Opening speech by Fanja Bouts
This tapestry is an intertwined collection of coexisting realities, particularly those realities that need reconsideration. The 12 prints in blue, the not-blueprints on the wall are in a way part of the opposite: They represent alternative realities that are being built as we speak. Why are they not blueprints? There is no one overarching plan that can be laid out to build a fairer world, as this will inevitably result in a plan through a western lens, leading to ‘solutions’ still rooted in capitalist anthropocentric mindsets. Instead, it’s about presenting a critical mass of alternative ways that can support the conditions for the radical systemic changes we need. The tapestry and the conversations in the headsets, and the resulting blueprints, converse and relate in a myriad of ways.
I would like to take you along some of those relations and walk you along the paths of this work, those of a knitted map: A map of regular irregularities. Why a map? Looking at the history of cartography, maps have often legitimized war, colonialism and resource extraction. Critical consideration of how maps are misused are in our current political climate more pressing than ever, with people being pushed out of their homes and killed as we speak, genocides presented as justified through a settler colonialist mindset. One of the researchers I have spoken to for my work is Tuomo Alhojärvi, a Finnish researcher developing alternative cartographic methods to study the commons. He reminds me that it is essential to recognize how maps have been used to build cartographies of power and that now it is up to us to build counter-maps. Together, creating an archive of counter-maps which focus instead on challenging those powers and present in those maps what truly matters, to humans and non-humans.
In the tapestry through different scenes, I invite you to critically assess practices of our world that need to be protested and rewritten. Equally, I invite you to step onto the big bang in the middle and walk along the many cosmic paths, reminding you that we are an infinitely small part of an infinitely vast structure. There is a connection to be acknowledged in our shared short existences – and I think that if we are conscious of the fact that, as Sun Ra in his cosmic afro-futurist philosophy expresses, we all travel the Space-ways together. Then we might approach our lives a little more collectively.
It is that collective mindset which I discuss with the Gemini group for post-growth futures, a group of researchers based in Oslo assessing the concept of growth. They discuss how if we really want care rather than growth at the heart of our society, we need to start thinking like a collective. I then do not care for someone to be a good person, I care because they are me, we are of one and the same. The tapestry is surrounded by steps that give you the impression that you are infinitely going up, but in fact it mirror’s those of Escher: You end up where you started each time – pursuing infinite growth is a myth that locks you in a mindset reaching for an interpretation of happiness that can never be reached.
Parallel to the steps, ouroboros crawls through the frame, reminding us of the cyclical nature of our world, emphasizing our need to reconsider how we organise our planet following the principle of unity of all.
In the centre of the scene, from the big bang we escape and move down into a carnival fair, where we are shaped from 17 elemental particles and randomly given our existence in a ferris wheel of fortune. A philosopher who’s name I can’t remember once said we should organise our world after the thought experiment that you will restart your life right now in a randomized place, within a randomized family somewhere on our planet. As your life is now left to chance, to ensure having a dignified life, you must ensure that all lives exist in good circumstances with the same opportunities.
We walk along the roads of our world and this map and see rows and rows of perfectly aligned crops, with not a bug or weed in sight. We spray our fields so only one particular seed variety, owned by a single company, will grow there. The consequences are incredible. Such intense losses of species that we are living through earth’s 6th mass extinction. Besides ecological consequences there are large socio-economic consequences, too. Small farmers become heavily dependent on corporations holding a monopoly over available seeds, taking away autonomy and creating financial insecurity, moving towards neofeudal structures of coexisting. I talk to Marco Immovilli, who follows farmers living in communities in the Italian alps who try to live away from capitalism, organising their farm around the value of care. It is important to underscore that this is not easy and should not be romanticized, it is rather an ongoing set of compromises to reconsider. At times, the seeds of the large multinational have to be bought in order to survive. Other times, they manage without. At all times, these choices are not easy. Isabelle Hugoy talks to farmers in Norway who want to switch or have switched from traditional agriculture to regenerative agriculture. They too express that it is incredibly hard at times, but that in the long run, caring for your soil and not being dependent on artificial fertilizers is better for everyone, and that it is possible by building a strong community of farmers that help each other. I speak to youth workers looking into eco-farming practices in the southern lights farm in Greece. They are hopeful and share that a resilient food system, a strong community and a thriving society all have the one thing in common: Diversity must be celebrated and encouraged.
