat bogs,  Ensayo #6  is committed to the biodiversity conservation processes of the new Patagonian Peatland Initiative and others like it around the world. Randi Nygård (Norway), Caitlin Franzmann (Australia) and Christy Gast (USA) will give presentations about poethical issues related to their local bogs.  
https://ensayostierradelfuego.net/

4:35 pm Oslo/ 12:35 pm Santos/ 10:35 am NY
A Colaboradora 
By Marina Paes (Instituto Procomum)
Marina Paes presents Initituto Procomum’s Colaboradora program, which offers artists training and experience in collaborative practices with the aim of strengthening cooperation, building networks and expanding repertoires. The program offers a free school with workshops, mentorships, and participation in different events; access to the LAB Procomum, a physical space for collective use, with all the necessary resources for a project to take off; and articulation with other networks and communities. Participants are selected through a public call and are fully subsidized. Participants contribute to a time bank that encourages the exchange of services between everyone, strengthening the logic of collaboration. Colaboradora is a project for social inclusion and combating inequality, which is impossible to face without considering aspects of class, race and gender. Thus, the selected participants come from the different outskirts of Baixada Santista, with an emphasis on women, the Afro-descendant population, the LGTBQI+ and indigenous peoples. National and international guests exchange ideas and experiences with participants and with the public of LAB Procomum, so that this network can also be strengthened nationally and internationally.
https://colaboradora.procomum.org/

4:50 pm Oslo/ 12:50 pm Santos/ 10:50 pm NY
BREAK

5 pm Oslo/ 1 pm Santos/ 11 am NY
Sørfinnset skole/ the nord land in community and Sámi perspectives
By Geir Tore Holm and Søssa Jørgensen (Meander Society)
Sørfinnset skole/ the nord land examines how contemporary art can function in a long-term dialogue with a small local community. The initiators of the project, Geir Tore Holm and Søssa Jørgensen, present an everlasting artist’s engagement in a village in Northern Norway. 
http://sorfinnsetskole.blogspot.com/ 

5:15 pm Oslo/ 1:15  pm Santos/ 11:15  am NY
Coletivo Etinerâncias/ Networks of care
By Raissa Capasso and Gabriel Kieling (guests)
Since 2014, Coletivo Etinerancias/ Networks of Care has operated from daily practice, strengthening autonomous experiences through methodological advice to social movements, traditional communities (indigenous villages, quilombos, coastal villages and peasants…) and spaces of resistance (occupations, settlements, slums ..) through Brazil and other territories of Abya Yala. Through coexistence, bonding, listening and supporting collective intelligence in political articulation in the field of relationships and the common. It disputes human relations and everyday times against neoliberal fragmentation from social, ancestral and digital technologies, with a set of strategies that range from cartography, systematization and exchange of experiences and knowledge to agroecology. In addition, he shares his days with midwives, herbalists, storytellers, master griots, healers… And they dedicate their paths, as apprentices and co-creators of oral and ancestral tradition, to the connection of living culture, meeting points between worlds.
https://etinerancias.com.br/

5:30 pm Oslo/ 1:30  pm Santos/ 11:30 am NY
The Fjord and the Mountain
By Kjersti Vetterstad and Kristin Astrup Aas (Meander Society)
Kjersti Vetterstad and Kristin Astrup Aas presents ongoing work on the documentary film The Fjord and the Mountain, which takes its starting point in a planned open-pit mine in the Engebø Mountain on the west coast of Norway, and depositing of mining waste in the Førde Fjord. 
https://greenhouseprod.no/fjorden-og-fjellet-the-fjord-and-the-mountain/

5:45 pm Oslo/ 1:45 pm Santos/ 11:545 pm NY
BREAK

6 pm Oslo/ 2 pm Santos/ 12 pm NY
Becoming mineral
By Olive Bieringa (guest)
How can we perceive more of the whole scale of the sensitivities, intelligences and within us, the human and non-human?  How can we perceive more of the commonalities we share with each other? As we ground and expand our perceptual capacities can we build new relations to transform the way we experience and live in the world? We will breathe and move together.
https://bodycartography.org/author/olive/

6:30 pm Oslo/ 2:15 pm Santos/ 12:15 pm NY
Bog as Body + Bodies as Ruins + Ruins as Rebirth
By Teal Gardner, Morgan Kulas, Justin Moore, Rebecca Schultz, Natalie Stopka, Becca Zablocki, Alejandra Ortiz de Zavallos – Nomad Interdisciplinary MFA Students at the University of Hartford & Ensayos (guests)
Students in the University of Hartford’s Nomad Interdisciplinary MFA took an Art & Ecology course with Christy Gast and Camila Marambio, who teach collaboratively as part of Ensayos, in June, 2021. The course focused on peatland conservation. Students participated in the Binational Seminar on the Peatlands of Patagonia and learned about peatland ecology through a field trip to the Crystal Peat Conservation Area in Tolland, CT. For their final project, students collaboratively responded to a prompt from the Patagonia Peatland Initiative to experiment with the ArcGIS StoryMap platform to create an interactive tool that creatively integrates art and science to tell the story of a (former) peatland. The students will present their StoryMap, which delves into the complex past, present and future of the Crystal Peat Conservation Area, followed by a Q & A. 
https://ensayostierradelfuego.net/programs/3039/

6:45 pm Oslo/ 3:45 pm Santos/ 1:45 pm NY
BREAK

7 pm Oslo/ 3 pm Santos/ 1 pm NY
Yandê – Indigenous Radio
By Zulu Anápuàka M. Tupinambá Hã hã hãe (guest)
Rádio Yandê is educational and cultural. Our objective is to spread indigenous culture through a traditional perspective, but adding the speed and reach of technology and the internet. Our need to encourage new “indigenous correspondents” in Brazil makes it possible for us to build a much stronger collaborative communication compared to traditional Radio and TV media.
https://radioyande.com/

7:15 pm Oslo/ 3:15 pm Santos/ 1:15 pm NY
Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole
By Randi Nygård and Karolin Tampere  (Meander Society)
In 2017 Nygård and Tampere edited an interdisciplinary anthology based on and named after Section 2 in Norway’s Marine Resources Act. In 2019 and 2021 Nygård, Holm and Jørgensen continued the project with a series of events at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, where they related to the law not only with the usual legal definitions but also with a more poetic and fundamental approach to management, different ideas about the environment and our role in nature, world views, language and values. Nygård will introduce the projects briefly before we hear excerpts from interviews about the act with activists, lawyers, professors, fishermen, and in the end poetic laws for a better future. 
https://www.printedmatter.org/catalog/52199/

7:30 pm Oslo/ 3:30 pm Santos/ 1:30 pm New York
Contagious Zone
By Henrique Parra and Alana Moraes (guests)
Pimentalab is a transdisciplinary laboratory based at UNIFESP that works with investigations into knowledge practices, technopolitics and social struggles. We are interested in situated research actions, thinking about ways of activating and caring for life forms (and their technologies) that emerge in situations of conflict and onto-epistemological tensions, oriented towards cooperation and production of the Common. We investigate the new configurations of contemporary capitalism and the knowledge-power relationship based on the technical order of the world – infrastructures, knowledge technologies, control devices, digital technologies and cybernetic mediation – and their modes of subjectivation, as well as collective forms of resistance, experimenting and sustaining the Common at the interfaces between territories, bodies, dissidences and technical and scientific actions. Recently, we pursued a multiscale research practice to think about the reverberations of the Anthropocene/ Technocene and the War of the Worlds it engenders, also mapping other propositions and fables of worlds, knowledge practices that emerge from human and other than human coexistence in the intersections between cosmotechnics and cosmopolitics.
www.pimentalab.net

7:45 pm Oslo/ 3:45 pm Santos/ 1:45 pm NY
ENDING

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS: 

Marina Guzzo, artist, and researcher, concentrates her creations at the interface of the body and the landscape, mixing dance, performance and circus when tensioning the limits of subjectivity in cities and in nature. Since 2011, the climate crisis and the role of the artist in the production of imagery for crossing a ruined world on the Plantationoceno have been at the center of her research. She works in partnership with health, culture and social assistance equipment, thinking of art as a political action that weaves a complex network of people, institutions, objects and nature. The artist has a post-doctorate from the Department of Performing Arts at ECA-USP and a master’s and doctorate in Social Psychology from PUC-SP. She is an Adjunct Professor at Unifesp at the Baixada Santista Campus, a researcher at the Corpo e Arte Laboratory in the Society and Health Institute.

Caitlin Franzmann is a Brisbane-based artist who creates installations, sonic experiences, performances, and social practice works that focus on place-based knowledge and embodied practices. Caitlin has exhibited at National Gallery of Victoria, Institute of Modern Art, TarraWarrra Museum of Art and Kyoto Art Centre. She was recipient of the 2014 Churchie National Emerging Art Prize and was selected to exhibit in Primavera 2014: Young Australian Artists at the Museum of Contemporary Art. As a member of the feminist art collective LEVEL from 2013-2017, Caitlin has collaboratively presented participatory works at Gallery of Modern Art, Museum of Contemporary Art and Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. With LEVEL, she has also co-curated exhibitions and forums with a focus on generating dialogue around gender, feminism and contemporary art. She was on the management committee of Outer Space ARI 2018-2019, and is currently a core member of Ensayos, a collective research practice centered on extinction, human geography, coastal health and peatland conservation. She originally trained as an urban planner before completing a Bachelor of Fine Art at Queensland College of Art in 2012.

Christy Gast is an artist who makes textile-based sculptures, performances, videos, and collaborative works about eco-political, queer, interspecies entanglements. She is interested in places where there is evidence of conflict in human desires, which she traces, translates or mirrors through her art practice. Her work has been exhibited at MoMA/P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Performa, Artist’s Space, Harris Lieberman Gallery and Regina Rex in New York; the Pérez Art Museum of Miami, Bass Museum of Art, de la Cruz Collection, Locust Projects, and Nina Johnson in Miami; as well as Mass MoCA, the American University Museum, L.A.C.E., High Desert Test Sites, Centro Cultural Matucana 100 (Chile), the Kadist Foundation (Paris) and Milani Gallery (Brisbane). 

Marina Paes is a psychologist, cultural manager, and coordinator of the Colaboradora Arts and Communities, free school of the Procomum Institute.

Søssa Jørgensen lives in Skiptvet, Norway at the farm Øvre Ringstad. Parallel to individual work that includes video, photography, drawing and performance, Søssa has worked long-term with radio and sound art in collaboration with peer Yngvild Færøy. Together with Geir Tore Holm and artists from Thailand, Sørfinnset School/ the nord land was initiated in Oarjelih Bájjdár/Gildeskål, Norway in 2003, this ongoing project focuses on the exploitation of nature, exchange of knowledge in the field of a broad aesthetically understanding of ecological realities of society, humans and nature.

Geir Tore Holm artist, grew up in the Sámi community Olmmáivággi/Manndalen, Gáivuotna/Kåfjord. He lives and works at Øvre Ringstad Farm in Skiptvet, Østfold. Graduated from Kunstakademiet i Trondheim in 1995. With Søssa Jørgensen he established Sørfinnset skole/ the nord land in Gildeskål, Nordland in 2003. Geir Tore Holm was head of project in the founding of Kunstakademiet in Tromsø – UiT in 2007. From 2009 till his dissertation in 2017 he was a fellow in artistic research at KHiO–Oslo National Academy of the Arts with the project Poetics For Changing Aesthetics.

Raissa Capasso is a Community Social Psychologist, Post Graduate in Traditional Chinese Medicine, Actress, Educator and Feminist. It also works with Methodological Advice and Latino self-management practices and mobilizes the construction of policy from the daily experience of Women.

Gabriel Lieling is a Latin American traveling apprentice. Urban Architect, Artist, Educator, Poet, Guardian of Creole Seeds…Researches and co-creates social, ancestral and digital technologies and methodologies and mobilizes the Latin American Network for Knowledge and Community Sciences.

Kristin Astrup Aas is based in Copenhagen, Denmark. She holds a MA from The Danish Academy of Arts, Architect school in Copenhagen, with emphasis on the ephemeral and sense perceptions in creation of place. She has worked in urban planning with conservation of green spaces, and as an architect on projects concerning homeless, refugees, and shelter and settlements in disasters. She has a certificate on Permaculture Design from Norway and has been working with practical ecology in urban farming projects, cultivation of heirloom seeds, and wild city foraging. Since 2016 she has been involved in collaborative work with other artists in film, theater, performance, and in writing on the topics eco-philosophy and environmentalism.

Kjersti Vetterstad (b. 1977) is a visual artist living and working in Oslo (NO). She is educated from the National Academy of Arts in Bergen (NO) and Konstfack in Stockholm (SE). Through media spanning from performance and installation to sound, video and film, Vetterstad explores themes such as time, place and impermanence, and questions related to identity and alienation. In recent years her works have revolved around issues of environmental challenges and questions related to the boundaries that define the relations between the human and the more than human world. Vetterstad is chair of MEANDER Society and one of the founding members of MEANDER International Platform. 

Olive Bieringa is a dance, performance and visual artist working at the intersection of social and creative practice, pedagogy, and healing. She is a teacher, and practitioner of Body-Mind Centering and a program director of Somatic Education Australasia. She collaborates with Otto Ramstad as the BodyCartography Project whose mission is to engage with the vital materiality of our bodies and minds to create live performance that facilitates a re-enchantment of embodiment, relationship, and presence. She is a doctoral candidate at the Theatre Academy, Uniarts Arts, Helsinki.

Zulu Anápuàka M. Tupinambá Hã hã hãe
Creator – Founder and CEO Rádio Yandê, Mani Bank and Yby Festival By Abya Yala, Son of Pindorama, Tupinambá Nation, elder and grandfather, Communicator, businessman, indigenous digital culture in Brazil, Tecno-shamanist, Indigenous Organic and Virtual Artist, indigenous ethnomedia, CEO, Executive Producer, Rádio Yandê (indigenous web radio) , Casa Yandê, Contemporary Indigenous Music Award, Yby Festival, Indigenous Maker, specialist in HiperMuseums, Bussines RedSkin Money, Indigenous RePangeia. And in my spare time as a hobby I’m an alien.

Karolin Tampere (b. Tallinn, Estonia) is an visual artist and curator based in Lofoten, Norway. Part of her practice is to work with sound, write for artists, commission new works and strive to present artistic practice, presence and work with a transdisciplinary approach in often periferic locations. She has a particular interest in collaborative, social and performative practices, sound and listening. Tampere has currently the position as curator at the North Norwegian Art Centre in Svolvær, and together with Hilde Mehti, Neal Cahoon and Torill Østby Haaland she co-curated LIAF2019 – Lofoten International Art Festival.

Randi Nygård is an artist and writer who lives and works in Oslo, Norway. Her practice concerns our basic relations to and view on nature. Aiming to create both wonder and enthusiasm for the natural environment, she highlights how humans have a profound impact on but also deep affiliation with nature. She demonstrates our tendency to understand the natural environment merely as material resources, and how we in doing so fail to remember that life is everywhere around us. Nygård graduated with an MFA from the Art Academy in Trondheim in 2006. Nygård is also a member of Ensayos and MEANDER.

Henrique Z.M. Parra – sociologist, associate professor of undergraduate and graduate courses in Social Sciences at the Federal University of São Paulo. He is coordinator of Pimentalab (Technology, Policy and Knowledge Laboratory), researcher at LAVITS (Latin American Network for Studies in Surveillance, Technology and Society) and member of the Tramadora collective.

Alana Moraes de Souza holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the National Museum – UFRJ. Master by the Sociology and Anthropology program at UFRJ. (2012). Graduated in Social Sciences from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (2010). Experience in the field of Anthropology, with an emphasis on Political Anthropology; Gender Studies, Social Movements and Knowledge Practices. Specialist in contemporary Latin American politics at the Institut des Hautes Etudes de l”Amerique Latine (IHEAL), Nouvelle Sourbonne Paris III with a Master Île-de-France scholarship. She is a researcher at the Technology, Policy and Knowledge Laboratory (Pimentalab) at Unifesp, where it develops research and extension actions.

You find more infromation about the four collectives and initiatives that constitute MEANDER International Platform here: https://meanderinternational.org/category/collectives/

MEANDER International Platform for Sustainable Art and Life Practices se complace en ofrecer una serie de presentaciones de una cohorte de artistas, activistas y pensadores internacionales, multidisciplinarios y de enfoque colectivo, cuyo trabajo en Brasil, Chile, Noruega, Dinamarca, Australia y los Estados Unidos explora por qué los bienes comunes es un marco importante para comprender la emergencia ecológica. Ensayos compartirá dos presentaciones, una enfocada en turberas en Noruega, Australia y Nueva York, y otra con nuestros estudiantes del programa Nomad MFA quienes presentarán su StoryMap sobre Crystal Peat Conservation Area.

El evento se transmitirá en línea el sábado 4 de diciembre a partir de las 4 p. m. (Oslo), 12 p. m. (Santos), 10 a. m. (Nueva York) en www.meanderinternational.org.

El programa está coproducido por miembros de MEANDER International Platform con el apoyo del Arts Council Norway.

PROGRAMA:

16:00 Oslo/ 12:00 Santos/ 10:00 Nueva York
Introducción por Meander Society

16:05 Oslo/ 12:05 Santos/ 10:05
Mixture/ Choreographic and affective alliances between women and plants
Por Marina Guzzo (Lab Corpo e Arte)
Mezcla es un dispositivo que propone un juego de ensamblaje a partir de elementos que tienes a mano. El juego pretende forjar un ritual entre mujeres y plantas, y pensar en una mezcla coreográfica, como un juego de palabras del filósofo italiano Emanuele Coccia (2018), que sugiere una metafísica de la mezcla. Hacer danza/coreografía alternativa de mundos interespecíficos, salvajes, no humanos, como una forma de resistencia al antropoceno/ plantación/ capitoceno, reuniendo perspectivas que apuntan a la cosmopolítica desde otras formas de estar en el mundo: tallo, raíces, savia, hojas, flores y frutos. Una coreografía de mujeres interesadas en encontrar posibles alianzas entre ropa, objetos y plantas. “Alianzas afectivas” como diría Ailton Krenak, basadas en la cotidianidad improbable. Relaciones y vecindades imposibles. Para ello, el taller cuenta con una partitura, que comienza con una deriva de “búsqueda”, de plantas caídas, objetos olvidados, disfraces alegres. Luego ensamblar para transformar. Transformarse para hacer otros arreglos e imaginar futuros y rituales de contradomesticación.

16:20 Oslo/ 12:20 Santos/ 10:20 Nueva York
Bog Is Good: Sensing Local Peatlands
Por Caitlin Franzmann, Christy Gast y Randi Nygård (Ensayos)
Ensayos es una práctica de investigación colectiva iniciada en el archipiélago de Tierra del Fuego en 2010. Las metodologías de investigación temática de Ensayos surgen del delirio archipelágico y se caracterizan por su sensualidad y precariedad. En asociación con las iniciativas de conservación ecológica y cultural existentes en la isla principal de Tierra del Fuego (WCS Parque Karukinka, Caleta María, Fundación Hach Saye), Ensayos entrelaza las prácticas artísticas, los métodos de las ciencias sociales y los movimientos indígenas con la investigación ambiental apremiante. Dedicado a la política, el cuidado y la concientización sobre la importancia ecosistémica de las turberas, Ensayo #6 está comprometido con los procesos de conservación de la biodiversidad de la nueva Iniciativa de Turberas Patagónicas y otras similares en todo el mundo. Randi Nygård (Noruega), Caitlin Franzmann (Australia) y Christy Gast (EE. UU.) harán presentaciones sobre temas poéticos relacionados con sus pantanos locales.
https://ensayotierradelfuego.net/

16:35 Oslo/ 12:35 Santos/ 10:35 Nueva York
Colaboradora
Por Marina Paes (Instituto Procomum)
Marina Paes presenta el programa Colaboradora del Initituto Procomum, que ofrece a los artistas formación y experiencia en prácticas colaborativas con el objetivo de fortalecer la cooperación, construir redes y ampliar repertorios. El programa ofrece una escuela gratuita con talleres, mentorías y participación en diferentes eventos; acceso al LAB Procomum, un espacio físico de uso colectivo, con todos los recursos necesarios para el despegue de un proyecto; y articulación con otras redes y comunidades. Los participantes son seleccionados a través de una convocatoria pública y están íntegramente subvencionados. Los participantes contribuyen a un banco de tiempo que fomenta el intercambio de servicios entre todos, fortaleciendo la lógica de la colaboración. Colaboradora es un proyecto de inclusión social y lucha contra la desigualdad, imposible de afrontar sin considerar aspectos de clase, raza y género. Así, los participantes seleccionados provienen de las diferentes periferias de la Baixada Santista, con énfasis en mujeres, población afrodescendiente, LGTBQI+ e indígenas. Invitados nacionales e internacionales intercambian ideas y experiencias con los participantes y con el público de LAB Procomum, para que esta red también se fortalezca a nivel nacional e internacional.
https://colaboradora.procomum.org/

16:50 Oslo/ 12:50 Santos/ 22:50 Nueva York
PAUSA

17:00 Oslo/ 13:00 Santos/ 11:00 Nueva York
Sørfinnset skole/ the nord land in community and Sámi perspectives
Por Geir Tore Holm y Søssa Jørgensen (Meander Society)
Sørfinnset skole/ the nord land examina cómo el arte contemporáneo puede funcionar en un diálogo a largo plazo con una pequeña comunidad local. Los iniciadores del proyecto, Geir Tore Holm y Søssa Jørgensen, presentan el eterno compromiso de un artista en un pueblo del norte de Noruega.
http://sorfinnsetskole.blogspot.com/

17:15 Oslo/ 13:15 Santos/ 11:15 Nueva York
Coletivo Etinerâncias/ Networks of care
Por Raissa Capasso y Gabriel Kieling (invitados)
Desde 2014, el Colectivo Etinerancias/ Redes de Atención opera desde la práctica diaria, fortaleciendo experiencias autónomas a través de asesoría metodológica a movimientos sociales, comunidades tradicionales (pueblos indígenas, quilombos, pueblos costeros y campesinos…) y espacios de resistencia (ocupaciones, asentamientos, asentamientos precarios). .) a través de Brasil y otros territorios de Abya Yala. A través de la convivencia, el vínculo, la escucha y el apoyo a la inteligencia colectiva en la articulación política en el campo de las relaciones y lo común.

Disputa las relaciones humanas y los tiempos cotidianos frente a la fragmentación neoliberal desde las tecnologías sociales, ancestrales y digitales, con un conjunto de estrategias que van desde la cartografía, la sistematización y el intercambio de experiencias y saberes hasta la agroecología. Además, comparte sus jornadas con comadronas, herbolarias, cuentacuentos, maestros griots, curanderos… Y dedican sus caminos, como aprendices y co-creadores de la tradición oral y ancestral, a la conexión de la cultura viva, puntos de encuentro entre mundos.
https://etinerancias.com.br/

17:30 Oslo/ 13:30 Santos/ 11:30 Nueva York
The Fjord and the Mountain
Por Kjersti Vetterstad y Kristin Astrup Aas (Meander Society)
Kjersti Vetterstad y Kristin Astrup Aas presentan el trabajo en curso en la película documental The Fjord and the Mountain, que tiene como punto de partida una mina a cielo abierto planificada en la montaña Engebø en la costa oeste de Noruega, y el depósito de desechos mineros en Førde. Fiordo.
https://greenhouseprod.no/fjorden-og-fjellet-el-fiordo-y-la-montaña/

17:45 Oslo/ 13:45 Santos/ 23:545 Nueva York
PAUSA

18:00 Oslo/ 14:00 Santos/ 12:00 Nueva York
Becoming mineral
Por Olive Bieringa (invitada)
¿Cómo podemos percibir más de toda la escala de las sensibilidades, inteligencias y dentro de nosotros, lo humano y lo no humano? ¿Cómo podemos percibir más de los puntos en común que compartimos entre nosotros? A medida que cimentamos y ampliamos nuestras capacidades de percepción, ¿podemos construir nuevas relaciones para transformar la forma en que experimentamos y vivimos en el mundo? Respiraremos y avanzaremos juntos.
https://bodycartography.org/author/olive/

18:30 Oslo/ 14:15 Santos/ 12:15 Nueva York
Bog as Body + Bodies as Ruins + Ruins as Rebirth
Por Teal Gardner, Morgan Kulas, Justin Moore, Rebecca Schultz, Natalie Stopka, Becca Zablocki, Alejandra Ortiz de Zavallos – Estudiantes nómadas interdisciplinarios de MFA en la Universidad de Hartford y Ensayos (invitados)
Los estudiantes de la Maestría en Bellas Artes Interdisciplinaria Nómada de la Universidad de Hartford tomaron un curso de Arte y Ecología con Christy Gast y Camila Marambio, quienes enseñan en colaboración como parte de Ensayos, en junio de 2021. El curso se centró en la conservación de las turberas. Los estudiantes participaron en el Seminario Binacional sobre las Turberas de la Patagonia y aprendieron sobre la ecología de las turberas a través de un viaje de campo al Área de Conservación Crystal Peat en Tolland, CT. Para su proyecto final, los estudiantes respondieron de manera colaborativa a un mensaje de Patagonia Peatland Initiative para experimentar con la plataforma ArcGIS StoryMap para crear una herramienta interactiva que integre de manera creativa el arte y la ciencia para contar la historia de una (antigua) turbera. Los estudiantes presentarán su StoryMap, que profundiza en el complejo pasado, presente y futuro del Área de Conservación Crystal Peat, seguido de una sesión de preguntas y respuestas.
https://ensayotierradelfuego.net/programas/3039/

18:45 Oslo/ 15:45 Santos/ 13:45 Nueva York
PAUSA

19:00 Oslo/ 15:00 Santos/ 13:00 Nueva York
Yandê – Indigenous Radio
Por Zulu Anápuàka M. Tupinambá Hã hã hãe (invitado)
Rádio Yandê es educativa y cultural. Nuestro objetivo es difundir la cultura indígena desde una perspectiva tradicional, pero sumando la velocidad y el alcance de la tecnología e internet. Nuestra necesidad de alentar nuevos “corresponsales indígenas” en Brasil nos permite construir una comunicación colaborativa mucho más fuerte en comparación con los medios tradicionales de radio y televisión.
https://radioyande.com/

19:15 Oslo/ 15:15 Santos/ 13:15 Nueva York
Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole
Por Randi Nygård y Karolin Tampere (Meander Society)
En 2017, Nygård y Tampere editaron una antología interdisciplinaria basada en la Sección 2 de la Ley de Recursos Marinos de Noruega, que lleva su nombre. En 2019 y 2021 Nygård, Holm y Jørgensen continuaron el proyecto con una serie de eventos en Kunstnernes Hus en Oslo, donde relacionaron el derecho no solo con las definiciones legales habituales sino también con un enfoque más poético y fundamental de la gestión, diferentes ideas sobre el medio ambiente y nuestro papel en la naturaleza, visiones del mundo, lenguaje y valores. Nygård presentará los proyectos brevemente antes de escuchar extractos de entrevistas sobre el acto con activistas, abogados, profesores, pescadores y, al final, leyes poéticas para un futuro mejor.
https://www.printedmatter.org/catalog/52199/

19:30 Oslo/ 15:30 Santos/ 13:30 Nueva York
Contagious Zone
Por Henrique Parra y Alana Moraes (invitados)
Pimentalab es un laboratorio transdisciplinario con sede en la UNIFESP que trabaja con investigaciones sobre prácticas de conocimiento, tecnopolíticas y luchas sociales. Nos interesan las acciones de investigación situadas, pensando en formas de activar y cuidar formas de vida (y sus tecnologías) que emergen en situaciones de conflicto y tensiones onto-epistemológicas, orientadas a la cooperación y producción de lo Común. Investigamos las nuevas configuraciones del capitalismo contemporáneo y la relación saber-poder a partir del orden técnico del mundo -infraestructuras, tecnologías del conocimiento, dispositivos de control, tecnologías digitales y mediación cibernética- y sus modos de subjetivación, así como formas colectivas de resistencia , experimentando y sustentando lo Común en las interfaces entre territorios, cuerpos, disidencias y acciones técnico-científicas. Recientemente, emprendimos una práctica de investigación multiescalar para pensar las reverberaciones del Antropoceno/Tecnoceno y la Guerra de los Mundos que engendra, mapeando también otras proposiciones y fábulas de mundos, prácticas de conocimiento que emergen de la convivencia humana y no humana en las intersecciones entre cosmotecnia y cosmopolítica.
www.pimentalab.net

19:45 Oslo/ 15:45 Santos/ 13:45 Nueva York
FINAL

SOBRE LOS COLABORADORES:

Marina Guzzo, artista e investigadora, concentra sus creaciones en la interfaz del cuerpo y el paisaje, mezclando danza, performance y circo al tensionar los límites de la subjetividad en las ciudades y en la naturaleza. Desde 2011, la crisis climática y el papel de la artista en la producción de imágenes para cruzar un mundo en ruinas en el Plantationoceno han sido el centro de su investigación. Trabaja en alianza con equipos de salud, cultura y asistencia social, pensando el arte como una acción política que teje una red compleja de personas, instituciones, objetos y naturaleza. La artista tiene posdoctorado en el Departamento de Artes Escénicas de la ECA-USP y maestría y doctorado en Psicología Social en la PUC-SP. Es Profesora Adjunta de la Unifesp en el Campus Baixada Santista, investigadora del Laboratorio Corpo e Arte del Instituto Sociedad y Salud.

