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Fulbright 2024 Blog

 

Research for the creative project entitled “Cañ and Ara: Mending Climates with Vernacular Cosmovisions“ received a Fulbright scholarship for the 2024-2025 year. Follow the journey below:

BRIEF

A cataclysm sets the myth in motion, two sons of Cañ surviving a diluvial flood that drowned out all life of the Cañari cosmovision. From the far reaches of the Ecuadorian Amazon jungle untouched by Pachamama’s rage - two macaw women flew over the Andes to bring to the brothers the knowledge of cultivation. A civilization was born. Watching the flood waters of today, the sea level rise and the shifting microclimates, it’s not hard to ponder how the knowledge of the Earth might usher in an era beyond anthropocentric change. Adaptations from communities refined over generations bear modern and innovative fruits for those willing to revitalize the technology. Cultural exchange has always been an important cornerstone of Ecuadorian cultures, routes like the Qhapaq Ñan, the Inca road extending more than 30,000 km across the continent, once bridged the now fragmented climates of pre-columbian Abya Yala. Ecuador is a multi-ethnic state, with a plurality of cultures composing diverse architectural typologies. How has architectural exchange and the insights of ancestral knowledge from within indigenous communities transformed into sustainable buildings that mitigate climate disaster?


12.02.2024 DELUGE


Underneath the concrete of the drained Parque Aquatico, we approached the market painted aquarium blue; the descent beneath the waters below the river preceded us, a marker for what could have been. Unfiltered tilapia schooled behind glass, murals adorned in vibrant feathers and spotted prints, it was perhaps the only Amazonian art collective in a country overflowing in Andean cooperatives. Despite its familiarity to me, a traveler of the Napo, its compilation felt wholeheartedly sacred and scarce. Walnuts and achiote, so many abundant treasures that seldom migrate to the large cities, embrace another symbol of aversion towards the lost continent. This quiet morning, the stalls were mostly shut behind metal grates, except for the tiendas of a few generous women showing us ways to weave the pato into a necklace. A series of reproduced warrior spears perched in a bucket of lentils, so many hours of labor contained within the hands of tourists, a facsimile of a nation once violently at war with colonization. For an uncontacted community, when brute force of colonization and religious assimilation are no longer effective, trade becomes the most seductive mode of integration. Shiny new iPods, plastic phone cases, the techno-aesthic of a modernizing world is inexorably presumptuous; a condition in which a weapon transforms into a coat rack. Moreover, spaces for trade.

Speaking with the Shuar bookkeeper of the Bioparque Etnobotanico, she reassured me that I wouldn’t need to read Achuar literature, that all the spears and scars of the Shuar cosmovision would suffice. We are one people after all, despite a violent dispossession between them. Rummaging through the piles she hands me a book on Shuar architecture. Well, they are the same, so many people tell me - despite this aching feeling that sameness is a narrative written by cultural victors, particularly in their territory. The Shuar nation outnumbers the Achuar 10:1, and whose voices speak on behalf of whom I can’t quite parse from this perspective. All I know is that the stories of my partners in this endeavor go without mention, articulate through stereotypes like the constant warning that I’ll be forced into matrimony with a woman whose skin incidentally brushes mine. I wonder, who translates these narratives and who is advocating for plurality? I make assumptions that knowledge is equated with writing, that research is a mode of discovery, that recollection is a perfect monolith; All of which have been contested by emergent voices.

Every so often, I’m fortunate enough to have the opportunity to sit with Andrea, a colleague and artist who collaborates with communities in her own corner of the world’s largest rainforest. She reminded me of a biological mechanism that had slipped from the so often distracted forefront of my memory. A story of tributaries formed in the sky like rivers of clouds, mists that mirror the hydrological world below. Strung somewhere between are the trees and the people who care for one another. Scientifically, this transpiration en masse is what generously contributes to the flow of water between the Atlantic and the Andes. Unseen pathways, they work invisibly to water the many organisms who call these geographies home. By pulling the ocean into the sky, it’s the mechanism that keeps similar latitudes to vast deserts lush; lush at least for now.


11.15.2024 GUAPONDELIG


From the empty lobby of La Confradia’s cafe, only unhindered glass separates me from the patrons in the plaza hastily awaiting deliverance on bus line 17, framing arándano domes of the cathedral so central to Cuencan identity it might as well be considered the cornerstone of the city. “Be careful,” whispered a voice in the doorway, calling light to the gentle unease that perforated being present in public spaces alone over the most recent few years. With a sigh I turned to the hurried streets, knowing full well that my laptop and other valuable items were visible behind the drape - that solidity was only an illusion, and that at any moment - the extranjero in the dollhouse could be contained within the site of contention.

Conceived of jewels and tears, the cathedral grew and grew from the pennies of partitioners until one evening a crack shuttered down the spine. Not enough devotion, decried the pastor, and so with empty pockets and a defaced monastery - the  people of the city settled their grievances. “It’s a bit stumpy,” Jessica replied, “like - I can’t unsee it now that I know it’s only half built.” And it’s true, that with AI visions of unconstructed walls of stone, a sudden hollowness was rendered from the outside in. “Well maybe it’s the lack of completion that makes it unique,” replied Marcos, and each party settled differently, gazing upon the same unkempt spires through colored glass.

