Format/Structure

Sensory walk and a ritual, with the purpose to give the participants opportunities for sensory encounters and "landing" in Barcelona.

Long Abstract

We would like to offer this sensory walk and ritual with plants to facilitate our arrival(s) in Barcelona and in the conference, as a way of sensing and honoring our connections to the land, to the work that we do, and to each other. We believe in, and want to contribute to POLLEN as a gathering of beings deeply engaged with ecology and committed to collectively bringing nourishing and liveable planetary futures into being. In developing the walk/ritual, we draw inspiration from our work with urban nature-cultures, feminist eco-activism, queer ecologies, collaborative, arts-based research, and sensory ethnography.

The walk would have the following three stages:

1) Arriving- bringing into presence our ancestors, the places and relations that we carry with us, and that carry us as we come together in Barcelona;

2) Going visiting: embodied multi-sensorial mapping of urban plant life in the interstices, the route depending on the exact location of the conference and the time of day. We would design the route to enable encounters with plants, including Nettle, Alfalfa (Medicago sativa), Thistle and hierbas mediteranas, like rosemary and thyme. Here, we will further develop the format of “(un-)guided tour” (Lapina, Samson & Abrantes, in press)- where we move along a set route, but where the more-than-human participants (including the weather, plants, animals…) co-enact how we move, the pace, the rhythms. In midday and/or very hot weather, we would adapt the walk to ensure accessibility.

3) Ritual/offering: coming together and sharing in the form of collective ritual, offering healing to the land, plants and ourselves, and cultivating reciprocity.

We intend the walk to support our arrivals in Barcelona, and as an opportunity to connect to local ecologies, and hopefully cultivate more-than-human solidarity and love.