Intervention: La Palabre #2: Collecting Seeds, Decolonizing Nature

1.September.2023 | Talking Objects Lab and Vierte Welt

Some of the best and worst stories get told via/through seeds. Seeds are a vehicle for narrating histories of colonisation through the mobility of plants. At the same time seeds tempt us to anthropomorphize nature as the unfolding of life or experiences of uprooting. Field Narratives as an artistic research body looks at rural biographies as well as transgenerational and cross-continental storytelling as sites where transformative knowledges can be found and made palpable. As a multi-year endeavour beyond institutional logic, Field Narratives scrutinises the biographical and the rural as places where personal and communal recollections intersect and where imaginations and practices convene with the aim to connect, liberate, or ground ourselves anew. In its current iteration Field Narratives deals with questions of muteness, monocultures, silences, and rites.

"La Palabre" refers to the social practice of public discourse, gathering and conflict resolution in numerous countries on the African continent; the location is usually a baobab tree, l'arbre a palabre.
In its current iteration Field Narratives deals with questions of muteness, monocultures, silences, and rites.

La Palabre is a series hosted by Talking Objects Lab and is curated by Isabel Raabe and Celina Basra. Read more