Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to Foraging, a podcast about environmental humanities.
In this second season, we step into the Foragers engagements Beyond the Human, a series of public events that brings together artists, researchers and enthusiasts around the practice of foraging.
It starts with simple questions. What grows here? What can we take?
What should we leave?
From there, we move into bigger conversations about care, community consumption, and the way we relate to more than human worlds.
We also explore how artistic practices can sharpen those questions, complicate them and reframe them.
My name is Jose Verflusum. I'm a performance and visual artist and co curator of the Foragers.
Plants are a constant presence in my practice. Their stories, their imaginaries and the new languages they open for the complexity we're living through.
In each episode, I invite two artists from the Foragers. We talk about their work and what foraging means in their practice as a method, a metaphor, and a way of asking better questions.
Not only what can I take? But also what does this place ask me in return?
I hope these conversations can inspire you.
Let's begin.
We are here today in the studio with Juts Zauma, the graphic designer of the Foragers project. And. And besides from being a very talented graphic designer, Jute has also a very interesting artistic practice.
Later, more about this Hello Jude.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: Hello Jose.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: And also here with us in the studio is Aisha Ouata, a Brussels based artist who will take part in the Foragers Expo.
Bienvenue.
[00:02:09] Speaker C: Hello Aisha. Hi.
[00:02:11] Speaker A: Both of their work revolves around water, so today's conversation will be quite aquatic.
I invited Jute and Aisha because of the interesting relation between foraging and water.
The presence of water is often a key point in a landscape. It often serves as a marker to navigate and read the environment, and it allows plants to grow and life to persist.
Astrida Nemanis, a cultural theorist and the writer of the interesting book which we might quote again called Bodies of Water. Author Posthuman Feminist Feminology she was the one also who coined the term hydro feminism.
She brings together feminist, queer and ecologist sensibilities. And she describes humans as bodies of water and as such, part of a shared system where life flows between people, plants and ecosystems.
Foraging can help us to thematize the connection between bodies of water that we are and the landscape that we move through.
On top of that, bodies of Water throughout time and space have served as archives of memory vessels that contain stories of human and more than human creatures.
In her work, Jud talks about plurality of faces of water, of many different perspectives of water.
So let's start.
Because I have the impression that we have a lot to talk about, I want to start first to introduce you.
Jute.
Jute Thuama explores the intersection of memory, water and landscape through multimedia projects that weave together personal histories, environmental observation, and collective storytelling.
Her work highlights how rivers, wells, and seasonal water patterns carry culture and ecological knowledge, creating a space where human and non human worlds interact and coexist.
Aisha Watara is a Belgo Malian multidisciplinary artist born and based in Brussels.
Her artistic language emerges from clay structures, cellular textures, the liquidity of colors, archaeological forms, cosmogenic collages, and immersive performances. The work of Aisha seeks to reconnect non human life with its poetic dimension.
Wow, that's already a lot of words. Actually, Aisha, maybe we start with you. You will take part in the Foragers Expo that will start has his fernissage on 23 April. Can you maybe explain a bit what you're gonna exhibits and the process through to what you connect, like the work trajectory?
[00:05:17] Speaker C: Yes.
So I'm going to work with clay, with red clay, and I have had the chance to go in Senegal for a few weeks and to also work and research a bit there.
And I'm really busy at the moment with the gesture and the moment of libation. So libation is actually the gesture, the act of pouring water, or it could also be alcohol or milk, but it's the fact of pouring a liquid on a specific object that we can also call a fetish.
And the pouring of this water actually opens a communication with some entities that could be ancestors and that it's actually a very simple way of consulting when we have questions towards maybe health problems or maybe issues in the family or maybe.
And yeah, I got very interested in the presence of water and also inhabiting the pouring.
So I am creating objects. So it's like three different bodies of water.
And it's actually inspired by.
What's that word in English in gourd?
A bottle of like a vessel.
Yeah, a bottle. But a vessel is like already like in a very spiritual frame. But I mean, like a bottle you would take, even for daily life, that you need to take like water with you.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: Drinking bottle.
[00:07:13] Speaker C: Yeah. So where I was, so I was in Cazama, which is like a salt region in.
In Senegal, and there before, I mean, even now. But they are working a lot with the rice culture, agriculture in Rizier.
And before they had all the plastic and the whole industrial life happening, they had this clay bottle of water. They would take to go to the fields, also because it was keeping the water fresh and also because they just needed to drink the whole day of the work. So I got inspired by this first traditional form and then from there like reshaped new forms.
So that's a bit like where I am right now. And I'm going to share like a step of the research process in the frame of the foraging exhibition.
[00:08:17] Speaker A: Thanks for explaining. I'm looking forward to see this.
So it comes a bit from your research that you did in all the residency you had in Senegal.
[00:08:28] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly.
That I just came back from. Exactly.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Nice.
Jute, can you describe your work a bit or what you are working on currently?
