Grounded Theories - Pluriversity in the Columbian Rainforest

Fachsemester in the Field of History and Theory of Architecture (063-0854-22)
Veranstalter: Professur Ursprung
Dozierende: Philip Ursprung, Adam Jasper, Tim Klauser, Berit Seidel, Nina Zschocke
 

Learning from the Inga



“At the university, an adviser had interested her in Amerindian languages. Certain esoteric rites still survived in certain tribes out West; one of her professors suggested that she go live on a reservation, observe the rites, and discover the secret revealed to the initiates. When she came back, she would have her dissertation, and the university authorities would see that it was published. She set out for more than two years in the jungle, sometimes sheltered and sometimes in the open. She rose before dawn, went to bed at sundown, and came to dream in a language that was not that of her ancestors. One morning, without saying a word to anyone, she left. In the city, she made her way to her professor's office and said that she knew the secret, but had resolved not to reveal it. "I don't know how to tell you this, but the secret is beautiful, and science, our science, seems mere frivolity to me now.” After a pause she added: "And anyway, the secret is not as important as the paths that led me to it. Each person has to walk those paths themself."
The professor spoke coldly: "I will inform the committee of your decision. Are you planning to live among the Indians?" "No," she answered. "I may not even go back to the jungle. What the people of the jungle taught me is good anywhere and for any circumstances.”— adapted from Jorge Luis Borges’ The Ethnographer (1969)

Our Fachsemester accompanies an ongoing project for a new university in the highland rainforest of Colombia by the Inga people, who trace their history in the Andes back to the Inca. The Inga have much to teach us. Although their population is small (around 30,000), their history is long. The Quechua people, of whom the Inga form a part, have already irreversibly shaped western medicine and colonial history, not least through teaching Jesuit missionaries about the use of quinine, the botanical basis for modern malaria treatment.

The Inga, together with their encyclopaedic knowledge of botany, medicine and agriculture, are under threat from mining companies, agricultural businesses and other cartels. Both their land and their identity are threatened precisely because of their role as custodians of the headwaters of the Amazon. As protectors of the forest, they also defend us against global climate change. The Inga, whose language is to this day unwritten, now see the establishment of an institution as a means by which they can both assist the world, and maintain their own culture.

This university is a real project. It was initiated in 2018 by Hernando Chindoy, a representative of the Inga, and has been facilitated by the artist Ursula Biemann and Professor Anne Lacaton. Professor An Fonteyne will run a design studio on the topic in the fall of 2022. But the topic is also a problem, one that poses us questions about what a university is and does, and what and who it is for.

The group will meet on Tuesday and Thursdays. Students are invited to develop their own texts in relation to the overall topic. The collective result of our writing will be a greater understanding of global interrelations, and the invention of new models of teaching from the history and theory of architecture.

ZOOM Meeting-ID: 654 6202 0002


FILM SCREENINGS


co-organised with the Chair of Affective Architecture

Event 1 – Forest Knowledge



DATE: 01.March, 2022, 6:30 pm
LOCATION: Hönggerberg, HIL E6

1. Ursula Biemann (Zurich) & Paulo Tavares (Quito/Londres): Forest Law, 2014, 38 min

«Forest Law» (2014) is the result of research carried out in the Equatorial Amazon, in November 2013, where the biodiversity-rich land is being exploited on a large scale by mining activities, due to the mineral wealth of the area. The project was carried out in collaboration with Brazilian architect Paulo Tavares, and the result is a two-channel video installation, displaying a series of legal cases and the fight of both indigenous leaders and scientists in court. One of the landmark cases was that of the Kichwa people from Sarayaku, who recently won trial arguing the importance of the living jungle (Kawsak Sacha), where nature is no longer the scenario of political disputes, but a subject of rights.

Ursula Biemann is an artist, writer and video-essayist, based in Zürich (Switzerland). She researches climate change and the impact of global movement, addressing ecologic and migration issues.


2. Ana Vaz, (Brazil): Apiyemiyekî? english subtitles | 2019 | 27min

"Apiyemiyekî?" was produced from within a series of newly commissioned works dedicated to constructing a critical cosmology of the Military Dictatorship in Brazil for the survey exhibition "Meta-Archive 1964-1985: Space for Listening and Reading on the Histories of the Military Dictatorship in Brazil" (Sesc-Belenzinho, São Paulo, Brazil). The film is cinematographic portrait that departs from Brazilian educator and indigenous rights militant Egydio Schwade's archive — Casa da Cultura de Urubuí — found in his home at Presidente Figueiredo (Amazonas), where over 3.000 drawings made by the Waimiri-Atroari, a people native to the Brazilian Amazon, during their first literacy process are currently kept.
Based on Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy, drawings became one of the first methods of knowledge exchange and production between them. During these exercises, the most recurrent question posed by the Waimiri-Atroari was: why did Kamña (“the civilized”) killed Kiña (Waimiri-Atraori)? Apiyemiyekî? (Why?).
The drawings document and construct a collective visual memory from their learning process, perspective and territory while attesting to a series of violent attacks they were submitted to during the Military Dictatorship in Brazil. "Apiyemiyekî?" animates and transposes their drawings to the landscapes and sights that they narrate searching to echo their recurrent question and trusting that memory really is a necessary engine to build a common future.

