I’m sharing what I’m about to tell you from a land that originally belonged to the O’odham, with their salty skin smelling of gobernadora. [2] My speculations arose in a part of the world whose memories are linked to the coordinates 31o N and 114o W on the geologic time scale, a location where other counter-cartographic memories concentrate, like those of the turtles who planted the saguaros and the gentle grass that shares its medicine. At this crossroads of cross-border memories, I interweave confluences that come together and drift apart like a tide interconnected to our communal and individual ways of feeling and experiencing the landscape; different ways of inhabiting Earth and dancing in space.
I’m speaking from jewed.tlalli.yby.tierra: a living and technological entity that dances in the darkness with the Sun and the Moon, above the terranauts who remain on Earth in order to relay the connection back to her, in a brief prologue to the zones of climatic imagination.
The Zone of Climatic Imagination
a great field of solar panels announces a new time.
a time of heat between constellations,
in which we become a single zone,
in which the night, which lasts but a few hours,
allows us to see the enormous network of satellites,
obsession of millionaires since 2000 . . .
As in all geographic fictions created in invaded spaces in this part of the world, this territory has suffered many modifications since its colonial invasion: borders and environmental protection plans aimed at preserving memory in dialogue with a modern plan demarcating violence as a principle of connection with the Earth, overlooking the fact that this territory is filled with sacred symbols, without which there would be neither memory nor land.
( . . . ) if the rulers who exploit for a collapsing
currency are left with heat, it is with that heat
that they may continue to generate their privileges.
The Zone of Climatic Imagination is an area of Earth that remains habitable even after its last resources were exploited.
It is organized into three areas of coexistence: crops, code, and re-enchantment. Each is coordinated by a figure in charge of its vitality and operation. The people who inhabit this zone carry with them symbols that correspond to a nonbinary nature, possessed of an antipatriarchal and transfuturist flow in their earthly ancestry. They are entities of the cosmos that think in circularity, working the land using ancestral technologies.
Courier’s Notes
The courier works within the visible on the translation, transmission, and continuity of the climate, like the figure of the griô [3] who adapts histories of the Earth to the present context, archiving, revealing, and recycling the residual memory above, below, at the center, and within. In this sense, they produce an archeology of the residues produced on Earth for space, like defunct satellites, their lost fragments, tools, and instruments, as well as the waste disposal points surrounding the zone for recycling mineral memory. She knows the uncontaminated locations so that the entity can observe the stars and areas for agricultural cultivation.
Today’s weather:
Point 1 — max. 62 ºC, 12:00 p.m. — linear time, shade-free zone
Point 2 — max. 32 ºC, 12:00 p.m.. — tree time, in the shade
The Farmer’s Recipes
This figure is inspired by those people who develop methods for creating shade in the desert in the face of extreme temperatures. The people who live around the salt mines cultivate native species that connect with their memory and landscape in a warm climate, with soil composed of sand, salt, and marine fossils. Guardian of vegetal memory, the farmer is connected to the right to the land and foundational conflicts as well as disputes for life. She sows cornfields in the cultivation zone forecasted by the courier, reestablishing her nutritional and medicinal memory. At one point, the memory of corn began to distance itself from the memory of glyphosate and return to the soil.
Healing Rituals
As Malcom Ferdinand notes in his book Decolonial Ecology, leaving Earth involves a matricide. So, from Earth: How can we re-enchant space in the face of light pollution and space debris so prevalent we confuse it for stars? How can we re-enchant space in our condition? The entity acts as a healer, preparing medicines for the terranaut body out of what the farmer produces, deeply connected with plants related to healing through bathing, an antidote against colonial poison.
Notes for the Re-enchantment of Space
Observe the trajectory of the Sun from its axis to determine the cardinal directions.
Observe the phases of the Moon for collecting medicinal herbs.
Extinguish all the lights on the continent to locate seasonal responses in the stars.
On a new moon, turn yourself into ever-expanding dark matter.
Become Earth again
——
[1] About the title: The term “ecology” was coined in 1866, when slavery was still widespread and the perceptions of Latin America still centered around its exploitation through food and medicinal botany and other landscape technologies. In this sense, how can we think about ecologies in light of the systems implemented in these lands under colonization? What kind of ecology are we talking about?
[2] Gobernadora, also known as creosote and chaparral in the United States, is a very common plant in the deserts of North America. It is known for its ability to prevent the growth of other plants in its vicinity as a way of ensuring greater access to water. It is also known in Spanish as hediondilla because of its fragrance.
[3] In Brazil, a griô refers to a person whose role within a community, whether religious or cultural, is to gather memory and transmit it down through the generations.
