100 Yicas & The Holobient Trail
Invited by La Intermundial Holobiente, Lumbung artist, in collaboration with the Tewok Centre Culturel and with the support of documenta fifteen and the National Heritage Secretariat of Argentina. Buenos Aires – Santa Victoria Este, 2022.
The video was presented at RuruKids in Kassel and served as a complement to the activity. It primarily aimed to showcase what the Wichí community wanted to share about their relationships with non-human beings, even through their tradition of writing by weaving.
The Wichí are a population that inhabits the north of Argentina, next to a river that constantly changes course (the Pilcomayo). Since La Intermundial Holobiente’s project for documenta fifteen was a book (see Reading) — a specific cacophonous site that diplomatically translated what had been written (invisible to human eyes) by a Holobient composed of the territory of Komposthaufen in Karls Auepark — I was invited to collaborate with the Tewok Cultural Centre (a Wichí cultural space in Salta, Argentina). We designed another book based on a series of workshops that linked pareidolia and Wichí cosmovision. With Candela and Karina Mendoza (two bilingual intercultural teachers in Wichí-Spanish), we wrote the story that the children of the community decided to share with the children visiting documenta fifteen (especially the people of Kassel).
With Claudia Fontes, we created complementary activities to the reading of the story, thus creating a book: Die Spur der Holobients [The Trace of Holobients]. The young people in Kassel could borrow a Wichí bag with a copy of the book and tools to respond to the Wichí children’s story. In this book, there is a meeting between the Wichí and German worlds, to play, draw, trace, and write about what one can imagine of a nature-culture different from one’s own. Once these books are filled, they will return to Santa Victoria Este where the community lives. “100 Yicas” was designed to share the stories woven in the bags.