Caitlin Franzmann es una artista con sede en Brisbane que crea instalaciones, experiencias sonoras, actuaciones y obras de prácticas sociales que se centran en el conocimiento basado en el lugar y las prácticas encarnadas. Caitlin ha expuesto en la Galería Nacional de Victoria, el Instituto de Arte Moderno, el Museo de Arte TarraWarrra y el Centro de Arte de Kyoto. Recibió el Premio Nacional de Arte Emergente Churchie 2014 y fue seleccionada para exhibir en Primavera 2014: Jóvenes artistas australianos en el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo. Como miembro del colectivo de arte feminista LEVEL de 2013 a 2017, Caitlin ha presentado en colaboración obras participativas en la Galería de Arte Moderno, el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo y el Centro Australiano de Arte Contemporáneo. Con LEVEL, también ha co-comisariado exposiciones y foros enfocados en generar diálogo en torno al género, el feminismo y el arte contemporáneo. Formó parte del comité de gestión de Outer Space ARI 2018-2019, y actualmente es miembro central de Ensayos, una práctica de investigación colectiva centrada en la extinción, la geografía humana, la salud costera y la conservación de las turberas. Originalmente se formó como planificadora urbana antes de completar una Licenciatura en Bellas Artes en Queensland College of Art en 2012.

Christy Gast es una artista que crea esculturas, performances, videos y obras colaborativas basadas en textiles sobre enredos ecopolíticos, queer e interespecies. Le interesan los lugares donde hay evidencia de conflicto en los deseos humanos, los cuales rastrea, traduce o refleja a través de su práctica artística. Su trabajo ha sido exhibido en MoMA/P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Performa, Artist’s Space, Harris Lieberman Gallery y Regina Rex en Nueva York; el Museo de Arte Pérez de Miami, el Museo de Arte Bass, la Colección de la Cruz, Locust Projects y Nina Johnson en Miami; así como Mass MoCA, American University Museum, L.A.C.E., High Desert Test Sites, Centro Cultural Matucana 100 (Chile), Kadist Foundation (París) y Milani Gallery (Brisbane).

Marina Paes es psicóloga, gestora cultural y coordinadora de la Colaboradora Artes y Comunidades, escuela gratuita del Instituto Procomum.

Søssa Jørgensen vive en Skiptvet, Noruega, en la granja Øvre Ringstad. Paralelamente al trabajo individual que incluye video, fotografía, dibujo y performance, Søssa ha trabajado a largo plazo con la radio y el arte sonoro en colaboración con su colega Yngvild Færøy. Junto con Geir Tore Holm y artistas de Tailandia, la Escuela Sørfinnset/ the nord land se inició en Oarjelih Bájjdár/Gildeskål, Noruega en 2003. Este proyecto en curso se centra en la explotación de la naturaleza, el intercambio de conocimientos en el campo de una amplia comprensión estética de realidades ecológicas de la sociedad, los seres humanos y la naturaleza.

Geir Tore Holm, artists, creció en la comunidad sami Olmmáivággi/Manndalen, Gáivuotna/Kåfjord. Vive y trabaja en Øvre Ringstad Farm en Skiptvet, Østfold. Graduado de Kunstakademiet i Trondheim en 1995. Con Søssa Jørgensen estableció Sørfinnset skole/ the nord land en Gildeskål, Nordland en 2003. Geir Tore Holm fue jefe de proyecto en la fundación de Kunstakademiet en Tromsø – UiT en 2007. Desde 2009 hasta su disertación en 2017 fue becario de investigación artística en KHiO–Academia Nacional de las Artes de Oslo con el proyecto Poetics For Changing Aesthetics.

Raissa Capasso es Psicóloga Social Comunitaria, Posgraduada en Medicina Tradicional China, Actriz, Educadora y Feminista. También trabaja con Asesoramiento Metodológico y prácticas de autogestión latina y moviliza la construcción de políticas desde la experiencia cotidiana de las Mujeres.

Gabriel Lieling es un aprendiz itinerante latinoamericano. Arquitecto Urbano, Artista, Educador, Poeta, Guardián de Semillas Criollas… Investiga y co-crea tecnologías y metodologías sociales, ancestrales y digitales y moviliza la Red Latinoamericana de Conocimientos y Ciencias Comunitarias.

Kristin Astrup Aas tiene su sede en Copenhague, Dinamarca. Tiene una maestría de la escuela de arquitectos de la Academia Danesa de las Artes en Copenhague, con énfasis en las percepciones efímeras y sensoriales en la creación de lugares. Ha trabajado en planificación urbana con conservación de espacios verdes y como arquitecta en proyectos relacionados con personas sin hogar, refugiados y albergues y asentamientos en desastres. Tiene un certificado en Diseño de Permacultura de Noruega y ha estado trabajando con ecología práctica en proyectos de agricultura urbana, cultivo de semillas tradicionales y búsqueda de comida en ciudades silvestres. Desde 2016 ha estado involucrada en trabajos colaborativos con otros artistas en cine, teatro, performance y escritura sobre temas de ecofilosofía y ambientalismo.

Kjersti Vetterstad (n. 1977) es una artista visual que vive y trabaja en Oslo (NO). Estudió en la Academia Nacional de Artes de Bergen (NO) y Konstfack en Estocolmo (SE). A través de medios que van desde la actuación y la instalación hasta el sonido, el vídeo y el cine, Vetterstad explora temas como el tiempo, el lugar y la impermanencia, y cuestiones relacionadas con la identidad y la alienación. En los últimos años sus trabajos han girado en torno a temas de desafíos ambientales y cuestiones relacionadas con los límites que definen las relaciones entre lo humano y el mundo más que humano. Vetterstad es presidente de MEANDER Society y uno de los miembros fundadores de MEANDER International Platform.

Olive Bieringa es una artista de danza, performance y visual que trabaja en la intersección de la práctica social y creativa, la pedagogía y la curación. Es profesora y practicante de Body-Mind Centering y directora de programa de Somatic Education Australasia. Colabora con Otto Ramstad como BodyCartography Project, cuya misión es comprometerse con la materialidad vital de nuestros cuerpos y mentes para crear actuaciones en vivo que faciliten el reencantamiento de la encarnación, la relación y la presencia. Es candidata a doctorado en la Academia de Teatro, Uniarts Arts, Helsinki.

Zulú Anápuàka M. Tupinambá Hã hã hãe
Creador – Fundador y CEO Rádio Yandê, Mani Bank y Yby Festival Por Abya Yala, Hijo de Pindorama, Nación Tupinambá, anciano y abuelo, Comunicador, empresario, cultura digital indígena en Brasil, Tecno-chamanista, Artista Indígena Orgánico y Virtual, etnomedia indígena , CEO, Productor Ejecutivo, Rádio Yandê (radio web indígena), Casa Yandê, Premio Música Indígena Contemporánea, Festival Yby, Hacedor Indígena, especialista en HiperMuseos, Bussines RedSkin Money, Indígena RePangeia. Y en mi tiempo libre como hobby soy un extraterrestre.

Karolin Tampere (n. Tallinn, Estonia) es una artista visual y curadora que vive en Lofoten, Noruega. Parte de su práctica es trabajar con sonido, escribir para artistas, encargar nuevos trabajos y esforzarse por presentar la práctica artística, la presencia y el trabajo con un enfoque transdisciplinario en lugares a menudo periféricos. Tiene un interés particular en las prácticas colaborativas, sociales y performativas, el sonido y la escucha. Tampere ocupa actualmente el puesto de curadora en el Centro de Arte del Norte de Noruega en Svolvær y, junto con Hilde Mehti, Neal Cahoon y Torill Østby Haaland, co-curó LIAF2019 – Festival Internacional de Arte de Lofoten.

Randi Nygård es una artista y escritora que vive y trabaja en Oslo, Noruega. Su práctica se refiere a nuestras relaciones básicas y nuestra visión de la naturaleza. Con el objetivo de crear tanto asombro como entusiasmo por el entorno natural, destaca cómo los humanos tienen un profundo impacto pero también una profunda afiliación con la naturaleza. Ella demuestra nuestra tendencia a entender el entorno natural simplemente como recursos materiales, y cómo al hacerlo no recordamos que la vida está en todas partes a nuestro alrededor. Nygård se graduó con un MFA de la Academia de Arte de Trondheim en 2006. Nygård también es miembro de Ensayos y MEANDER.

Henrique Z. M. Parra – sociólogo, profesor asociado de cursos de pregrado y posgrado en Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad Federal de São Paulo. Es coordinador de Pimentalab (Laboratorio de Tecnología, Política y Conocimiento), investigador de LAVITS (Red Latinoamericana de Estudios en Vigilancia, Tecnología y Sociedad) y miembro del colectivo Tramadora.

Alana Moraes de Souza es doctora en Antropología Social por el Museo Nacional – UFRJ. Máster por el programa de Sociología y Antropología de la UFRJ. (2012). Licenciada en Ciencias Sociales por la Universidad Federal de Río de Janeiro (2010). Experiencia en el campo de la Antropología, con énfasis en Antropología Política; Estudios de género, movimientos sociales y prácticas de conocimiento. Especialista en política latinoamericana contemporánea en el Institut des Hautes Etudes de l”Amerique Latine (IHEAL), Nouvelle Sourbonne Paris III con una beca Master Île-de-France. Es investigadora del Laboratorio de Tecnología, Políticas y Conocimiento (Pimentalab) de la Unifesp, donde desarrolla acciones de investigación y extensión.

Encuentra más información sobre los cuatro colectivos e iniciativas que constituyen la Plataforma Internacional MEANDER aquí: https://meanderinternational.org/category/collectives/

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The Gift: Ensayos Supports Chilean Pavilion @ Venice Biennale

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In a first for the art world, the peatlands of Patagonia will represent Chile at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022. The Chilean Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage of Chile and DIRAC are pleased to announce Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol as the project that will represent Chile at the upcoming 59th International Venice Biennale. The Chilean pavilion is being curated by Ensayos founder Camila Marambio, and features an immersive installation by Chilean creatives Ariel Bustamante (sound), Carla Macchiavello (art historian), Dominga Sotomayor (filmmaker) and Alfredo Thiermann (architect), whose work will plunge viewers into the hol-hol tol or “heart of peatland” in the language of the Selk’nam people who are indigenous to Tierra del Fuego in Patagonia. The artists are joined by ecologist Bárbara Saavedra, Selk’nam writer Hema’ny Molina, cultural producer Juan Pablo Vergara, and additional plurinational collaborators, including contributors to Ensayo #6.

Ensayos collaborators Caitlin Franzmann (Australia), Christy Gast (New York, United States) and Randi Nygård (Norway) are working with “pods” of artists and ecologists to explore the ecology and culture of peatlands local to their regions. The three groups, with collaborators including Freja Carmichael (curator and Ngugi woman of the Quandamooka people), Denise Milstein (sociologist), Renee Rossini (ecologist), Karolin Tampere (curator/artist), Simon Daniel Tegnander Wenzel (artist) and Agustine Zegers (artist) will conjure a gift of scent from international peatlands that will contribute to the multisensory experience of the pavilion in Venice.

Read more about Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol here.

Por primera vez en el mundo del arte, las turberas de la Patagonia representarán a Chile en la 59 Bienal de Venecia en 2022. El Ministerio de las Culturas, las Artes y el Patrimonio de Chile y DIRAC se complacen en anunciar Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol como el proyecto que representará a Chile en la próxima 59 Bienal Internacional de Venecia. El pabellón chileno está curado por la fundadora de Ensayos, Camila Marambio, y presenta una instalación inmersiva de los creativos chilenos Ariel Bustamante (sonido), Carla Macchiavello (historiadora del arte), Dominga Sotomayor (cineasta) y Alfredo Thiermann (arquitecto), cuyo trabajo sumergirá a los espectadores. en el hol-hol tol o “corazón de las turberas” en el idioma del pueblo Selk’nam que son indígenas de Tierra del Fuego en la Patagonia. A los artistas se unen la ecologista Bárbara Saavedra, la escritora selk’nam Hema’ny Molina, el productor cultural Juan Pablo Vergara y otros colaboradores plurinacionales, incluidos los colaboradores de Ensayo #6.

Los colaboradores de Ensayos Caitlin Franzmann (Australia), Christy Gast (Nueva York, Estados Unidos) y Randi Nygård (Noruega) están trabajando con “grupos” de artistas y ecologistas para explorar la ecología y la cultura de las turberas locales en sus regiones. Los tres grupos, con colaboradores como Freja Carmichael (curadora y mujer Ngugi del pueblo Quandamooka), Denise Milstein (socióloga), Renee Rossini (ecóloga), Karolin Tampere (curadora/artista), Simon Daniel Tegnander Wenzel (artista) y Agustine Zegers (artista) evocará un regalo de aroma de turberas internacionales que contribuirá a la experiencia multisensorial del pabellón en Venecia.

Lea más sobre Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol aquí.

 

 

 

Ensayos & Patagonian Peatland Initiative @ COP26 Global Peatland Pavilion

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This program will be presented in Spanish with subtitles in English.
Register here. There are a limited number of conference places available however sessions will be recorded and made available through www.globalpeatlands.org after the event.


Este programa será presentado en español con subtítulos en ingles.
Registrar aquí. Hay un número limitado de lugares disponibles para conferencias; sin embargo, las sesiones se grabarán y estarán disponibles a través de www.globalpeatlands.org después del evento.

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Rebog StoryMap: Nomad MFA Student Project

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Students in the University of Hartford’s Nomad Interdisciplinary MFA took an Art & Ecology course with Christy Gast and Camila Marambio, who teach collaboratively as part of Ensayos, in June, 2021. The course focused on peatland conservation, which is the foundation of Ensayo #6. Students participated in the Binational Seminar on the Peatlands of Patagonia and learned about peatland ecology through a field trip to the Crystal Peat Conservation Area in Tolland, CT with special guest Dr. Bernard Goffinet. For their final project, students collaboratively responded to a prompt from the Patagonia Peatland Initiative to experiment with the ArcGIS StoryMap platform to create an interactive tool that creatively integrates art and science to tell the story of a (former) peatland.

Project introduction by Nomad MFA C6 students: 

We collaboratively created this StoryMap across time zones and borders. Its completion is the bookend of a process that began with our visit to the Crystal Peat Conservation Area at the beginning of our first residency with the Nomad MFA program in June 2021. We came together as a cohort of artists and learners to visit a peat bog; what we discovered were the ruins of a bog that had been exploited by the Crystal Peat Company decades before. Although our experience was not what we had anticipated, we spent a day exploring the ecosystem that is there now: observing, documenting, meditating, sketching. At the completion of the Art and Ecology course taught by Christy Gast and Camila Marambio, our group was tasked with the creation of a StoryMap about Crystal Peat. We returned to the site before we parted ways to gather more documentation and deepen our understanding–then dispersed to our home communities across the United States and Peru. Through numerous group calls, we visually, textually, and sonically constructed the history of Crystal Peat as told by our vision of the bog’s voice. Our aim was to present an artist’s perspective of place, as well as educating viewers about the science behind Crystal Peat’s ecology and advocating for the preservation of other peatlands.

Here is the direct link to the project. It is best experienced with the audio turned on: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/a6f950ed742a4a17bad81a63efdb9a0a

Los estudiantes de University of Hartford’s Nomad Interdisciplinary MFA tomaron un curso de Arte y Ecología con Christy Gast y Camila Marambio, quienes enseñan en colaboración como parte de Ensayos, en junio de 2021. El curso se centró en la conservación de las turberas, que es la base de Ensayo #6. Los estudiantes participaron en Binational Seminar on the Peatlands of Patagonia y aprendieron sobre la ecología de las turberas a través de un viaje de campo al Área de Conservación Crystal Peat en Tolland, CT con el invitado especial Dr. Bernard Goffinet. Para su proyecto final, los estudiantes respondieron de manera colaborativa a un mensaje de Patagonia Peatland Initiative para experimentar con la plataforma ArcGIS StoryMap para crear una herramienta interactiva que integre de manera creativa el arte y la ciencia para contar la historia de una (antigua) turbera.

Introducción del proyecto por estudiantes de Nomad MFA C6:

Creamos en colaboración este StoryMap a través de zonas horarias y fronteras. Su finalización es el final de un proceso que comenzó con nuestra visita al Área de conservación de Crystal Peat al comienzo de nuestra primera residencia con el programa Nomad MFA en junio de 2021. Nos reunimos como un grupo de artistas y estudiantes para visitar una turbera ; lo que descubrimos fueron las ruinas de un pantano que había sido explotado por Crystal Peat Company décadas antes. Aunque nuestra experiencia no fue la que habíamos anticipado, pasamos un día explorando el ecosistema que ahora está allí: observando, documentando, meditando, dibujando. Al finalizar el curso de Arte y Ecología impartido por Christy Gast y Camila Marambio, nuestro grupo se encargó de la creación de un StoryMap sobre Crystal Peat. Regresamos al sitio antes de separarnos para recopilar más documentación y profundizar nuestra comprensión, luego nos dispersamos a nuestras comunidades de origen en los Estados Unidos y Perú. A través de numerosas llamadas grupales, construimos visual, textual y sonoramente la historia de Crystal Peat tal como la cuenta nuestra visión de la voz del pantano. Nuestro objetivo era presentar la perspectiva del lugar de un artista, así como educar a los espectadores sobre la ciencia detrás de la ecología de Crystal Peat y abogar por la preservación de otras turberas.

Aquí está el enlace directo al proyecto. Se experimenta mejor con el audio encendido:

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/a6f950ed742a4a17bad81a63efdb9a0a

Print Posters / Imprime afiches

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Download or print Ensayos’ posters for the Binational Seminar on the Peatlands of Patagonia in Spanish, English or Selk’nam. Designed by: Christy Gast, Camila Marambio, Rosario Ureta with collaboration from WCS-Chile.

Descarga o imprime los Afiche Seminario Binacional Turberas de Patagonia en Español, Inglés y Selk’nam. Diseñado por: Christy Gast, Camila Marambio, Rosario Ureta con colaboración de WCS-Chile.

Descargue o imprima los carteles de Ensayos para el Seminario Binacional sobre las Turberas de la Patagonia en español, inglés o selk’nam. Diseñado por: Christy Gast, Camila Marambio, Rosario Ureta con la colaboración de WCS-Chile.

Descarga o imprime los Afiche Seminario Binacional Turberas de Patagonia en Español, Inglés y Selk’nam. Diseñado por: Christy Gast, Camila Marambio, Rosario Ureta con la colaboración de WCS-Chile.

DOWNLOAD / PRINT turberas-poster-1_sm

DOWNLOAD / PRINT turberas-poster-2_sm

DOWNLOAD / PRINT turberas-poster-3_sm

“Una turba” @ Tenerife Espacio de las Artes

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Para que haya fiesta tiene que danzar el bosque (For there to be a party, the forest has to dance) un proyecto comisariado por Michy Marxuach en colaboración con múltiples voces transhemisféricas. 

Ensayos presentó un proyecto multidisciplinario titulado ‘Una turba’ con poesía, video y aficiones sobre la conservación de las turberas en Tierra del Fuego.

Del 2 de julio hasta el 26 de septiembre de 2021, Tenerife Espacio de las Artes.

Una conversación con lxs artistxs: Carla Zacagnini, Cecilia Vicuña, Chris Marker y Alain Resnais, Dominique Ratton, Ensayos (Christy Gast, Camila Marambio, Rosario Ureta,  Alejandra Figueroa, Hemany, Carolina León Valdebenito, Gabriela Mataloni, Nicole Püschel, Antonieta Eguren, Adriana Urciuolo,  Bárbara Saavedra, Carolina Saquel, Caitlin Franzmann, Hema’ny Molina, Carla Macchiavello, Denise Milstein, Randi Nygård ), Florian Dombois, Jochi Melero, Mónica Rodríguez, Onda Corta (Néstor Delgado y Maria Laura Benavente) y Transhemisférica (Jonatan Habib Engqvist, Luis Berríos-Negrón, Maria Kamilla Larsen,Taru Elfving y Michy Marxuach).

Descarga o imprime los afiches en Español, Inglés y Selk’nam.

OUT-Ensayo-Turba

OUT-Ensayo-Cucu

Para que haya fiesta tiene que danzar el bosque

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TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes
2/7/2021 – 12/9/2021

Un proyecto comisariado por Michy Marxuach en colaboración con múltiples voces transhemisfericas.

Una conversación con lxs artistxs: Carla Zacagnini, Cecilia Vicuña, Chris Marker y Alain Resnais, Dominique Ratton, Ensayos (Christy Gast, Camila Marambio, Rosario Ureta,  Alejandra Figueroa, Carolina León Valdebenito, Gabriela Mataloni, Nicole Püschel, Antonieta Eguren, Adriana Urciuolo,  Bárbara Saavedra, Carolina Saquel, Caitlin Franzmann, Hema’ny Molina, Carla Macchiavello, Denise Milstein, Randi Nygård), Florian Dombois, Jochi Melero, Mónica Rodríguez, Onda Corta (Néstor Delgado y Maria Laura Benavente) y Transhemiferica (Jonatan Habib Engqvist, Luis Berríos-Negrón, Maria Kamilla Larsen,Taru Elfving y Michy Marxuach).

Con los portales de:  Adrián Flores, Ernesto Pujol, Daniasa Curbelo, Jenny Perlin, Runo Largomarsino, Ramiro Chaves, Chaveli Sifre, Nikolina Ställborn, Gala Berger, Band of weeds, Diego del Pozo Barriuso, Alia Farid, Karla Claudio-Betancourt, Nesta, MitiMiti, Lotta< Petronela, Eliana Otta, Kristine Strømberg, Alana Iturralde, TVGOV, Mai Ulrikka Sydendal, Sarah Hamilton, Blockadia Tiesfee, Galas Porras Kim, IC-98, FRAUD,  Ela Spalding, Mai Ulrikka Sydendal, Ensayos y otrxs que seguirán uniéndose durante el transcurso de la exposición.

Con obra de la colección de TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes Jorge González, Walter Marchietti, Esperanza D’Ors, María Belén Morales, José Ramon Anda, Martín Chirino, Eusebio Sempere, Joaquin Rubio Camín, Stipo Pranyko, Andreu Alfaro, Aurelia Muñoz, José Luis Fajardo, Gonzalo González y José Herrera.

Esta exposición contiene una capa sonora de múltiples piezas que pueden acceder con sus celulares. Recomendamos que la visiten con sus auriculares.