[00:08:40] Speaker B: Yeah, currently I'm working on an artistic research which is very much in close relation to the Ifritz river, specifically in Syria.
And looking into this body of water as a witness, as a sort of record also of different times and also cultures as well around. Of different cities around. And I'm being in close relation to it through different family members, through different people who live close to it, family as well.
And also exploring my own relation to the river from my own position as somebody who has been displaced from Syria for the last 15 years.
And yeah, I found this relation really interesting, like how you.
Like there are systematic forces of displacement or disconnection from water and land, but then these relations really take so many different forms that any systematic violence cannot really touch. Like, and it goes very deep into dreams or memories or even relations. So, I mean, I left physically, but the river is very much within me.
So I mean, these relations are really how the research is folding through or unfolding through.
Right now I'm looking into or trying to understand the fruits river in the context of the last 15 years of like in Syria, beginning with the Revolution in 2011, and how the river itself was part of, part of that or enabled also different processes of. Yeah, how the river was also enabled this resistance also at the time and as well as how the river itself was turned into a form of war weapon or a way to disconnect communities from each other.
So looking into all of that and seeing the context of the river today, ecologically, politically, and also the connection to the water that still persists.
And right now I'm looking closely into the experience of passage.
And the connection between different sides of the Ifritz river, specifically in Deir Ezor, the city that I come from, there are seven bridges across the Ifrit river.
And many, many, many ways, many cultures, songs, chants, ways in which also that asserted this relation between different sides of the river. This has always existed and as infrastructures, as, you know, structures that connected these different sides of the river. These seven bridges have also very, I mean, a lot of significance also in the city, but also they were very much targeted, like the first structures also to be targeted after the revolution started, specifically from the Assad regime. And I mean, one of the main bridges in Deir Ezor, the Yuselam Alaq, or the suspended bridge, has been immediately directed or targeted in a way, again to control movement, to control connections, to severe connections.
And I mean, that's also the same strategy that was used in Raqqa, like in different cities also across the river itself.
So there are many stories and many anecdotes and many processes also, and how the river itself was part of all this process.
And the research now is really looking into these moments of passage into different kind of memories also of crossing the river, of different traditions also that are in relation to that, or cultural traditions that are very much in relation to that.
And also different songs and chants that are also in connection to the crossing or the connection asserting the connection between the river shores.
And it's also my own relation as somebody who is crossing distances to be in relation. So that's also part of. Part of that experience.
[00:13:57] Speaker A: Yeah, we kind of come back to that relation. But I also was interested because in both of your views, I read and I know your artistic practice crosses a lot of disciplines also. So you, Aisha, but also you don't hold to one medium or one discipline. You don't stick to it. But it's very.
Your artistic practice also, media wise is very fluid. Can you maybe describe a bit that you work with clay? We heard, but there's a lot of different media, a lot of different media to produce, but also a lot of different media to research.
Ayesha, can you talk a bit more about that?
[00:14:40] Speaker C: I can try, yeah.
I would say, yeah. I'm also.
I've always been drawing and painting and I have like, also a background in contemporary dance.
I've been doing a lot of improvisation.
And then through dance, I got to know the world of the somatic practices.
And I entered into also fascia therapy and dance, which is a very specific and beautiful way to approach the body.
And yes, somehow I also got into sculpting with the clay. So it's a bit like it has many arms.
It has not always been easy to have a feeling of unity.
And it's true that actually, to be honest, I've never thought about the connection with water, this multidisciplinary aspect. But I think maybe something that water teaches me is actually the. The work of unification towards all those different ways of expressing myself. Or also to manifest. Many different ways to manifest, but actually the same inner world.
And it's also like, I'm a bit. Also really busy with the fact of one body of water pouring water to another body of water.
And I think these multi mediums is also like, maybe I'm researching or exploring or just experiencing something.
For instance, with dance, also with sound, because I also love to sing. And then actually it nourishes like it pours the water I've just experienced in this medium to this other medium to this other container.
So it's also like those beautiful.
It's kind of. Yeah, like a communication system where it's like.
And it's. I mean, I'm still learning.
I'm really still researching how to evolve in those multi mediums.
But I also just listen to the.
To the urge.
To the urge and also to the.
Yet inspiration.
And sometimes, like, for instance, sculpting is quite new in my life. It's been like, maybe two years.
And it's just I've been. For instance, the drawing and the painting is because I have such a big love for colors and also for liquidity in colors.
But then to some point in my life, I felt I need to go out of the 2D, the 2 dimension. Like, I felt in my body that I needed to be in contact with another body.
And I really feel it now that when I work with clay, there is something, like, very somatically fulfilling in my body that there is not a body in front of me.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: Yeah. I see Jude smiling with a toss. And I heard you also humming when it was about urgency and sound.
Yeah. Maybe you can tell a bit about the multidisciplinarity of your work and how that resonates with what Ayesha was just talking about. Yeah.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
It's very beautiful to hear about your own relation to multidisciplinarity, Ayesha. And also the aspect you were talking about of porosity or how things start to seep into each other.
