TOWARDS PERMACULTURAL INSTITUTIONS: CURATING TRANSFORMATION
People Care: Allyship and Climate Justice
October 20–21, 2023

 

Language: English
Admission free, registration till October 17th: info@medienwerk-nrw.de
(no registration required for the Friday lecture)

What does it mean for art institutions to put themselves at the service of environmental struggles and the climate justice movement in a present time marked by colonial continuities, patriarchal violence and territorial exploitation? The first workshop on allyship will explore the possibility of supporting local groups and activists, and look for ways to build reciprocal relationships between actors and communities in the so-called Global South and North. How can a decolonial allyship succeed?

Antonia Alampi, director of Spore Initiative, Berlin (with Abrahan Jesús Collí Tun, Julián Dzul Nah and Valiana Aguilar)
Jakeline Romero Epiayú, environmental activist, Colombia
Chihiro Geuzebroek, artist and organizer, Amsterdam
Camilo Pachón, artist, Berlin/ Colombia
Ela Spalding, artist, Berlin/ Panama
Angela Serino, curator, Amsterdam
AMA TWI, caterer, Cologne

DAY 1
Friday, 20th Oct 2023

2—6 p.m.
Some steps for de-centering and collectivizing artistic and curatorial authorship.
Reading circle with Antonia Alampi (SPORE Initiative, Berlin)

This reading and discussion group will revolve around a text titled ‘Some steps for decolonising international research-for-development partnerships’ by Katarzyna Cieslik, Shreya Sinha, Cees Leeuwis, Tania Eulalia Martínez-Cruz, Nivedita Narain and Bhaskar Vira.

In the s/kin of the Earth
Somatic exercises with Ela Spalding, artist, Berlin

Somatic exercises perceived with SUELO. SUELO is a methodology to (re)connect with the places we inhabit and build alliances of solidarity through the materiality and metaphor of soil, with its multifaceted associations and spheres of engagement - from our bodies to our homes, hoods, continents, to the planet.

Permacultural Processing
Transfer with Angela Serino, Researcher, Amsterdam

On the occasion of this two-day workshop, Angela Serino will refer to some of the key-principles of permaculture as a way to facilitate processes of observation and conversations.

 

6—7:30 p.m.
Dinner
AMA TWI, caterer, Cologne

7:30—8:30 p.m.
Everything to come has already begun
A lecture in the form of a dialogue between Abrahan Jesús Collí Tun, Antonia Alampi, Julián Dzul Nah and Valiana Aguilar

The conversation between the speakers will revolve around collaborative processes they have been engaged with in the past two years from different positions, focused on the development of spaces and cultural tools around practices of agro-ecology and biodiversity protection. Tools whose content, form and necessity has been established and led by Maya communities, organizations and collectives, part of Indigenous Peoples movements that represent only the 6% of the world population, yet protect 80% of the remaining biodiversity on the planet.
The cultural collaborations that will be discussed are part of the work of Spore Initiative, an institution inviting cultural practitioners to be at the service of the needs of communities at the forefront of environmental protection and ecological regeneration. An institution whose work is based on the belief that art and culture can play an instrumental role for environmental movements on the ground.

DAY 2
Saturday, 21h Oct 2023

10:30 a.m.—7 p.m.

Community Actions: horizontal networks for anti-mining activism
Workshop with Jakeline Romero Epiayú, environmental activist, Colombia, und Camilo Pachón, artist, Colombia

This workshop addresses the dynamics of community work – especially in the context of anti-mining activism against El Cerejón in La Guajira in Colombia – from the perspective of its inhabitants. It seeks to promote the creation of affective and horizontal networks that enrich the relationship between social leaders, artists, communities and art institutions in different parts of the world.

Lunch
AMA TWI, caterer, Cologne

Practicing Solidarity
Workshop with Chihiro Geuzebroek, artist and organizer, Amsterdam

In this workshop we will socialize our first perceived obstacles on the road to strengthen relationships of collaboration, solidarity and trust when working across differences of power and context. This will become fuel for some playful exercises to explore risk taking and addressing obstacles to solidarity and dealing with setbacks as a group.

Permacultural Processing
Transfer with Angela Serino, Researcher, Amsterdam

In the s/kin of the Earth
Somatic exercises with Ela Spalding, artist, Berlin

Biographies

AMA TWI is a Cologne based caterer, offering Afrocentric cuisine inspired by the African diaspora, with a playful combination of flavours and colours. The eye eats with you! With her great passion for cooking, Gifty Owusu respectfully challenges the norms of classic recipes by offering vegan alternatives to African cuisine. Since her childhood, she has moved in the culinary field of tension between Accra and London, and has now found her home in Germany.