Through the tapestry we see a beast walk through the frame that seems to be out of place, in its belly written: The belly of the beast. The beast is an invasive species, walking in lands it is not meant to walk in. I see the introduction of invasive species, in the many interpretations you can have, as the core of our environmental issues. Though settler colonial practices humans have occupied land and planted and spread non-native species. I pose this as the belly of the beast as at the heart of environmental issues lies fighting against an ecosystem rather than living in harmony within it. Unequal power relations, within humans and between humans and the rest of nature, form the foundation of environmental degradation. Today, I will speak for my own experience of my country in the Netherlands, nature in its free, wild form has seized to exist. Plants once unknown to our soils take over plots of land, with all effects following. Feroz Kahn is a researcher of disaster studies and mentions that there is no such thing as a natural disaster, they are all consequences of human decisions. As a clear example we talk about California and the recent wildfires. While climate change presented a clear cause of the large extent of the fires, the human cause of the fire more importantly dominantly lies in how the land was once stolen and reshaped. The native species that once occupied the land were able to live with the ecosystem: They could exist and thrive with fire as part of their growth cycle. Now, with non-native species dominating, a fire raging over a non-resilient land leaves no life behind. Kahn expressed the importance of making clear to people that consciousness of the context of disasters is an important part of a post-growth world.
While in this tapestry and out in the world we see direct or indirect symbolisms of the atrocities humanity is carrying out on our planet, I want to also remind everyone that the many black holes and windows that can be opened up in the piece are doorways to other possibilities. I created this work with an emphasis on the absurdity of our existence: How could we be spending time raging wars if we have gotten the unique opportunity to be born? It is not all doom and gloom, as everywhere in the piece, nature is fighting back and will inevitably reclaim the earth. The humorous approach reflects how I view we can live: In the process of fighting for a fairer world, make sure to pay attention to the playful joy life brings, and the jokes made along the way.
While I often claim that nature disappears, it is also occurring the other way around, and I think it’s important to also mention the reclamation of the landscape: The success stories if you may. Cecilie Odegaard researched the closing of the coal mines and some of the most northern settlements in Svea. Here, all traces of human activity are being taken away, a great challenge in the harsh Northern conditions. Old photographs of what the landscape used to look like inform us of what was lost, but they are also, primarily used to help shape back the landscape to its natural state. With this rewilding project, Svalbard will be given back as belonging to the landscape, not to the humans visiting within.
In one of the recordings you hear me talk to Simon Fines, and his direct approach to build a better planet exemplifies the joyful view I mention. Simon and I met in a course with an even longer title than the tapestry called beyond sustainability: theorizing post and anti-capitalist food futures. Here, we held weekly discussions about how the revolution should be organized and how we can stop wasting all of our food. At the same time, Simon is the example of someone realizing theorizing without putting words into action is an empty act. So he quit the masters and started cooking for different communities full-time, using what people would consider waste: Fermenting food scraps into soups, cooked together and shared with people from the local refugee centre. He turned something he loves into an act of resistance. By cooking, sharing, and at times dancing together the squatted centre where everyone was welcome and people of all ages gathered became the counternoise for the anti-refugee movement that was rising in the Netherlands, including through our own government. Here, I have met some of the kindest and most selfless people and for me it again shows that the most joyous places are those where culture is shared and people make, together.
If you look closely, you see caterpillars spread around the work. These caterpillar carriages carry human beings depicted as parasites. The caterpillars eat away earth’s resources until there is nothing left. It is key to note that is not the caterpillars themselves, who are eating mindlessly, driving this: it is the humans that ride the caterpillars who hold the ropes. This critique is then presented from a political economist point of view: It is not the responsibility of the individual who is making these bad choices, it is about the system that drives these choices. The caterpillars do not act out of their own agency, but are pushed into life choices they do not necessarily want to make. In the space here, segments of the body of a caterpillar are spread around the room. I invite you to take place, listen to the alternative ways we can organise our world and rewrite the story of the caterpillar. It is time to accept the end of an era of growth, and accept our metamorphosis into a butterfly era – in which instead of anxiously awaiting growth, we flutter freely and calmly.