A garden blooms out from within the Kichwa market stalls, through walls of roses that starkly contrast the endless greenhouses now scattered in perfect formation in the foothills of Cotocachi. Infused herbal remedies, the aguas de pimitas, promise offers of prosperity and new growth, rooting ancient traditions in sharp juxtaposition to the busy gasoline husked cobblestones of the center built over caverns of the old city. The Plaza de las Flores thrives in the shadow of the cross etched into the petals at noon.

For the regal procession of the King of Spain, who hosts a yearly pan-American summit as some olive branch to peace in remembrance of colonization, the streets received a new million dollar coat of paint. Military servicemen of many different stripes littered the entrances of hotel lobbies rather erratically, and truck load by truck load poured into the bleeding heart of the historic center. With this flood of security, I couldn’t help but think, while standing on the boulder at the center of the now defunct river, about the desperate need for satiation; about the electricity shortages impending at the end to this international performance, about the song filled nights played out by performers hired from the countryside to sing for empty courtyards, about the last sliver of light at the peak of the bell tower visible before the sun goes down, immersing the valley in darkness; the way the rest of the country sees the night sky. From here spilled so much beauty through the wrought iron lanterns; a living mirage, a ploy to upend global sedition.

Built upon four intersecting rivers, the Cañari civilization settled what they referred to as Gaupondelig, or the “land as big as heaven.” These waters bridge the highlands to the Amazonian lowlands and flow out towards the ocean in an enteral precipatory exchange, a life giving sangre that connects the clouds to the tierra. Many, in olden times, would describe Cuenca as guarded by rivers, perhaps to the strength of the civilization barely conquered by the Inca only years before their collapse. Protectors of a landscape that in turn protected them - an identity and sanctity that subsisted through the passage of time.

When they destroyed the mountains, they left the animals with nothing to swallow - spoke a man in a video watching fleeing deer graze in the Primax parking lot. It’s Cajas, they told me, despite visions of the deepest blue reflected in the lake in the sky only a mere week ago. When traveling, I sometimes ponder when, if ever, I’ll embody that place again. Geography strung between lifetimes and remembrances, held in the palm lines of the volcanic veins running through this sierra. Seldom does that infinity untether so quickly and so quietly, relocated from a place I was to a place I will not be again. Smoke in the valley to the west, fog in the valley to the east; impartiality unending.

With my grainy fingers, I caress the soft heads of the tussock grass, those same strands which weave the baskets I use to contain my earthly treasures. My apartment is filled with odd remnants of this place; carved pieces of wood, ceramic bowls, knitted textiles. Each tells the material story of a landscape that otherwise goes unnoticed. I’m looking for a home in this land of sleeping giants, trying to find prosperity in the unsung voices of the earth beneath my feet. For now, they elude me, although with a proximate closeness, I come one stone closer to understanding how to listen for a language I don’t yet speak. Somehow these snakes with wings feel less stranger, coils unto the Turi slopes.

The roses in my living room are dying even though I retrieved their bodies dead. I dry them in the foyer, with the realization that Andean roses are just roses, but grown in the Andes. Through their limp corpses swaddled now like a baby, they tell me things don’t truly die here - with the promise that one day I’ll exhume their lustful scent.



10.15.2024 BLACK NIGHT, SHAKY STARS, A TINY MOON [INTERLUDE]


Sometimes nightly a flash of the old self emerges in crisp LCD. Other times the visions are much blurrier.  When the lights shut off as the rivers run dry, I press on the incandescent lamp, invigorate the candles and incense, and place my pen into the paper.

I remember contradictions, embrace them: 
  • A cloudless forest.
  • Gods in antennae like a splinter through the thumb of the mountain echoing the radio playing 90.1 FM W Radio Ecuador (the same station I listen to now in the quiet) presenting a talk show lamenting discontent with the very blackouts I write this amidst.
  • He picks at a wound that’s festering with the knife I bought to cut through thick vegetation. Can human flesh be cultivated?
  • Jipijapa, the Manabitan island translocated to downtown Quito.
  • We mould those closest to us in our likeness, whether we intend to or not. Our existence is a docile one.
  • The Oropendula bird, Montezuma interred.
  • My body is a collection of disparate components.
  • Bike lanes superimposed through metro centers, drawn only by lines of orange cones.
  • My practice has always been a practice of opposition.
  • Frogs sing more when it rains.
  • A one night folly, always seeking pacification.
  • Visibility from one side - ink bleeding through paper.
  • Devotional labor.
  • Abya Yala, the old continent, printed into the spine of the book about indigenous communities written by an academic outside said indigenous community. 
  • Antiquity today.
  • Pondering the difference between having and owning.
  • Running in the darkness for the fear of what’s behind when the generator sputters, laughing all the way.