Because I find it also in my own practice.
I'm trained first as an architect. I started architecture school in Damascus, and then I followed that with graphic design, and then I followed that with visual arts. And then I feel like my practice now is also moving in between different ways of working. And it's very much also in listening to the questions and the materials and the relations and the Urgencies that also emerge.
And so I've been exploring the moving image or video explorations. I've also very recently been exploring sound in collaboration with different people right now, also in relation to the work that I've just shared before, collaborating with Sma' Il Benawi, who's a sound composer.
And we're together also going through different field recordings and chants that we're also collecting to explore these different relations to water, also echoes and how sound also is very much in relation to waterways and crossing and passage. And this listening, like deep listening, also to the environment or to water or to the witness of the water. I think also for me, through this research, I've been really so obsessed with this idea of the ifrits or the river or a water being a witness, which goes against this idea of archives or like fixed records. But then water or like these bodies of water are really like these fluid, fluid entities or living beings as well that go through all that, you know, all the beings are also going through. And it's. And it's really like, keeps traces. And it's like through this listening, there's so much that unfold as well.
So I find myself now really, like, exploring that. Exploring collaboration, exploring intergenerational relations and experiences, I think.
I don't know. There's like a lot that seeps also through that. Different voices as well, or experiences that they're.
Yeah. That it's very much relational.
[00:21:03] Speaker C: Yeah, it seems.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:05] Speaker C: No, I just wanted to. When I hear you, that you're also talking about listening and all those different voices, you also kind of put your work at service.
That's also the thing, right. With multidisciplinary, it's like there are so many different ways to listen.
There are so many different tools to listen. And I think that's also why, like, for instance, with the dance, it's like I really trained to be available to what's there.
I really trained that in improvisation.
But once you train that in dance, you also have it in drawing or in everything. Like, you train the fact to listen and your availability. And then. And then it's. Of course, then it can take many forms.
So it's more like a quality of listening that is, like, present in many creative aspects.
[00:22:04] Speaker A: Yeah. And I'd sing in the book the Mushroom at the End of the World, she calls it. I. I think you're talking about this. I don't know, but the quality or the art of noticing and the art of paying attention. And it talks about attunement with an environment that there is a mutual, mutuality, reciprocity.
Is that something that you.
How does it feel? Like how does it feel in your body? Because we just said also we are bodies of water. So is water connecting to water or how does it work? How does it feel in your work? Also I'm very curious about that. Like the bodily sensations.
[00:22:48] Speaker B: Really good question. Do you want to answer it first? Aysu.
[00:22:54] Speaker C: It's not an easy question also because it's of course a bit more complex than just being a body of water.
But maybe what I can share is for me for instance, if I am near a river or the sea or like I just. It's also about the resonance.
It's like somehow it amplifies.
It's hard to explain because it's a somatic experience.
Yeah, it's like there is like many possibilities of resonance between us.
But I mean I also could have that in a forest or in a mountain. But I think also each of us are different and some people have like maybe more affinity towards specific natural sites and maybe that's what I can say about water and the body of water and how do I also relate to it within my bodies? Like I, I feel it amplifies like some kind of breathing or resonance.
Yeah,
[00:24:19] Speaker B: yeah. I also, yeah hear what you say. Like, like the resonance is. Yeah. Something I experienced too. And yeah, I also. It's not a one, one way relation or experience or it doesn't feel one way.
It's really. Yeah. It's a very layered experience and sometimes there is a relation, sometimes there is no relation at all. There's rupture and then that is in itself is a, is a form of relation to really tend to and have attention to and like really understand.
So in relation to the Eretz river or different bodies of water, like it's really a different experience. It brings also different contexts, different histories with it.
And that all in itself is very much entangled and intertwined. So it's really like. It's like to assume that as bodies we can just remove ourselves from that. It's really. Yeah. It's such a violent way of disconnecting completely. So in being intertwined with all of this, I mean it comes with a lot. There's a lot of grief, there's a lot of love, there's a lot of care, there's a lot of yearning, there's a lot of longing.
There is, yeah, it's just. Yeah, indeed it comes, it's unfold, it unfolds, it unfolds a lot. So I really also like in relations with Ifrit's river in specific, there is a.
A relation through echo which I'm very interested also to like a. Curious also to understand or to embody as well.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: Can you tell a bit more about this echo?
[00:26:01] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:26:02] Speaker A: So evident what you mean, what it means in this context.
[00:26:06] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Like an echo, like as a sound is like understand it as a resonance, like something that's really crosses and then what is. I mean these dichotomies of what is near or far or close or not. It's like it really falls because there's something in between that happens. And it is really in this in betweenness that I find there's so much that can also emerge as relations.
