Echoes: Ancestral Calls and Edible Answers

Marcel Jean-Baptiste (Mawongany) will introduce the musical and collective agricultural traditions of Bélé and Lasoté, elaborating on their meaning within decolonial ecologies in Martinique. Through an engagement of body, soul, and spirit Mawongany familiarizes participants with his social, environmental, and artistic projects. In this active listening session, participants are initiated in an enduring community practice that continues to resonate through decades of colonization and enslavement.

Luiza Prado’s food installation “Lunar Tides and the Spirals of the Universe” is an invitation to a collective performance through the act of sharing a meal; a ritual that looks at change and transformation as the fundamental forces of the universe. This edible artwork explores the ongoing historical pathways of an ancient spice, medicine, and aphrodisiac called silphium — a plant overharvested to extinction during the Roman Empire, triggering waves of destruction, transformation, and change that echo through time and space. The work takes as a starting point the Cult of Sylphis — an ancient religious practice revolving around the planting, tending, growth, protection, sharing, and consumption of silphium in Antiquity — to explore changing forms of worship and spiritual practices in the context of climate disaster.