Sparks from the Pluriverse #1: Dancing like the WindSparks from the Pluriverse #1: Dancing like the Wind

Words by Sophie Krier & Erik Wong

In the podcast series and exhibition In Search of the Pluriverse (2020-2022) we brought together many practices, topics and locations: concrete manifestations of living pluriversally by embracing otherness, making kin, daring to say no, or letting go.

There is a truth in the saying “the hardest thing is not to start new things, but to tend to them – to keep them alive”. That’s why, this year, we will put our ear to the ground. How is everyone in the network doing? What is going on at the different ends of the pluriverse? There are many ways of knowing. Can we tie new knots in the network and find overlaps, questions and issues that ask to be thought together? And if we now form a kind of village together: how, where and when can this village manifest itself in the future?

"Dear Erik,

You asked me to tell you why Mhairi and Mouna. It’s simple, I see them as ‘warrior women’ who harness the magic of the animal/feminine body to counter dominant, repressive systems – the military, authoritarian governance. I know some may find this hunch is a bit far fetched. But something tells me that from this first encounter, something beautiful could unfold around the body and its dance with the pluriverse.

I know we decided to not script this talk as usual – to let it flow freely. Still – you know me – I couldn’t help preparing for it. And I don’t regret it: I came across an Insta post by Mhairi about the Gaelic/English book “Focail na mBan/Women’s Words”. It speaks to the interrelation between the (female) human body and its surroundings: “Some of the words are slang, some derogatory, some are poetic and some are funny. All are very visual. Amongst my favourites are Riasc rùnda - vagina/secret marsh/bogland and Clais - vulva/gully/water channel/spawning bed/gash/ditch/deep cut.” Reading this I wondered, how the body language of street dance interacts with urban developments in Casablanca?

Casablanca is booming. Morocco will host the African Union Football Cup next year (and the World Cup a couple years later) – meaning on the ground that “new, shiny complexes for the rich” are rising everywhere, at the cost of Casa’s informal urbanity. And this informality is what creates great spots to come together. To meet, to talk, to dance. There’s a last thread I want to share – with Mouna and Mhairi on my mind, I came across a really well-made comic strip, Paroles d’honneur, that undoes taboos around sexuality in Moroccan culture. It makes the point that as long as women are seen either as virginal divinities, or as sluts, with emphasis on either/or, patriarchal patterns of dominance will remain in place. For me, the pluriversal (and buddhist) ethos of transcending polarities seems the only way forward from here."

No sooner said than done: on a February Tuesday, Sophie, Mhairi and Mouna meet up online. Sophie tries her best to not moderate. Apart from the fact that M&M have super interesting practices, they are coming together laboriously. They are struggling a bit with ‘Sophie's Choice’ to connect them. Worlds apart. A talk about how the wind has free rein on the Inner Hebrides and how gentrification is chasing uncontrollably through Casablanca.

"Dear Sophie,

Wow, interesting conversation. Wind and gentrification, both elusive and very present. How do you get a grip on something that seems to be taking its course almost invisibly? Should we think something of it? I like how Mouna says she has trouble labeling things.... It just is. She tries to connect, to capture, to remember, to move with. Tries to hold body and street together, while Mhairi dances a completely different dance... Endlessly circling around possible research partners, and then suddenly 'it cracks': a partnership: science/activism/art/military. All set in motion by a washed-up whale carcass onshore. Again: remnants of a body.

The body as a mediator between larger/other forces. Mouna brings in ferrofluids as a metaphor. This ‘matter’ is constantly adapting, forming, organizing in response to sound waves. Patterns, organization, action, reaction, without judgement. Mhairi and Mouna also don't seem to be choosing sides or labelling what happens. “We carve out a space” - in Mouna’s words. Informal knowledge is made specific, place-based, embodied. Mouna organises, produces, dances knowledge. Mhairi translates scientific data in audiovisual art works. The body as sensor. Maybe this is what makes both their practices pluriversal."

More Mouna: Casablanca: Who owns the city #4 Mouna Belgrini (2022).