El 3 de Julio se estará realizando en el Teatro del TEA una única
proyección de la película Con Con de Cecilia Vicuña (Documental, 54 min, 2010)

Esta muestra ofrece una reflexión que pretende desentrañar cómo en un mundo homogeneizado y disperso geográficamente, voluntades y estructuras de apoyo nos pueden ayudar a combinar experiencias, objetos, ideas, subjetividades, referencias y técnicas. Responde a la urgencia de nuestro presente, pero también a dedicar compromisos y a la posibilidad del encuentro que se ve cada vez más amenazado. Este tóxico desencuentro no es solo de hoy, sino que ha sido parte de una estrategia de fragmentación dentro del sistema capitalista en el que vivimos. Uno de los ejes de este proyecto es formar algunas nociones de cómo se juntan las cosas y conversar sobre qué es lo que estamos haciendo para encaminar formas de vida que compartan espacios de salud y de regeneración en vez de destrucción. De fondo, resuena la pregunta: ¿Cómo surge la generosidad y la complicidad entre lamultiplicidad de procesos, entre seres conocidxs o por conocerse para poder entonar juntxs urgencias y encaminarnos a la celebración? ¿Qué compartimos, cómo nos preparamos y nutrimos? Nos transformamos para escuchar las señales y seguir abriendo portales, conectores para una conversación con el bosque y, de este modo, aprender juntxs maneras para una transición de solidaridad planetaria y de protección de la vida.

Podríamos describir el espacio como una argamasa que contiene una serie de puentes conectores y confabulaciones que se desbordan de la superficie para encender caminos hasta el océano profundo. Setrata de voluntades que catapultan conversaciones en el presente de relaciones también pasadas y que durante el proceso de la exhibición continúan añadiendo voces y participaciones.  Es una invitación a constelar de forma consciente y generosa comunicadores de realidades,seres, preguntas, prácticas y posibles soluciones mientras continuamos caminando y organizando maneras de trasladar las referencias y conocimientos de seres que han sido silenciados para que juntxs nos acompañarnos en la emancipación y restitución hacia la solidaridad. Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi la definió como aquella conspiración que significa, precisamente, “respirar en conjunto”.

TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes
2/7/2021 – 12/9/2021

A project curated by Michy Marchaux in collaboration with many transhemispheric participans.

A conversation with the artists: Carla Zacagnini, Cecilia Vicuña, Chris Marker y Alain Resnais, Dominique Ratton, Ensayos (Christy Gast, Camila Marambio, Rosario Ureta,  Alejandra Figueroa, Carolina León Valdebenito, Gabriela Mataloni, Nicole Püschel, Antonieta Eguren, Adriana Urciuolo,  Bárbara Saavedra, Carolina Saquel, Caitlin Franzmann, Hema’ny Molina, Carla Macchiavello, Denise Milstein, Randi Nygård), Florian Dombois, Jochi Melero, Mónica Rodríguez, Onda Corta (Néstor Delgado y Maria Laura Benavente) y Transhemiferica (Jonatan Habib Engqvist, Luis Berríos-Negrón, Maria Kamilla Larsen,Taru Elfving y Michy Marxuach).

With posters by:  Adrián Flores, Ernesto Pujol, Daniasa Curbelo, Jenny Perlin, Runo Largomarsino, Ramiro Chaves, Chaveli Sifre, Nikolina Ställborn, Gala Berger, Band of weeds, Diego del Pozo Barriuso, Alia Farid, Karla Claudio-Betancourt, Nesta, MitiMiti, Lotta Petronela, Eliana Otta, Kristine Strømberg, Alana Iturralde, TVGOV, Mai Ulrikka Sydendal, Sarah Hamilton, Blockadia Tiesfee, Galas Porras Kim, IC-98, FRAUD,  Ela Spalding, Mai Ulrikka Sydendal, Ensayos and more.

With work from the collection of TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes Jorge González, Walter Marchietti, Esperanza D’Ors, María Belén Morales, José Ramon Anda, Martín Chirino, Eusebio Sempere, Joaquin Rubio Camín, Stipo Pranyko, Andreu Alfaro, Aurelia Muñoz, José Luis Fajardo, Gonzalo González y José Herrera.

Esta exposición contiene una capa sonora de múltiples piezas que pueden acceder con sus celulares. Recomendamos que la visiten con sus auriculares.

On July 3 there will be a screening of “Con Con” by Cecilia Vicuña (Documentary, 54 min, 2010)

This exhibition aims to unravel how in a homogenized and geographically dispersed world, wills and support structures can help us combine experiences, objects, ideas, subjectivities, references and techniques. It responds to the urgency of our present, but also to the possibility of an encounter that is increasingly threatened. This toxic disagreement is not only current, but has been part of a strategy of fragmentation within the capitalist system in which we live. One of the axes of this project is to form some notions of how things come together and talk about what we are doing to direct ways of life that share spaces of health and regeneration instead of destruction. In the background, the question resounds: How does generosity and complicity arise between a multiplicity of processes, between beings known or to be known to be able to sing together urgencies and lead us to the celebration? What do we share, how do we prepare and nurture? We transform ourselves to listen to the signals and continue to open portals, connectors for a conversation with the forest and, in this way, learn together ways
for a transition of planetary solidarity and protection of life.

This space can be described as a series of connecting bridges and confabulations that spill over from the surface to light paths to the deep ocean. These are wills that catapult present conversations of past relationships–and during the exhibition process these will continue to add voices and participation. It is an invitation to constellate in a conscious and generous way communicators of realities, beings, questions, practices and possible solutions while we continue to walk, organize, and transfer the references and knowledge of silenced beings so that together they accompany us in the emancipation and restitution towards solidarity. Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi defined it as that conspiracy that precisely means “breathing together”.

Society as a Whole @ Kunsternes Hus, Oslo

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Contributed by Randi Nygård

On Hovedøya, an island in Oslo, Norway, a group of 12 people met and wrote poetic laws for a better future. Through quick and playful writing exercises led by the poet Marte Huke we examined our thoughts and our relationships with the environment. Then Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde, professor of law at the University of Oslo, joined us and discussed our texts in the context of environmental law through the ages.

We talked about the relationship between poetry and law, between abstract rules and poetic meetings. Whose voices will be heard in the laws of the future? How can we represent other lifeforms in our language?

The workshop was part of “The Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole”, a series of interdisciplinary events have been named after section 2 of the Norwegian Marine Resources Act. The project was organized by Randi Nygård, Geir Tore Holm and Søssa Jørgensen at Kunstnernes Hus, Norway in 2019-21. It related to the law not only with the usual legal definitions but also with a more poetic and fundamental approach. It examined different ideas about the environment and our role in nature, our management of natural resources, responsibilities, world views, language, and values.

The poetic laws that the group produced during the workshop are below: 

The death of a plant or an animal shall breathe life into new creatures.
But before climate change turns into a dead, dry branch, the humans must see soul in what is alive and hear the voices of the animals.

When plants and animals are stepped upon,
When poisonous rain destroys seeds and sprouts,
When the sun burns the community away,
When the air becomes too heavy to carry for all of us,
When climate change feels like cold glue that does not let go of the fingers,
We must step out of time
And then the billowing threatening dark and unknown sea will take over.

The living growth space of the universe should never be invaded.

The differences that exist between living beings do not give us sovereignty, but obligation.

Anything that joins something shall be able to depart from everything.

The freedom to dive to 10-meters requires intimate feelings for the fjord.

All living beings carry the right to the horizon.

The assessment of equal life, lived life, and the justified existence of the coming life, at all times, is considered a prerequisite for solving problems of all possible sorts.

During the most serious consequence of climate change, when it becomes unbearable here and the grief becomes too heavy to bear, there must be joy. There is joy in it. In all. Do not forget it. Death is not a heavy burden. If unconsciousness is a rule, it must also be allowed to be vanishingly small. And when it’s too much, the amount is not crucial.

En Hovedøya, una isla en Oslo, Noruega, un grupo de 12 personas se reunió y escribió leyes poéticas para un futuro mejor. A través de ejercicios de escritura rápidos y lúdicos dirigidos por el poeta Marte Huke examinamos nuestros pensamientos y nuestras relaciones con el entorno. Luego, Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde, profesor de derecho en la Universidad de Oslo, se unió a nosotros y discutió nuestros textos en el contexto del derecho ambiental a través de los tiempos.

Hablamos de la relación entre poesía y derecho, entre reglas abstractas y encuentros poéticos. ¿Las voces de quién se escucharán en las leyes del futuro? ¿Cómo podemos representar otras formas de vida en nuestro idioma?

El taller fue parte de “Los recursos marinos vivos silvestres pertenecen a la sociedad en su conjunto”, una serie de eventos interdisciplinarios que recibieron el nombre de la sección 2 de la Ley de recursos marinos de Noruega. El proyecto fue organizado por Randi Nygård, Geir Tore Holm y Søssa Jørgensen en  Kunstnernes Hus, Noruega en 2019-21. Se relaciona con el derecho no sólo con las definiciones jurídicas habituales, sino también con un enfoque más poético y fundamental. Examinó diferentes ideas sobre el medio ambiente y nuestro papel en la naturaleza, nuestra gestión de los recursos naturales, responsabilidades, visiones del mundo, lenguaje y valores.

Las leyes poéticas que el grupo produjo durante el taller son las siguientes:

La muerte de una planta o de un animal dará vida a nuevas criaturas.
Pero antes de que el cambio climático se convierta en una rama seca y muerta, los humanos deben ver el alma en lo que está vivo y escuchar las voces de los animales.

Cuando se pisan plantas y animales,
Cuando la lluvia venenosa destruye semillas y brotes,
Cuando el sol quema la comunidad,
Cuando el aire se vuelve demasiado pesado para todos nosotros,
Cuando el cambio climático se siente como pegamento frío que no se suelta de los dedos,
Debemos salir del tiempo
Y luego el ondulante mar oscuro y desconocido se hará cargo.

El espacio de crecimiento vivo del universo nunca debe ser invadido.

Las diferencias que existen entre los seres vivos no nos dan soberanía, sino obligación.

Cualquier cosa que se una a algo podrá separarse de todo.

La libertad de bucear a 10 metros requiere sentimientos íntimos por el fiordo.

Todos los seres vivos llevan el derecho al horizonte.

La evaluación de la vida igual, la vida vivida y la existencia justificada de la vida venidera, en todo momento, se considera un requisito previo para resolver problemas de todo tipo posible.

Durante la consecuencia más grave del cambio climático, cuando se vuelve insoportable aquí y el dolor se vuelve demasiado pesado para soportarlo, debe haber alegría. Hay alegría en ello. Ahí. No lo olvides. La muerte no es una carga pesada. Si la inconsciencia es una regla, también se debe permitir que sea extremadamente pequeña. Y cuando es demasiado, la cantidad no es crucial.

Magnus Holmen, Signe Liden, Kjersti Vetterstad, Aslaug Nygård, Yngvild Færøy, Søssa Jørgensen, Geir Tore Holm and Randi Nygård. contributed to the poems. The project was supported by Fritt Ord and Arts Council Norway.

Odas a la turbera

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Ensayos invited participants of the Binational Patagonian Peatlands Seminar to contribute to Odes to the Peat bog, a poetic archive that compiles 100 word odes in praise the peatlands of Patagonia. Peat bog specialists, artists and Selk’man activists from Chile and Argentina chose microorganisms, flora, invertebrates, minerals, gases, molecular processes and ancestors to sing their praises to.

Poems were included in the project ‘Una turba’ for the exhibition Para que haya fiesta tiene que danzar el bosque, (For there to be a party, the forest has to dance) at Tenerife espacio de las artes in July 2021.

Scroll down to read the odes.

Ensayos invitó a participantes del Seminario Binacional de Turberas de Patagonia a contribuir a Odas a la Turbera, un archivo poético que busca celebrar en no más de 100 palabras la biodiversidad de las turberas. Especialistas del mundo de la conservación, artistas, y activistas Selk’nam eligieron microorganismos, flora microscópica, invertebrados, minerales, gases, procesos moleculares y ancestros para cantarles sus alabanzas.

Los poemas se incluyeron en el proyecto ‘Una turba’ para la exposición Para que haya fiesta tiene que danzar el bosque en Tenerife espacio de las artes en julio de 2021.

Desplazarse hacia abajo para leerlas.

Museo de la democracia at nGbK, Berlin

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Distancia, the more-than-human web series created by Carolina Saquel and Camila Marmabio as part of Ensayo #3 is included in the group exhibition museo de la democracia at neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK) in Berlin, Germany. Carolina Saquel will present an online screening and talk on June 1, 2021.

Exhibition and public program
Exhibition dates: Saturday 17 April 2021 – Sunday 13 June 2021
Address: nGbK, Oranienstraße 25, 10999 Berlin
Opening times: Thursday to Sunday, 12 noon to 6 p.m.
Language(s): Spanish, German, English
Admission: free
Access: The exhibition can be visited only after prior registration and presentation of a certified negative test result on a daily basis (test-to-go.berlin)
Organizer: neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst

Distancia, la serie web más que humana creada por Carolina Saquel y Camila Marmabio como parte de Ensayo #3 se incluye en la exposición colectiva museo de la democracia en neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK) en Berlín, Alemania. Carolina Saquel presentará una proyección y charla en línea el 1 de junio de 2021.

Exposición y programa público
Fechas de exposición: sábado 17 de abril de 2021 – domingo 13 de junio de 2021
Dirección: nGbK, Oranienstraße 25, 10999 Berlín
Horario: de jueves a domingo, de 12 a 18h. 
Lenguaje(s): Español, alemán e inglés
Admisión libre
Acceso: La exposición se puede visitar solo después de la inscripción previa y la presentación de un resultado de prueba negativo certificado diariamente (test-to-go.berlin) certified negative test result on a daily basis (test-to-go.berlin)
Organizador: neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst

Phase Transistions: Webinar with Nomad MFA

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To celebrate the launch of Hydrofeminist METitations Episode 4: Phase Transitions Podcast, which was created by Nomad Interdisciplinary MFA students, Nomad MFA hosted webinar on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2020 at 1pm (EST), which was open to the public. Christy Gast and Camila Marambio of Ensayos and Nomad MFA students Julie Chen, Kathryn Cooke, Arnethia Douglass, Aiyesha Ghani, Katie Grove, Monica Kapoor, Roberta Trentin, and Mauricio Vargas as they presented the project through a series of actions and questions. Carol Padberg, Director of the Nomad Interdisciplinary MFA program, moderated.

Para celebrar el lanzamiento de Hydrofeminist METitations Episode 4: Phase Transitions Podcast, que fue creado por estudiantes de Nomad Interdisciplinario MFA, Nomad MFA organizó un seminario web el miércoles 2 de diciembre de 2020 a la 1 p. m. (EST), que estuvo abierto al público. Christy Gast y Camila Marambio de Ensayos y los estudiantes de Nomad MFA Julie Chen, Kathryn Cooke, Arnethia Douglass, Aiyesha Ghani, Katie Grove, Monica Kapoor, Roberta Trentin y Mauricio Vargas presentaron el proyecto a través de una serie de acciones y preguntas. Moderó Carol Padberg, directora del programa MFA interdisciplinario Nomad.

Launch event for MEANDER International Platform

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Ensayos is part of the launch event of MEANDER International Platform, a web platform where members of four initiatives – MEANDER Society for Ecological Thinking and Artistic Practice (NO/DK), Ensayos (CL/ FR/ US /AU), Instituto Procomum (BR) and ODD (RO/IN) – situated in different parts of the world, come together to exchange ideas and questions regarding our relations to our environments and fellow life forms.

The event will stream on MEANDER’s YouTube channel. A global audience is invited to follow an 8 hour long program, which will be broadcasting from 4 different time zones.

The program will start with an introduction from MEANDER at the artist run space Tenthaus in Oslo, which is hosting the event in Norway. Later on, Cristina Bogdan will present her work with ODD and stream the short film 360 Degrees. A View from Romania.

A radio laboratory action by Jasmina Al-Qaisi and Ralf Wendt, proposed by ODD, will be transmitted from the live radio lab and studio of ‘Anybody out there?!’ 100 years of Radio in Germany, D21 Gallery, Leipzig (DE).

Students from the Nomad MFA (Interdisciplinary Master of Fine Arts) at the University of Hartford, Connecticut, led by artists Christy Gast (US) and Camila Marambio (CL), will present their podcast Hydrofeminist METitations # 4: Phase Transitions.

Throughout the day, the four collectives will share scores and responses to scores live. The program involves cooking and sharing a meal. A selection of music by Vera Dvale (NO) will be streamed.

Timings of the event:
8 am – 4 pm in New York
10 am – 6 pm in Santos/ Santiago de Chile
2 pm – 10 pm in Oslo/ Copenhagen/ Leipzig/ Paris
3 pm – 11 pm in Bucharest
6:30 pm – 2:30 am (+1) in Guwahati

Ensayos es parte del evento de lanzamiento de MEANDER International Platform, una plataforma web en la que participan miembros de cuatro iniciativas: MEANDER Society for Ecological Thinking and Artistic Practice (NO/DK), Ensayos (CL/ FR/ US /AU), Instituto Procomum (BR) ) y ODD (RO/IN) – situados en diferentes partes del mundo, se reúnen para intercambiar ideas y preguntas sobre nuestras relaciones con nuestros entornos y otras formas de vida.

El evento se transmitirá en el canal de YouTube de MEANDER. Se invita a una audiencia global a seguir un programa de 8 horas de duración, que se transmitirá desde 4 zonas horarias diferentes.

El programa comenzará con una presentación de MEANDER en el espacio dirigido por artistas Tenthaus en Oslo, que albergará el evento en Noruega. Posteriormente, Cristina Bogdan presentará su trabajo con ODD y transmitirá el cortometraje 360 ​​Grados. Una vista desde Rumania.

Una acción de laboratorio de radio de Jasmina Al-Qaisi y Ralf Wendt, propuesta por ODD, se transmitirá desde el laboratorio de radio en vivo y el estudio de ‘¿Alguien por ahí?!’ 100 años de radio en Alemania, Galería D21, Leipzig (DE).

Alumnas del the Nomad MFA (Master Interdisciplinario en Bellas Artes) de la Universidad de Hartford, Connecticut, dirigidas por las artistas Christy Gast (US) y Camila Marambio (CL), presentarán su podcast Hydrofeminist METitations # 4: Phase Transitions.

A lo largo del día, los cuatro colectivos compartirán partituras y respuestas a partituras en directo. El programa consiste en cocinar y compartir una comida. Se transmitirá una selección de música de Vera Dvale (NO).

Horarios del evento:
8 am – 4 pm en Nueva York
10 am – 6 pm en Santos/Santiago de Chile
14:00 – 22:00 en Oslo/ Copenhague/ Leipzig/ París
15:00 – 23:00 en Bucarest
6:30 pm – 2:30 am (+1) en Guwahati

Hydrofeminist METitations # 4: Phase Transitions

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Hydrofeminist METitations is a listening series brought to you by Ensayos. This episode was created with students from the Nomad MFA program at the University of Hartford’s Hartford Art School. The course was taught by Christy Gast and Camila Marambio with technical units taught by sound artist Ariel Bustamante and radio journalist Catalina Jaramillo.

Episode 4: Phase Transitions

Coastal Curriculum is one of Ensayos’ ongoing projects. It’s dedicated to conserving and caring for the sea and the coastline. Ensayos uses pedagogy to give form to these issues–through teaching, storytelling, artmaking and songs. 

Episode four was created with fine art graduate students from the Nomad MFA, an interdisciplinary MFA dedicated to regenerative culture, hosted by the University of Hartford. Ensayistas Camila Marambio and Christy Gast asked the students to think “with” water as they developed these segments. 

This episode was produced during a course in the Nomad Interdisciplinary MFA. Students in this program live all over the world, and these stories come from those locations. 

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, students could not meet in person or access professional recording studios. They recorded with their phones and digital recorders. We consider these to be artifacts of the learning process, and also of the imperfect time in which we are living and working.

Act One: The Buried Myth of The Park River

Hartford, Connecticut is a city that lies on the highway between New York and Boston. Hidden beneath the urban bustle, lies the Park River. NOMAD’s Julie Chen curiosity about the motives to channelize and bury Park River lead her to capture these words of local historian Kerri Provost. Join us on a hike with Kerri along what’s left exposed of Hartford’s Park River, to the tunnel that takes it underground.

Hartford, Connecticut is a city that lies on the highway between New York and Boston. Hidden beneath the urban bustle, lies the Park River. Artist Julie Chen was curious about the motives that led the city to channelize and bury the river under concrete, so she asked local historian Kerri Provost to meet her for a hike along the riverbank. They walked and talked along the exposed section of the Park River, and into the tunnel that takes it underground. Kerri tells us how it happened.

ACT Two: Sweet Waters

How do we care for our waters and where do we obtain guidance for that caring? 

Arnethia Douglass shares the Yoruba cultural teachings, a religious practice that originated with the ancient people of West Africa. Arnethia tells of the forced diaspora of West African peoples. As a surviving descendent, she shares her history and spiritual connection to the faith of her ancestors. 

Arnethia tells the Yoruba Creation story. She speaks of Oschun and Yemoja, two of many spiritual teachers, known as Orishas. Yemoja and Oschun, Yemoja the mother of seven oceans, around the world, and Oschun the goddess of rivers, lakes and fertility.

Kathryn Cooke’s listening and editing is elemental to the storytelling in this piece. Arnetha’s story offers a pathway of awareness to the lands and waters which sustain the world.

Act Three: Spaceship Earth–A single droplet of water

Visionary architect Buckminster Fuller wrote: “Spaceship Earth was so extraordinarily well invented and designed that to our knowledge humans have been on board it for two million years not even knowing that they were on board a ship.”

Spaceship Earth is like one droplet of water hurtling through infinite space. Artists Katie Grove and Aiyesha Ghani reflect on states of being… and what water and humans might become in the distant future. 

What phase of transition is this ship hurtling towards? Liquid, gas, solid, or the quantum state of water? Pressure, temperature, environment, experiments on the quantum level. All of these elements and more are initiators into states of infinite possibility.  And if we are to think to the far, far future we may see a time when we have become something we can not yet fathom.

Act Four: A Deep Dive

In these uncertain times we may feel like fish out of water, gasping for air. But we can find our way back to sea.  Artists Roberta Trentin and Monica Kapoor choose to breathe through the un-predict-ability. The rhythm of breath mirrors the waves of the ocean.  

Free divers rely on breath control, and trust, to navigate external pressure. This somatic exercise takes a cue from them, and invites us on a deep dive. 

Trust your guide’s voice as she leads you on an inner aquatic journey.  

Act Five: Probability Waves–A song by Mauricio Vargas

Dissonant particles bounce between dimensions in the expanse of space. Time dilates to a halt. A fateful spark releases an oxygen atom from its kin…simultaneously bonding it with two hydrogens. 

The abandoned oxygen oscillates in search of balance, turning a molecule into a droplet… a droplet into a puddle… and a puddle… into a flowing stream. Chaos dissipates… and frequencies align. 

A song ..forms. 

A dance… ensues.

About Hydrofeminist METitations

Gender studies scholar Astrida Neimanis coined the term “hydrofeminism” to bring together feminist, queer, and ecological sensibilities.* In her words, hydrofeminism begins “one’s ethics and politics from the realization that we are mostly made of water…refusing a separation between nature and culture, between an environment ‘out there’ and a human subject ‘in here.’”

When Ensayos collaborated with Neimanis in 2017, Camila Marambio formulated “METitation” to emphasize Ensayos’ material-somatic research that considers molecular and global relationships in the physical world.** MET is an acronym for Mechanical Electrical Transduction, a sensory mechanism through which cells convert mechanical stimuli into electro-chemical activity. MET accounts for senses of hearing, balance, and touch; hair cells in the inner ear convert the stimuli of drum vibrations, water dropping in the sink, a crashing wave, and voice into electro-chemical signals received by the brain. This transformation is the sense of hearing.

*Astrida Neimanis, “Hydrofeminism: or on Becoming a Body of Water,” in Undutiful Daughters: New Directions in Feminist Thought and Practice, ed. Henriette Dr. Gunkel, Chrysanthi Nigianni, and Fanny Dr. Soderback (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

**“Hydrofeminist METitaions” was first used by Ensayos to describe a live sounding experiment performed by Neimanis, Marambio, Sarita Gálvez, and Karolin Tampere and presented as part of the Liquid Architecture program, “Negative Volumes: Body Languages” held at West Space, Naarm/Melbourne, on October 14th, 2017.

……

Hydrofeminist METitations episode four, Phase Transitions, was produced by Ensayos and Masters of Fine Arts students in the Nomad MFA at the University of Hartford’s Hartford Art School. This episode was created by Julie Chen, Kathryn Cooke, Arnethia Douglass, Aiyesha Ghani, Katie Grove, Monica Kapoor, Roberta Trentin, Mauricio Vargas and Catalina Jaramillo. It was produced by Christy Gast and Camila Marambio. Special thanks to Kerri Provost, Linda Martini, Luigi Murphy and Shawn DeRyder, Dexter Drayton, Joyce Ramsey, Logan Thackray, Teri Hayes, InspectorJ, Arc Voyager 25, MusOpen, Bloom’s creek, Spring Creek, Park River, the Sea of Sardinia,  and the Pacific Ocean. 

This episode was mixed and mastered by Ariel Bustamante and Pablo Thiermann. Original music is by Mauricio Vargas and Vera Dvale.

 “We are all bodies of water” are the wise words of Astrida Neimanis.

Creative Commons attributions:

“Ambience, Seaside Waves, Close, A.wav”, “Splash, Jumping, A.wav”  by InspectorJ (www.jshaw.co.uk) of Freesound.org


Additional sound effects from: https://www.zapsplat.com, Free Sounds Library, soundsnap.com, Frédéric Chopin Nocturnes performed by Gleb Ivanov, and Aya Higuchi from MusOpen.org.

Oxygen and Hydrogen sounds by youtube user voyager360360 (Arc Voyager 25) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBlgm26wQo8

This episode is brought to you with support from the Nomad MFA:

METitaciones hidrofeministas es una serie de escuchas presentada por Ensayos. Este episodio fue creado con estudiantes del programa Nomad MFA en la Escuela de Arte Hartford de la Universidad de Hartford. El curso estuvo a cargo de Christy Gast y Camila Marambio con unidades técnicas impartidas por el artista sonoro Ariel Bustamante y la periodista radial Catalina Jaramillo.

