Vital Knowledges (2023-2024)
A serpentine drawing to convoke certain forms of life, to trace the roots that make me / us.
As an offering to awake communalities.
I draw knowing the evoked forms will only live for nine days.
At the same time following my intentions and letting the corporealities of wood and
carbon graphite, dance and move like rivers on the wall.
Invoking through the drawings serpentine rhythm, memory, myth, subconscious, trauma, survival, song, tone, interconnection, regeneration, seeds and roots, rituals, relationality, porousness, spiritual-political organizing, autohistoria, teachings of the world, ontological justice, rivers, the sounds and vibrations of everything.
The audiovisual work Vital Knowledges (2023) is a mixture of sound and moving image produced in collaboration with plants and other phenomena of life from my neighborhood, as well as from the surroundings of Pachacamac, a pre-colonial ceremonial center south of Lima, Peru. Vital knowledges are the basic knowledges we need to have in order to live: knowledges about interexistence, about food, about reciprocity, about trauma and survival learnings derived from previous extinctions, about the languages of life: vibration, movement, taste, rhythm, sound, color, being actively in the present, and other teachings of the world.
Drawing offering. Video (6 min.)
Tratado material IV: Narcissus’ echo
My work seeks to point out the impact of the colonial proposal of life that confronts nature in an extractive way, in its perpetual search for progress and development. Also suggesting that our relationships with other earth-beings (De la Cadena) activate alternatives for transformative action. Revisiting the myth of Narcissus I realize that it is implied that he has never done the exercise of “seeing” himself. Narcissus’ encounter with water causes him to become obsessed with the projection of his image, to the point of losing his life. Besides the critique of vanity, one could also read a warning. Could the myth also be an ecological warning about the power of water and the persistence of life? Narcissus dies but in the same place a flower of the same name is born.
Museo Convento San Francisco y Las Catacumbas de Lima.
They live, eat, gather, cooperate, laugh, dance, hug, precognize, dream (2023)
Installation (mural, clay pieces on textil, and video "Vital Knowledges").
Exhibition view at La Virreina Museum, Barcelona.
Originally: "Se juntan, viven, cooperan, comen, ríen, bailan, se abrazan, preconizan, sueñan" (2023)
Part of "El Futuro Ya Fue: Antifuturismo Cimarrón" (2021-2023)
Curated by Yuderkys Espinoza and Katia Sepúlveda.
Curated by Yuderkys Espinoza and Katia Sepúlveda.
Stories of Endarkment (2022)
Sudden climatic disaster brings a group of migrants to live in subterranean environments of caves as a way to escape extreme solar temperatures. In the underground, they learn to live in the dark and to pay attention to the survival skills of other species. They learn to observe the changes in soil, and a new relation to roots, both physically and symbolically, develops when they learn from roots to locate water. Impacted by deceleration and channeling the time of stones, they learn to enjoy the vibrancy of stillness. Through these experiences their relation to time, and thus to space, is redrawn anew.
In the stillness of the dark they plant histories with others that counter the histories of excess of light, of speed and of production. Eventually, a tension between old meanings and new woven communities builds up, as we come to understand that the group of migrants had not meant to be human.
This story is woven around the notion that we are set to enter into deeper crises and thus we could be anytime thrown into utterly unknown conditions, such that our sense of self and of reality would no longer be recognizable to us or would mean the wreckage of our species. Having grown up in Peru in the 80s, in the absence of basic covered needs, and in the dark of frequent blackouts, we dug on these lived memories to extrapolate the learnings that generation made then. The story hints to how a disconnection from productivity and efficacy, creates an opportunity for trans-species ancestral knowledges to come to the fore. As a chance to introduce ourselves to the rhythm of other songs beyond accumulation and progress.
In the stillness of the dark they plant histories with others that counter the histories of excess of light, of speed and of production. Eventually, a tension between old meanings and new woven communities builds up, as we come to understand that the group of migrants had not meant to be human.
This story is woven around the notion that we are set to enter into deeper crises and thus we could be anytime thrown into utterly unknown conditions, such that our sense of self and of reality would no longer be recognizable to us or would mean the wreckage of our species. Having grown up in Peru in the 80s, in the absence of basic covered needs, and in the dark of frequent blackouts, we dug on these lived memories to extrapolate the learnings that generation made then. The story hints to how a disconnection from productivity and efficacy, creates an opportunity for trans-species ancestral knowledges to come to the fore. As a chance to introduce ourselves to the rhythm of other songs beyond accumulation and progress.
A project by Imayna Caceres and Eliana Otta.
Writing and dramaturgy: Imayna Caceres.
Film and video editing: Eliana Otta.