I’m sharing what I’m about to tell you from a land that originally belonged to the O’odham, with their salty skin smelling of gobernadora. [2] My speculations arose in a part of the world whose memories are linked to the coordinates 31o N and 114o W on the geologic time scale, a location where other counter-cartographic memories concentrate, like those of the turtles who planted the saguaros and the gentle grass that shares its medicine. At this crossroads of cross-border memories, I interweave confluences that come together and drift apart like a tide interconnected to our communal and individual ways of feeling and experiencing the landscape; different ways of inhabiting Earth and dancing in space.
I’m speaking from jewed.tlalli.yby.tierra: a living and technological entity that dances in the darkness with the Sun and the Moon, above the terranauts who remain on Earth in order to relay the connection back to her, in a brief prologue to the zones of climatic imagination.
The Zone of Climatic Imagination
a great field of solar panels announces a new time.
a time of heat between constellations,
in which we become a single zone,
in which the night, which lasts but a few hours,
allows us to see the enormous network of satellites,
obsession of millionaires since 2000 . . .
As in all geographic fictions created in invaded spaces in this part of the world, this territory has suffered many modifications since its colonial invasion: borders and environmental protection plans aimed at preserving memory in dialogue with a modern plan demarcating violence as a principle of connection with the Earth, overlooking the fact that this territory is filled with sacred symbols, without which there would be neither memory nor land.
( . . . ) if the rulers who exploit for a collapsing
currency are left with heat, it is with that heat
that they may continue to generate their privileges.
The Zone of Climatic Imagination is an area of Earth that remains habitable even after its last resources were exploited.
It is organized into three areas of coexistence: crops, code, and re-enchantment. Each is coordinated by a figure in charge of its vitality and operation. The people who inhabit this zone carry with them symbols that correspond to a nonbinary nature, possessed of an antipatriarchal and transfuturist flow in their earthly ancestry. They are entities of the cosmos that think in circularity, working the land using ancestral technologies.
Courier’s Notes
The courier works within the visible on the translation, transmission, and continuity of the climate, like the figure of the griô [3] who adapts histories of the Earth to the present context, archiving, revealing, and recycling the residual memory above, below, at the center, and within. In this sense, they produce an archeology of the residues produced on Earth for space, like defunct satellites, their lost fragments, tools, and instruments, as well as the waste disposal points surrounding the zone for recycling mineral memory. She knows the uncontaminated locations so that the entity can observe the stars and areas for agricultural cultivation.
Today’s weather:
Point 1 — max. 62 ºC, 12:00 p.m. — linear time, shade-free zone
Point 2 — max. 32 ºC, 12:00 p.m.. — tree time, in the shade
The Farmer’s Recipes
This figure is inspired by those people who develop methods for creating shade in the desert in the face of extreme temperatures. The people who live around the salt mines cultivate native species that connect with their memory and landscape in a warm climate, with soil composed of sand, salt, and marine fossils. Guardian of vegetal memory, the farmer is connected to the right to the land and foundational conflicts as well as disputes for life. She sows cornfields in the cultivation zone forecasted by the courier, reestablishing her nutritional and medicinal memory. At one point, the memory of corn began to distance itself from the memory of glyphosate and return to the soil.
Healing Rituals
As Malcom Ferdinand notes in his book Decolonial Ecology, leaving Earth involves a matricide. So, from Earth: How can we re-enchant space in the face of light pollution and space debris so prevalent we confuse it for stars? How can we re-enchant space in our condition? The entity acts as a healer, preparing medicines for the terranaut body out of what the farmer produces, deeply connected with plants related to healing through bathing, an antidote against colonial poison.
Notes for the Re-enchantment of Space
Observe the trajectory of the Sun from its axis to determine the cardinal directions.
Observe the phases of the Moon for collecting medicinal herbs.
Extinguish all the lights on the continent to locate seasonal responses in the stars.
On a new moon, turn yourself into ever-expanding dark matter.
Become Earth again
——
[1] About the title: The term “ecology” was coined in 1866, when slavery was still widespread and the perceptions of Latin America still centered around its exploitation through food and medicinal botany and other landscape technologies. In this sense, how can we think about ecologies in light of the systems implemented in these lands under colonization? What kind of ecology are we talking about?
[2] Gobernadora, also known as creosote and chaparral in the United States, is a very common plant in the deserts of North America. It is known for its ability to prevent the growth of other plants in its vicinity as a way of ensuring greater access to water. It is also known in Spanish as hediondilla because of its fragrance.
[3] In Brazil, a griô refers to a person whose role within a community, whether religious or cultural, is to gather memory and transmit it down through the generations.
Subscribe to our newsletter!
¡Gracias por suscribirte!
CALLE DEL ARTÍCULO 123 #116, INT 100, COLONIA CENTRO, DELEGACIÓN CUAUHTÉMOC, CDMX 06040, MÉXICO