Episodio 4: Transiciones de fase

El Coastal Curriculum es uno de los proyectos en curso de Ensayos. Se dedica a la conservación y cuidado del mar y del litoral. Ensayos utiliza la pedagogía para dar forma a estos temas, a través de la enseñanza, la narración de cuentos, la creación artística y las canciones.

El episodio cuatro fue creado con estudiantes graduados de bellas artes de Nomad MFA, un MFA interdisciplinario dedicado a la cultura regenerativa, organizado por la Universidad de Hartford. Las ensayistas Camila Marambio y Christy Gast pidieron a los estudiantes que pensaran “con” agua mientras desarrollaban estos segmentos.

Este episodio fue producido durante un curso en el MFA Interdisciplinario Nómada. Los estudiantes de este programa viven en todo el mundo y estas historias provienen de esos lugares.

Debido a la pandemia de coronavirus, los estudiantes no pudieron reunirse en persona ni acceder a estudios de grabación profesionales. Grabaron con sus teléfonos y grabadoras digitales. Consideramos que estos son artefactos del proceso de aprendizaje, y también del tiempo imperfecto en el que estamos viviendo y trabajando.

Acto uno: El mito enterrado del río Park

Hartford, Connecticut es una ciudad que se encuentra en la carretera entre Nueva York y Boston. Escondido bajo el bullicio urbano, se encuentra el río Park. La curiosidad de Julie Chen de NOMAD sobre los motivos para canalizar y enterrar Park River la llevó a capturar estas palabras de la historiadora local Kerri Provost. Únase a nosotros en una caminata con Kerri a lo largo de lo que queda expuesto del río Park de Hartford, hasta el túnel que lo lleva bajo tierra.

Hartford, Connecticut es una ciudad que se encuentra en la carretera entre Nueva York y Boston. Escondido bajo el bullicio urbano, se encuentra el río Park. La artista Julie Chen tenía curiosidad acerca de los motivos que llevaron a la ciudad a canalizar y enterrar el río bajo cemento, por lo que le pidió a la historiadora local Kerri Provost que la encontrara para hacer una caminata por la orilla del río. Caminaron y hablaron a lo largo de la sección expuesta del río Park y hacia el túnel que lo lleva bajo tierra. Kerri nos cuenta cómo sucedió.

Acto dos: Aguas dulces

¿Cómo cuidamos nuestras aguas y dónde obtenemos orientación para ese cuidado?

Arnethia Douglass comparte las enseñanzas culturales yoruba, una práctica religiosa que se originó con los pueblos antiguos de África Occidental. Arnethia habla de la diáspora forzada de los pueblos de África occidental. Como descendiente sobreviviente, comparte su historia y conexión espiritual con la fe de sus antepasados.

Arnethia cuenta la historia de la creación yoruba. Ella habla de Oschun y Yemoja, dos de muchos maestros espirituales, conocidos como Orishas. Yemoja y Oschun, Yemoja la madre de los siete océanos, alrededor del mundo, y Oschun la diosa de los ríos, lagos y la fertilidad.

La escucha y la edición de Kathryn Cooke son elementales para la narración de esta pieza. La historia de Arnetha ofrece un camino de conciencia hacia las tierras y aguas que sustentan el mundo.

Acto tres: nave espacial Tierra: una sola gota de agua

El visionario arquitecto Buckminster Fuller escribió: “La nave espacial Tierra fue inventada y diseñada tan extraordinariamente bien que, hasta donde sabemos, los humanos han estado a bordo durante dos millones de años sin siquiera saber que estaban a bordo de una nave”.

La nave espacial Tierra es como una gota de agua que se precipita a través del espacio infinito. Las artistas Katie Grove y Aiyesha Ghani reflexionan sobre los estados del ser… y lo que el agua y los humanos podrían llegar a ser en un futuro lejano.

¿Hacia qué fase de transición se dirige este barco? ¿Líquido, gaseoso, sólido o el estado cuántico del agua? Presión, temperatura, ambiente, experimentos a nivel cuántico. Todos estos elementos y más son iniciadores en estados de posibilidad infinita. Y si vamos a pensar en el futuro lejano, podemos ver un momento en el que nos hemos convertido en algo que aún no podemos comprender.

Cuarto Acto: Una Inmersión Profunda

En estos tiempos inciertos, podemos sentirnos como peces fuera del agua, sin aliento. Pero podemos encontrar nuestro camino de regreso al mar. Las artistas Roberta Trentin y Monica Kapoor eligen respirar a través de la imprevisibilidad. El ritmo de la respiración refleja las olas del océano.

Los buzos libres confían en el control de la respiración y la confianza para navegar la presión externa. Este ejercicio somático se inspira en ellos y nos invita a una inmersión profunda.

Confía en la voz de tu guía mientras te guía en un viaje acuático interior.

Quinto Acto: Probability Waves–Una canción de Mauricio Vargas

Partículas disonantes rebotan entre dimensiones en la extensión del espacio. El tiempo se dilata hasta detenerse. Una chispa fatídica libera un átomo de oxígeno de sus congéneres… uniéndolo simultáneamente con dos hidrógenos.

El oxígeno abandonado oscila en busca de equilibrio, convirtiendo una molécula en una gota… una gota en un charco… y un charco… en una corriente que fluye. El caos se disipa… y las frecuencias se alinean.

Una canción ..formas.

Un baile… se produce.

Acerca de las METitaciones Hidrofeministas

La académica de estudios de género Astrida Neimanis acuñó el término “hidrofeminismo” para unir las sensibilidades feminista, queer y ecológica.* En sus palabras, el hidrofeminismo comienza “la ética y la política de uno a partir de la comprensión de que estamos hechos principalmente de agua… rechazando una separación entre la naturaleza y la cultura, entre un ambiente ‘allá afuera’ y un sujeto humano ‘aquí adentro’”.

Cuando Ensayos colaboró ​​con Neimanis en 2017, Camila Marambio formuló “METitation” para enfatizar la investigación material-somática de Ensayos que considera las relaciones moleculares y globales en el mundo físico. ** MET es un acrónimo de Mechanical Electrical Transduction, un mecanismo sensorial a través del cual las células convertir estímulos mecánicos en actividad electroquímica. MET da cuenta de los sentidos del oído, el equilibrio y el tacto; Las células ciliadas en el oído interno convierten los estímulos de las vibraciones del tambor, el agua que cae en el fregadero, una ola rompiendo y la voz en señales electroquímicas recibidas por el cerebro. Esta transformación es el sentido del oído.

*Astrida Neimanis, “Hydrofeminism: or on Becoming a Body of Water,” en Undutiful Daughters: New Directions in Feminist Thought and Practice, ed. Henriette Dr. Gunkel, Chrysanthi Nigianni y Fanny Dr. Soderback (Nueva York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

**“Metaciones hidrofeministas” fue utilizado por primera vez por Ensayos para describir un experimento de sonido en vivo realizado por Neimanis, Marambio, Sarita Gálvez y Karolin Tampere y presentado como parte del programa Liquid Architecture, “Negative Volumes: Body Languages” realizado en West Space , Naarm/Melbourne, el 14 de octubre de 2017.

……

El episodio cuatro de Hydrofeminist METitations, Phase Transitions, fue producido por Ensayos y estudiantes de Maestría en Bellas Artes en Nomad MFA en la Escuela de Arte Hartford de la Universidad de Hartford. Este episodio fue creado por Julie Chen, Kathryn Cooke, Arnethia Douglass, Aiyesha Ghani, Katie Grove, Monica Kapoor, Roberta Trentin, Mauricio Vargas y Catalina Jaramillo. Fue producido por Christy Gast y Camila Marambio. Un agradecimiento especial a Kerri Provost, Linda Martini, Luigi Murphy y Shawn DeRyder, Dexter Drayton, Joyce Ramsey, Logan Thackray, Teri Hayes, InspectorJ, Arc Voyager 25, MusOpen, Bloom’s creek, Spring Creek, Park River, el Mar de Cerdeña y el océano Pacífico.

Este episodio fue mezclado y masterizado por Ariel Bustamante y Pablo Thiermann. La música original es de Mauricio Vargas y Vera Dvale.

“Todos somos cuerpos de agua” son las sabias palabras de Astrida Neimanis.

Atribuciones de Creative Commons:

“Ambience, Seaside Waves, Close, A.wav”, “Splash, Jumping, A.wav” por InspectorJ (www.jshaw.co.uk) de Freesound.org

Efectos de sonido adicionales de: https://www.zapsplat.com, Free Sounds Library, soundsnap.com, Frédéric Chopin Nocturnes interpretados por Gleb Ivanov y Aya Higuchi  de MusOpen.org.

Sonidos de oxígeno e hidrógeno del usuario de YouTube  voyager360360  (Arc Voyager 25)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBlgm26wQo8

Este episodio se presenta con el apoyo de Nomad MFA:

Watch Cucú and Her Fishes / Cucú y sus pececillos 

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New Museum artists in residence Ensayos premiered Act I of their experimental ecofeminist drama Cucú and Her Fishes on September 1, 2020 at 6AM, 2PM, and 8PM EST.

The 2PM screening was followed by a Q&A with Ensayos cast members.

The play begins at a country house partially submerged in a peat bog. As a group of women plan a fundraising scheme for ocean advocacy, debates about ecological justice and interspecies ethics escalate. The actions and conversations are drawn from Ensayos’ “undisciplined” fieldwork, which incorporates creative cross-disciplinary research of pressing ecological issues at the world’s end. Ensayos practitioners are not professional actors; they are a group of artists, scientists, and activists who collaborate on eco-cultural inquiries. Ensayos, in English, means rehearsals. Queering each other’s research methodologies, Ensayistas navigate the complex tasks of ecological conservation through playful, performative experiments in Tierra del Fuego, Norway, Eastern Australia, and New York.

Cucú and Her Fishes is inspired by Fefu and Her Friends (1977), a feminist work by Cuban-born American avant-garde director and playwright María Irene Fornés (1930 – 2018). In Fornés’ play, the audience moves through a deconstructed stage set and experiences a “plotless” narrative in which characters debate gender roles, complex kinships, and cooperative action. Camila Marambio and Christy Gast proposed the re-imagining of this piece to Ensayistas as a way to reflect on their own performance and further entwine their transdisciplinary eco-cultural ethics. Nine Ensayistas began meeting online for weekly rehearsals in March 2020, drawing on compositional and somatic exercises including Fornés’ generative writing, Cote Junemann’s canalizations, and Camila Marambio’s METitative prompts to develop characters and dialogue. Prior to global quarantine measures due to Covid-19, Ensayos had conceived Cucú and Her Fishes as a project that would be developed and performed in the physical space of the New Museum with both in-person and remote participation. After a decade of international collaboration, the process of shifting the performance to virtual space during a pandemic reaffirmed Ensayos’ commitment to an ethic of care across distance and to transgressing humanness.

Ensayos is a collective research practice initiated on the archipelago of Tierra del Fuego in 2010 that brings together artists, scientists, and locals to exercise speculative and emergent forms of eco-cultural ethics. Ensayos has presented work in exhibitions and performances at the Kadist Art Foundation, Paris; the Institute for Art and Olfaction, Los Angeles; Bruce High Quality Foundation, New York; Puerto de Ideas, Valparaíso, CL; Festival Cielos del Infinito, Puerto Williams, CL; Kurant, Tromsø, NO; Gertrude Contemporary, Naarm/Melbourne, AU; and The 8th Floor Gallery, New York.

Credits

Cucú and Her Fishes (Act 1) was produced by Ensayos and the New Museum, New York, and screened on September 1, 2020 by the New Museum. Directed by Camila Marambio in collaboration with Christy Gast. Set design by Christy Gast with input from cast members. Edited by Christy Gast. Post-production by Darío Ordenes and Camila Marambio. Sound Mix by Ariel Bustamante with collaborations by Christy Gast and Karolin Tampere. Sound Master by Pablo Thierman. Script translation by Manuela Baldovino. Special thanks to Fernanda Olivares Molina, Julian Donas Milstein, Amaara Raheem, Derek Wright, Emily Mello and Andrew An Westover.

Script was written by cast members based on Fefu and her Friends by María Irene Fornés

Cucú: Bárbara Saavedra (Santiago, Chile)
Cindy: Carolina Saquel (Paris, France)
Christina: Caitlin Franzmann (Brisbane, Australia)
Julia: Hema’ny Molina (Santiago, Chile)
Ema: Carla Macchiavello (Santiago, Chile)
Paula: Denise Milstein (New York, New York)
Su: Christy Gast (Amenia, New York)
Cecilia: Randi Nygård (Oslo, Norway)
María Irene: Camila Marambio (Papudo, Chile)

Act I was written and rehearsed during the first six months of 2020. Cast members met weekly online at Wednesdays at 8am EST, 2pm CEST, 10pm GMT. Ensayistas will develop and perform Acts 2 and 3 in 2021.

Las artistas en residencia del New Museum, Ensayos, estrenaron el primer acto de su drama ecofeminista experimental Cucú y Sus Pececillos el 1ro de Septiembre 2020 a las 6AM, 2PM, y 8PM EST.  La proyección de las 2PM fue precedida por una sesión de preguntas y respuesta junto a las Ensayistas participantes de la obra.

La obra comienza en una casa de campo que está parcialmente sumergida en una turbera. Con un grupo de mujeres que planifica una recaudación de fondos en defensa de los océanos, debatiendo sobre justicia ecológica y escalas éticas interespecie. Las acciones y conversaciones trazadas desde el trabajo en terreno “indisciplinado” de Ensayos, que incorpora creativamente investigación interdisciplinaria de problemáticas ecológicas urgentes del fin del mundo. Las practicantes de Ensayos no son actrices profesionales; ellas son un grupo de artistas, científicas y activistas que colaboran en estas indagaciones eco-culturales. Ensayos, en Inglés, significa rehearsals. Extrañamente las otras metodologías de investigación, las ensayistas navegan la compleja tarea de la conservación ecológica a través de lo lúdico, la experiencia performática en Tierra del Fuego, Noruega, el Este de  Australia y Nueva York. 

Cucú y Sus Peces está inspirada en Fefu y sus Peces (1977), un trabajo feminista de vanguardia de la directora y dramaturga de origen Cubano-Americano, María Irene Fornés (1930 – 2018). En la obra de Fornés, la audiencia se mueve a través de un escenario deconstruido, experienciando un cambio en la narrativa donde los personajes debaten sobre los roles de género, parentesco complejos y acción cooperativa. Camila Marambio y Christy Gast propusieron la reimaginación de estas piezas a las Ensayistas como una forma de reflejar sus propias actuaciones y entrelazando profundamente sus éticas eco-culturales transdisciplinarias. Nueve Ensayistas comenzaron a reunirse para ensayar semanalmente desde Marzo del 2020, ilustrando lo compositivo y ejercicios somáticos incluyendo la escritura generativa de Fornés, la canalización de Cote Junemann, las indicaciones METitativas de Camila Marambio para desarrollar los personajes y sus diálogos. Previamente a las medidas globales tomadas por el Covid-19, Ensayos había concebido Cucú y Sus Peces como un proyecto que iba a ser desarrollado y realizado en el espacio físico del New Museum de ambas maneras, con participación presencial y remota. Después de una década de colaboración internacional, el proceso de trasladar la actuación al espacio virtual durante la pandemia, reafirma el compromiso de Ensayos a través de la distancia de una cuidada ética y transgrediendo lo humano.

Ensayos en una práctica investigativa colectiva iniciada en el archipiélago de Tierra del Fuego en 2010 para reunir artistas, científicos y ejercicio especulativo de los lugareños, y formas emergentes de éticas eco-culturales. Ensayos ha presentado su trabajo en exhibiciones y performance en la Fundación de Arte Kadist, en París; El Instituto de Arte y del Olfato, Los Angeles; Bruce High Quality Foundation, Nueva York; Puerto de Ideal, Valparaíso, CL; Festival Cielos del Infinito, Puerto Williams, CL; Kurant, Tromsø, NO; Gertrude Contemporary, Naarm/Melbourne, AU; y la Galería 8th Floor, New York.

Créditos

Cucú y Sus Peces (Act 1) ha sido producida por Ensayos y el New Museum, Nueva York, y será proyectada el 1ro de Septiembre de 2020, por el New Museum. Dirigida por Camila Marambio en colaboración con Christy Gast. El set ha sido diseñado por Christy Gasta con aportes de las miembras del elenco. Editada por Christy Gast. Post-producida por Darío Ordenas y Camila Marambio. Mezcla de sonido por Ariel Bustamante en colaboración con Christy Gast y Karolin Tampere. Masterización por Pablo Thierman. Transcripción de guión por Manuela Baldovino. Agradecimientos especiales a Fernanda Olivares Molina, Julian Donas Milstein, Amaara Raheem, Derek Wright, Emily Mello y Andrew An Westover.

El guión fue escrito por las miembras del elenco basadas en Fefú y Sus Peces de María Irene Fornés. 

Cucú: Bárbara Saavedra (Santiago, Chile)

Cindy: Carolina Saquel (Paris, France)

Christina: Caitlin Franzmann (Brisbane, Australia)

Julia: Hema’ny Molina (Santiago, Chile)

Ema: Carla Macchiavello (Santiago, Chile)

Paula: Denise Milstein (Harlem, New York)

Su: Christy Gast (Amenia, New York)

Cecilia: Randi Nygård (Oslo, Norway)

María Irene: Camila Marambio (Papudo, Chile)

El primer acto fue escrito y ensayado durante los primeros seis meses de 2020. El elenco se reunió semanalmente de manera online cada miércoles a las 8am EST, 2pm CEST, 10pm GMT. Las Ensayistas desarrollarán y actuarán los actos 2 y 3 en 2021.

Más allá del fin, Issue #3.5

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Publicado en agosto de 2020 con motivo de Ensayos: Passages, una residencia virtual en el New Museum en Nueva York. Descargar la versión en español aquí o la versión en inglés aquí.

Scroll down for the English version.

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Published in August of 2020 on the occasion of Ensayos: Passages, a virtual residency at the New Museum in New York.  Download English version here or Spanish version here.

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Fortunes of the Forest Divination Session @ New Museum

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Fortunes of the Forest: Divination, Dance, and Story is a livestreamed, participatory performance that incorporates ritual, plant knowledge, movement, listening, and response-ability. This program will take place on August 18 at 8PM, and is part of the digital residency “Ensayos: Passages.” Australian Ensayos collaborators Dr. C.F. Black, Amaara Raheem, and Caitlin Franzmann each bring unique interpretations to divination cards, which they will pull in response to concerns and questions gathered collectively from participants.

Caitlin Franzmann created the divination deck with collaborator Man Cheung’s botanical photographs of plants, rocks, and insects, all of which are found in Karawatha, an urban forest in Australia. One of a number of decks and guidebooks Franzmann has created, “Fortunes of the Forest” prompts associations with living entities, with whom humans share primeval genes, and considers how their ways of being on the planet can guide us. Indigenous legal scholar C.F. Black, PhD, will call the audience to contemplate deeper meaning from the cards based on her understanding of plant consciousness and story. In an ongoing collaboration with Franzmann, dancer Amaara Raheem creates movement scores responding to the cards; for this program, Raheem will invite online participants to join guided movements prompted by the reading.

Fortunes of the Forest: Divination, Dance, and Story, celebrates the launch of artists in residence Ensayos’ online periodical Más allá del fin / Beyond the End, issue #3.5, bilingual essays edited by Carla Macchiavello and Camila Marambio, with guest editor Helen Hughes. Franzmann and Dr. Black’s shared card readings are published in this issue.

This program is free and registration is required. Those who register by August 11, 2020, 5 PM EDT, are also invited to contribute a question to the collective reading. Register here.

Dr. C.F. Black (Gold Coast, Australia) is an intellectual explorer and a writer. Her intellectual training includes a PhD in Law, Griffith University, her Australia, Australian Aboriginal ancestry, and travels throughout Native America and other Indigenous worlds. Her academic writing includes A Mosaic of Indigenous Legal Thought: Legendary Tales and Other Writings (Routledge, 2017). Research and travel have shaped her understanding of how to interact with plant beings and other beings on the Earth in a lawful manner. Currently, Black is developing online courses to share this knowledge with the general public. She is also an artist and short story author and is currently developing her first play: “The Assassination of the Soul of a Nation.”

Caitlin Franzmann (Brisbane, Australia) is an artist who creates installations, performances, and social practice works that focus on place-based knowledge and clairsentience. Her work has been featured in exhibitions globally, including the National Gallery of Victoria, Naarm/Melbourne; Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; and Kyoto Art Centre, among others. Originally trained as an urban planner, she completed her Bachelor of Fine Art at Queensland College of Art in 2012.

Amaara Raheem (Black Range, Australia) is a Sri Lankan-born, Australian-grown dance artist who lived in London for fifteen years. She is now based in both Naarm/Melbourne and regional Victoria (Black Range) and is co-making a residential hub for reparative and speculative practices that investigate the blur between life, art, and climate. Currently completing a practice-led PhD at School of Architecture and Urban Design, RMIT University, Amaara’s practice intentionally crosses cultural, spatial, disciplinary, geographic, linguistic, and cosmic borders.

Accessibility Information:
This event will be live captioned.

 

New Listening Series: Hydrofeminist METitations Episodes 1, 2 & 3

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As part of our digital residency at the New Museum, Ensayos has launched three podcasts. Drawing from Ensayos’s transdisciplinary work, these podcasts focus on waters in different archipelagic regions, including Tierra del Fuego, New York, eastern Australia, and Norway. Journalist Catalina Jaramillo guides listeners through four acts that mirror different aspects of Ensayos’s field research: fiction, fact, somatic exercise, and care ethics. Each concludes with a song.

I. Hydrofeminist METitation: Eastern Australia: A lesson in water care drawn from a “creekulum” / A speculative mystery “The Bringers of the Viral Red Dust” / A somatic exercise in “Mangrove Tuning” / A sorrowful interview with an ichthyologist / A song about tiny crustaceans and microplastics

II. Hydrofeminist METitation: Norway: A glaciorhythmic audio collage from the Arctic/ On law and poetry/ Walk along the Holsbekken Creek leading to a canyon of controversies/ A rowing journey/ Song sung by farmed sea salmon

III. Hydrofeminist METitation: The Americas: Selk’nam know-what/ A wooden house is a ship in a bog/ A conversational road map through peatlands/ Olfactory exercise/ Seafaring song ¿’Onde va la lancha? (Where is the boat going?)

“A Planetary Expenditure”: Interview with Ensayos in MOMUS

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By Jarrett Earnest, August 6, 2020

The work of Ensayos – a strategically covert group of artists, poets, historians, biologists, lawyers, sociologists, ecologists, activists, policymakers, and local community members, around the globe – is extremely difficult to summarize. And that’s just the way they want it. Their commitment to cultural and ecological complexity often takes cover in a poetics of illegibility, utilizing tactics from feminist pedagogies and experimental theater. For the past decade, this group of loose-knit collaborators have been working at the intersections of ecology, anti-colonial politics, and speculative fiction in a number of archipelagos: beginning in the Fuegian Archipelago (Chile and Argentina) and soon spreading to sites in Norway, Australia, and New York City, building long-term relationships with specific landscapes and the people who live and work there, in ways that only occasionally become visible to the outside. In the process, Ensayos has developed its unique practice blending somatic exercises, audio-visual storytelling, and physical exhibitions, into hybrid forms they term “eco-fictions.”

An ongoing technique has been their use of quixotic “scores” enacted back and forth between artists and scientists. In Tierra del Fuego, for instance, Ensayos educated itself on the presence of beavers, which have been dubbed an “invasive species,” by giving human-scale beaver costumes to ecologists in order to film themselves in the landscape, and sending artists to do field research on scents used in territorial communication – all culminating in a project at the Institute for Art and Olfaction, in 2015.

Ensayos is currently making a rare artworld appearance as the inaugural “digital artists in residence” at the New Museum in New York. Originally planned as a physical residency on the museum’s fifth floor, the tactics Ensayos has developed enables a seamless transition into the digital space of the global pandemic. For ENSAYOS: PASSAGES, at the New Museum, the group rallied collaborators to co-write and rehearse a performative experiment, Cúcu and her Fishes, which will debut on September 1st, 2020. Crafted for the “theater” of Zoom, the livestream re-envisions Cuban-American playwright María Irene Fornés’s Fefu and Her Friends (1977), a play that follows a group of socialite philanthropists engaged in a fundraising scheme; their new version doubles as an actual fundraiser for peat bog conservation. Ensayos has also released three new podcasts titled “Hydrofeminist METitations,” each show led by a different group of ensayistas based in Norway, Australia, and the Americas. The collective is also premiering the second season of its fragmentary web series DISTANCIA, which follows the activists, scientists, and artists on the road in Tierra del Fuego, pursuing questions that belong in that archipelago.

In this conversation with Ensayos co-founders, theorist-curator Camila Marambio and artist-educator Christy Gast, we speak about what they’ve learned from their years of collaborating across the digital divide while staying rooted in the specifics of physical place, and well as the role – and limitations – of empathy in telling cross-cultural histories, following what they call “the ethics of the visitor.”

Read the full interview at at MOMUS.ca

Hydrofeminist METitations # 3: Americas

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Hydrofeminist METitations a listening series brought to you by Ensayos as a part of the digital residency at the New Museum of Contemporary Art.

Episode 3: the Americas — in Chile and in New York

In this episode we think with wetlands. We squish through them — in real life and in our imaginations. Preserving turberas, or peat bogs, in Tierra del Fuego, is a major concern of the Wildlife Conservation Society. We are collaborating with them on that mission.

The Wildlife Conservation Society is a New York-based NGO that manages a huge expanse of land on Tierra del Fuego. Contributors to this episode live in Santiago, Valdivia and Papudo, Chile, and in Amenia, New York. We work across North and South America–or from an Indigenous perspective, Turtle Island and Abya Yala. This requires time, translation and patience. We delight in the gaps, failures and excesses of this process. We experiment with lending each other our ears and our voices to create a chorus — many forms of naming the things that we love and care for.