And as I began assuming that there is distance from a certain body of water, but it's very close by. I mean it's. It lives through you as well. So it's like. Which is a very intense also experience. But so I'm very committed not to essentialize an experience or like see it in a one way and not the other. Like it's a very layered one.
[00:27:00] Speaker C: Yeah. Maybe. Something I just wanted to add also with that, it's very simple what I'm going to say, but it's just that it's also just a very strong component of life, water. So it's also just a recognition of this common component for life to happen, for life to be and to continue.
I mean, water is a lot about also life continue making life somehow.
[00:27:45] Speaker A: You were talking before Aisha about.
I forgot a word, a word that I never heard. Libation.
[00:27:52] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:27:53] Speaker A: Is that word.
[00:27:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:55] Speaker A: And the use of water in certain rituals, often rituals of cleansing or initiation rituals.
What place does these kind of rituals have in your work?
What rituals have been inspiring for you?
Feeding, your practice.
I see here also you brought this very beautiful object that we have here standing on the table. So maybe this can be the start of a conversation about rituals.
[00:28:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I feel like.
I mean, aspects of this research also began with this. With this interest in different water rituals also that I grew up with and that are practiced and in many locations also in connection to water and rivers.
And I grew up also with this bowl, with this fear bowl, tosterraba, which
[00:28:53] Speaker A: maybe you can describe what we.
[00:28:57] Speaker B: It's a copper bowl and it has this piece in the middle of it with different keys around it.
And on the ball itself there are many engravings. And these engravings are like Islamic engravings, like bismillahirrahman Rahim, in the name of Allah, the most Merciful. And then there are also verses from the Quran.
So this very much also is in relation to this whole practice about reading.
Reading Quranic verses or prayers on water with this belief that the word of Allah like has protective and healing properties. And then for that to be also infused with water, then it has that healing or protective aspect about it. And this is like really practiced in the everyday life.
And yeah, I remembered that I think two years ago or three years ago and it really sparked a lot of questions about these. These first.
Yeah. Very close relation with. With water and also through. Through these objects and the ritual itself. And also the speaking on water or like the.
Like as you pour it, it makes sound as well when it's. When it's. Yeah. When these little keys are.
Yeah. Hitting each other and then there's a resonance and then it's always in connection. There's always somebody who gives it to you or you give it to yourself. There's always aspect to it.
[00:30:39] Speaker C: So yeah, it has to touch the water before you give it to somebody.
[00:30:43] Speaker B: You pour water into it.
[00:30:44] Speaker C: You pour water into it and then
[00:30:46] Speaker B: you offer it as a form of. As a form of care. Okay.
[00:30:48] Speaker C: So when you offer it, it has water in it.
[00:30:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:51] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:30:53] Speaker B: And it's really also is. Is in connection to. I mean specifically used when somebody is experiencing fear or anxiety or is just so a nightmare for instance, and woke up. And then in these instances when somebody is experiencing this kind of trauma or like shock or intense fear, then this is offered also as a way of care, as a way of calming, soothing.
So I was remembering this and I was like, whoa, this is part of the everyday. I mean it's just.
Yeah, this, this close relation to. It has been. Yeah. Always there. And it's also made me think what would. How does that look like? You know, in relation to water? It's like the fears that the water maybe has also and like going through different. Like within different contexts. So.
So yeah, I think that's remembering that this practice also was again like a way of reconnecting to.
To memory to different relations, family relations, generational relations, remembering different rituals as well or practices that center water or like the relation to water or like embodies this relation and from there things. Yeah. You follow your intuition and your curiosities and then there's so many things that you start to.
[00:32:21] Speaker A: And in which form did this object end up in your research or in the more public sharings of your research?
[00:32:29] Speaker B: What do you mean?
[00:32:30] Speaker A: Like if you share your work with the public, if there is A public moment. Does this also take a form of a ritual or you stay away from that?
[00:32:38] Speaker B: No, it's.
[00:32:41] Speaker A: How do you relate to that in relation to sharing?
[00:32:47] Speaker B: Up until now, I've been.
I mean, there's also a protective aspect, you know, like with rituals, like, how do you share it, in what context to share it and how to create the conditions also or. Or to build a certain relation as well with whoever you would like to share this with. So just like, there's a lot that also comes into this.
So for now, I mean, this has been a very important personal relation or just like, again, like this reconnection, but it's not specifically or materially in the research. I think I tried that, but I didn't feel there's a protective aspect also about it. And just like in artistic context, it didn't make sense.
[00:33:38] Speaker A: I see. You understand.
[00:33:40] Speaker C: Yeah, I really like that.
[00:33:43] Speaker A: Can you tell a bit more? Because you were referring before to more animist traditions and the rituals, the place that takes ritual in those traditions and how they inspire your work or come into your work.
[00:34:00] Speaker C: Yeah. So, of course, there are many different types of rituals and ceremonies in animist traditions.
And I was just referring to one part of that world which is very complex, that is just a part of consulting the ancestors for different questions.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: And water plays a big role in that consequences.