Samba Soumbounou crossed the Western Sahara desert on his motorbike last summer. Sophie gave him a call to hear how it went.

S: Salut Samba! Ça va…? Ça fait quoi, deux ans..? Trop contente d’entendre ta voix
S: Ça va, ça va, merci et toi? Tout va bien?
S: Écoute, ça va.. je crois.. Il pleut… it’s raining.. since a week. (…) The reason I’m calling you is because Erik and I were curious what made you undertake your trip last summer…
S: Ah, well, you know me – I’ve always wanted to go au-delà des frontières, beyond borders, à la rencontre des gens – to meet people. And travelling on motorbike is great for that. Already 3 km out of Casa I met a woman, a traveller too, she wanted to make a picture together. I also wanted to test it it’s possible: crossing the desert… It’s a 2000 km trip.
S: How long did it take you?
S: Not so long - 4 days on the way there, even less on the way back (I had to attend a meeting in Casa so I pressed the gas pedal…). I was told it would take me 5 days. S: So it’s Morocco-Mauritania, in one go? Or do you pass more countries?
S: The idea is to make a loop: from Morocco, my land of adoption to Mauritania, my native land, back via Sénégal, Guinée and Mali where I also have family. I feel “chez moi”, at home, in all those countries. There is no separation. For me the trip was also an hommage to the ancient routes the caravanes took. C’est dingue, we used to have no vehicles besides dromedaries, but have lots of signs, you know, saying 64 days to go there, 20 days to go there.. And today, while we have so many ways to travel, we have less roads, there is less contact between the Maghreb [North African countries] that looks towards Europe, and l’Afrique de l’Ouest. The desert was not a border. Now it is. I want to show the partage, the sharing, the borrowing, the exchanges that has shaped these lands and their cultures.
S: Wow (sophie rabbles on enthusiastically, and then gathers herself). And your motorbike, how was it to spend so much time with her.
S: Ah, you know, I talk to her… She was born in 1988 and did Paris-Dakar ! I chose her because the mechanics are simple, in case there’s trouble on the road. I’m going to call her Dongola, after the most famous horse of Afrique de l’Ouest.

More Samba: Casablanca: Who owns the city #6 Samba Soumbounou (2022)

In 2022 Erik joined Sean for carnival in Trinidad & Tobago. He got in touch with Sean to hear what he is up to this year.

E: Sean! I see it is carnival-time in Trinidad. Wish I was there. Nice moko-jumbie creations this year… I just started a project with my students (Gerrit Rietveld Academie, TXT, text and textile, ) about the idea of ‘wilderness’. I showed the movie "Stones have Laws" and we now discuss how (de)colonialism defines our thinking about what wilderness is, or could be. In the end it is also about (endless)patterns on fabric. How is nature/wilderness represented on fabric and wallpaper? I had to think of your story about the birds flying from Trinidad over the Surinam delta…

S: Erik! Great hearing from you. Yes, things are in full (carnival) swing here. Not sure about its relevance to your project, but for me, one thing that is interesting about the concept the ‘wilderness’ is that it can conjure states of both uncomfortable disorientation as well as nourishing isolation… Carnival/costume wise, I am following my ongoing interest in the Carnival productions of the group Vulgar Fraction, produced by Robert Young. This year he’s used the human predicament Palestine and the space of Carnival as a way of ‘bearing with-ness’; a call for common grief in the face of ongoing human violence. The zipper mask design is a hallmark Vulgar Fraction motif, where anonymity is essential to the ‘mas'.*

*Mas: that dimension of Carnival that facilitates one’s transport to and temporary embodiment of the state of being other, typically through a combination of costuming, body adornment, masking, performance, ritual etc. -‘to play a mas’

More Sean: Warming up to the Pluriverse #4. On Celebrating Smallness (2021)

Back in 2022, the Asturias team made a timid start with weaving a hazel fence at PACA Art Projects, Virginia Lopez’ residency in the rural fringes of Gijón, Spain. Coordinating so many hands and branches was quite a dance. Times moves on and the hedge is now finished!