3. Juan Downey: The Laughing Alligator: 1979, 27 min (Venezuela/Brazil)

Merging the subjective and the objective, the autobiographical and the anthropological, The Laughing Alligator is a highly personal observation of an indigenous South American culture. Recorded while he and his family were living among the Yanomami of Venezuela, this compelling work distills Downey's search for his own cultural identity and heritage through the encounter between the Western family and the so-called "primitive" tribe. Challenging the anthropological view of the Yanomami as violent cannibals, Downey focuses on the tribe's myths, rituals and ceremonies, documenting funerary rites in which tribal members eat the pulverized ashes of their dead to insure their immortality. Subverting conventional modes of ethnographic documentary, Downey participates as an active presence, "shooting" with his video camera as a means of creating an interactive dialogue between artist and subject and addressing his own "yearning for a purer existence."
Field Crew: Marilys Downey, Titi Lamadrid. Post- Production: The TV Workshop at WXXI/TV 21, Rochester, New York; The TV Lab at WNET/Thirteen.

Event 2 – Imaginary




DATE: 26.April 2022, 6:30 pm
LOCATION: ONA


[B]1. Lothar Baumgarten: Der Ursprung der Nacht | 1973 – 1977 | 102 min


Es ist der Beginn der frühen künstlerischen Experimente Baumgartens, als er mit ephemeren Materialien in Außensituationen ortsspezifische Interventionen realisiert. Er belässt die Umgebung, wie er sie vorfindet, oder modifiziert sie leicht, um ihre mimetische Gegebenheit aufzuzeigen: In Äskulap (1971) zum Beispiel mutet ein Schlauch wie eine Schlange an, oder ein Ast; in Verlorene Früchte (1969) evozieren Schuhspanner Pilze oder Lilien. Angesichts des temporären Charakters der Arbeiten werden sie unmittelbar foto¬grafisch zum Bild geführt und später mit dem Titel Kultur-Natur, Manipulierte Realität (1968 – 72) versehen. In diesen »Manipula-tionen« der Realität werden Natur und Kultur in eine differentielle Beziehung zueinander gesetzt: Indem unsere Wahrnehmung zwi¬schen dem, was wir sehen, dem, was wir nicht sehen, sowie dem, was wir sehen wollen, hin und her pendelt, scheinen die Grenzen der Validität des Gegensatzpaares Natur und Kultur auf. Diese Aktivitäten und die in sie eingeflossenen Denkprozesse kulminieren in dem 16-mm-Film Der Ursprung der Nacht (1973 – 78), einer scheinbar »exotischen« Tropenreise, die, wie sich herausstellt, in Wirklichkeit jedoch dem Flusslauf des Rheins folgt.

16mm color film transferred to Blu-ray and DCP, 102 min, surround sound



Event 3 – Self-portrayal



DATE: 10.May 2022, 6:30 pm
LOCATION: tba

1. Laura Huertas Milan, JÍIBIE, 2019, 24 min

The fabrication ritual of the green coca powder (called mambe or "Jiíbie") unveils an ancestral myth of kinship. In the Muiná-Muruí community, the coca plant is not a product, but a sacred interlocutor, the beating heart of a collective body.

2. Video Nas Aleidas

Established in 1986, Vídeo nas Aldeias (VNA, Video in the Villages) is a pioneer project in the field of indigenous audiovisual production in Brazil. Since its beginnings, the project’s goal has been to support indigenous peoples’ struggles in order to strengthen identities and territorial and cultural heritages, through audiovisual resources and a shared production with the indigenous peoples Vídeo nas Aldeias works with.

In 2000, VNA became itself an independent NGO. Its trajectory allowed the creation of important image archives about indigenous peoples in Brazil, and the production of over 70 films, most of which have received national and international awards. Vídeo nas Aldeias became a reference in this domain.

2.1. The Spirit of TV, 1990 / 18min. / Wajãpi


Beginning with the arrival by canoe of a TV and VCR in their village, The Spirit of TV documents the emotions and thoughts of the Waiãpi as they first encounter their own TV images and those of others. They view a tape from their chief’s first trip to Brasilia to speak to the government, news broadcasts, and videos on other Brazilian native peoples. The tape translates the opinions of individual Waiãpi on the power of images, the diversity of native peoples, and native peoples’ common struggles with federal agents, goldminers, trappers and loggers.

2.2. MARANGMOTXÍNGMO MÏRANG From the Ikpeng children to the world, 2001 / 35min. / Ikpeng

Four Ikpeng children introduce their village answering a video-letter from the children from Sierra Maestra in Cuba. They show their families, their toys, their celebrations, their way of life with grace and lightheartedness. Curious to know about children from other cultures, they ask that their video–letter be answered.




Kontakt


Prof. Dr. Philip Ursprung
Dr. Adam Jasper
Dr. Nina Zschocke