Made for the exhibition After Progress (2023).
The plant that is conscious in me
On the links between life forms, common origins and interaction across species and times. Done in a collaboration with plants and animals of my neighborhood. The complete title of the work is: "The plant that is conscious in me. A continuous thread from the first forms of life, and the learnings of all the species that precede us and are present in every part of ourselves. Personal-collective diasporic learnings that manifest in dreams, visions, and in our collective political doings, contributing to maintain a sense of connectedness and of belonging amidst the unrootedness of non-citizenship and migration. Learning from the neighbor bodies of water, plants, lichen, soils that make us, and tuning to a consciousness beyond the structures of accumulation and exploitation, 2019-2022" Aquarelle and acrylic on paper. 21 x 14,5 cm
Photo: Rotor Centre for Contemporary Art Graz.
Cosmic, Planetary, Communal: Learning from Neighbor Earthbeings
In Cosmic, Planetary, Communal: Learning from Neighbor Earthbeings, I shared works that were created at an intuitive intersection of ecological, communal, and planetary concerns, where various kinship communities (human and more than human) activate sedimentary layers of life wisdom.
What we feel-think about the beings that we name as nature and how we relate to them is at the core of issues around accumulation. Several works are brought up to dialogue with one another in order to pay attention to these entanglements. Some of my works exhibited include:
====Communal Technologies: Ritual Offering (2022).
====Underground Blossomings (2019-2020). Drawings.
====Movements and languages in which life manifests itself (2022).
====Stories of Endarkment (2021) Video 17 min. With Eliana Otta
====Making meaning with more than human worlds (2020) Video 6 min.
====Learning from plants (2021) Video 3 min.
====Thunderstorms (2020), Flowerings (2019), Master Tree (2019), Dream Mountain (2015).
Movements and languages in which life manifests itself (2022)
In this work I evoke several constants that are part of the reproduction of life. I employ drawing, painting and shaping clay as methods to feel-think, speculate, and activate reflections about the consequences of said constants. The recognition of our interexistence with the cosmos has at times connotations of a return to a system in balance. And yet, a constant in the reproduction of life is the coexistence of structure and openness, as well as of chaos and destruction. In painting and forming clay, I experience a recognition of the decisions and movements that had to be made by our most distant ancestors millions of years ago that ultimately gave rise to the biotic diversity of which we are a part. Movements in which organisms structured their matter in a system of mirror partitions, both in cell division and in their formal appearance (f.e. the halves of a leaf being similar to each other). Shoots, sprouts, bilateral simmetries, asymmetries, folds. Dancing matter in decisive movements, and that gave way to all forms of bacterial, archaea, and eukaryotic life.
En este trabajo evoco varias constantes que son parte de la reproducción de la vida y que dibujándolas activo reflexiones sobre sus posibles consecuencias. El reconocimiento de nuestra interexistencia con el cosmos tiene por momentos connotaciones de regreso a un sistema en balance. Y sin embargo, una constante en la reproducción de la vida es la coexistencia de estructura y de caos, así como de apertura y de destrucción. Al dibujar y al manipular la arcilla, experimento un reconocimiento de las decisiones y movimientos que tuvieron que ser tomadas por nuestros mas lejanos ancestros hace millones de años y que dieron lugar a la diversidad biótica de la que formamos parte. Decisiones, movimientos, y danzas que dieron paso a todas las formas de vida bacteriales, arqueas, eucariotas. Entre estos movimientos está la forma en la que los organismos estructuran su masa en un sistema de particiones en espejo, tanto en la división celular como en la apariencia de los organismos (mitades de un organismo que son similares entre sí).
Water, pigments, paper, and clay. Photo: Marisel Orellana Bongola.
Ancient Losses: Manifestations of mourning over the loss of life as it was once known (2022)
Bifurcating life forms, growing with and without base structures, with and without stems, with and without extended family, in arid, rocky, swampy spaces, developing different protection mechanisms, with diverse forms of limbs, being a source of energy and care for other species.
They say that about 444 million years ago, Ordovician-Silurian extinctions wiped out about 85% of all Ordovician species. That at the time of the extinction, most of the 'complex' multicellular organisms lived in the sea, and the only evidence of life on land are rare spores of small, early land plants.
That the extinction event abruptly affected all major taxonomic groups and resulted in the disappearance of one-third of all brachiopod and bryozoan families, as well as numerous groups of conodonts, trilobites, echinoderms, corals, bivalves, and graptolites. Losses along the continental shelves resulted in a great loss of biodiversity.
