Picture: Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky, Variation as Nature, 2018
Yanomami Gardens - Growing Plants in the Amazon
Sunday, August 25 2019 - 13:00
within the exhibition The trees are inviting the wind
at Willem Twee, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands
in collaboration with
Forest trees and garden plants do not grow all by themselves, as white people think. Our forest is vast and beautiful. But it is not like this without reason. Its value of growth makes it so. This is what we call në rope. Nothing would grow there without it. It comes and goes like a visitor, making plants grow everywhere on its path. Kopenawa & Albert, 2013
How do forests and plants live and think according to alternate cosmovisions?
Through the ongoing dialogue between Davi Kopenawa, Shaman and spokesman for the Yanomami of the Brazilian Amazon, and anthropologist Bruce Albert, the collaborative book "The Falling Sky - Words of a Yanomami Shaman" published by Harvard University Press, 2013, came to life.
This is an invitation to gather with an open mind and read together out loud. Collectively we will read passages from the book "The Falling Sky". We will learn from Yanomami culture, their spirits and ideas around the ‘value of growth of the forest’ (urihi a në rope).
Over the last 2 years, our monthly gathering at Zabriskie bookshop in Berlin is organically growing. Within the "The trees are inviting the wind" exhibition, the ‘Between Us and Nature – A Reading Club’ becomes both a live performance event enfolding while happening and a collective practice of transdisciplinary learning co-shaped by each participant.
We, co-founders and hosts, are Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky, artist, and Sina Ribak, researcher for ecologies and the arts. We investigate art and ecology in a sympoietic practice. We push each others boundaries inherited from our original disciplines. The Reading Club itself becomes a garden. A dynamic ecosystem nurtured by our collective urge to read and investigate as a group. Our nerdy explorations involve natural sciences, art activism, anthropology, postcolonialism, (post)anthropocene, from a female perspective. Looking beyond disciplines we learn from seeds, mushrooms, soil, multinaturalist narratives and the genomic revolution. With ‘Between Us and Nature’ we host a space of empowerment - creating hope and change. At this reading group we will read passages together out loud and share our experiences and thoughts about the natures we live in, we will discuss what we can learn from the Yanomami's cosmovision and what it means to us.
PLEASE NOTE: IN TERMS OF SUSTAINABILITY WE WILL NOT PRINT OUT THE TEXT.
BRING YOUR COPY ON A DIGITAL DEVICE OF YOUR CHOICE OR PRINTED OUT! :-)
What: The Reading Club is in English language
Where: Willem Twee muziek en beeldende kunst, Boschveldweg 47, 5211 VK ‘s-Hertogenbosch (in collaboration with Zabriskie Buchladen für Kultur und Natur)
When: Sunday August 25, 2019, 13.00 (sharp!)
Who: small group of lovely, people who would like to meet you (rsvp only, not suitable for children)
Why: to read together, be inspired and meet people
Note: Bring your copy of the text as print out or on a digital device
Hosts: Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky, artist, and Sina Ribak, natural and cultural ecosystems
Picture: Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky, Variation as Nature, 2018