[00:34:28] Speaker C: Exactly. It can, depending on the territory, on the place. So in some place it could be palm wine, some place could be water.
Of course, you also have the blood that comes for sacrifice, but that's actually also the liquidity of the blood.
And I think what I got really touched by is, like, how water is used.
Yeah. As a tool to open a door or to knock on the doors of the ancestors to ask them for assistance.
And.
Yeah, it just also, I think, confirms the ability of water to transfer, like an information, to transfer like a prayer, to transfer, like a question, an intention.
And it also has to be poured on a specific space place that the ancestors are choosing. And it's also usually there is a person who's like.
[00:35:47] Speaker A: A guard.
[00:35:49] Speaker C: Guard. I don't really like the way that
[00:35:51] Speaker B: sounds, let's say with guardian or steward
[00:35:57] Speaker C: English. Sometimes.
Yeah. But actually it's more than that because it's also a person that has the ability to hear the answers of the ancestors. It's not everyone that can actually hear the way they respond.
So there are actually, actually mediators.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: Medium. Yeah.
[00:36:15] Speaker C: So they actually. It's actually.
Exactly. It's like a system of diverse mediators.
Like the object on which the water is poured is a mediator, but then the person who's there is another mediator using. You know what I mean? There are like multiple mediators.
Yeah. And I think I just got.
Yeah, I think it was just very beautiful that it's still very present in the daily life in some spaces.
[00:36:50] Speaker A: I find it interesting that you're using. We are looking for the world of mediator garden stewards.
You as artists, how would you describe your role?
Now I also start to talk from vis a vis, in relation or towards water or. Because, Jud, you refer to a very specific body of water, the Euphrate river.
Aisha, you also have a relation with a specific body of water. Maybe you first describe a bit which body of water.
[00:37:26] Speaker C: Yeah, I feel very connected to the Fleuve Niger, that is across different countries in West Africa and that I got to encounter when I was in Mali, where I.
Where I have roots from.
So, yeah, the encountering was quite powerful.
[00:37:51] Speaker A: And now, coming back to the question that I was actually posing, like, how would you describe your relation with the river as an artist? Like, are you a steward, are you a mediator? Or do you feel like an antenna?
And what is the river? Is it an accompanyon de route in your research, or how do you. Your relation with that body of water that you study or that you work with, let's say?
[00:38:27] Speaker B: Yeah, so in the research, I mean, the position I take is of a listener or something or somebody who wants to remember a relation. And I take remembrance as, like, remembrance, like, really bringing together what has been displaced or what has been scattered, like, remembering that in a way, to remember relation to water and to land.
So, I mean, that's really the position that I would like to take, is really to listen and also to listen to people who have been. Who are stewards of the river itself, who still live around it and who have this very, very close relation to it. And, you know, through revolution, through, like, military processes, through many, many, many also generations before that. So it's really listening and learning and remembering my own, you know, relation, personal, but also a collective one. So I feel there's always. Things are always in relation. And I think the connection to the river for me is also. Is also.
It really takes place also in the form and the. In these relations that are also connection that are being connected through it.
So that's really where I position myself in relation to the river.
[00:40:07] Speaker A: You, Aisha, how would you.
[00:40:09] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a good question.
I think that at the moment, I feel a lot in a position of Learning, learner. I don't like the word student, so I'm not going to use that word. But it's like this. It's like I feel if I have such a big interest about something, it means that I have a lot of things to learn from that thing.
So I mean, I trust my body, that my body goes to something that actually I have. There is a specific knowledge there that is important for me to receive.
And I think I see it also with the creative practice.
It's like what I learn a lot about, but it's not only about water, because actually for me, water I think is the door towards my relationship to nature in a broader frame. But it's. I'm learning a lot about actually the contracts that exist between human and non humans. And I think that's also why I got so interested into animistic traditions because they have still very clear.
Codes, ceremonies, acts, beliefs that are grounded into the contracts that there is between us. And this contract is not more than the recognition of the interdependence.
And this recognition of the interdependence is also like a responsibility. And then it's just present in many different acts towards also the non human presences.
So I think my artistic practice is also a way to learn to.
What I'm searching is how to get back, to find my way back to Honore le Contra to honor the contract.
How do I find a practice that honors the contract that we are sharing this life, actually. Yeah.
[00:42:30] Speaker A: Jude, you sound very enthusiastic.
[00:42:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Honor the contract.
[00:42:35] Speaker A: Yeah, honored the contract. I was also like, wow, that's very well put.
[00:42:39] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:42:39] Speaker C: Because that's also what's important with that is like, it's also about responsibility, but it's a beautiful responsibility.
[00:42:47] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Indeed. Like it's a very, very close intertwined relation. Like it's indeed this interdependency. It's like it cannot be disconnected. But then when it is like we're disconnected from ourselves even so it's like honoring that, remembering that really, really embodying that. I mean, it goes into many, many questions then, but yeah, this remembering of it, I think that's also.