Act One: Turba Tol / Heart of Peat

Hema’ny Molina is a Selk’nam writer, poet, craftswoman and grandmother.
She is the president of the Selk’nam Corporation Chile, which was formed five years ago. The Selk’nam people are one of four communities Indigenous to Tierra del Fuego. Her grandfather’s generation were the last Selk’nam people to live freely and practice their culture on the archipelago. He was removed from Tierra del Fuego as a young child, in the final chapter of a long cultural genocide.

The corporation Hema’ny directs gathers Selk’nam descendants who have maintained ancestral knowledge over the generations. They aim to dislodge the community from the stigma of “extinction.” The community celebrated a major success this past June. The Chilean House of Representatives approved the first step of the process that will legally recognize the Selk’nam as a living indigenous community.Hema’ny collaborates with Ensayos and the Wildlife Conservation Society to influence policies that protect her homeland. Let’s hear her heart-felt manifesto.

Act Two: My House Is a Ship Turned Upside-Down

Christy Gast is an artist who works in textiles, sculpture and performance. She is one of the founding members of Ensayos.

The Wildlife Conservation Society invited her to join their 7th Marine Expedition to the Admiralty Sound as an artist in residence a few years ago. She traveled with marine biologists and park rangers. The boat was their home and laboratory for 10 days. It was an intimate, sensorial research experience–typical of Ensayos.

In this piece, Christy wonders how field-based research can happen at home in the time of COVID? Throughout the piece you’ll hear echoes of “Onde va la lancha?” a folk song Christy learned from a sailor that asks, “Where is the boat going?” Let’s find out.

Act Three: What is a peat bog?

There are a lot of turberas, or peat bogs, in Karukinka Natural Park, in Tierra del Fuego. Dr. Bárbara Saavedra is the director of the Wildlife Conservation Society in Chile, which directs the Park. She is a biologist who specializes in ecology and conservation, and is a founding member of Ensayos. Dr. Saavedra advocates for peatland conservation, and has created a road map for how Chile should do this.

Christy Gast interviewed her to find out how it’s going.

Act Four: A Flavour for Peat

Can you imagine losing your sense of smell? That is one of the symptoms of COVID-19. Ensayos has explored the sense of smell in order to communicate with beavers in Tierra del Fuego. That’s right, we want to communicate with BEAVERS, using scent. Beavers are in danger in Tierra del Fuego. They flood forests and dig channels through peat bogs to make their homes. Beavers were brought to Tierra del Fuego by people, but now we say they don’t belong. The governments of Chile and Argentina believe that eradicating beavers will protect the ecosystem. Ensayos wondered what beavers had to say about that, so we followed their lead and developed a series of scents for an olfactory experiment. Did it work? The results were inconclusive. That’s ok…we are against utility.

Anyway, back to your nose. Camila Marambio, who founded Ensayos, will take us on a guided tour of the olfactory system. I encourage you to close your eyes and follow her voice–sniff your way into the inner wetlands of your body.

Act Five: “Onde va la lancha”

We sing songs. Folk songs, sea chanties, kids’ ditties, pop hits–anything to keep conservation questions flowing in the world. Remember ‘Onde va la lancha? Camila invited a family of talented musicians from her hometown, a fishing village on the coast of Chile, to record our version of this Chilote classic.

Get on board, this boat’s heading to the turbera!!

About Hydrofeminist METitations

Gender studies scholar Astrida Neimanis coined the term “hydrofeminism” to bring together feminist, queer, and ecological sensibilities.* In her words, hydrofeminism begins “one’s ethics and politics from the realization that we are mostly made of water…refusing a separation between nature and culture, between an environment ‘out there’ and a human subject ‘in here.’”

When Ensayos collaborated with Neimanis in 2017, Camila Marambio formulated “METitation” to emphasize Ensayos’ material-somatic research that considers molecular and global relationships in the physical world.** MET is an acronym for Mechanical Electrical Transduction, a sensory mechanism through which cells convert mechanical stimuli into electro-chemical activity. MET accounts for senses of hearing, balance, and touch; hair cells in the inner ear convert the stimuli of drum vibrations, water dropping in the sink, a crashing wave, and voice into electro-chemical signals received by the brain. This transformation is the sense of hearing.

*Astrida Neimanis, “Hydrofeminism: or on Becoming a Body of Water,” in Undutiful Daughters: New Directions in Feminist Thought and Practice, ed. Henriette Dr. Gunkel, Chrysanthi Nigianni, and Fanny Dr. Soderback (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

**“Hydrofeminist METitaions” was first used by Ensayos to describe a live sounding experiment performed by Neimanis, Marambio, Sarita Gálvez, and Karolin Tampere and presented as part of the Liquid Architecture program, “Negative Volumes: Body Languages” held at West Space, Naarm/Melbourne, on October 14th, 2017.
……

Episode 3 was created by Christy Gast, Camila Marambio, Hema’ny Molina and Bárbara Saavedra, with Elisita Balbontin, Ariel Bustamante, Fuente Papudo, Pablo Thiermann, Nico Torres, Red Submarine Recording Studio, Karolin Tampere, Caitlin Franzmann and Catalina Jaramillo. Special thanks to Elena Betros-Lopez, Wildlife Conservation Society Chile, Karukinka Natural Park, the Amenia Conservation Advisory Council, Sharon Jewell and Carla Macchiavello who contributed to the Australia Podcast and were not named in those credits, Manuela Baldovino for her translations, Dr. Max Lake for his book “Scents and Sensuality” and Emily Mello from the New Museum. Music is by Vera Dvale and “We are all bodies of Water” are the wise words of Astrida Neimanis.

New Museum Streaming Conversation: Ecofiction at the End of the World

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A woman sits with her back to the camera at a desk with a computer editing station in a room with floor to ceiling windows, beyond which lies a green forest and the water horizon of Waratah Bay in Gippsland, Australia.

Tuesday, June 23 at 2 PM EST. RSVP required. Register here for this program.

This conversation takes the second season of the Ensayos web series “DISTANCIA” as a starting point to discuss the ethical dimensions of storytelling. Specifically, DISTANCIA collaborators will explore situated identity in relation to the physical, social, historical, and psychic landscape of Tierra del Fuego. Carolina Saquel and Camila Marambio, who imagined and realized the web series, and Ariel Bustamente, sound artist, will each briefly present their varied positions to questions of truth-telling that arose while editing their large accumulation of audio and visual field recordings for season two. Their statements, illustrated with clips and images, will bring together different perspectives on representation, sensorial multi-species ethnography, and the complexities of being participant-observers. The participants will discuss to what degree it is possible to give up the power of framing and revising self-image in postproduction.

Anthropologist Michael Taussig, who also appears in the series, will respond and continue the conversation from the perspective of his unconventional scholarship, which challenges the authorial colonial violence of ethnographic study and its claims to objectivity.

Watch DISTANCIA season 2 here: https://vimeo.com/showcase/7223262

Ariel Bustamente (b. 1980, Chile; lives and works in La Paz, Bolivia) is a self-taught artist whose practice concentrates on long-term processes of both craftsmanship and experimental research. Based on the physical and social aspects of listening and conversation, Bustamante produces highly complex auditory spaces informed by the production of experiential inquiry methods. In 2016, Bustamente produced Conversation Room, a public sound sculpture installed in the center of Helsinki City, Finland. Over the course of two years, Bustamante and his team practiced conversation as a method for interpersonal self-exploration, developing techniques to subvert the norms and habits that operate when we think with others. Bustamante has written for the European Hz-Journal Magazine, Sweden. He has presented his projects at Matralab, Concordia University of Montreal and talked about his work at the Curatorial program at Goldsmiths, University of London. Bustamante has exhibited his projects at Harvestworks, New York; Linda Gallery, Beijing; The Transitio Electronic Arts Festival in Mexico City; and Liquid Architecture, Melbourne; the National Museum of Fine Arts, Chile; Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, among others.

Camila Marambio (b. 1979, Phoenix, Arizona; currently lives and works in Papudo, Chile) is a curator and Founder/Director of Ensayos. Motivated by the strong sentiment that Tierra del Fuego, despite its remoteness, is the center of the world, Ensayos brings together artists, scientists, and locals to exercise speculative and emergent forms of bio-cultural ethics. Maramibio holds a PhD in Curatorial Practice from Monash University, Naarm/Melbourne; a Master of Experiments in Art and Politics, Science Po, Paris; and a M.A. in Modern Art: Curatorial Studies from Columbia University, NYC. She attended the Curatorial Programme at de Appel Arts Center in Amsterdam (2006/2007) and has been curator-in-residence at Gertrude Contemporary in Naarm/Melbourne (2015), Kadist Art Foundation in Paris (2014), the Watermill Center in New York (2010), and Sørfinnset Skole in Norland, Norway (on multiple occasions). She was Chief Curator of Matucana 100 in Santiago (2008-2010) and Assistant Curator at Exit Art in New York City (2003-2005). Marambio is currently Guest Curator, Extended Research Project at the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America of the Museum of Modern Art. She is co-author of the books Slow Down Fast, A Toda Raja with Cecilia Vicuña (Errant Bodies Press, 2019) and Sandcastles: Cancerous Bodies and their Necro/Powers with Nina Lykke (forthcoming 2021).

Carolina Saquel (b. 1970, Concepción, Chile; lives and works in Paris, France) is a visual artist and former lawyer. In 2003 she was selected to study in Le Fresnoy, France, a two-year program that focuses on cross-disciplinary work between contemporary art and cinema. She uses the moving image as a medium for altering perceptions of temporality of seemingly unimportant events. Bodily gestures, the history of painting, nature stripped of human presence, and cinematographic as well as literary references are points of departure for her work in video and photography. Her work has been shown at Espai 13, Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris; Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, Canadá; Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg; Grand Palais, Paris; Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton, Paris; Bloomberg Space, London; and Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart.

Michael Taussig, PhD (b. 1940, Sydney, Australia; lives and works in New York City) is an anthropologist and author of several books, including the following: I Swear I Saw This; and Mastery of Non-Mastery in the Age of Meltdown (2020); What Color is the Sacred (2009); My Cocaine Museum (2004); The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America (1980); Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing (1987); Mimesis and Alterity (1993). He is professor of Anthropology at Columbia University.

Accessibility Information:
This event will be live captioned.

Sponsors

Artist commissions at the New Museum are generously supported by the Neeson / Edlis Artist Commissions Fund.

Artist residencies are made possible, in part, by:
Laurie Wolfert
The Research & Residencies Council of the New Museum

Support for Education and Public Engagement programs is provided, in part, by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Endowment support is provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund; the Skadden, Arps Education Programs Fund; and the William Randolph Hearst Endowed Fund for Education Programs at the New Museum.

Watch DISTANCIA Webseries, Season Two

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DISTANCIA Season Two premieres here on June 15, 2020 as part of Ensayos’ residency at the New Museum. 

Direct link: https://vimeo.com/showcase/7223262

Tierra del Fuego is remote to many in both physical distance and in the imagination, yet the archipelago at the tip of South America’s southern cone is deeply entangled with global social, political, and ecological conditions. Imagined and realized by Carolina Saquel and Camila Marambio, DISTANCIA contemplates life in and with Tierra del Fuego, countering narratives that presume meaning should be found primarily through scientific observation, documentary, ethnographic interpretation, and geographic analysis. Plotless episodes decenter human exceptionalism, weaving suspenseful and quotidian sensations of the sounds and visual textures of the terrain, the wind, and the psychically-charged histories of human architectures. DISTANCIA draws attention to colonial violence written on the land.

View Season One of DISTANCIA here: https://www.ladistancia.tv/

Related program: Join the New Museum for ““Ecofiction at the End of the World,” https://www.newmuseum.org/calendar/view/1669/ecofiction-at-the-end-of-the-world a conversation with Camila Marambio and Carolina Saquel, who imagined and realized the series, joined by collaborators, sound artist Ariel Bustamente and anthropologist Michael Taussig.

DISTANCIA Season Two Credits

Realized and Imagined by
Camila Marambio and Carolina Saquel

Sound Design
Ariel Bustamante

Production Design
Camila Marambio

Production
Julio Gastón Contreras
Camila Marambio
Ivette Martínez
Carolina Saquel

Director of Photography
Matías Illanes

Images
Matías Illanes
Carolina Saquel

Direct Sound
Sebastián Arce
Ariel Bustamante
Carolina Saquel
Nicolás Spencer

Image Editing
Carolina Saquel

Color Correction
Darío Ordenes

Sound Editing and Mix
Ariel Bustamante

Postproduction
Darío Ordenes

Sound Master
Ariel Bustamante and Pablo Thiermann

English Subtitles
Camila Marambio

Title Design
Pablo Gonzalez

Poster and Web Design
Rosario Ureta

Media Strategy
TereQ

With appearances and participation of: Óscar Aguilera, Sebastián Arce, Ariel Bustamante, Reinaldo Catalán, Julio Gastón Contreras, Valentina Espinoza, Alberto Harambour, Camila Marambio, Ivette Martínez, Patricia Messier, Alfredo Prieto, Carolina Saquel, Nicolás Spencer, Michael Taussig, José Tonko and Cecilia Vicuña.

Special thanks to: María Jesús Gutiérrez de Val, Nina Lykke, Christy Gast, WCS Chile, Emily Mello, Andrew An Westover, Sebastián Arce, Ivette Martínez, Javiera Carmona, David Couve, Aharon Gibbs-Cohen, Nicolás Arze, Michael Taussig, Felicia Carlisle, Mo Gourmelon, Carla Macchiavello, SHE (Se habla español), Karin Schneider, ORTVI.ART, Ana Maria Bresciani, Diego Fernández and Philippe Eustachon.

Special credits:

Episode 1
« Al Jardin de la Republica » (1993), Mercedes Sosa
Composer: Virgilio Ramon Carmona
Al Jardín de la República © Warner Chappell Music, Inc
Radio broadcasting on Radio Porvenir FM 99.5 during our car trip from Caleta María to Porvenir.

Sound intervention from the series “Osciladores de viento” © Nicolás Spencer, 2016.

Episode 4
Don Cata, archival images, Philippe Eustachon, 2017.

Episode 6
Two Monkeys Were Paid Unequally: Excerpt from Frans de Waal’s TED Talk on Youtube

Teaser
Original tracks “Cumbita” and “Minueto” by Sebastián Arce remixed by Ariel Bustamante.

Queering the Science Poster: Research Turned Inside-Out

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Students in the University of Hartford’s Nomad Interdisciplinary MFA took an Art & Ecology course with Christy Gast and Camila Marambio of Ensayos in June, 2020. Ensayos believes that that imagining a better future requires sound science, aesthetic sensitivity, creative experimentation, collaboration, and systems thinking. Students took a deep dive into the water systems around them, as well as the language and outlook of scientific researchers concerned with climate and the environment. For the final project, students worked in pairs. The course was held remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so students began by thinking of a of a mode, body or state of water that connects them. Then, they elaborated on the materiality, political history and economic structures of their connection. Collaboratively they translated the knowledge they gained using Ensayos’ research processes into a format that refers to the scientific poster. They were prompted to “queer” the genre, to make it strange–here are their results.

Beneath Feet: Groundwater +Corporeal Water
Roberta Trentin & Aiyesha Ghani
“We noticed that there were similarities in how our body manages the water we drink and how the water in our systems circulates, from and to the ecosystem.”–RT
“We also created our own signature land acknowledgment glyph based on our personal histories and the history of the lands that these watersheds shape and serve.”–AG

Art+Ecology_Aiyesha+Roberta_sm

Waterbeing
Julie Chen & Mauricio Vargas
“It is the water that exists as it is, and as it will be; ever-flowing and changing, in and out of our bodies and consciousness.”–JC
“It’s how I imagine a science book about supernatural things like ghosts being explained through quantum theory and psychology.”–MV

FLOOD WORDS
Arnethia Douglass & Katie Groves
“In the changing of seasons there is always flooding”–AD
“The goal was to interlay our two voices together and show harmony in the chaos and contrast of our experiences.”–KG

Dendrotech
Kathryn Kooke & Monica Kapoor
“We understand that natural ecosystems help reduce the effects of high rainfall, and surging bodies of river and ocean water.”–KC
“It felt important to acknowledge that preserving natural ecosystems provide the best flood defenses, but that also takes away the urban from the urban.”–MK

On Art and Laws

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Icebergs in Svalbard

Randi Nygård of Ensayo #4 has published an essay on the Norwegian platform Artica Writings that contemplates the connection between poetry and the law, specifically the Norwegian legal treatise that governs relationships between society and the marine resources. Artica Svalbard’s series Artica Writings aims to share knowledge and influence critical thinking on urgent issues related to the Arctic.

Nygård and Ensayos collaborators Karolin Tampere, Geir Tore Holm and Søssa Jørgensen organized an exhibition (2015) and anthology (2017) entitled The Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole, which takes a deep dive into these questions. The long-term project examines different ideas about the environment and our role in nature, our management of natural resources, responsibilities, views on nature, language and values. The inquiry continues as a series of events at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo. Nygård performed the text at Livet er Svalbardtraktaten a seminar about The Svalbard Treaty, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2020.

Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole – On art and laws

What can laws and natural resource management tell us about our relationship with nature and our surroundings? The name of the art project Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole comes from Section 2 of the Norwegian Marine Resources Act. It explores the wording of the act not just in terms of standard, legal definitions, but also by taking an open, poetic and profound look at different ways of viewing nature, natural resource management, societal responsibility, language use and values. As an interdisciplinary project, it involves biologists, poets, anglers, lawyers, philosophers, fishers, young people and artists.

In 2017, Karolin Tampere and I published an anthology with the same name as the project. Our work will continue this autumn with a series of events at the art gallery Kunstnernes hus in Oslo.

As an artist, I believe that as artists we can pose naive questions, but also profound and occasionally good ones, to people from other disciplines such as biology, climate research, law and philosophy. We don’t always understand the methodologies of their fields, but we have been trained to cast an inquisitive, sensitive and poetic eye on things that other people understand and perhaps take for granted.

In today’s complex world where we suffer from information overload, people are increasingly alienated and removed from nature and from how society and resource management operate. If we are unable to see how our life relates to bigger societal structures and natural cycles, it becomes difficult to imagine other possible communities, social structures and ways of living with and in nature. I believe that knowledge, emotions and poetry are all needed to feel and understand the various relationships we have with our surroundings and hence with ourselves.

The project The Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole is part of Ensayo #4, an international, interdisciplinary project to explore resource management, language, values and identities related to coastal areas and seas. The aim is to find new and better ways to study, understand, explain and respond to the big resource-related, environmental and climatic problems we face.

In Norway, Søssa Jørgensen, Geir Tore Holm, Karolin Tampere and I are taking part in Ensayo #4. In 2015, we started looking into what the law has to say about the management of Norway’s coastal areas and seas.

In Norges lover, a book containing all of Norway’s statues, I found the Marine Resources Act of 2008. Section 2 really leapt out at me: “Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole.” I found it poetic, romantic and paradoxical. How could a sentence like that be a law? Why does it say “wild living”? What is meant by “belong to”? What is the relationship between society, the resources and the wild living resources? What conception of nature lies behind that sentence and our natural resource management? What meaning and value do the sea and nature have beyond being a resource for us? What is meant by a whole ecosystem? Must we view ourselves as being outside nature in order to manage it? What is a resource, and what is not a resource? Is society part of an ecosystem and are ecosystems part of society? And what is ecosystem-based management, the system introduced by the Marine Resources Act of 2008?

In March 2016, at the Kurant exhibition space in Tromsø, Karolin Tampere and I put various questions of this kind to artists, fishers, environmentalists, lawyers and researchers with backgrounds in both the social and natural sciences. Those conversations and people’s answers formed the basis for the book we published the following year, with contributions from several people from Tromsø.

Wild living resources are taken for granted by my uncle, whose livelihood involves harvesting from the sea, as my family has done for many generations. “We have to make a living somehow”, he says, “and for us, fish are a resource”. Why did the wording of the law seem so strange to me? Doesn’t it reduce wild living fish to a mere resource? What about the intrinsic value of the individual? Can fish at the same time be individuals, resources and part of our society? The Animal Welfare Act states that all animals have an intrinsic value irrespective of their utility value for humans.

I think we sometimes ignore the wild animals and plants in our immediate surroundings, paradoxically because they aren’t resources for us. In towns they are often seen as a nuisance that doesn’t belong there. With that in mind, the word resources may in this case also mean that we notice the fish and are conscious of the fact that we are taking their lives so that we can live.

In Tromsø, the lawyers explained that the term “wild living” was used because we have a separate law on aquaculture, so farmed fish had to be excluded from the Marine Resources Act. As one of them said: “In the old days we had salmon, and everyone knew that it was wild, but now most of our salmon is farmed.”

To me, wild living still resonates of power and freedom.

The law says “belong to”. One reason for this is that the Sámi Parliament of Norway protested against other wordings like “are owned by” when the Marine Resources Act was revised in 2008. Because how can wild and living things be owned by anyone at all? And different people may have different notions of who is part of “society”. “Belong to” implies that something belongs, but it’s less strong, and it doesn’t claim ownership rights. It also suggests that society has a responsibility for the wild living resources. The wording is supposed to ensure that the resources benefit society, even if we have a system of private rights to fishing quotas.

A successful management of the oceans, we also learned, is not about managing the fish, but rather about influencing people and their actions. Because you cannot control wild things, so management is largely about building knowledge and spreading the right values amongst people.

That involves using models, such as ecosystems. An ecosystem is a representation, not something that exists in nature. It gives a picture of how some things interact with each other in a given environment. But no model can include everything.

Most of the people we interviewed in Tromsø didn’t see any contradiction between considering themselves to be part of nature and being able to analyse, plan and manage. And no-one claimed we had a right to harm the environment. Nevertheless, the human race is in the process of causing irreversible damage to the world in which we live: nature. Why is our conduct at odds with our values? Shouldn’t we manage the use of all natural resources in new ways based on new mindsets, models and laws?

When I interviewed Arne Johan Vetlesen for our book, we were sitting by a window in the University of Oslo. I asked the professor to imagine nature as a language that is constantly developing, and which expresses something that we cannot grasp. In response, Arne Johan asked me to look at the trees that were moving in the wind outside. He said that normally we think that the wind moves the trees. Although we say that a tree is moving in the wind. In our mechanistic and simplistic worldview, lifeless things are moved by external forces. And although I was searching for new ways to see plants and animals as living things, I also viewed the trees like that, as static, only moved by the wind. Could the tree put up resistance? Or was it moving with the wind so it wouldn’t break? Suddenly I understood what is meant by a mechanistic worldview. Vetlesen went on to say it is unlikely that the wind is the only force acting here, as we know that trees are living things capable of movement, for example towards the sun. But we have a tendency to forget that and to be blind to their way of being.

In psychology, the term oceanic feeling refers to an existential feeling of the self dissolving and becoming one with the world, in a limitless moment. I believe that artists often seek those moments, as part of the flow of their creative process; in their encounters with other things, beings and people. Freud, who had never experienced this oceanic feeling himself, saw it as a narcissistic longing for the stage of childhood when the child is still unaware that the external world isn’t part of it.

The text of the Marine Resources Act juxtaposes wild living things, resources and society. Perhaps oceanic feelings can also shed light on the relationship between them. In those moments, we have no fixed reference points. When art and poetry are at their finest, they can elicit a strong experience of something that cannot be reduced to information, or be understood or explained.

I think it makes sense to draw on poetic experiences if the goal is to represent animals and plants better in our laws. Of course we need rational laws and rules and models to follow, but I believe that there should be greater emphasis on poetry and mystery, to help us conceive of ourselves as part of nature and nature as part of society. We need some new models.

The philosopher Derrida wrote in his book The Animal That Therefore I Am that ideas about the animal, if they are possible, must come from poetry.

Derrida started thinking about this after being seen naked by his cat. He wrote a whole book as a result of his encounter with the mysterious and inscrutable gaze of the cat on him as an old man.

Normally, poetic experiences cannot be pinned down. And Derrida couldn’t know how the cat experienced the situation, but he felt something powerful at the moment when their gazes met.

At their best, that is precisely what art and poetry do: bring us closer to the unfathomable. Art can tell us things that cannot be expressed in words, and thus gives us another kind of knowledge about the world. And as I see it, artists don’t need to make the world poetic, because the world is inherently poetic.

Dei viltlevande marine ressursane ligg til fellesskapet – Om kunst og lover

Kva kan lover og forvaltning fortelje oss om forholdet vi har til naturen og til omgjevnadene våre? Kunstprosjektet Dei viltlevande marine ressursane ligg til fellesskapet har fått namnet sitt frå paragraf 2 i den norske havressurslova. Det undersøkjer lovteksten ikkje berre i lys av dei vanlege, juridiske definisjonane, men med ei open, poetisk og grunnleggjande tilnærming til dei ulike natursyna våre, forvaltning av naturressursane, fellesskapsansvaret, språkbruk og verdiar. Prosjektet er tverrfagleg og involverer biologar, poetar, fiskeentusiastar, juristar, filosofar, fiskarar, ungdommar og kunstnarar.

I 2017 gav Karolin Tampere og eg ut ein antologi med same namn som prosjektet. Arbeidet held fram i haust med ein serie arrangement på Kunstnernes hus i Oslo.

Som biletkunstnar trur eg at vi kunstnarar kan stille naive, men grunnleggjande og av og til gode spørsmål i møte med folk frå andre fagfelt, som biologi, klimaforsking, juss og filosofi. Vi forstår ikkje alltid metodane til dei ulike faga, men vi er trena til å ha eit undrande, følsamt og poetisk blikk på ting andre forstår og kanskje tek for gitt.

