Photos: Lourdes Cabrera. Courtesy of TBA21–Academy
Program trailer. Video and editing by Lourdes Cabrera.
Deeply connected to the fragility of ecosystems and ecological balance, the belief systems of river valley civilizations traveled widely across historical and transnational boundaries to reach us today through song, poetry, and praise. How can the environmental histories of river valley civilizations, empires, nation states, and self-governed communities help us navigate some of the challenges that lie ahead of us?
Lafawndah, The Dawn of Everything (2023)
The Spanish title of the convening Un manantial entre dos aguas, took inspiration from the celebrated 1976 song “Entre dos Aguas” by the musician, composer, and flamenco guitar virtuoso, Paco de Lucía. Composed between Havana and the Andalusian ports, the song expresses a sonic continuum between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, embodying the sound and history of flamenco.
Approaching the river as a score—a system that guides ways of doing, being, and composing—this performance sought to form a bodily connection to the Guadalquivir River. Through conversation, choreography, and music, Lewis and the flamenco guitarist and scholar Guillermo Castro Buendía, Classics scholar Brooke Holmes, and dancers Carlos López Campos, Javiera de la Fuente, Helena Martos, Laila Tafur, and Rosario Vacas, offer pathways and reflections on the river’s spiral flow as an embodied strategy for connecting the diversity of sonic and movement traditions in Andalusia.
Each day a communal meal invited collaborators and communities involved in Meandering to gather around the table. These meals featured menus conceived by the commissioned artists in collaboration with local farmers and producers, coordinated by Córdoban chef and restaurateur Gabrielle Mangeri. Inspired by the Guadalquivir River’s rich history of spiritual, ecological, and cultural exchange, the occasions encompassed acts of cooking and eating where food became not only a source of bodily nourishment but also a means of sharing and producing knowledge that strengthened connections between diverse ways of relating to the world. These communal meals provided a context for a sensorial journey that delved into some of the complexities of both food and politics, all the time striving to imagine how the watershed and a shared human history could be tangibly experienced.
Caique Tizzi, Celestial Agriculture (2023)
Celestial Agriculture was an artistic-culinary project that looked at the local and global histories of Andalusia through the lens of food culture, ancestral knowledge, and cosmology. Inspired by the agricultural philosophy of the so-called Córdoba Calendar, a text from 961, it encompassed a multichapter menu that unfolds as a performative experience over three days and through seven key ingredients.
Each convening was syncopated by mindful walks along the Guadalquivir River as it passes through the city of Córdoba. Led by artists, activists, anthropologists, and scientists, river walks invited the public to attune to the Guadalquivir and converse with its rhythms and frequencies. They aspired to create shared narratives of Córdoba’s human and more-than-human histories as they engaged with the layers of time, cultures, and fluvial forms that have shaped and been shaped by this waterway.
River walks with Elizabeth Gallón Droste and Jesús Alcaide
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