P007 → Shifting Ecologies: Swamps as Utopian Grounds
with Eva Garibaldi (2023)
Shifting Ecologies: Swamps as Utopian Grounds is a speculative project that takes the swamp as a starting point to question ecological, spatial, societal, and economic dynamics in a context of shifting and unstable realities. The project reimagines the swamp as a catalyst for weaving new narratives, myths, and legends exploring ancient beliefs, indigenous knowledge, and the dynamic nature of swamps. Neither land nor water, swamps are transitional grounds for biological and cultural diversity. They are crucial landscapes in mitigating climate change through carbon sequestration, coastal protection, and biodiversity conservation. As ever-morphing terrains they are a metaphor for current instabilities, becoming a fertile ground to blur binaries and dichotomies and embrace instability and fluidity as the condition of our time. Exploring the dynamic nature of swamps and the symbolic nature and political role of these ecosystems, the project addresses the complex and increasingly shifting conditions of our world. Swamps once considered wastelands, become terrains of resistance and possibility.
The performance is around 10 minutes and is designed as a poetry reading in 4 acts. The text is read by the performers from an approximately 15m scroll that becomes spatialized as the reading unfolds. The text is in English with some sections in Italian and Slovenian (our mother tongues). The idea behind the performance is to embody/perform the swamp and give it a voice through the poetry. In the back of the images, you can see the videos of both of our explorations at our research sites.
Photos from the performance at Garage Rotterdam Ph. Chiara Catalini