Hi Erik!! Sophie!!
So nice have news from you!

here everything is going on, we have planted a lot of new trees this winter and now making bigger and in a bit Italian style, a piece of the garden close to the hazel fence, so tired but happy ;)
Since January I have been making a small beginning of a community garden (Lo Verde project) in a baroque building, owned by the Gijón city council, and since this year managed by the Municipal Culture Foundation: the space is now a center for artistic residencies and cultural production . Well, they are preparing it, They will launch the first open call this spring..

I uploaded the video to the drive, I did it with my mobile, I hope the definition is enough for you. If not, tell me I'll take another walk ;).

A big hug from Mela and Giovanni, cats and other beings who love you.
Besos queridas!
Virginia

More Virginia: Asturias, Spain: Tuning into the struggles of a post-industrial region #2 Virginia López (2022)

Erik was present at Sabine Zahn’s DAS Graduate programme presentation. She wanted to discuss the glossary that is slowly growing around her practice that centres around moving in, and with public space. In a personal reflection, Wong added some queer notions to the intriguing list of words.

More Sabine: Fluid selves, fluid Berlin #5 Sabine Zahn: Doing the city (2022)

Posthumanist philosopher Rosi Braidotti (co-founder of The New Academy at the Nieuwe Instituut) invited feminist theorist Donna Haraway and literature-and-science researcher Bruno Clarke pay tribute to evolutionary theorist Lynn Margulis in a crowded evening at the Nieuwe Instituut last December.

Watch the replay here (It’s a bit of a stretch but you don’t want to miss Braidotti’s sparkling introductions, and Haraway never disappoints!)

Last summer, Sophie took part in a two-week Body Weather lab guided by dancer/researcher Astarti Asthanasiadou & artist Stéphane Verlet Bottéro on the farm of Konrad Liebchen in Styria, Austria. Sensing/feeling/relating/learning with fellow human bodies but foremost with the grasses, horses, cows, sheep and chicken. Developed in rural Japan in the 1980s by Min Tanaka, this somatic non-linear practice works with the body-as-weather: largely unpredictable and sense-driven. Astarti gives regular trainings in Amsterdam if you are intrigued.

Curious what’s next? So are we. Here are two tasters. Stay tuned, we’ll be back in (European) summertime.

• How to move a farm? After four years of pioneering in Malden, regenerative farm Bodemzicht (motored by Anne van Leeuwen & Ricardo Cano Mateo) is moving to a new location: t’ Gagel in Lochem. As you can imagine, we can’t wait to get to the bottom of this.
• Weaving a Pluriversity This Spring, Framer Framed will host an Open Studio workshop series titled Weaving a Pluriversity. An initiative of the group Pluriversity Weavers (María Eufemia Arroyo Izquierdo, Dwanimako Arroyo Izquierdo, Dwasimney Del Carmen Izquierdo Torres, Seynawiku Izquierdo Torres, Natalia Giraldo Jaramillo, LI Yuchen, Ana Bravo Pérez, Aldo E. Ramos, Rolando Vázquez Melken) and spiritual leader Mamo Arwawiku, the gatherings will bring together Indigenous thinkers from Colombia to reflect on the (broken) relation between humans, communality and living territory. How can life-affirming practices deconstruct colonial heritage? The workshop series is sold out but Sophie will be your eyes and ears.

This network grew out of the project In Search of the Pluriverse and includes persons and collectives that curators Erik Wong & Sophie Krier met in person. They see the network as never-ending / ever-growing, including all makers and listeners who feel affinity with the pluriverse.

If you feel the urge to respond, please do via pluriverse@nieuweinstituut.nl.

Sparks from the Pluriverse emerged from the first edition of the Travelling Academy, in which Wong and Krier went to the frayed edges of Europe in search of what the pluriverse is: a world that makes room for many different worlds. They translated their search into a series of more than 60 podcasts and an exhibition at the Nieuwe Instituut in 2022 with fringe programming and local satellite. With this new iteration, Wong and Krier work towards letting the network grow into a collective with the agency to co-define the agenda for the years to come

Editors: Sophie Krier & Erik Wong
Audio editing: Nina van Hartskamp
Audio post production: Rick Haring

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