Antonia Alampi is the artistic and executive director of Spore Initiative, Berlin. Her professional practice as a cultural organizer, art historian, curator, and director, has been defined by working collaboratively with artists and professionals from different fields and backgrounds, and within rather small-scale, socially sensitive, politically engaged, and structurally vulnerable organizations. She has been the artistic co-director of SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin (2016–20); in the curatorial team of sonsbeek20➜24; curator of Extra-City Kunsthal, Antwerp (2017–19); and curator of Beirut, Cairo (2012–15), among other things that go further back in time. Within and outside of institutions, she has curated or been involved in many types of cultural and artistic projects, researches, movements, publications, and actions pursuing social, political, and environmental justice as well as supporting nonconformist forms of reading and interpreting the earth and its lives. She occasionally teaches, writes essays, edits books and talks in public. She is the mother of a girl and lives in Berlin.

Chihiro Geuzebroek is decolonial climate justice organizer, speaker, trainer, teacher, filmmaker, poet and singersongwriter. She is Bolivian Dutch and based in Amsterdam where she is currently teaching at Sandberg Institute art academy at the Planetary Poetics master. Chihiro is co-founder of the decolonial foundation Aralez, was part of Fossil Free Culture.NL and has worked with six museums in the past two years as advisor, trainer, speaker, performer and is currently making an installation for Amsterdam Museum. In 2020 she made the expo People Powered Movement vs. Shell and in 2022 and in 2023 she made the expo Indigenous Dreams. The topics she most works on is climate racism, Indigenous Liberation and decolonization and re-membering.

Camilo Pachón is a multidisciplinary Colombian artist who has been working on community projects in different parts of Colombia for over ten years. The voices of the communities, their experiences, stories, and struggles are at the heart of Camilo's practice. His current project, "Invisible Landscapes," involves a series of artistic actions, conversations, and debates about the increasing extractive practices of coal, raw materials, wind park projects, and their impact on the territory, landscape, and cosmology of the indigenous peoples in northern Colombia. As part of his practice, Camilo has conducted extensive research on masks, costumes, and carnivals, exploring their significance as ancient tools of change.

Jakeline Romero Epiayú is a Wayúu woman human rights defender in the department of Guajira, in the northeast of Colombia. Jakeline is part of the organization Sütsuin Jieyuu Wayúu (Force of Wayuu Women), created in 2006 with the aim of visibilising and denouncing violations of the rights of the Wayúu indigenous people, which are a result of the mining megaprojects, forced displacement, the situation of vulnerability of the victims of the armed conflict and the presence of armed groups and the militarization of the Guajira territory.

Angela Serino is a curator, writer, and researcher based in Amsterdam who has worked with artists-in-residencies programs in various roles. She is interested in individual and collective moments of research, self-reflection and learning around feminisms, ecological belonging and permacultures. In 2021 she co-founded ARRC, a collective that studies art residencies and their relation to place, time, ecology and otherness. She co-edited Kunstlicht’s issue n.4 (2023) titled: “Between the Standing and the Inclined: Structures Supporting Change”. Angela is an alumna of De Appel's Curatorial Programme.

Ela Spalding is an artist-facilitator exploring the ecotones between fields of knowledge, using art as a conduit to prac-ce and convey no-ons of ecology and interconnectedness. Her work focuses on sound, wellbeing and nature’s processes to invite listening and resonance within and without. As founder and director of Estudio Nuboso, a plaCorm for art and ecology based in Panama, she’s currently wri-ng the Suelo Methodology Field Guide for people to connect with the places we inhabit. Her artworks have been shown at the XIII Bienal de La Habana, Cuba (2019); the X Bienal Centroamericana in Costa Rica (2016); the Bienal de Artes Visuales del Istmo Centroamericano (Bavic9) in Guatemala (2014); and in group exhibi-ons in Panama, Central and South America, Germany and Austria. Her work Ocaso, Panamá is part of the MAC - Panama Contemporary Art Museum collection.

Valiana Alejandra Aguilar Hernández is dedicated to the work of regenerative agriculture, the care of native seeds and plants and the nurturing of melipona and apis bees. She is also part of the Suumil Móoktáan collective in her community (Sinanché) where collectively are living on a plot of land, a solar, that they claim through the construction of alternative ways of life where knowledge and practices of caring for the territory are generated.

Julián Dzul Nah is an ethnographic researcher, teacher, and manager of intercultural projects, interested in Mayan contemporary memories, religion and plural conceptions about times, futures and finitudes. He also works moving these topics from academic spaces to other community, local and situated spheres, where they can accompany reflective processes, or else, unfold in other types of discourses, specially in collaborative and self-managed initiatives in the fields of graphics arts, theater and agroecology.

Abrahan Collí Tun's (Yucatán, México) work consists of getting to know, different ways of living the peninsular territory, ancient and recent; to then propose them in socialization activities in different local spheres. This work scheme has led me to support, share experiences and learn from different initiatives, artistic collectives that seek to encourage to remember and reactivate Mayan practices.

Curated by Aneta Rostkowska and Nada Rosa Schroer