That the extinction event abruptly affected all major taxonomic groups and resulted in the disappearance of one-third of all brachiopod and bryozoan families, as well as numerous groups of conodonts, trilobites, echinoderms, corals, bivalves, and graptolites. Losses along the continental shelves resulted in a great loss of biodiversity.
The drastic decrease in competition and the vacant niches left by the organisms that perished in the catastrophe made it possible for sponges to thrive and even dominate some marine ecosystems in the aftermath of this biotic crisis. They also say that sponges may have contributed to the recovery of other clades (groupings of species related to a common ancestor), helping to stabilize sediment surfaces, which allowed suspension-feeding bryozoans, brachiopods, corals and other sessile organisms to recolonize the seafloor.
One of the first signs of the approaching crisis is thought to have been the incremental die-off of graptolites (colonial animals) followed by a rapid decline. In this, one reads a parallel with contemporary changes in global biodiversity that may eventually be followed by a rapid decline.
Series of 30/100 drawings. Color pencil and pastel on red paper (21x29,7cm).
References:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1907847116
https://noticiasdelaciencia.com/art/48501/las-mayores-extinciones-masivas-en-la-tierrahttps://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/the-first-mass-extinction-event-explained-end-ordovician
Feeding Practices for Plural Knowledges and Beings
Unearthing Memories, Feeding Practices for Plural Knowledges and Beings, 2021. How can transdisciplinary approaches to art help us to reimagine human and more-than-human relationalities to respond to the current socio-ecological crisis? How might collaborative forms of art-making create fertile vocabularies and ways of storytelling to transform anthro-eurocentric paradigms that are shaped through oppositional dichotomies and excluding frontiers? How to cultivate plural value-ecologies of living with others on Earth? These were some of the questions we asked together with Eliana Otta, Nuno Cassola and Vasiliki Sifostratoudaki in the six months Junctions program of Pact Zollverein. The final outcome was exhibited at Impact: Urgent Translations in Essen through photos, videos and warm tea amidst one week of fruitful exchange. Photo: Dirk Rose
Virus and bacteria peoples redrawing ideas on life (2020)
The scheme of modernity with its promise of opening the way to "civilized" worlds could cover up the poverty of its proposal and the negative consequences of the paradigms of progress and development. The self-ascription of humans as dominant beings of the earth who decide over the lives of other species ended up creating the conditions to give way to beings that put human existence at risk. Viruses and bacteria manifested themselves as agents of change that rewrote the prevailing narratives. The very awareness of their existence and the need to understand what they are and how they live, led many to rethink the way in which life is interconnected.
La trama de la modernidad con su promesa de abrir paso a mundos "civilizados" no pudo tapar la pobreza de su propuesta y las consecuencias negativas de los paradigmas de progreso y desarrollo. La autoadscripción de los humanos como seres dominantes de la tierra que deciden sobre las vidas de las otras especies terminó creando las condiciones para dar paso a seres que ponen en riesgo la existencia humana. Viruses y bacterias se manifestaron como agentes de cambio que reescribieron las narrativas imperantes. La misma consciencia de su existencia y la necesidad de entender qué son y cómo viven, llevó a repensar a muchos la manera en la que la vida está interconectada.
Photo: Marisel Orellana Bongola
Underground Blossomings (2019-2020)
More about this work in Underground Blossomings: Serpentine thinking with other beings
in Periskop N°24 https://tidsskrift.dk/periskop/article/view/126176/172565
in Periskop N°24 https://tidsskrift.dk/periskop/article/view/126176/172565
Postcards for Healers
Imayna Caceres. 'Postcards for Healers', 2020. Digital print. Kunst im Öffentlichem Raum Niederösterreich. Photo: The artist / courtesy of the artist. Original drawing: Colored pencil and pastel on paper. 50 x 70 cm.
Ancestral Re/visions
Digital drawing (variable dimensions), 2019. Produced by the artist.
An ancestral futuristic vision on Andean symbologies, such as the Chakana which in Quechua makes reference to four sided steps, as bridges that make it possible to cross over. Produced as a visual dialogue with the Banisteriosis Caapi plant. Many of these dialogues featured symbolic presences such as the underground world, the Amazon, the ritual smoke of tobacco, the Pacific ocean, the liquidification of reality, black and red ink, and textile patterns.
Part of “Picking out images from my soul’s eye”, Understanding Gloria E. Anzaldúa through Artistic Practices. http://www.district-berlin.com/de/wissen-ueber-bruecken-conocimiento-sobre-puentes-2/
Kinship
Chalk, pastel and crayon drawings on paper, along a ritual offering of coffee beans, grains and coca leaves. 2019. Publication Guerrilla of Enlightenment (2020) Edited by Margarethe Makovec and Anton Lederer.