Water from the forest egg: Dwelling in uncertainty
Water from the forest egg: Dwelling in uncertainty
Water from the forest egg, Bern Academy of the Arts, Switzerland.. (2022) Documentation:Ben Zurbriggen Collaborators: Yue Cao, Nanny Friebel, Alexandra Lapierre, Sarah Gos, and Sheila Sanfeliz.
Master's thesis project at the Academy of Arts in Bern, Switzerland, structured around a poem as a creative score. The work interweaves the poetics of the origin of cacao with the production of the first genetically generated chocolate in a Swiss laboratory, questioning the relationships of ownership and care of landscapes and ecosystems. Four human bodies dressed in military green establish a performative dialogue with cacao as the central interlocutor: singing to it, playing with it, using it as a corporal landscape, and recalling links with ancestral traditions and customs. This interaction questions extractive dynamics and proposes alternative forms of relationality with natural elements. The project culminates in an uncertain territory: faced with the possible extinction of cacao trees due to global warming, laboratory-produced chocolate could become the only vestige of an environment and potential we know today. This critical speculation interrogates the possible futures of our relationships with nature and the processes of industrialization. The work articulates decolonial, ecological and futuristic concerns, using cocoa as a vehicle to reflect on extractivism, cultural memory and contemporary ecosystem transformations.
Master's thesis project at the Academy of Arts in Bern, Switzerland, structured around a poem as a creative score. The work interweaves the poetics of the origin of cacao with the production of the first genetically generated chocolate in a Swiss laboratory, questioning the relationships of ownership and care of landscapes and ecosystems. Four human bodies dressed in military green establish a performative dialogue with cacao as the central interlocutor: singing to it, playing with it, using it as a corporal landscape, and recalling links with ancestral traditions and customs. This interaction questions extractive dynamics and proposes alternative forms of relationality with natural elements. The project culminates in an uncertain territory: faced with the possible extinction of cacao trees due to global warming, laboratory-produced chocolate could become the only vestige of an environment and potential we know today. This critical speculation interrogates the possible futures of our relationships with nature and the processes of industrialization. The work articulates decolonial, ecological and futuristic concerns, using cocoa as a vehicle to reflect on extractivism, cultural memory and contemporary ecosystem transformations.