I dag, i vår komplekse verd med overveldande mykje informasjon, er vi menneske stadig meir framandgjorde og fjerna frå naturen og frå korleis samfunnet og ressursbruken vår fungerer. Og om vi ikkje evnar å sjå korleis livet vårt relaterer seg til større samfunnsstrukturar og naturlege krinsløp, er det også vanskeleg å sjå føre seg andre moglege fellesskap, sosiale strukturar og liv med og i naturen. Eg trur at både kunnskap, kjensler og poesi kan vere nødvendig for å kjenne og skjøne dei ulike forholda vi har til omgjevnadene våre og dermed også til oss sjølve.

Prosjektet Dei viltlevande marine ressursane ligg til fellesskapet er del av Ensayo #4, eit internasjonalt og tverrfagleg prosjekt som undersøkjer forvaltning, språk, verdiar og identitet som er knytt til kyst og hav. Målet er å granske, forstå, formidle og handtere dei store ressurs-, miljø- og klimaproblema vi står overfor, på nye og betre måtar.

Søssa Jørgensen, Geir Tore Holm, Karolin Tampere og eg er del av Ensayo #4 i Noreg. Vi begynte å undersøkje kva lovene sa om forvaltning av kyst og hav her til lands i 2015.

I Norges lover fann eg havressurslova av 2008. Paragraf 2 stakk seg tydeleg ut og sa: «Dei viltlevande marine ressursane ligg til fellesskapet i Noreg». Eg synest den var både poetisk, romantisk og motsetnadsfylt. Korleis kunne ein slik setning vere ei lov? Kvifor står det «viltlevande»? Kva er «ligg til»? Kva er forholdet mellom fellesskapet, ressursane og det viltlevande? Kva natursyn ligg til grunn for setninga og for vår forvaltning? Og kva meining og verdiar har havet og naturen utover det å vere ein ressurs for oss?Korleis kan ein forstå eit heilt økosystem? Må vi sjå oss sjølve som utanfor naturen for å forvalte han? Kva er ressursar, og kva er ikkje ressursar? Er fellesskapet ein del av økosystema og økosystema ein del av fellesskapet? Og kva er ei økosystembasert forvaltning, som havressurslova la om til i 2008?

I mars 2016 på visingsrommet Kurant i Tromsø, stilte Karolin Tampere og eg fleire slike spørsmål til kunstnarar, fiskarar, miljøvernarar, juristar og forskarar innanfor både samfunns- og naturvitskapane. Samtalane og svara vi fekk, la grunnlaget for innhaldet i boka vi gav ut året etter, der fleire frå Tromsø er med.

Viltlevande ressursar er sjølvsagt for onkelen min, som lever av å hauste frå havet, slik familien min har gjort det i mange generasjonar bakover. «Noko skal vi leve av», seier han, «og fisk er jo ein ressurs for oss». Kvifor blei desse orda i lag så merkelege for meg? Blir ikkje den ville, levande fisken redusert til ein ressurs? Kva med eigenverdien til individet? Kan vi sjå fisken som individ, ressurs og som del av våre fellesskap? Dyrevelferdslova seier at alle dyr har ein eigenverdi som er uavhengig av nytteverdien dei har for menneska.

Eg trur at vi av og til overser ville dyr og planter i nærmiljøet vårt, paradoksalt nok fordi dei ikkje er ressursar for oss. I byane blir dei ofte sett på som plager som ikkje høyrer til der. Slik sett kan kanskje ordet ressursar i dette tilfellet også bety at vi ser fisken og har eit klart forhold til at vi tek liv for å leve sjølve.

I Tromsø kunne juristane fortelje oss at «viltlevande» stod det fordi vi har ei eiga lov om fiskeoppdrett, og ein måtte då utelate oppdrettsfisk frå havressurslova. Som ein av dei sa: «Før hadde vi laks, og alle visste at han var vill, men no har vi mest oppdrettslaks.»

Viltlevande kling likevel heftig og fritt for meg.

«Ligg til», står det i lova. Det er mellom anna fordi Sametinget protesterte på andre formuleringar som «høyrer til», då havressurslova blei skriven om i 2008. For korleis kan det ville og levande eigast av nokon i det heile? Og det kan variere kven ein ser som del av «fellesskapet». «Ligg til» indikerer at noko høyrer til, men er mildare, og det stadfestar ikkje eigedomsrett. Det tyder òg at fellesskapet har ansvar for dei viltlevande. Setninga skal sikre at ressursane kjem fellesskapet til gode, sjølv om vi opererer med private rettar til fiskekvotar.

Ei vellukka forvaltning av havet, lærte vi og, handlar ikkje om å forvalte fisken, men å påverke menneska og deira handlingar. For ein kan ikkje kontrollere det som er vilt, og forvaltning handlar derfor i stor grad om å skape kunnskap og rette verdiar hjå menneska.

Til det bruker ein mellom anna modellar, slik som økosystem. Eit økosystem er ein representasjon, ikkje noko konkret i naturen. Det er eit bilete av korleis nokre ting påverkar kvarandre i eit visst miljø. Men ingen slike modellar kan innehalde alt.

Dei fleste vi intervjua i Tromsø, meinte at det ikkje er nokon motsetnad mellom det å sjå seg som del av naturen og det å kunne analysere, planleggje og forvalte. Og ingen ville seie at vi har rett til å skade miljøet. Men vi menneske er no i ferd med å gjere uoppretteleg skade på livsverda vår, naturen. Kvifor er framferda vår i konflikt med verdiane våre? Burde vi ikkje forvalte all bruk av naturressursar på nye måtar gjennom nye tankesett, modellar og lover?

Då eg intervjua Arne Johan Vetlesen til boka vår, sat vi ved eit vindauge på Universitetet i Oslo. Eg stilte professoren eit spørsmål om å sjå naturen som eit språk, som heile tida utviklar seg, og som uttrykkjer noko som vi ikkje kan gripe. Arne Johan bad meg då sjå på trea som bevegde seg i vinden utanfor. Han sa at vi vanlegvis oppfattar at det er vinden som beveger trea. Sjølv om vi seier at treet rører på seg i vinden. For ifølgje vårt mekanistiske og forenkla verdsbilete blir livlause ting bevega av ytre krefter. Og eg, som jo prøvde å tenkje på planter og dyr som levande på nye måtar, opplevde også trea slik, som urørlege og bevegde berre av vinden. Kunne treet gjere motstand? Eller bevegde det seg med vinden for ikkje å knekke? Eg forstod plutseleg kva eit mekanistisk verdsbilete er. Vetlesen heldt fram med å seie at det ikkje er sannsynleg at vinden er den einaste krafta her, sidan vi veit at tre er i live og i stand til å bevege seg, for eksempel mot sola. Men vi har ein tendens til å gløyme det og vere blinde for deira måtar å vere på.

Det psykologiske uttrykket oceanic feeling beskriv ei eksistensiell kjensle av at sjølvet løyser seg opp og blir eitt med verda, i ein augneblink utan grenser. Eg trur kunstnarar ofte søkjer slike augneblinkar, i ein flyt i prosessen sin, i møte med andre ting, vesen og menneske. Freud, som sjølv aldri hadde opplevd ei slik havleg kjensle, såg det som ein narsissistisk lengsel etter stadiet der barnet endå ikkje veit at den eksterne verda ikkje er del av det.

Teksten i havressurslova set saman det viltlevande, ressursane og fellesskapet. Kanskje kan dei havlege opplevingane òg vise oss noko om dette forholdet. I dei augneblinkane held vi ikkje noko fast. Når kunst og poesi er på sitt beste, kan det gi ei sterk oppleving av noko som ikkje kan reduserast til informasjon, og som ikkje kan begripast eller forklarast.

Eg ser på det å bruke poetiske erfaringar som relevant viss det er eit mål å representere dyr og planter betre i lovgivinga vår. Sjølvsagt treng vi rasjonelle lover og reglar og modellar å handle etter, men eg trur at det poetiske og underlege kan få større plass for at vi skal kunne forstå oss sjølve som del av naturen og naturen som del av samfunnet. Vi treng nokre nye modellar.

Filosofen Derrida skriv i boka The Animal That Therefore I Am at det å tenkje på dyret, viss det er mogleg, må komme frå poesien.

Derrida begynte å tenkje på dette etter at han hadde blitt sett naken av katten sin. Møtet med det mystiske og ukjente blikket til katten då han var ein eldre mann, gjorde at han skreiv ei heil bok.

Opplevinga av det poetiske kan som regel ikkje haldast fast. Og Derrida kunne ikkje vite korleis katten oppfatta situasjonen, men han kjende noko sterkt i det blikka deira møttest.

Kunst og poesi gjer på sitt beste nettopp dette, nærmar seg det ugripelege. Kunst kan seie noko om det som ikkje kan seiast, og på denne måten gir det ein annan kunnskap om verda. Og slik eg ser det, treng kunstnarar ikkje å gjere verda poetisk, for forholda i verda er grunnleggjande poetiske.

Save the Date: Society as a Whole @ Kunsternes Hus, Oslo

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busy port seen from a rooftop

ENSAYOS and The Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole present SOCIETY AS A WHOLE: Friday & Saturday, September 12 & 13, 2020 at Myntgata 2 and Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway

SOCIETY AS A WHOLE: On Saturday, during a walk along the harbor of Oslo, we will swim, eat from the sea and have a performative reading at the Oslo City Hall. This will be followed by an ecopsychological workshop approaching emotions and common denials related to our environment. On Sunday we will present film and audio screenings and a workshop combining law and poetry with a focus on formulating better possible futures. The leaders of the workshop will be announced shortly.

The event is motivated the questions: Which common psychological images, relations and reactions do we have to the ocean, environmental degradation and climate change? How can we change our common, everyday denials and, consequently, ways of life? What role can art play? Can we formulate possible better futures by combining law-making and writing with poetic expressions?

ABOUT THE EVENT SERIES: 

The Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole is a series of interdisciplinary events at Kunstnernes Hus, organized by Geir Tore Holm, Søssa Jørgensen and Randi Nygård, as part of Ensayo#4. The events have been named after section 2 of the Norwegian Marine Resources Act and will be based on the legal text, divided according to its wording. The words are starting points for walks, film screenings, lectures and discussions.

The project relates to the law not only with the usual legal definitions but also with a more poetic and fundamental approach. It examines different ideas about the environment and our role in nature, our management of natural resources, responsibilities, views on nature, language and values. It seeks to present alternative views and experiences. We need to better understand ourselves as integrated parts of both the natural cycles and societal structures and we need to see nature as part of society to find new and better ways of organizing our communities.

Derrida writes, in “The Animal That Therefore I Am”, that thinking about the animal, if there is such a possibility, must derive from poetry. So, if we want to see plants and animals as part of our society and democracy, and ourselves as part of nature, then it can not happen only with our rationality, but also in emotional, poetic and intuitive ways.

The project is supported by Fritt Ord and Arts Council Norway. This event wasorganized in collaboration with Sørfinnset skole/the nord land.

About the venues:

Kunstnernes Hus is an art institution in the center of Oslo. Established by artists in 1930 to show both Norwegian and international art, it has since then become the most important independent institution in Norway led by artists, specifically dedicated to contemporary art.

Myntgata 2 is a studio building run by the Municipality of Oslo. It also houses the Oslobiennalen, who generously lent their space for the seminar on 12.09.

Belong to @ Kunsternes Hus, Oslo

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ENSAYOS and The Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole present RESOURCES: Short talks by Søssa Jørgensen, Janike Kampevold Larsen and Wenche Dramstad.

Premiere of A Beehive in My Heart (63 min, 2019) by Kjersti Vetterstad
Wednesday 4.12. at 7 pm
Kunstnernes Hus Kino

Below are excerpts from Søssa Jørgensen’s text, with Spanish translation by Chilean poet Tomás Browne.


I will start quoting from my contribution to the book  “The wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole” 

Under the surface, the infinite surface of the ocean, something wild is living, something wild, that can be exploited to our advantage.

If we were the wild ones, would we then accept being a resource for human society without choosing to?

But nowadays I have begun to feel confused, bewildered, uneasy, mixed up, spaced out, thrown off balance, I don’t know what to do.

I feel that language as a tool has been so deeply manipulated so I have difficulties in finding meaning, or finding the path, how to navigate through the fragments that make up our time. To live on a farm was one part of the solution, a way to learn, a way to change perspective, see the world from a rural point of view, use the art skills, art thinking, from this little farm on a bluff in Skiptvet.

Here, where every day commences when the early morning light brightens up the tall pine trees on the hill-crest behind the house. Green needle formations on twisted branches. Golden bark. The sun awakens the birds, and encourages their singing. Restless, the sun starts to make shadow theatre together with the two old ash trees in the garden, animating small dark patterns on the white walls of the house.

After this game, it goes further away, carefully warms up the bee-hives on the slope and pays a visit to the horses in their green pasture by the road, giving them a warm touch on their coats, sparking hopes for the day, letting their eyes enjoy the glowing red paint on the farm buildings, balancing it with a green contrast in the dense, dark, planted spruce forest. But the sun goes even higher and starts to help the golden grain-fields to grow, the grass to grow, the herbs to grow, the vegetables to grow. Then the sun lets the last rays flicker down to the forest floor, down to moss, heather, berries, mushrooms, willows, grass, ferns and lichens. Until it helps us to end the day at the bench, resting our eyes on the hillside, where it disappears behind, leaving a gap in the circle as the night closes in around us, creating dreams about circles, zeros, rings leaving them unfinished, bent open, broken circles, open to enter in, like a door in a circular home: Ringstad.

Inside the house the cats arrive at my desk as soon as I try to write something on the computer. They purr, stretch and take a stroll over the keys. One day they’re gonna shut down all the communication from here, but for now, they walk on soft paws around the laptop and lay down to lick their soft fur bodies on the right side of the screen, stretching a long, elastic hind leg past my hands, then hunting my hand, in an undaunted way. Suddenly, they sleep.

The cats are not here because they are so soft, dark and incredibly beautiful. No, they are here to help us cope with the House Mouse. Not that they will be entirely able to, the mice have been living with us for 150,000 years and they only need an opening about 7 mm to get into the house. If the head comes in, the whole mouse is in. And our house is like a strainer, we do not know how old it is or how many openings it has.

It is speculated upon whether animals can smell our emotions. They may come involuntarily close to us. Revealingly close. Throughout cultural history, there are countless examples of the animals’ highly valued role. This is especially true for the horse, who has not only had the role of a working animal but also been an intermediator between us and the afterlife. The horse as a creature gave the human-animal a broader understanding of nature and the world of gods. Is there still any of this etherealness and value in the horse-human relationship? Our pets and farm animals can be seen as mirrors, but it is difficult to accept the images in the mirror and decode the information.

So yes, I am a bit confused, very much confused.

What is right, what is right now?

An artist colleague; Mari Keskikorsu from Finland, asked a horse through a medium, an animal interpreter: what to do with climate change?

The horse then answered, as I remember it:

“Take it easy, take it slow, and it will all work out”

This made me inspired, and one day while I was out riding on my black mare she told me: “If you want things to change–be the change you want to see!”

Yes, she spoke in English, don’t ask me why.

Comenzaré citando una contribución que hice al libro “Los recursos marinos vivos pertenecen a la sociedad en su conjunto”

Debajo de la capa superficial está la superficie infinita del océano: algo natural hay vivo, algo orgánico, que se puede explotar para nuestro provecho.

Si nosotros fuéramos esos recursos naturales ¿nos entregaríamos a la sociedad humana sin pensarlo?

Hoy en día me siento confundida, perpleja, incómoda, desorientada, distanciada, desequilibrada, y no sé qué hacer. Siento que el lenguaje entendido como un medio ha sido tan manipulado que me cuesta encontrarle sentido o, bien, encontrar la ruta para saber cómo navegar a través de los fragmentos que componen nuestra época. Vivir en el campo ha sido una parte de la solución, una manera de aprender y de tener otra perspectiva, y ver el mundo desde el punto de vista rural, aplicando tanto la práctica como la teoría, desde este pequeño mirador que es esta granja en Skiptevet, donde vivimos.

Aquí los días comienzan con la luz del alba alumbrando, en lo alto de la colina atrás de la casa, las copas de los pinos. Articulaciones de acículas verdes en ramas torcidas. Corteza dorada. El sol despierta a los pájaros y anima sus cantos. El sol, impaciente, junto a los dos fresnos del jardín, comienza a hacer un teatro de sombras: son patrones negros sobre las paredes blancas de la casa.

Después de este juego, el sol va más allá. Con cuidado, templa las colmenas que hay en la ladera y, luego, visita a los caballos que están en la pradera verde junto al camino, prodigándoles con un toque cálido en sus pelajes: esperanza resplandeciente para el día, dejando que sus ojos gocen del brillo de aquél rojo con que están pintadas las construcciones agrícolas, armonizándose con el contraste verde de la oscura y densa plantación forestal de abetos. Pero el sol viaja todavía más alto y se lanza a ayudar a los dorados campos de cereales, al pasto, a las hierbas y a los vegetales para que germinen y crezcan. Entonces el sol deja a sus últimos rayos destellar en el suelo del bosque: en musgos, líquenes, helechos; en hierbas y brezos; en bayas y setas, y en los sauces. Al final, el sol nos ayuda a nosostros a terminar el día sentados en el banco del jardín, contemplando la ladera en la que éste se esconde, dejando un vacío circular en el cielo cuando la noche comienza a envolvernos, creando sueños sobre rondas, ceros y anillos que dejan a los sueños incompletos, curvados-abiertos, circunferencias quebradas, abiertas para entrar, como una puerta de una casa circular: esto es Ringstad.

En la casa los gatos vienen a mi escritorio cada vez que intento escribir algo en el computador. Ronronean, se estiran y se pasean por las teclas. Uno de estos días van a acabar con la toda la comunicación que tenemos desde aquí. Pero por el momento caminan suavemente alrededor del computador portátil, y se acuestan al lado derecho de éste para lamerse sus pieles suaves. Y de manera impertérrita estiran sus largas patas traseras que tocan mi mano. De pronto están durmiendo.

Los gatos no están aquí porque son tiernos, negros y tan lindos; no, están aquí para lidiar con los ratones domésticos. No es que se la puedan al 100% contra ellos, pues hemos vivido con las lauchas durante 150.000 años, y sólo necesitan una abertura de 7mm para entrar en la casa. Si por ahí pasa su cabeza, pasa todo el cuerpo.Y nuestra casa es como un escurridor: no sabemos ni cuántos años ni cuántos aberturas tiene.

Se especula acaso los animales huelen nuestras emociones. Se pueden acercar involuntariamente a nosotros. Reveladoramente cerca. A lo largo de la historia cultural hay innumerables ejemplos que ponen en evidencia el alto valor que desempeñan los animales. Esto es evidente en el caso del caballo, que no sólo es un animal de trabajo, sino que también ha sido un mediador entre nosotros y el más allá. El caballo como criatura le da al animal racional una comprensión más amplia de la naturaleza y los dioses. ¿Todavía nos queda algo de esta valiosa y etérea relación con el caballo? Nuestras mascotas y animales de granja pueden verse como nuestros espejos, pero es difícil reconocerse en las imágenes del espejo, y descifrar la información.

Entonces la verdad es que estoy confundida, muy muy confundida.

¿Qué está bien, cómo es ahora mismo?

Una colega mía, Mari Keskikorsu quien es una artista de Finlandia, le preguntó a un caballo a través de un intérprete de animales: ¿qué hacer con el cambio climático?

Entonces, si bien recuerdo, el caballo le respondió:

“Tranquilo, tomátelo con calma, y todo saldrá bien”.

Esto me inspiró tanto que un día que cabalgaba sobre mi yegua negra, ésta me dijo: “¡si quieres que las cosas cambien- sé tú el cambio que quieres ver!”

Ella me habló en inglés, no me pregunte por qué.

ABOUT THE EVENT SERIES: 

The Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole is a series of interdisciplinary events at Kunstnernes Hus, organized by Geir Tore Holm, Søssa Jørgensen and Randi Nygård, as part of Ensayo#4. The events have been named after section 2 of the Norwegian Marine Resources Act and will be based on the legal text, divided according to its wording. The words are starting points for walks, film screenings, lectures and discussions.

The project relates to the law not only with the usual legal definitions but also with a more poetic and fundamental approach. It examines different ideas about the environment and our role in nature, our management of natural resources, responsibilities, views on nature, language and values. It seeks to present alternative views and experiences. We need to better understand ourselves as integrated parts of both the natural cycles and societal structures and we need to see nature as part of society to find new and better ways of organizing our communities.

Derrida writes, in “The Animal That Therefore I Am”, that thinking about the animal, if there is such a possibility, must derive from poetry. So, if we want to see plants and animals as part of our society and democracy, and ourselves as part of nature, then it can not happen only with our rationality, but also in emotional, poetic and intuitive ways.

The project is supported by Fritt Ord and Arts Council Norway.

Sing the Copepod Song

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ENSAYOS translated the content of a scientific paper (“Toxic effects of polyethylene terephalate microparticles and Di(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate on the calanoid copepod, Parvocalanus crassirostris“) into the form of a well-known folk song. The rewrite was undertaken in collaboration with ichthyologist Lynne van Herwerden so that her laboratory’s research concerning the human impact on nearby coral reefs could be accessible to the broader coastal community. The song was performed as a sing-along at the closing of the exhibition Everything is Possibly an Oracle in Brisbane, Australia. During the performance, audience talkback filled in the blank in the song’s last line. Here is the song. Please sing it, and fill in the blank. It’s a mouthful.

COPEPOD SONG
Sing to the tune of “I Know an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly”

I woke up this morning and swallowed some plastic
I don’t even know what microplastics are
I hope I don’t die

I woke up this morning and swallowed a copepod
That little guy ate a microplastic for breakfast (instead of a phytoplankton)
Just sucked it right up, into its gut (yeah it got stuck there)
I hope it don’t die

I woke up this morning and swallowed a fish larva
It’s swimming around in my tummy all salty and gooey
I swallowed a fish larva that swallowed a copepod
That swallowed a microplastic instead of a phytoplankton,
I hope we don’t die

I woke up this morning and swallowed a damselfish
I WISH YOU’D STOP EATING FISH
I swallowed a damselfish that swallowed a fish larva
That’s swimming around in my tummy all salty and gooey
I swallowed a fish larva that swallowed a copepod
That swallowed a microplastic
Instead of a phytoplankton (reducing its chance of survival by 40%)
Are they all gonna die???

I woke up this morning and swallowed a coral trout
Without a doubt I like eating trout
I swallowed a coral trout that swallowed a damselfish that swallowed a fish larva
That’s swimming around in my tummy all salty and gooey
I swallowed a fish larva that swallowed a copepod
That swallowed a microplastic for breakfast instead of a phytoplankton
At the base of the food web
We’re all gonna die…
UNLESS ___________________

POR EL AGUA: CAMBIO DE PRÁCTICAS Y COSTUMBRES. A TODA RAJA

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Cuatro invitadas se unirán en el Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende en una conversación donde conectarán sus experiencias y posiciones en torno al cuidado del agua.

 – 

Esta conversación se enmarca dentro del lanzamiento del libro Slow Down fast, A toda Raja de Camila Marambio y Cecilia Vicuña, quienes proponen gestos y fuentes de transformación cultural para migrar a una comprensión diferente de lo que es el ser humano en medio de los abusos neoliberales.

Sobre Slow Down Fast, A Toda Raja

Editado por Errant Bodies Press (2019), en este brillante dialogo intergeneracional, la curadora Camila Marambio (1979) y Cecilia Vicuña (1948), conversan sobre mestizaje, desastres ecólogicos, eroticismo y decolonización con un tono multilingual, subversivo e irreverente humor chileno. El resultado es un libro único que presenta una conversación que es al mismo tiempo poético y crítico.

El diálogo cruza  desde el Español al Inglés, desde la poesía a la argumentación académica, y desde el arte a la ciencia. Definiendo “performance verdadera” como “aquella de nuestras especies en la Tierra: la manera en que causamos sufrimientos en otros, la manera en que calentamos la atmósfera o producimos que otras especies desparezcan”, Slow Down Fast, A Toda Raja propone un método necesario para la liberación decolonial, que revela el poder transformativo del arte en la  búsqueda de “una ecología del alma, el resplandor de nuestra conexión entre nosotros y el cosmos”.

Habrá una venta especial del libro. Pronto más detalles.

Sobre las invitadas

Francisca Fernández Droguett es antropóloga social de la UAHC, Diplomada en Estudios Regionales, mención en América Latina del Instituto de Estudios avanzados IDEA, Magíster en Psicología Social de la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Doctora en Estudios Americanos, mención Pensamiento y Cultural del Instituto de Estudios avanzados IDEA. Se ha especializado en investigaciones e intervenciones participativas con comunidades indígenas aymaras de Bolivia y Chile, y cuenta con experiencia en la realización de cursos de metodologías cualitativas y participativas en la Universidad de Chile, Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Universidad de Valparaíso, y diversas universidades privadas. Actualmente se encuentra desarrollando una investigación postdoctoral financiada por FONDECYT, en el programa de Psicología Social de la Memoria, en la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad de Chile. Es integrante del Movimiento por las aguas y el territorio (MAT).

Camila Marambio es curadora, Licenciada en Estética de las Universidad Católica de Chile, graduada del Programa Curatorial del centro de arte De Appel (Holanda) y magíster en Arte moderno: estudios críticos y curatoriales de la Universidad de Columbia (EE.UU.) Dirigió el área de Artes Visuales de Matucana 100 entre 2008 y 2010. Fue curadora en residencia de la Fundación Kadist en París, ciudad en la cual inicio sus estudios en el programa de Experimentación en Artes y Políticas de Science PO en 2011. Es directora creativa de Ensayos, proyecto en colaboración con el Wildlife Conservation Society en Chile. Actualmente reside en Melbourne, Australia donde realiza su doctorado en Practica Curatorial en MADA.

