Sparks from the Pluriverse #4: Where to from HereSparks from the Pluriverse #4: Where to from Here

Words by Sophie Krier & Erik Wong

In the West, winter has made place for spring, the season of promise and flow. For this final newsletter, Erik and Sophie went in conversation with river activist Li An Phoa, founder of Drinkable Rivers, and Paramaribo-based theater maker Tolin Alexander. While the last Spark zoomed in on life-affirming practices, this Spark decides on a broader view: what is the horizon of our practices? Which dots on the horizon can we see? Can we pull the horizon, the future closer, as part of the present? What if ‘over the rainbow’ is to be found at this side of that colourful arch?

Besides Li An and Tolin, we connected with more pluriversal makers who have specific relations to both rivers and horizons: Chiara Sgaramella, Kornelia Dimitrova, Roberto Uribe Castro and Gus Drake.

P.S. if you are new to this matter, scroll all the way down for a soft landing into the pluriverse.

In this 45-minute conversation, water activist and artist Li An Phoa, founder of Drinkable Rivers, and Paramaribo-based theatre maker Tolin Alexander talk about rivers as living entities. Rivers as crucial personalities that can make and break our existence as humans and all living beings that surround us.

For Tolin, the river is part of his maroon heritage. When you meet someone, you ask them: "what is your river language?" The river as a narrative thread that holds communities together. Twenty years ago, Li An had a life-changing encounter with the Rupert river in Canada. It ignited her ongoing campaign for drinkable rivers. By forming ‘river bed communities’ she shifts the perspective: to consciously live with rivers. We are the river, the river is us.

We talk about Robert Macfarlane’s last book Is a river alive?. He sees the dying of rivers as a failure of imagination. We reflect on Ursula Le Guin’s notions of water and mud as inspiring ways to look at politics, conflict, resistance. “The river ignores the Nation State, it is its own territory” says Tolin. Li An adds: “Don’t be fooled by the image of a – linear – flowing river. That ‘mainstream’ is the tip of the iceberg, large bodies of water move underground, out of sight, in all directions.”

Watch Our Blue World: A Water Odyssee, in which Li An participated.

Watch Stones have Laws (2018), Tolin’s previous film with Siebren de Haan and Lonnie van Brommelen.

More Li An.
More Tolin.

Back in 2022, we asked Chiara Sgaramella to join our Asturias edition, because her practice as an artistic researcher focuses on the connection between art and agriculture. Valencia, where Chiara is based, faced massive floods last year. Overnight, 48,000 houses were gone, 1,500 kilometres of roads destroyed, and over 220 human lives were lost. Not to mention animal lives, crops, and the emotional suffering that numbers cannot quantify. Community-led calls for mutual aid and relief actions quickly self-organised, while the government was slow to react – to say the least.

A few months after the floods, Sophie called Chiara up to hear how Valencia citizens and farmers are dealing with the aftermath. Chiara and Sophie speak about mud as an active agent, also inspired by the work of anthropologist Annelies Kuijpers (Mud Matters). Can we learn to think ‘with’ mud?

Sign the petition to ensure protection for the Horta farmland near Valencia.

Leaf through REGAC: Activist Imaginaries: Art and Curatorial Practice as Collaborative Endeavour, a journal Chiara co-edited last winter.

More Chiara.

Last September, artist Roberto Uribe Castro was selected by a jury composed of Virginia Lopez, Sophie, and Erik for a research residency at PACA Art Projects in Asturias. Roberto set to work with this legacy of Asturian artist Eduardo Chillida: "All men are brothers. Doesn’t that make the horizon our common homeland? Isn’t the present in which we live another boundary, another limit, another place without dimension, like the horizon?”

On a Saturday morning, Erik and Roberto look back at the three-week research session over a cup of coffee. How did Chillida’s sense, place, and notions about the horizon give direction to Uribe’s research? And what has the still-present steel industry to say? Roberto recorded its voice and is still working on the transcript of these – beastly – whispers. A talk about a region in transition, and the horizon as a battlefield.

More Roberto.
More PACA Arts Projects.

Sitting by a dashboard with knobs that enables you to interact with a sonified simulation of melting ice on the Arctic, Sophie and Kornelia Dimitrova (Foundation We Are) ponder on how to become more intimate with climate change as its horizon moves towards us with tremendous speed. What if we are climate change ourselves? From time to time, the erratic sounds of melting ice come to the forefront. Scientists know that the Antarctic hyperobject, as Kornelia calls it, will melt in the coming thousand years. The question is how, and what its impact will be.

We can have as many forecasting models as we want about what the future may hold, but it all still depends on one key variable – how humans will do things together. Humans have invented countless stories: seasonalities, weather patterns… But humans are less good at looking into each other’s eyes and committing to this very moment. Sharing a popsicle made of arctic ice might help.

Get the book Collaborations for Future: The Blueprints on how to tackle climate change, together.

More Kornelia.
More Foundation We Are.

Erik and Gus Drake both work on a website for New Horizon Initiative, a ‘studio’ that uses AI and a ton of visual and scientific data to create 3D speculative future landscapes. What makes it special is that these ‘digital twins’, as Gus calls them, can be rendered from the perspectives of different stakeholders in specific landscapes. Think of an imaginary round table with all stakeholders – from mussels, to seaweed, to oak trees, and yes, humans too – present, discussing, negotiating their future environments. A talk about AI as a tool with an ambivalent reputation, and the need for classic human narratives, such as Alice in Wonderland and The Matrix to bring that ever-abstract future closer.

More New Horizon Initiative.

Curious what’s next? So are we. For now our pluriversal journey ends. Don’t worry, the pluriverse will stream endlessly, we just humbly navigated this inspiring river for a while. Sophie and Erik will go underground and stream in multiple directions. We will surface sometime, somewhere. Hope to see you there and then! Before we drop the mic, we’ll hand it to Jeremy Wade, aka Puddles the Pelican: “Everything is going to be okay, even if it’s not going to be okay.”

More water reads and initiatives:

• The new platform Quelccaya is named after the world’s largest tropical glacier, located in the Southern Andes of Peru, and honours a commitment to defending living territories and all life forms. If you’re into radical, collective unlearning, join their quest.
• The Confluence of European Water Bodies is an initiative that was formalised in front of the European Parliament of Brussels in 2023. Its initiators demand attention for the many crises of water today and for more adequate representation and emancipation of water bodies in international politics. One of its players is Embassy of the North Sea, who was founded on the principle that the North Sea owns itself. Its members listen to, speak with and negotiate on behalf of the sea and all its life.
• Social design researcher Henriëtte Waal co-edited the book Water Works with moral ethicus Clemens Driessen, to be released by Valiz this spring. A handful of gems. Keep an eye out for it.

Sparks from the Pluriverse is a quarterly update that celebrates the ever-growing pluriversal network and its dynamics. Building from the Nieuwe Instituut's In Search of the Pluriverse podcast series and exhibition, itself part of the Travelling Academy, curators Erik Wong and Sophie Krier keep their ear to the ground and report in videos, stories, sounds, letters and other 'signs' from the pluriverse: “In the podcast series and exhibition 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. This year, we revisit, reflect, tie new knots. How is everyone in the network doing? What is going on at the different ends of the pluriverse? There are many ways of knowing. We attempt to surface some of these ways, curious and unknowing as we are. The pluriverse explained in 8 words : A world in which many worlds can thrive.”

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 both never-ending and ever-growing, including all makers and listeners who feel affinity with the pluriverse.

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

Follow In Search of the Pluriverse on Instagram: @insearchofthepluriverse.