Yeah.
[00:43:17] Speaker A: And I wanted to come back to that actually, because we are all the time actually talking about the relation between remembering, archiving, witnessing and water, as if it's like a very natural thing. Maybe, probably it is, but maybe we.
You can explain this a bit more because for certain people it might not be a given, this relation between. Or water having this capacity of archiving, of memory, of keeping of holding a memory.
They look at each other. Who is going to take that?
Maybe it's also opposite to this.
[00:44:00] Speaker B: Yeah,
[00:44:02] Speaker A: we were just talking before we entered the studio here, also about this beautiful book from River Solomon, the Deep. I don't know if you read it myself.
[00:44:12] Speaker B: No, not yet.
[00:44:13] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a beautiful book where actually it imagines water as a sentient remembering entity, an entity that can hold human memory and actually can hold the memory where human memory fails. So it can hold and storage and be an archive for.
Yeah. For memory. For a history that we cannot. We don't want to. Or that is too much to actually hold.
[00:44:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I think maybe this goes to also.
Maybe there's an understanding of what it means to archive. Like, how is that relation?
Because, you know, like, there's. With modernity, like there's this, you know, urgency, like to. Or this need or this controlling need to have things set in stone, like. And fixed.
[00:45:15] Speaker A: Categorized.
[00:45:16] Speaker B: Categorized. But then this is not the relation in many, like, deeply rooted cultures.
And I mean, the relation to time and the relation to.
It's not about fixing, it's about transmitting. And it's. I mean, with transmitting, there's a lot of things that Then it's a very fluid thing because then it's always reinterpreted and it has a different new lives every time.
So it's.
So to have this relation also through water and through the environment. Natural environment.
Yeah. It's if they become collaborators or also like in this relation that. Ayesha, you were talking about, this continuity.
And it takes so many forms. Like, for instance, I'm looking very closely, remembering, reading, collecting different chants and songs and poetry that are very much in close relation to the Ifrit River. And you feel like it's present, like, in the language and the styles of writing and the musical styles as well.
And there's this very deep reflection. Like, there's. If I can read to you this short, very short, like, piece of poetry or chants that is very much about grief.
But then the water in this poem becomes the beloved or that which is yearned for. And then it becomes like it's embodied through the water.
So I'm going to read it first in Arabic and then I will translate it.
So it goes.
So I come to you, river, and stand at my full height I come, condemned by a love that is unjust. I come so they may return to me. Return to me.
And what it is, this poem, it's said by a lover who is standing by the Ifritz river, specifically, like a part of it that is called the khabur.
And the person, this lover, remembers Rima, the beloved, the yearn ford who has departed. And so the person stands in front of the river and is calling through rima, through the water itself. And then the water also echoes back this relation.
So the river becomes the beloved or the departed. And then there's like this circular relation that happens or this echo that keeps happening. And this very much also is in relation to how water.
Like in many different beliefs in Islamic cosmology, there's an understanding of rivers also being this passage between different realms.
And this connects also to this intermediary realm, or the Barsakh, which is the realm also where the departed reside, but also where imaginary potentials or possibilities also take place, where dreams also take place.
So.
So, yeah, so these bodies become realms all together, and then they also are present in many different temporal realities as well. And so this, like, this perspective as a modernist perspective on time or the fixing of something, it's just not.
Yeah. There's different temporalities or realities also that are in there.
[00:49:12] Speaker A: Yeah. Different imaginations.
[00:49:14] Speaker B: Different imaginations. Different beings. Different realms as well, that. I mean, maybe through our senses we cannot. But it's there.
[00:49:22] Speaker A: We don't have access to it.
[00:49:23] Speaker B: Yeah, but it's very much there. And, yeah, I mean, these natural elements, water really gives access to that, or there's that which can create a passage or access somehow.
[00:49:38] Speaker A: Yeah. I wanted to come also to the point that because you're boat, you were describing the river as a departed one or an analogy between the river and the departed one. And you're both, with your research, you are connecting to a body of water that is actually inaccessible for both of you. The Niger river and the Eufrad, because of political reasons.
So I find it very intriguing.
How do you install a relation then, with the body that you cannot, you have no access to or no physical access to?
And how does this translate into your artistic practice?
[00:50:26] Speaker C: Yeah, I think that Jude had studied that relationship in a quite powerful way.
For me. It's still like, say, new also to. I'm still like, really at the beginning of also understanding how to relate to it. I mean, in a way that I haven't yet really explored, or maybe not so consciously, maybe not. So the absence of it also because it's a river that I met like, three years ago.
So it's different because, like, I'm not born in Mali. I'm born in Brussels.
My father is actually. My grandparents are from Mali, but my father is born in Senegal. So Senegal is also a country that I have a strong connection to. And so Mali was.
Yeah, it was only a few years ago that I could finally, like, go there and then that I encountered the Niger River.
