if the soil speaks by rym

ارض حريه كرامه وطنيه land, freedom، collective dignity a slogan that has been with me for a long time, since the revolutionary moment in Tunisia in 2010, when we raised it in the protests, wrote it on the walls, banners that we held high, we sang and shouted it, it recurred in our writings, in our conversations, in our dreams of the sovereignty and independence of our lands. today I see, we see, houses bombed, falling down, turned into dust, piles of stones, dirt. the land carries it all, embraces the decay and transforms it. Down there, other times lie, invisible, suspended from the narratives of control and structures of oppression that dominate the realm above. in the past semester, perhaps even years, I have turned my attention to the interstices in cities that have been created, or rather overrun, by the political programming of urban spaces. They have become areas that have no specific function, no specific production value, no active role in the web of trajectories, signals, instructions, restrictions, power relations... they are just there immanent I like to go there, to step aside from the flow of traffic, to stand in the in-between corners that people hardly look at. I am always wandering, wondering how I can inhabit them, reconvert them, activate their performative potential, claim other times and relations that neutralise or reverse the dominant narratives around me. I took the act of strolling as a ritual, a method. I looked and all I found was dirt, soil, biomass, decaying debris, stones inhabited by microscopic organisms, a complex stratum composed of various "others". everything felt connected and embedded in itself. robert smithson wrote in an article: "the city gives the illusion that the earth does not exist. but what I saw was a symbiosis of things we often see as separate, they grow, they evolve, they shift as a one, a network of self-organising systems. There's no master, no slave. I saw in the land a biosphere highly charged with inter-independent times, stories, histories, memories, dreams, identities, homes, belonging, roots... they are all there, traces of our past, inherited from our ancestors, and of our present, which we define ourselves. monday, half past nine, the air is slightly aggressive, my hands are cold, I am collecting soil in this area behind the railway. I haven't broken any laws I promise, I haven't jumped any barriers, I've just been following the side of the canal. I don't really choose where I stop, the ground calls me, I respond. I walked to the back of this area that has no title, I found a small door hidden behind the herbs. It opened onto a cemetery, beautiful and quiet. I remembered Michel Faucault and his concept of heterotopia, which also fascinated me during the first semester. he described them as spaces absolutely other, the city's sacred and immortal wind. I saw in the in-between spaces of the city what I call heterotopias, a land for altered human and non-human relations, friday, february is almost over. spring is shyly approaching, I could see and touch it as I bent down to collect some earth. today I had an encounter with a microscopic, translucent creature. I've observed so much autonomy and self-sufficiency through it. vivieros de castro, a brazilian anthropologist interested in the amazonian cosmologies and amerindian perspectivism (the way in which humans, animals, and spirits see both themselves and one another, an idea that suggests a redefinition of the classical categories of « nature », « culture », « super nature » based on the concept of perspective). said in one of his lectures: "the experience that each 'self' has of the 'other' can, however, be radically different from the experience that the 'other' has of its own appearance and practices." -- Lecture 1, p. 51 it seems to me that when we turn our gaze to our other, non-human selves, who perceive reality from a different perspective, within a very different temporality, we learn so much about how the world is of relative semblances, for example, what is solid earth to us is airy sky to the beings who inhabit the strata below us, and what is airy sky to us is solid earth to those who inhabit the strata above us. it is a world of relative semblances, where different kinds of beings see the same things differently. in the last few years, before coming to the Netherlands, i've been volunteering on organic farms, dynamising the soil, collecting and redistributing biomass, planting wild forests... this has taught me a lot about how what happens in the soil can influence what happens above it, in terms of self-organising structures, symbiosis and, above all, solidarity. these last few months have also taught me that solidarity comes with love, it's hard to relate to the feeling without having love as a drive.

chapter one -

in search for meaningful

material

in the abyss of matter in decay

(unlocated found material) moss growing on a brick

vocabularies appears to those who can see them

chapter two

labouring for meaningful relationships

exploration of interstices

place - location - space

conversation

rhizome

network map TAZ (temporary autonomous zone)1

places that appear

to thoses who can see them

story action material memory finding appearing disappearing tactics of disappearance2

insurrection outside time and history

flying3 the dominant temporality

narratives

reversing
inversing

reconvertion

dèrive

reappropriation heterochrony change of spatial positioning time as a social and political construct political dispositifs that accumulate time history unfolds linear to domianant narratives times resist conventional narratives and reject accumulation as historical method

claiming other times

temporalities that suspend neutralize or reverse dominant narratives

in-between spaces where otherness seem invisible

dérive psychogeography bodygeography drifting urban drifting expédition lines of flight

idiosyncratic plan of the city particular features of a person habits degrees of attraction and repulsion4

flânerie wandering poetic walks faire de l'errance une véritable discipline du regard5

the method itself would allow instigate a transofrmation of daily life uninterrupted process of reorientation

experiemental utopia (Lefvebre) heterotopia (faucault)

non-fixed scenography where people collectively collaborate its inside elements

a vocabulary to write rewrite corwrite by the collectivity freely and accordingly shaping the milieu according to their collective desire

the story cities as geological strata that underlays physical landscapes

historical landscapes shaped by the successive events that

time have burried

unlock the times uncover discover what lays under the dust

inviting non-human perspective

in-between spaces as sites for altered human and non-human relations times and spaces for claiming narratives that suspend neturalize or reverse the dominant narratives

dérive as a method to engage with these spaces challenging the politics of individuation and fragmentation of the notion of "public" in "public" space s ""

what does collecting and accumulating mean to me? what relationships am I seeking?

(unlocated found material) moss growing on sand

anthropocentric?

weaving relationships with the communities inhabiting the earth below and the ones above

2 first locations

chapter three : processing the matter and the research materials

play simultaneously

how can a non-human perspective inform / inspire restoring human relations in the public and social spaces

what would the underground speak to the topground

symbiosis contiuum mutualistic relationship solidarity movement

of energy distribution diversity collaboration different colors

patterns

the communities that inhabit the soil embody incarnate other times cristals

history

memories hidden universes

beauty provides a channel through which nonhuman specters can enter. they do not have to be left out in the prefabricated "nature" of a bourgeois ideology

beauty is a love letter from an unknown source a non-local telepatic-mind-meld with somwthing that might not be conscious might not be a sentiment might not be alive might not even exist beauty

is a feeling of unconditional solidarity with things with everything with anything6