Cecilia Vicuña ha concentrado su trabajo en torno a la destrucción del medioambiente, los derechos humanos y la homogenización cultural, desde sus primeros poemas y pinturas, en la década de 1960, en Chile. Sus performances e instalaciones, como los Quipu, (emplazados en la naturaleza, calles y museos) combinan lo ritual y el montaje en una práctica que Vicuña llama lo precario: actos transformativos que trazan un puente entre arte y vida, lo ancestral y lo vanguardista. Sus pinturas, poesía, y Palabrarmas (grabados y collages que plantean nuevos significados descomponiendo el significante de las palabras), proponen una visión libre y futurista, considerada pionera como decolonización cultural indígena. Sus obras se encuentran en las colecciones de museos como Guggenheim y MoMA, en Nueva York, Tate Modern, en Londres y Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, en Santiago, de Chile. En el 2019, realizó su primera exposición retrospectiva Veroir el Fracaso Iluminado/Seehearing the Enlightened Failure, organizada por Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art en Rotterdam y fue galordonada con el Premio Velázquez de Artes Plásticas, del Ministerio de Cultura de España.

Barbara Saavedra es directora de Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) en Chile, Doctora en Ecología y Biología Evolutiva de la Universidad de Chile. Bárbara Saavedra ha dedicado su carrera a la conservación de la biodiversidad de Chile. Desde 2005 conduce, con visión y liderazgo, el programa WCS Chile, y lidera el proyecto de conservación Karukinka en Tierra del Fuego, promovido el conocimiento y la valoración de la naturaleza en distintos espacios, para avanzar transversalmente en su conservación. Desde colaboraciones estrechas con comunidades locales en las profundidades de la Patagonia, hasta la participación activa en Consejos presidenciales, ministeriales y sectoriales de Chile, Bárbara va creando conciencia sobre la necesidad de integrar la conservación de la biodiversidad en el proceso de desarrollo en Chile.

Belong to @ Kunsternes Hus, Oslo

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ENSAYOS and The Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole present BELONG TO: Friday 13.12.2019 at 7 pm, Kunstnernes Hus Kino.

THE ELEPHANT WHO WAS A RHINOCEROS is a lecture-performance by Erik Bünger that traces the footprints of wolves, elephant, bears and ravens as they move perpetually in and out of human language. A creature that does not speak, a creature you cannot speak of. An elephant in every room. A white bear, whose silhouette looms larger with every effort to keep it out of your mind.

ERIK BÜNGER
Erik Bünger is an artist, writer and composer, whose work investigates the relationship between language and concepts such as ‘voice’, ‘body’, ‘image’ and ‘nature’. In performance lectures, videos, and texts he explores how such concepts, by referring to something mute and unspeakable beyond the reach of language, be­come central voids around which our reality is built up. His lecture performances have been presented around the world in venues such as Centre Pompidou in Paris, The Wellcome Collection in London, The Lincoln Center in New York, KW in Berlin and The Curitiba Biennial in Brazil. In 2018, his debut book, The Elephant Who Was a Rhinoceros was published on RpB Verlag (Cologne).

ABOUT THE EVENT SERIES: 

The Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole is a series of interdisciplinary events at Kunstnernes Hus, organized by Geir Tore Holm, Søssa Jørgensen and Randi Nygård, as part of Ensayo#4. The events have been named after section 2 of the Norwegian Marine Resources Act and will be based on the legal text, divided according to its wording. The words are starting points for walks, film screenings, lectures and discussions.

The project relates to the law not only with the usual legal definitions but also with a more poetic and fundamental approach. It examines different ideas about the environment and our role in nature, our management of natural resources, responsibilities, views on nature, language and values. It seeks to present alternative views and experiences. We need to better understand ourselves as integrated parts of both the natural cycles and societal structures and we need to see nature as part of society to find new and better ways of organizing our communities.

Derrida writes, in “The Animal That Therefore I Am”, that thinking about the animal, if there is such a possibility, must derive from poetry. So, if we want to see plants and animals as part of our society and democracy, and ourselves as part of nature, then it can not happen only with our rationality, but also in emotional, poetic and intuitive ways.

The project is supported by Fritt Ord and Arts Council Norway.

Resources @ Kunsternes Hus, Oslo

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ENSAYOS and The Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole present MARINE: Wednesday 4.12. 2019 at 7 pm, Kunstnernes Hus Kino, Oslo, Norway

Short talks by Søssa Jørgensen, Janike Kampevold Larsen and Wenche Dramstad.
Premiere of A Beehive in My Heart (63 min, 2019) by Kjersti Vetterstad

A Beehive in My Heart portrays Catalan beekeeper Josep Maria Garcia and his bees. The bees are under pressure due to various forms of human activity. In simple words, Garcia talks about his work as a beekeeper, and about the struggle to keep the bees alive when temperatures rise on Earth and the use of pesticides among farmers increases in scope. The film juxtaposes pictures of the beekeeper and the bees’ work with images of animals and plants that live in and off the surrounding land.

The film has been developed in collaboration with film photographer and assisting producer Christopher Horne Iversen, music by Cha Blasco.

The event is related to Resources and Søssa Jørgensen (artist and farmer, Øvre Ringstad), Janike Kampevold Larsen (associate professor at Institute for Urbanism and Landscape at AHO), Wenche Dramstad (landscape ecologist, professor at NMBU and head of departement at NIBIO) will talk about resources, landscape, materiality, bees, eco systems and pollination before we watch the movie.

Kjersti Vetterstad (b.1977) is a visual artist with a degree from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bergen and from Konstfack in Stockholm. Through a diverse practice she explores themes such as place, time, and impermanence, issues relating to identity and alienation, and the boundaries that define the relationship between human and nature.

The Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole is a series of interdisciplinary events at Kunstnernes Hus, organized by Geir Tore Holm, Søssa Jørgensen and Randi Nygård, as part of Ensayo#4. The events have been named after section 2 of the Norwegian Marine Resources Act and will be based on the legal text, divided according to its wording. The words are starting points for walks, film screenings, lectures and discussions.

The project relates to the law not only with the usual legal definitions but also with a more poetic and fundamental approach. It examines different ideas about the environment and our role in nature, our management of natural resources, responsibilities, views on nature, language and values. It seeks to present alternative views and experiences. We need to better understand ourselves as integrated parts of both the natural cycles and societal structures and we need to see nature as part of society to find new and better ways of organizing our communities.

Derrida writes, in “The Animal That Therefore I Am”, that thinking about the animal, if there is such a possibility, must derive from poetry. So, if we want to see plants and animals as part of our society and democracy, and ourselves as part of nature, then it can not happen only with our rationality, but also in emotional, poetic and intuitive ways.

The project is supported by Fritt Ord and Arts Council Norway.

Marine @ Kunsternes Hus, Oslo

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ENSAYOS and The Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole present MARINE: 06.10.2019 at 6 pm, Kunstnernes Hus Kino, Oslo, Norway

Screening of LEVIATHAN (USA, 2012, reg. Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, 87 min)
with introductions by Silja Espolin Johnson and Randi Nygård and a short lecture by Mariken Lauvstad.

This experimental documentary film shows captivating footage of an American fishing boat and its crew throughout a night. The movie is filmed with sports cameras placed on the boat itself, on its trawl and underwater – the perspective dissolves and human beings play a secondary role. The fact that the film is without any commentary makes this bleak and hypnotic movie experience even more intense.

Lucien Castaing-Taylor is a British anthropolgist, artist and Director at the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University.

Véréna Paravel is a French anthropologist and artist working with film, video and photography. Her works have been exhibited at MoMa, Tate, Whitney Biennal and documenta 14, amongst others.

Mariken Lauvstad is a theater writer, playwright, actor, director and teacher. She wrote about Leviathan in the essay “Performing Arts in Our Anthropocene Time” in the Norwegian Shakespearean Magazine, which was named Critic of the Year 2018/19 in Norway.

ABOUT THE EVENT SERIES: 

The Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole is a series of interdisciplinary events at Kunstnernes Hus, organized by Geir Tore Holm, Søssa Jørgensen and Randi Nygård, as part of Ensayo#4. The events have been named after section 2 of the Norwegian Marine Resources Act and will be based on the legal text, divided according to its wording. The words are starting points for walks, film screenings, lectures and discussions.

The project relates to the law not only with the usual legal definitions but also with a more poetic and fundamental approach. It examines different ideas about the environment and our role in nature, our management of natural resources, responsibilities, views on nature, language and values. It seeks to present alternative views and experiences. We need to better understand ourselves as integrated parts of both the natural cycles and societal structures and we need to see nature as part of society to find new and better ways of organizing our communities.

Derrida writes, in “The Animal That Therefore I Am”, that thinking about the animal, if there is such a possibility, must derive from poetry. So, if we want to see plants and animals as part of our society and democracy, and ourselves as part of nature, then it can not happen only with our rationality, but also in emotional, poetic and intuitive ways.

The project is supported by Fritt Ord and Arts Council Norway.

Bush Ladies Clowning Around, or Recalling The Unseen Infrastructures of Water

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Performance and exhibition closing on Saturday, September 28, 2019 from 2-4 PM at CARPARK, Milani Gallery, Brisbane.

Be prepared to sing along, to drink spirits, and to wail if that be the feeling or simply come hear the stories of the undying elementals, the tumultuous microplastic, and the flowers that sustain our drift along the water column.

Twenty days ago, we left with itching questions for sacred sites. Taking to the long roads that lured us north, we followed hydrological lines to the headwaters of the Murray-Darling river system, then to tropical creeks flowing towards the mangrove shores where one of us was conceived. We crossed the Coral Sea to Yunbenun, and descended into the marine ecosystems. There, at the base of the food web, we sang. This tune amongst others travels back with us to Brisbane.

At first, the language of oracles can be foreign. But if one attunes for long enough the oracle opens up and begins to guide the seeker.

Ensayos honours the traditional custodians of the lands and waters were we roam and learn, including the Selk’nam, Yaghan, Kawéskar and Haush peoples of Tierra del Fuego and the Yuggera, Jagera, Turrbal, Quandamooka, Bidjara, Karingal, Gooreng Gooreng, Tarabalang and Wulgurukaba people of Queensland.

We give special thanks to Freja, Sonja and Glynn Carmichael, Sharon Jewell, Dale Harding, Helen Franzmann and Denny Ryan, Kathy and Peter Franzmann, Kyle Weiss, Lawrence English, Christine Black, Mary Graham, Carol and Trent Vincent, Lynne van Herwerden, Carl van Wyk, Jacques van Wyk, Anita Holtsclaw, and James Cook University.

This project is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.

Undine

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Laying on the land,
We asked the dreaming
to orient our listening.

It said,
women,
your sacred rituals excite the origin.
So, we followed the caterpillar east
up the mountain.
Across the rocky crevice,
to the twisted limbs of an ancient gum.

There,
we rested,
gossiping with the birds.
Until the rumble of our sisters’ return.

Upon descent,
sweet mandarins we shared,
speaking of undying elementals.

Laying on the land, again,
we were guided to the water’s edge.
Greeted by the elders,
we had visions of a red sea,
hemp twine,
and a shimmering spirit.
We heard the call of the aqueous erotic.

With clairsentience and doubt we parted.
Two to the homestead,
two to the river’s head.

Following our guides,
we meandered.
Zigzagging in and out of reality,
we found our way to the mossy opening.
Sweaty,
we stripped,
knowing we’d arrived.
With naked wonder,
we asked,
“ How do you do?”

Singing the creek as our compass,
we flowed like water
back to the camp.

Caitlin Franzmann and Camila Marmabio, Saddler Ridge, September 2019

Minjerribah and Canaipa – Ensayo #4

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WHEN

August 23-28, 2019

WHAT

Ensayistas met in Meanjin (Brisbane, Australia), where collaborator Caitlin Franzmann is based, for a mobile residency on the coastal islands in Quandamooka Country (Moreton Bay and islands) in southeast Queensland. After visiting the exhibition Seeing Country at Redland Art Gallery, curated by Freya Carmichael, who has strong family connections to Minhjerribah and Quandamooka Country, we crossed by ferry to Minjerribah and set up a base camp at Healing Rock. We were fortunate to spend time with Nguji woman weaver Sonja Carmichael and her family–bush walking, beach walking, textile talking, and sharing meals. At Canaipa we were hosted by artist Sharon Jewell, who shared the ephemeral land-based work of the Mudlines collective and led us on a littoral studio day.

WHY

Thinking about coastal stewardship in advance of the exhibition Everything Is Possibly an Oracle at Milani Gallery.

WHO

Caitlin Franzmann, Camila Marambio, Carla Macchiavello, Sarita Gálvez, Christy Gast

HOW

Big Mama the van.

The Wild Living @ Kunsternes Hus, Oslo

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The Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole is a series of interdisciplinary events at Kunstnernes Hus, organized by Geir Tore Holm, Søssa Jørgensen and Randi Nygård, as part of Ensayo#4.

THE WILD LIVING: Tuesday 27.8. at 19.00, Frognerelva, Oslo

Twilight walk and talks along Frognerelva with Geir Tore Holm, Søssa Jørgensen, Randi Nygård, microbiologist Laurent Fontaine and angler Lars Nilssen: Microbiologist Laurent Fontaine and angler Lars Nilssen joined us at a walk along Frognerelva, from the tunnels under the traffic at Majorstua, through the park and down into the wilder Frogner valley. We looked for fish in the wild and urban waters, which are teeming with life, learned about microorganisms and listened to the water in a hydrophone. In the end we sat still for a while and listened to life changing in the blue hour, also called the silent hour or the hour of the tusser (small underground trolls). Traditionally people in the Norwegian countryside would sit still and listen to the changes in the hour of darkening (skumringstimen) before lights were turned on and the cores resumed.

Tuesday 03.09.19 at 18.00, Kunstnernes Hus Kino

Lecture by Arne Johan Vetlesen, professor of philosophy at the University of Oslo.

Film screening of Bodil Furu’s Alnaelva 1 (2012).

Arne Johan Vetlesen (Professor of philosophy at the University of Oslo) presented some thoughts from his new book «Cosmologies of the Anthropocene: Pansychism, Animism, and the Limits of Posthumanism» (Routledge, 2019), where he engages with the classic philosophical question of mind and matter and considers a radical alternative cosmology: animism understood as panpsychism in practice. In panpsychism consciousness is not separated from matter, but rather seen as a fundamental part of the physical world.

After the talk we screened «Alnaelva I» (2012, HD video, 13 minutes) which is a film by Norwegian artist Bodil Furu, consisting of a series of field recordings made along the river Alna from a district called Ammerud to the Oslofjord. Its richly-detailed, monumental cinematic scenes and precisely captured location sound brought an intense and poetic attention to parts of the city which pass mostly unseen and unremarked. In the end we discussed the ethical consequences of a panpsychist worldview and what an animistic practice can be in our societies today.

ABOUT THE EVENT SERIES: 

The events have been named after section 2 of the Norwegian Marine Resources Act and will be based on the legal text, divided according to its wording. The words are starting points for walks, film screenings, lectures and discussions.

The project relates to the law not only with the usual legal definitions but also with a more poetic and fundamental approach. It examines different ideas about the environment and our role in nature, our management of natural resources, responsibilities, views on nature, language and values. It seeks to present alternative views and experiences. We need to better understand ourselves as integrated parts of both the natural cycles and societal structures and we need to see nature as part of society to find new and better ways of organizing our communities.

Derrida writes, in “The Animal That Therefore I Am”, that thinking about the animal, if there is such a possibility, must derive from poetry. So, if we want to see plants and animals as part of our society and democracy, and ourselves as part of nature, then it can not happen only with our rationality, but also in emotional, poetic and intuitive ways.

The project is supported by Fritt Ord and Arts Council Norway.

Text-isle: Multidisciplinary Work on Governors Island NYC

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Workshop: SAT, AUGUST 10 AT 1 PM at the Swale House (House 15) in Nolan Park on Governor’s Island in NYC, Free

Wool needs teeth to bond with dye. Soaking the fibers in a mineral-rich bath is called mordanting. We’ll collect seawater from Buttermilk Channel to mordant wool. As we walk along the seawall, we’ll practice deep listening and ask, “What else needs teeth? How do we make language susceptible to environment?” While the wool soaks in seawater, we will steep in the place where sculpture and poetry meet, souse our words, and play with them.

This workshop is a part of Ensayos, a nomadic research program based in Tierra del Fuego. Ensayo #4 (Coastal Curriculum) involves research pods in Tierra del Fuego, Northern Norway, New York, and Australia. The artists, scientists, and scholars involved in each pod meet intermittently to cross-pollinate and share their experiences with archipelagic intersections of identity, history, geography, language, and law.

Christy Gast brings her Mobile Tinctorium to Governors Island to extract color from goldenrod (solidago sp.), a native plant in the aster family. Gast’s process includes transferring color from plants to fibers (foraging, dyeing, felting), sculptural installations, and exploratory, poetic, performative and collaborative actions. She will work on-site and host events throughout the summer, amidst an evolving exhibition of projects and processes in the studio.

Denise Milstein is a writer and researcher. She teaches at Columbia University and edits Dispatches from the Field, a publication series devoted to ethnographic material. Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, she lives and works in New York City.

Wool mordanted with seawater drying on Strait of Magellan

The Institute of Urbanism and Landscape

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In November 2018, Ensayo #4 artist Randi Nygård visited the studio of The Institute of Urbanism and Landscape at AHO, The Oslo School of Architecture and Design to present the book Dei viltlevande marine ressursane ligg til fellesskapet / The Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole.

She conversed with professor Janike Kampevold Larsen and AHO landscape students about how to represent nature`s inherent values, what cybernetic networks are and what it means that the resources belong to society as a whole. Photo by The Institute of Urbanism and Landscape

The Last Act: Art & Culture in the Time of Environmental Crisis

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At The Last Act, Art and Culture in The Time of The Environmental Crises, Art Council Norway’s yearly conference in Bergen (November 20-22, 2018), the Norwegian cultural scene discussed what significance art and culture have when the climate and the environments are changing dramatically.

Randi Nygård took part in a panel called Rights and Resources, with Sigrid Eskeland Schütz, Professor of Law at the University of Bergen, Pål Lorentzen, Supreme Court Lawyer, and Anne Karin Sæther as the moderator. They discussed environmental regulations and laws and what role art can play in relation to these issues.

The panel began by talking about why economic interests so often win over environmental concerns. Do we need better legislation and more regulations? Lorentzen said that it is obvious that the environment does not yet have enough legal protection, as we see temperatures rising, mass pollution in the oceans, and fjord landfills being approved for mining companies. Sigrid mentioned that, for instance, there is a lot of micro plastic coming from pollution from road paint in speed stripes and there is no jurisdiction concerning the issue yet.

Nygård mentioned that the Norwegian Animal Welfare Act actually states that the animals have an intrinsic value which is irrespective of the resource value they may have for man. To her knowledge, this section has very seldom been used and had it been followed we would probably live in a very different society.

Nygård also spoke about how Ensayo#4 worked with an exhibition and a publication deriving from Section 2 of The Norwegian Marine Resources Act, Dei viltlevande marine ressursane ligg til fellesskapet / The Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole. They found the section to be both poetic and paradoxical. How can what is wild and living be a resource and belong to society?

Nygård sees including poetic approaches as highly relevant when we seek to represent animals and plants better in laws and to integrate them into our societies. Among others she mentioned Derrida’s idea that if thinking about the animal is possible it must derive from poetry.

Nygård also stated that art and poetry at its best does precisely this, it approches the ungraspable, it says something about that which cannot be said, and in this way it is another knowledge about the world.

Artists need not make the world poetic, the relations in the world are fundamental poetic. And so is also our relation to nature, mystic in its deepest sense.

T

Rugged, Weathered Above the Sea

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Randi Nygård of Ensayo #4 held a conversation with Timotheus Vermeulen about the anthology Dei viltlevande marine ressursane ligg til fellesskapet/The Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole at Coast Contemporary: Rugged, Weathered Above The Sea, a maritime art journey along the Norwegian coast, from Svolvær to Bergen, October 21.- 26. 2018.

For its second edition, Coast Contemporary explored the social, economic, and political values of the Norwegian landscape. Curated by Charles Aubin and Tanja Sæter, this six-day program gathers artists, architects, curators, writers, and environmental scholars to explore Norway’s centuries-long construction of a national affinity for nature, and how a changing climate will transform cultural imaginations.

The publication The Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole got its from after Section 2 of The Norwegian Marine Resources Act and is part of Ensayo#4.

Nygård and Vermeulen spoke about what happens when artists are the initiators of interdisciplinary projects, and why the law should meet poetry and art (and oceanography, philosophy, sociology, and biology.) Nygård mentioned Derrida who, in his book The Animal That Therefore I Am, writes that, if a thinking about animals exists it, must derive from poetry. So if we are to integrate the more-than-human into our democratic and political systems and give them more legal rights, the question of how to represent nature concerns both art, philosophy, science, and law, and might not only derive from logical thinking.

Nygård also said that artists may be good at asking naive but basic questions concerning the very foundations of the paradigms which the sciences and our worldviews are built on, creating a common ground where foundational discussions may form. In her belief, artists use feelings and intuitions in ways which might be foreign to most other sciences.

Vermeulen discussed the importance of moods, which Nygård related the necessary shift in perspectives–from nature as resources in a distant and dull world to an enlivened environment where we are integrated and where everything may have a level of inner consciousness and therefore also moods.

The conversation took place in a particularly unruly part of the trip, making the concept of The Oceanic Feeling fit very well.

“In 1927, after having read Spinoza and eastern mystics, Romain Rolland wrote a letter to Freud where he for the first time used the psychological term «oceanic feeling», describing a religious experience, an existential feeling of the self dissolving into the world, in a moment without boundaries.”*

*From Randi Nygård`s text The Oceanic Feeling in the anthology.

Coastal Curriculum @ Creative Time Summit Miami

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tiny island in the fjords of Tierra del Fuego with snow-capped mountains in the background

WORKSHOP: COASTAL CURRICULUM

Saturday, November 3rd from 12 to 1 pm at the Museum Park Baywalk, Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), 1103 Biscayne Blvd | Transportation Options

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THIS SESSION

Ensayo #4 (Coastal Curriculum) research pods exist in Tierra del Fuego, Northern Norway, New York, and Australia. The artists, scientists, and scholars involved in each pod meet at irregular intervals to cross-pollinate and share their experiences with varied archipelagic intersections of identity, history, geography, language, and law. This workshop will use embodied actions—both deep listening and movement based—to infuse and transform our own and participants’ creative and research practices engaging with coastal dynamics. Considering Miami’s position as part of the fragmentary ecosystem of the Everglades, the workshop will support artists and thinkers interested in advocating for sustainable coastal and wetland management by creating an alternative space and method for sharing knowledge and strategies.

Please meet in the museum lobby for this session before heading down to the Museum Park Baywalk with your session leaders.

Christy Gast is an artist whose work across media reflects her interest in issues of economics and the environment, and the role of content in giving meaning to the experience and form of the work. Her work has been exhibited at MoMA/P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Performa, Artist’s Space, Harris Lieberman Gallery and Regina Rex in New York; the Perez Art Museum of Miami, Bass Museum of Art, de la Cruz Collection, Locust Projects, Casa Lin and Gallery Diet in Miami; as well as Mass MoCA, the American University Museum, L.A.C.E., High Desert Test Sites, Centro Cultural Matucana 100 and the Kadist Foundation Paris, and she has received grants and awards from the Art Matters Foundation, Funding Arts Network, South Florida Cultural Consortium, Tigertail, the American Austrian Foundation Hayward Prize, and the Joan Sovern Sculpture Award from Columbia University.

Denise Milstein is a writer and researcher whose work examines the intersections of art with politics, ecology, and economic systems. Based on her interest in the emergence of innovation from structural constraints, she examines the potential for art to transform historical processes and subvert dominant modes of exchange. With Ensayos, she derived conceptual networks from observation of collective reflection, experimentation, and relations with non-human actors in Tierra del Fuego. She has published on artists and political repression in Latin America, on music revivals, and on social movement theory. Her prose has appeared in Tupelo Quarterly and Hobart, among others. She runs the MA program in sociology at Columbia University, where she trains students in qualitative and multi-method research.

Julián Donas Milstein is a student interested in documentary filmmaking, photography, history, and the natural environment. He joined Ensayos in 2015, when he participated in the BHQFU residency, and then traveled to Tierra del Fuego, where he collaborated with field experiments.

 

Beaver Diasporas: Thinking with Lewis Henry Morgan

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Date: April 27, 2018

Time: 2:-00-4:00 PM (Friday)

Location: VISTA Collaboratory, Carlson Library, University of Rochester

Beaver Diasporas: Thinking with Lewis Henry Morgan

Friday, April 27, 2018
2:00-4:00 PM

VISTA Collaboratory, Carlson Library
Computer Studies Building
160 Trustee Road
River Campus

A Multimedia Presentation:

Laura Ogden, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Dartmouth College
Christy Gast, Visual artist

Lewis Henry Morgan was interested in how the architecture of beaver worlds, such as their dams, lodges, and burrows, embody the social relations of beaver kinship systems. In this presentation, anthropologist Laura Ogden and artist Christy Gast build from Morgan’s work to explore how beaver worlds in Tierra del Fuego, Chile, embody other forms of social relations, particularly those associated with colonialism and empire. This multimedia presentation stems from collaborative ethnographic research in Tierra del Fuego, as well as experiments with ethnographic film production.

 

Boklansering/Book Launch at Kunsternes Hus in Oslo

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Sunday January 21 2018 from 3-5 pm at Kunstnernes Hus, Wergelandsveien 17, 0167 Oslo, Norway,

The anthology “The Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole” contains a wide range of expressions: poems, essays, photos, articles, manifests and artworks, all of which relate to our management of natural resources or discuss our fundamental views on nature. The book got its name from Section 2 of the Norwegian Marine Resources Act: The Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole.

What can laws and management tell us about the relationships we have to nature and to our surroundings? And what role can art play in relation to climate change and environmental issues?

The editors, Karolin Tampere and Randi Nygård will shortly introduce the book and Søssa Jørgensen will present the “Log book” by Sørfinnset skole/the nord land, before we listen to cod rumbling under kurtise and to Michelle-Marie Letelier, a visual artist from Chile, who will talk about her text in the book “On Exceptionalism”. Then the poet Inger Elisabeth Hansen will read a selection of her poems, before we hear a recording of the song “Kings of the Rivers” by artist Christy Gast.