And I think that maybe the way I now deal with the fact that, I mean, I could go to Bamako because Bamako could be like the only place right now where it could be, like, kind of easy, but still, like, the jihadism is very strong there everywhere at the moment.
But what I feel is maybe what I'm doing is I'm more like exploring and studying the place of water in many different other aspects.
Like, for instance, I was in Senegal and this research about libation. Then I just enter into another phase of water because I feel there are so many different ways to learn from it.
[00:52:21] Speaker A: Water as a teacher also.
[00:52:24] Speaker C: Yeah, also. And also because maybe. Also because I know it's going to be.
I guess I also take time with very emotional, Very strong emotional work.
And I know that getting more into the relationship to the Niger flower, Beautiful. The Niger river, it's also going to bring a lot of emotional work towards the relationship to the country and also towards understanding how to relate to a territory that is receiving so much violence.
And then open to the question how to relate to violence.
And maybe I'm also taking my time with that at the moment.
[00:53:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I also very much relate to that.
Yeah. About absence. Sometimes absence like that which you are denied from for whatever reason becomes really the ground that sets for a deeper relation or a very deep relation as well. I think also being displaced or not being able to reach to reach the first river yet makes this very close relation or this deep relation as well. Or desire as well. But again, I'm very careful not to essentialize a certain experience.
[00:53:55] Speaker A: So
[00:53:57] Speaker B: that's what I was saying before, like in mediation and also in listening and being in connection with family friends who are very much closely related to it and experiencing my relation through. With the water through them as well.
So it's kind of nourishes like.
Yeah. Whole relation as well around it.
And what you were mentioning also, Ayesha, like, it's really. Yeah, it really resonates with me as well. Like this relation with water that can be also very heavy and that there is so much grief as well in it.
That's very much also a similar case to the Ifritz river that has been also subjected to a lot of intense also like, military violences
[00:54:50] Speaker A: up to the point that it's disappearing.
[00:54:52] Speaker B: I.
Yeah, I mean, the levels of the river is definitely getting in the way, for many reasons.
Yeah, there's global warming.
[00:55:07] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:55:07] Speaker B: The environmental crisis, but also different infrastructures like dams in Turkey, for instance, that are also withholding, withholding the flow of the water. And the Ifritz river itself being a cross border river means, you know, like these relations also, or the relation to the water becomes very much in relation to geopolitics and these kind of relations as well.
So in Iraq, I mean, the Ifris river or the marshes are also going through a lot of, you know, like a crisis also of. I mean, being subjected to that, but also different military violences and extractivist policies, yet not to. I mean, that's one of the books that I have on the table. I can bring it now. There's the Syrian Revolution by Yasser Muniyev, who looks into the politics or the geopolitics of death, the ways that different relations or life caught in between these violences, military violences. But also, not to forget that there is also the politics of life which emerges from grassroots, from the everyday, from just surviving, just really on the level of the everyday, to have like a dignified life. And how that really translates in many ways in relations between communities, to land, to water, to resources, how to care, how to share, how to. Yeah. Have shared this responsibilities. And that is important also. Like. So in the context of Deir EZ or in the context of Syria. Yeah, there is a lot of these military violences going on, but not to only be fixed within this war ecology. There is also beyond that, you know, as a resistance as well, to remember or to know, to learn, like I'm speaking in the Syrian context of these politics of life or again, to remain in these relations.
What does justice means also for water, for environments?
[00:57:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm very curious also about. Because there's a thing that we didn't touch yet upon, but what is.
It's a stewardship over the water. And that some rivers.
There's this river in New Zealand, I think, another river in Colombia, who called legal entity.
What's your take on that?
Like became a legal personhood or. I don't know how to say it.
[00:57:48] Speaker C: You mean that they don't belong anymore to a country?
[00:57:51] Speaker A: No, that they like they can be represented in court.
Do you have an opinion on that river becoming?
[00:58:01] Speaker B: Yeah, myself, I'm learning about that.
I've first encountered this through the work of Natural Contract, Maria Lucia. Lucia, yes, Maria Lucia, who has been doing this work specifically with the Zinne river in Brussels.
So this is really when I started to learn about these Processes or what does it mean for a river to intercourse or to be represented? And it's really strange. It's a strange construct because there's the institution that becomes projected on environment and water.
And I understand, I mean, there are rules to protect and to keep away, like these extractivist entities or whatever, powers that want to also abuse resources.
But yeah, it's still like, yeah, this institutionalizing of water on that level. So I'm still learning about it. So I don't. Yeah, I'm really still learning about it. And also. So what does that mean in different contexts? Like in Europe? It means completely different also than other contexts. So how does that reflect as well?
[00:59:18] Speaker A: We're almost at the end of this podcast.
One little thing I wanted to touch upon is the resistancy of water, because Vandana Shiva critiques the privatization, the militarization of water as an extension of colonial power.
