Stories and Archives in Land Relational Knowing for Land-Centered Ontologies
| Stories and Archives in Land Relational Knowing for Land-Centered Ontologies | |
|---|---|
| Name | Stories and Archives in Land Relational Knowing for Land-Centered Ontologies |
| Location | Het Wilde Weg |
| Date | 2024/07/18-2024/07/23 |
| Time | 14:00-17:00 |
| PeopleOrganisations | Ritvik Khushu |
| Type | HDSC2024 |
| Web | Yes |
| No | |
For thousands of generations, humans have been children of Earth, embedded in the thick, dense webs of Earth-relations. Entire material cultures were arranged around local ecology - where our clothes, food, shelters, gods and stories, all came-to-form through reciprocal exchanges with land. How then, have we (modern humans) come to sever our anceint reciprocity with land? And what might it take for us to recover a loving and sustained relationship with the breathing Earth?
This workshop is a deep dive into the sensorial, the imaginary and breath of our local ecology. See this as a space to be embedded and transformed with land, to be close listeners of Earth, storytellers and hosts of others. The workshop transforms us into foragers, gatherers, critters, earthworms, ants, dung beetles, and the many many bugs of the forest floor - who fertilize, cultivate, plough, and breathe air into soil.
Over the course of the workshop, we will gather materials from the land around, to collectively design and build earthen structures that serve as material archives of stories, methods, memories, epiphanies we've gathered and shared as a group. We will learn to apply earth construction techniques, make pigments from natural materials (like plant sap, river clays), and make tools out of materials we gather from the land. To get ourselves ready for the labourious activities ahead, we will begin and end each session with group stretching and play!
From the Himalayas of Kashmir and the deserts of Rajasthan, Ritvik Khushu (b. 1997) is an Indian designer and visual artist based in the Hague, NL. In his material practices, he has been interested in cultivating (replenishing) marginalized and injured knowledge systems centered around land. His focus generally lies in interweaving design, spirituality, mythology, storytelling and ecology. Drawing from his cultural background, his work is concerned with memory - personal, communal and ancestral - and cultivating it.