Planting Communities: Diasporic Rooting

We will raise questions around re-rooting towards a 'radical diasporism' in dialogue with senses of solidarity that align with pre- and anti-zionist ethics and practices. How can we gather around the plants in an ecology of multiple diasporas that intersect now in Berlin?

We will focus on unearthing remedies for the protection from harm, violence and environmental destruction, asking: how might 'protection' operate beyond the logic of militarized border regimes? What might we learn from ancestral plant wisdoms?

During the workshop, we will inquire how particular herbs in the Spore Garden ally with the nervous and immune systems to collectively reflect on medicines to create for our times.

We invite this particular lineage to inform a practice of herbalism as a cross-cultural connector that defies ethnonationalist drives.

"The realm of health and healing, despite all the imposed limitations, had few or no boundaries in the Pale. Jews and non-Jews, whose lives intersected every day, borrowed freely from each other where health and healing matters were concerned" 
~ Cohen & Siegal in Ashkenazi Herbalism: Rediscovering the Herbal Traditions of Eastern European Jews 

With an introduction by Mikhail Lylov and moderated by Shelley Etkin.