But control over flow becomes control over futures, she says, but the water always resists. It leaks, it evaporates, it returns. It goes in places where it should not go.
Where do you see the power of water? Or how does this get communicated in your work?
The power of resistance? What is like the.
Is there a kind of a political activation in your work or.
I don't know.
You understand what I'm fishing at?
[01:00:16] Speaker C: Not totally.
How water can be also fundamental in resistance.
[01:00:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
Or how we were just saying, like, if you want to keep water, you can.
It leaks, it pours, it goes to. In little kind of places where.
Where it should not go.
[01:00:42] Speaker B: Yeah. I think, if I may begin in the context, for instance, with the Ifritz river, there's a lot of things that I'm thinking about, so I'm going to try to keep it short. But yeah, for instance, in relation to a dam that the Assad regime built and completed in the 70s, that has changed the river a lot, that has displaced a lot of communities, submerged many villages and sites, archaeological sites, changed also the affected fish life, just like the natural life around and underwater. But yeah, to see how. For instance. Yeah. The rust, like how the dam is rusting or the cracks.
Like this is the rust.
[01:01:36] Speaker A: Rust.
Corrosion.
[01:01:39] Speaker B: Corrosion or rust. Like, I mean. I mean, these infrastructures or these like, kind of systems imagine itself really as fixed or as internal, but then. But then it's really not. I mean, they're rusting. They're also fictions. They're also dreams, you know, and water really, in relation to that. I mean, they are rusting, literally.
There's a lot to say about that as well, because yeah. In that specific context. But just, like, just to imagine as well how water resists in these ways.
[01:02:12] Speaker C: Yeah. For me, also relating to something you were saying earlier about reflection.
I think that a very strong power of the water is actually the mirror it gives. It's very honest.
Water is very, very honest.
So it's just gonna reflect you.
What you put it in it. It's just gonna reflect what you're actually sharing with or what you are, like, addressing to it.
So you. Water is just gonna give you the feedback of what you. You have. You have addressed it. So I think that's. I think, very kind of even inherent principle of water, that it's resistant in itself.
And it's.
Yeah, it's also like.
That's what I meant also with the contract, because it's like. It's just putting you in a situation that you are just in front of your responsibility and in front of what you're doing. It's just showing you what you're doing.
It's just harnessed.
[01:03:24] Speaker A: It's a very beautiful thought.
We are closing this recording, but there is something on the table here that you brought, Aisha, that we hear here, but I don't know what it is, and I'm very intrigued by.
[01:03:42] Speaker C: It's called Gowe seeds, and it's actually incense.
So you can burn them.
I mean, I burn them. You can also. Actually, they are also used as medicine.
Like, you can, like, make a decoction in water with them. And they are actually. They are like the tuberculosis. How you say that in English? Tuberculosis is like kind of the end seed of a plant that is actually around rivers, that it's very close to rivers. And it's.
Yeah. You were inviting us to. To bring something also about our practice. And I think I just. I brought that very, like, spontaneously because it's. It's.
Yeah, it's just.
How can I explain it?
Maybe it's like a symbol of all the interiority that I also commit to. To also continue my work and research.
And that maybe refers maybe something also. I wanted to say early that when Jude was also talking about what do we share and what do we not share?
Because incense, for me, it's also a quality of presence that is very intimate. Also something that is also about my intimacy, that is also about.
There are some part of the connections I have I can share through my work, and there are some others that it's for the intimacy it's not made to share.
[01:05:36] Speaker A: Thanks so much.
Before we enter the studio here, Jude was reading a poem to us. That we find very beautiful. So I suggest that we end this recording by Jude reading the poem, if
[01:05:56] Speaker C: she can find it in the book.
[01:06:01] Speaker B: So it's titled Port of Mutual Memories, written by Ahmad Bereda in response to Simon Fatal.
I'm just going to read the first page because it's a longer poem. It goes the sea was far from this shore Dimashk, a port of mutual memories on the outer edge of French Going to Sukar Hamidiyeh to look at trucks to look, to look perchance to buy, to hang, to see the weaving on the wall to dream the knots out of which life is wrought the soft and heady scent of jasmine and bitter orange in your uncle's garden.
[01:06:48] Speaker C: Thank you, thank you, Vala.
[01:06:50] Speaker A: Thank you and see you in the Expo.
[01:06:54] Speaker C: Yes,
[01:06:59] Speaker A: Thank you for listening to Foraging. This episode was recorded and edited by Jorhus Patsis at Vrejuniversite Brusel.
The Foragers Engagement beyond the Human is co curated by me, Jose Verflusum, together with historian Benoit Henriette and VB Crosstalks.
The programme is supported by the European Research Council through the ERC for Agency grant and by the chair Kastermann Hammers in History and Philosophy of Sciences at Fre Universite Brussels.
For the full program and upcoming events go to crosstalks.net we thank the participating artists for sharing their work, their questions and their stories.
Until next time. Time Keep foraging.