“The Wild Living Marine Resources Belong to Society as a Whole” is a part of Ensayo#4, which is an interdisciplinary project that began in 2015 and deals with management, language, values and identity related to the ocean and the coast in certain parts of Norway and Chile. The goal is to understand, express and manage the big environmental issues we are facing in new and better ways.

The main project Ensayos was founded in Tierra del Fuego in 2011 by curator Camila Marambio.

The publication is supported by Arts Council Norway and Billedkunstnernes vederlagsfond.

Design: David Benski & Laurens Bauer
Edition: 500
ISBN: 978-82-303-3659-5
Published by Randi Nygård and Karolin Tampere as part of Ensayo#4, 2017

The following artists, poets, academics and fishermen have contributed to the book:

Christy Gast, Geir Tore Holm, Søssa Jørgensen, Amy Franceschini and Futurefarmers, Jahn Petter Johnsen (Norges fiskerihøgskule, UiT), Solveig Bøe (NTNU, Trondheim), Jason Hall-Spencer (Plymouth University), Inger Elisabeth Hansen, Alejandra Mancilla (UiO), Lise Doksæter Sivle (Havforskningsintituttet i Bergen), Paul Wassmann (UiT), Camilla Brattland (UiT), Michelle-Marie Letelier, Georgiana Dobre, Camila Marambio, Camilla Renate Nicolaisen, Maja Nilsen, Munan Øvrelid, Cecilia Vicuña, Erik Solheim (UN Environment Executive Director, UNEP), Kjersti Vetterstad, Georgiana Dobre, Camila Marambio, Sarita Gálvez, Barbara Savedra (Director, Wildlife Conservation Society, Chile), Arne Johan Vetlesen (UiO) og Amy Balkin.

Contributors of the Logbook:
Petter Snekkestad, Kjersti Vetterstad, Georgiana Dobre, Snorre Magnar Solberg, Stefan Mitterer, Karolin Tampere, Martin Lundberg, Christy Gast, Geir Tore Holm, Søssa Jørgensen and Amy Franceschini.

The Logbook is funded by Nordland County and the Municipality of Gildeskål

ISBN: 978-82-303-3759-2
Design: Jaan Evart
Edition: 700

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Velkomen til lansering av boka “Dei viltlevande marine ressursane ligg til fellesskapet” i Atelier Felix på Kunstnernes Hus.

Lett servering – og spesialpris på boka!

Antologien inneheld eit vidt spekter av uttrykk: dikt, essay, artiklar, foto, manifest og kunstverk. Dei handlar alle om tema relatert til våre natursyn og vår forvaltning av naturressursane. Boka har fått namnet sitt frå paragraf 2 i den norske havressurslova: Dei viltlevande marine ressursane ligg til fellesskapet i Norge.
Kva kan lover og forvaltning fortelja oss om forholda vi har til naturen og til omgjevnadane våre? Og kva kan kunst gjera i relasjon til klimakrise og miljøproblem?

Redaktørane, Randi Nygård og Karolin Tampere, vil introdusera boka, før vi lyttar til torsk som brummar under gyting, og til Søssa Jørgensen som presenterer den tilhøyrande Loggboka frå Sørfinnset skole /the nord land. Michelle-Marie Letelier, biletkunstnar frå Chile, vil snakka om tema relatert til hennar tekst i boka, “On Exceptionalism”, og Inger Elisabeth Hansen vil lesa eit utval av sine dikt. Til slutt høyrer vi ei innspeling av sangen “Kings of the Rivers” av biletkunstnar Christy Gast.

Publikasjonen er del av det tverrfaglege prosjektet Ensayos, der kunstnarar, lokalbefolkning og forskarar, både natur- samfunnsvitarar, over fleire år studerer og engasjerer seg i tema knytta til politisk økologi. Ensayos blei starta på Ildlandet i Chile i 2011 av kurator Camila Marambio.

Boka er støtta av Norsk kulturråd og Billedkunstnernes vederlagsfond.

Design: David Benski & Laurens Bauer
Opplag: 500
ISBN: 978-82-303-3659-5
Publikasjonen er gitt ut av Randi Nygård og Karolin Tampere som del av Ensayo#4, 2017

I boka bidreg følgjande kunstnarar, forskarar, fiskarar og poetar:

Christy Gast, Geir Tore Holm, Søssa Jørgensen, Amy Franceschini and Futurefarmers, Jahn Petter Johnsen (Norges fiskerihøgskule, UiT), Solveig Bøe (NTNU, Trondheim), Jason Hall-Spencer (Plymouth University), Inger Elisabeth Hansen, Alejandra Mancilla (UiO), Lise Doksæter Sivle (Havforskningsintituttet i Bergen), Paul Wassmann (UiT), Camilla Brattland (UiT), Michelle-Marie Letelier, Georgiana Dobre, Camila Marambio, Camilla Renate Nicolaisen, Maja Nilsen, Munan Øvrelid, Cecilia Vicuña, Erik Solheim (Direktør for FN sitt miljøprogram, UNEP), Kjersti Vetterstad, Georgiana Dobre, Camila Marambio, Sarita Gálvez, Barbara Savedra (Direktør for Wildlife Conservation Society, Chile), Arne Johan Vetlesen (UiO) og Amy Balkin.

Takk til Lise Doksæter og Petter Kvadsheim i prosjektet “3S” (Sonar Safety Sea mammals) ved FFI og Havforskningsinstituttet og til Lise Langgård for at vi fekk bruka deira lyd av kval og torsk.

I Loggboka bidreg følgjande:
Petter Snekkestad, Kjersti Vetterstad, Georgiana Dobre, Snorre Magnar Solberg, Stefan Mitterer, Karolin Tampere, Martin Lundberg, Christy Gast, Geir Tore Holm, Søssa Jørgensen og Amy Franceschini.

Loggboka er støtta av Nordland Fylke og Gildeskål kommune

ISBN: 978-82-303-3759-2
Design: Jaan Evart
Opplag: 700

Cuasi manifiesto del visitante*

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Silenciarse para escuchar lo silenciado.

Aprender a sentir lo oculto.

Preguntarse por nuestro estar. Practicar estar sin acecho. 

Reconocer lo Selk’nam, Kawéskar, Yámana, Haush.

Atender a la erosión, a las cicatrices que dejó y que va dejando la colonización.

Sabiendo que dejamos huellas, ¿qué forma tienen? ¿qué color? ¿qué tono? ¿qué olor?

Experimentar doblamientos, desdoblamientos, torceduras, vertir horizontales en verticales y verticales acostadas.

Entonar Odas al viento.

Habitar el espacio entre lo consciente y lo inconsciente, para arrancar de la raíz la razón.

Enredarse los unos en los otros, con ternura y curiosidad, con coraje, dispuestos a perdernos. 

Soñar.

Mirar las estrellas.

Ensoñar otro devenir. Ensayar otro devenir. 

Ensoñar para sanar. Ensayar el sanar.

Ensoñar para activar la geografía externa e interna. Ensayar zurcir  la geografía externa e interna.

*Escrito por Camila Marambio, con aportes de Ariel Bustamante, Matías Illanes, y Carolina Saquel, ad portas de su visita a Karukinka a grabar la web serie Distancia.

La Poeta y el Etnógrafo: Cecilia Vicuña y Michael Taussig en Conversación

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El antropólogo Michael Taussig y la poeta Cecilia Vicuña compartirán sus maneras de trabajar la “música” y el “sonido” de los hechos históricos ahondando en la “tarea del narrador” en una conversación que se realizará el jueves 28 de diciembre de 2017 en el Aula Tecnológica de la Biblioteca Central de la Universidad de Magallanes (Avenida Bulnes 01855, Punta Arenas), a partir de las 19 horas. Modera: Camila Marambio. Organizan: Ensayos, Magíster en Ciencias Sociales Mención Patrimonio o Mención Intervención Social Umag, Instituto de la Patagonia, Universidad de Magallanes, Caleta María, WildLife Conservation Society Chile (WCS).

Michael Taussig es un destacado antropólogo australiano conocido por sus provocativos estudios
etnográficos y su estilo poco convencional dentro del campo académico. Es profesor de antropología en la Universidad de Columbia en Nueva York. Además de sus numerosas publicaciones antropológicas, los escritos de Michael Taussig sobre Walter Benjamin y Karl Marx han sido elogiados más allá de su campo, especialmente en relación con la idea del fetichismo de las mercancías.

Taussig leerá de su libro nuevo, “Becoming Palm”, co-escrito con la artista Symrin Gill como respuesta a las plantaciones de palma y a las enormes transformaciones humanas y ecológicas que estas plantaciones engendran tanto en Sud America como en Asia del Sur. Además repensará sus escritos sobre los Selk’nam y Yámana publicados en 1999 en su libro “Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative”.

Cecilia Vicuña es poeta, artista y cineasta chilena de larga trayectoria internacional, creadora de “lo precario” una poética espacial de actos y performances realizados en la naturaleza, calles y museos como una forma de “oir un antiguo silencio esperando ser oído.” Desde los sesentas su obra ha re-elaborado el pensamiento poético y espacial amerindio en busca de una transformación de la conciencia para enfrentar el desastre ecológico de nuestro tiempo. Fundó la Tribu No en Chile en 1967, y co-fundó Artists for Democracy, en Londres en 1974.

Vicuña, cuya labor artística está siempre en conversación con las transformaciones medioambientales, entonará sus propias reflexiones en torno a su experiencia reciente en documenta 14, la gran muestra de arte contemporáneo en Atenas y Kassel que hoy está siendo atacada por el neo-fascismo Europeo. Esta coyuntura le servirá para recordar sus poemas a Lola Kiepja, escritos a fines de los ochenta y comienzos de los noventa, aún inéditos.

La actividad esta abierta a la comunidad y es organizada por Ensayos, el Programa de Magíster en Ciencias Sociales Mención Patrimonio o Mención Intervención Social de la Universidad de Magallanes, el Instituto de la Patagonia (Umag), Caleta María (Tierra del Fuego) y WildLife Conservation Society (WCS).

https://ensayostierradelfuego.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/AFICHE-Charla-Taussig-VicunÞa.pdf

¿’Onde va la lancha? at Detroit Institute of Arts

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Save the date: Christy Gast will perform ¿’Onde va la lancha?, a performance lecture set in Tierra del Fuego’s Admiralty Sound, on Friday, October 6 at 7 pm in the Detroit Institute of Arts’ Rivera Court.

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The Detroit Institute of Arts and James Pearson Duffy Department of Art and Art History, Wayne State University, Detroit, are pleased to present INSTRUMENTAL, a multi-media performance series featuring local and national artists who work in a variety of genres. The following artists will be featured in the performance series: Lisa Rybovich Crallé / Sophia Wang, Jimbo Easter, Angelo Conti, Naysayin, Katie Grace McGowan, Bushwick Bill, Joseph Ravens, Jessica Care Moore with special guests, Christy Gast, Jason Furlow, Beverly Fre$h, DJ Woounz, Kuperus and Miller (aka Adult.), ESHAM, Beili Liu, Cooper Holoweski, Richard Haley, Felicia Carisle, Biba Bell, Anna Rose, Jessica Wildman, and Russ Orlando. The series will also include brief lectures by Mary Anderson, Lauren Kalman, and Chera Kee.

Dreamworlds of Beavers

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In Tierra del Fuego, beavers are strangely invisible, and simultaneously ever-present. They are fleeting. One rarely sees a beaver, as they spend their days hidden under tannin-dark waters. Instead, only trace impressions. Rows of chew marks on the bark of a fallen tree. Castoreum’s oily residue. Downed timber. Drag lines in the mud.

In the woods, predators lurk. Here, beavers are graceless, lumbering. On the other hand, the pond offers a lightness of being. A safe tranquility. Light captures and enlivens microscopic particles. The calm of a snow globe, these sediments drift along the water column.

Beavers are night creatures, nocturnal. Of course, they may not even notice the dark, as they have such poor eyesight. In a hazy blur, their world is profoundly enlivened by scent and sound. Surely, beavers do not dream in images. Instead, their dreams offer an acrid, musty sensorium. A vibrato of gnashing teeth.

A beaver’s life acquires form in the water. Over the millennia, beavers have “become” with land and water. At some point they learned forestry. Later, to build underwater dens. We all make spaces that comfort us.

Piles of rough timber, tree limbs; really, this is an architecture of kinship. Kinship resists the logic of trees. It is a much messier entanglement.

Like other forms of domestic life, here, home comes into being through routinized labor. Chewing and dragging, chewing and dragging…such repetition. In “becoming beaver”, what other attachments are lost?

Silt, decades old, hovers and skips along every surface, like the landscape of the moon. For astronauts, water signals life’s possibility, though this seems a low bar for encountering the magic of other worlds. Beavers practice this kind of magic–what we call “becoming in other worlds.

Let us resist the indications of industry. Busy as a beaver? Instead, contemplate the intimacy of water.

Beavers are remaking this land of fire. Where rivers rushed wild, now dead trees litter the landscape like so many discarded pick-up-sticks. There is little hope for the forest’s return.

Can a forest be saturated by grief? If so, this is a form of forest arboressence, or, a forest made unchanging and stable. Put another way, it is a grief bound by our attachment to nature’s purity–a purity that no one really believes.

What happens when we look beyond this grief, when we pause for a moment of speculative wonder?

Text by Laura Ogden, Camila Marambio & Christy Gast

Coastal Curriculum in Coney Island

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This short film was produced as the result of a series of workshops with a group of teenagers from the New York Aquarium’s Wildlife Conservation Corps, which focuses on public-facing science and ocean advocacy projects. Led by the Aquarium’s artist in residence Christy Gast, they began by employing the Plastic Census Protocol developed during Gast’s Ensayo #4 residency at Bahía Jackson in Tierra del Fuego. Over the following weeks, they teased a narrative out of the objects they collected, asking where they came from, how they got there, and how they could advocate for change. They worked with playwright Cory Tamler to develop a script, composer Paul Hogan to record the soundtrack, and Christy Gast and George Ferrandi on the animation.

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2 Lost Soles was created by an artist-led group of teens from The Wildlife Conservation Corps (WCC), a field based training program for students planning to pursue careers in natural resources fields. This short trailer combines still animation and real-time video to tell the love story of two lost “soles” as they leave the feet of unknown humans from the past. As they float through the ocean for a thousand years, they are subsumed by a lifeless galaxy of plastic trash produced by a past culture of consumption. In this cinematic version of the future, there is no life in the sea, only floating garbage. But if we think ahead and act now, we might be able to flip the script and protect the ocean for generations to come. Watch to the end to find out how you can help!

Tánana

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We are pleased to share the trailer for Tánana, a documentary by our associates in Puerto Williams.

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TÁNANA, estar listo para zarpar en lengua yagán, es el regreso de Martín González Calderón al corazón del archipiélago del cabo de Hornos. Don Martín es un artesano yagán, pueblo que por más de 6000 mil años habita el territorio más austral del planeta. Creció en los hermosos y exuberantes canales del archipiélago fueguino, navegando a través de las miles de islas y parajes que componen la particular geografía del último rincón de América.

Las extensas travesías de caza que realizó junto a sus padres, le permitieron conocer los saberes y secretos más profundos de la navegación ancestral, recibiendo un legado que se transmitió por generaciones desde tiempos inmemoriales. Sin embargo, este modo de vida fue violentamente detenido, a raíz de la intervención de los estados de Chile y Argentina, especialmente a partir de los problemas políticos de los años 70. Desde entonces, la escasa población yagán aún con vida, no puede navegar como antes, concentrando su vida en Puerto Williams, Isla Navarino.

Cuarenta años después, Martín, motivado por la necesidad de transmitir sus conocimientos únicos sobre la cultura ancestral y el territorio, prepara una nueva travesía. Así, retoma su oficio de carpintero de ribera para construir una embarcación adecuada. Asentándose en Bahía Mejillones, único predio perteneciente a la Comunidad Yagán actualmente, a 30 kilómetros de Puerto Williams, y con ayuda de su familia, consigue sacar adelante está tarea, al mismo tiempo que les instruye respecto a tan importante conocimiento para la vida en los canales.

Listo para zarpar con su nueva embarcación, Martín y su yerno comprobarán que las nuevas exigencias para la navegación representan una gran traba, por lo que la expedición deberá requerir apoyo para alcanzar todos los lugares anhelados. De este modo comienzan su travesía a través de cientos de rincones por años sin visitar. Allí se encuentran con las ruinas y vestigios de su antigua vida, reviviendo sus profundos y únicos conocimientos sobre la memoria viva de los canales, de su deslumbrante historia, su impresionante fauna y geografía, en pleno corazón del archipiélago más austral del mundo.

La navegación, la aventura y los recuerdos de Martín, se entremezclan con sus habilidades artesanales, su soledad y su vida familiar. No obstante, tras la necesidad por dejar un legado para su descendencia y su pueblo, hay también un deseo especial por realizar, emular la hazaña de rodear el Falso Cabo de Hornos, como lo hizo a sus doce años de edad junto a su padre, como sencillos navegantes en su pequeña embarcación a remo y vela. En esa dirección trazó la ruta del viaje, esperando revivir, quizás por última vez, esos momentos de conexión ancestral única con los mares más difíciles del planeta, sabiendo que, además de ser uno de los últimos reales cabo horneros del mundo, es uno de los últimos grandes navegantes de su pueblo.

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Tánana, “get ready to set sail” in the Yahgan language, is the return of Martín González Calderón to heart of the Cape Horn archipelago. Don Martín is a yahgan craftsman, people who live´s for more than six thousand years in the southernmost territory of the planet. He grew up in the beautiful and exuberant channels of Tierra del Fuego Archipelago, sailing through the thousands of islands and places that make up the unique geography of the last corner of America.

The long hunting trips he made with his parents allowed him to know the deepest knowledge and secrets of ancient navigation, receiving a legacy that was transmitted for generations since immemorial time. However, this way of life was violently stopped, due to intervention of Chile´s and Argentina´s state, especially from the political problems of the 70s. Since then, the few Yahgan people still alive, cannot sail as before, concentrating their life in Puerto Williams, Isla Navarino.

Forty years later, Martin, motivated by the need to transmit his unique knowledge of the culture and ancestral territory, prepares a new journey. He recovers his skills as a shipwright to build a suitable boat. Settling in Mejillones Bay, the only property of to the Yagan Community today, 30 kilometers from Puerto Williams, with the help of his family gets to move this task, while instructs them about this important skill for life in the channels.

Ready to sail with his new boat, Martin and his son in law verify that the new requirements for navigation represent a major obstacle, so the issue will require support to reach all the cherished places. Thus begins their journey through hundreds of corners and places not visited for years. There they will find the ruins and vestiges of his old life, reliving his deep and unique knowledge and memory about the channels, with its dazzling history, stunning wildlife and geography, in the heart of the southernmost archipelago in the world.

Sailing, adventure and memories of Martin, mingle with his craftsmanship, his loneliness and his family life. However, after the need to leave a legacy for his descendants and his people, there is also a special desire to perform, to emulate the feat of surrounding the False Cape Horn, as he did as a twelve years old boy with his father, as simple sailors in their small boat, with oars and sails. In that direction he traced the route of the trip, hoping to revive, perhaps for the last time, those moments of deep ancestral connection with the most difficult seas of the world. Knowing that, in addition to being one of the last real cape horner of the world, he is maybe the last of the great navigators of his people.

Ensayos co-presents Cecilia Vicuña Performance Lecture @ Bella Union in Melbourne

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Cecilia Vicuña – The Artist As… Poet

“lo precario” (the precarious); transformative acts that bridge the gap between art and life, the ancestral and the avant-garde.

THU 6 Oct 2016
6PM-8PM
Bella Union
Cnr Victoria and Lygon St, Carlton
Wheelchair Accessible

FREE

Liquid Architecture, Ensayos, Institute of Modern Art (IMA) Brisbane and Curatorial Practice at MADA (Monash Art Design and Architecture) are pleased to present a special performative lecture by the Chilean poet, artist, filmmaker and activist Cecilia Vicuña.

Vicuña’s lecture is part of The Artist As…, a year-long lecture series co-presented by the IMA and Curatorial Practice at MADA. The series examines the ways artists move through the world and how that movement might involve adopting other roles to pursue a project, a position, a politics, or a practice. For any given project the artist may act as architect, as ethnographer, as archivist, as producer, as curator, as activist, as choreographer, and so on. The Artist As… also recognises that many artists come to their practice as experts in other fields, bringing with them specialist knowledge that informs and shapes their work.

Cecilia Vicuña’s multifaceted work addresses the pressing concerns of the modern world; ecological destruction, human rights and cultural homogenisation. Born and raised in Santiago, Chile, she has been in exile since the early 1970s after the military coup against elected president Salvador Allende.

Beginning in the mid 60′s in Chile, Vicuña’s practise might be formulated as “hearing an ancient silence waiting to be heard”. Her works are fluid and tangential, often starting as poems, becoming images that morph into film, song, sculpture or collective performance. These ephemeral, site specific actions in nature, streets and museums combine ritual and assemblage. She calls her impermanent, participatory work “lo precario” (the precarious); transformative acts that bridge the gap between art and life, the ancestral and the avant-garde.
In Chile Vicuña founded the legendary Tribu No in 1967, a group that created anonymous poetic actions throughout the city. In 1974, exiled in London, she co-founded Artists for Democracy to oppose dictatorships in the Third World.

Vicuña has published twenty-two art and poetry books, including Kuntur Ko (Tornsound, 2015) and Spit Temple: The Selected Performances of Cecilia Vicuña (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012). Her Selected Poetry is forthcoming from Kelsey Street Press, 2017. In 2009, she co-edited The Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry, 500 years of Latin American Poetry. She edited ÜL: Four Mapuche Poets, in 1997.

A partial list of museums that have exhibited her work include: The Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Santiago; The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) London; The Whitechapel Art Gallery in London; The Berkeley Art Museum; The Whitney Museum of American Art; and MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art in New York.
She was appointed Messenger Lecturer 2015 at Cornell University, an honor bestowed on authors who contribute to the “Evolution of Civilization.”
She divides her time between Chile and New York.

Ensayos Founder Marambio Is ICI Independent Vision Curatorial Award Finalist

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ICI’S 2016 INDEPENDENT VISION CURATORIAL AWARD NOMINEES

camila-marambio_papudo
Camila Marambio, Ensayos Founder & Director

Established in 2010 as an initiative of the Gerrit Lansing Education Fund, the Independent Vision Curatorial Award reflects ICI’s commitment to supporting international curators early in their careers who have shown exceptional creativity and prescience in their exhibition-making, research, and related writing. The award, including a $3,000 stipend towards a new project, is given every two years to an early or mid-career curator to support their independent practice through ICI, and give them a platform to pursue and publish their research online. The Independent Vision Curatorial Award is significant in that it is one of the very few awards in the world to recognize rising curatorial talent.

Past recipients of the award are Doryun Chong (2010), Chief Curator at M+, Hong Kong; Nav Haq (2012), recently appointed curator of the 2017 Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, & Jay Sanders(2012), Curator and Curator of Performance at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York – both selected for the Award by Hans Ulrich Obrist; and Eva Barois De Caevel (2014), an independent curator who earlier this year collaborated on the 37th EVA International, Ireland Biennial of Contemporary Art, Limerick, selected by Nancy Spector.

This year we reached out to 12 international curators and ICI collaborators have each nominated one emerging or mid-career curator for the award. From these nominations, Franklin Sirmans, Director of the Pérez Art Museum Miami, will select and present this year’s award at the ICI Annual Benefit & Auction on October 26, 2016.

The 2016 Gerrit Lansing Independent Vision Curatorial Award Nominating Committee is comprised of: Omar Berrada, Writer, translator, and curator; Joselina Cruz, Director and Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD), De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, Manila; Elvira Dyangani Ose, Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, independent curator and member of the Thought Council at the Fondazione Prada; Ruth Estévez, Director & Curator, Gallery at REDCAT; Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, Independent curators and academics, Co-founders of the multidisciplinary curatorial platform Art Reoriented, Munich and New York; Julieta González, Chief Curator / Interim Director, Museo Jumex and Adjunct Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP); Susan Hapgood, Executive Director, International Studio & Curatorial Program; Aileen Burns and Johan Lundh, Executive Co-Directors of the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; Lucía Sanromán, Director of Visual Arts, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Sally Tallant, Director, Liverpool Biennial; Emiliano Valdés, Chief Curator, Museum of Modern Art, Medellín; and Jochen Volz, Curator of the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo 2016.


The 2016 Independent Vision Curatorial Award Nominees are:
• Amanda Abi Khalil: Independent curator and Founder, Temporary Art Platform; Beirut, Lebanon.
• Elisé Atangana: Independent curator and producer; Curator, Seven Hills, Kampala Art Biennale 2016, Uganda; Cameroon and France.
• Rashida Bumbray: Independent curator and choreographer; Senior Program Manager, the Arts Exchange, Open Society Foundations; New York, USA.
• Diana Campbell Betancourt: Chief Curator Dhaka Art Summit and Artistic Director, Samdani Art Foundation, Dhaka, Bangladesh; and Bellas Artes Project, Bagac; The Philippines.
• José Esparza Chong Cuy: Pamela Alper Associate Curator, MCA Chicago; Chicago, USA.
• Sabel Gavaldon: Independent curator; London, UK.
• Candice Hopkins: Independent curator and writer; Albuquerque, USA.
• Miguel A. Lopez: Chief Curator, TEOR/éTica; San José, Costa Rica; Co-founder, Bisagra, Lima, Perú.
• Camila Marambio: Independent curator; Tierra del Fuego, Chile.
• Louise O’Kelly: Founding Director, Block Universe Performance Art Festival; London, UK.
• Fatos Ustek: Independent curator and writer; London, UK.
• Vivian Ziherl: Curator, Jerusalem Show VII Before and After Origins (2016) and Founder, Frontier Imaginaries; Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Más allá del fin, Issue # 2

Published on

This second issue of the periodical Más allá del fin brings together multiple approaches to the intersections between art, science, ecology, rights, performance and other life experiences taking place in and around Tierra del Fuego.

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