Virtual Sanctuary for Fertilizing Mourning
Eliana Otta
Virtual Sanctuary for Fertilizing Mourning was created with the intention of commemorating the deaths of indigenous leaders and environmental activists assassinated in recent years in Peru, while defending their territories from deforestation, mining, and drug trafficking.
Over the course of a year and a half, we worked together with their families and communities to create virtual tours of the areas they strove to protect, now hosted in a website called Luto Verde. Every tour is different, trying to reflect each community’s own universe, uniquely shaped by its territory, collective activities, and more-than- human bonds. Oral histories, remembrance, songs, and all the information that the communities found suitable to share, were used to develop portals into ways of life that are now threatened, but also to convey the invisible and affectionate threads sustaining them. The recorded material additionally shows the effects of extractivism and corruption in places where nature is treated merely as an infinite source of resources and profit. Besides the website, Virtual Sanctuary for Fertilizing Mourning is constituted by its research activities, texts about its work with the different communities, sound pieces, drawings, and a site-specific installation at the Berlin venue silent green.
This project has emerged from the conviction that remembering the deceased can be a way to learn from and defend the precious territories and cultures to which they belonged. Getting to know their communities, even from afar, will hopefully highlight the important daily battles they face in defense of the Amazon under the most precarious circumstances. By mourning the lives of Mauro Pío, Gonzalo Pío, Arbildo Meléndez, Yenes Ríos, Herasmo García, and Santiago Vega, we aim to help fertilize the grounds for the ways of living they defended.
Listen to the form Design Podcast’s latest series, Driving the Human x form Design Podcast. In six episodes, participants from the Driving the Human initiative discuss the intersection of design and science.
We are excited to share four videos looking back at the Driving the Human festival, one for each day and an overall recap.
In 2022, the Driving the Human initiative met its ultimate goal of materializing the Seven Prototypes for Eco-social Renewal.
From November 25–27, 2022, Driving the Human: 7 Prototypes for Eco-social Renewal brought to Berlin a variety of formats exploring new ways of envisioning and inhabiting the world.
From November 25-27, 2022, Driving the Human hosts a three-day festival in Berlin marking the culmination of three years of collaboration, research and experimentation connecting disciplines between sciences and the arts.
Eliana Otta contextualises her project Virtual Sanctuary for Fertilizing Mourning, a virtual space collaboratively built with the Peruvian communities Nuevo Amanecer Hawai, Unipacuyacu, Puerto Nuevo and Sinchi Roca, to learn about their assassinated leaders, and their threatened territories.
Following our Berlin festival presenting 21 visions for eco-social renewal, the Driving the Human jury had the difficult task to select seven projects to be developed as prototypes throughout 2022.
The three days of exchange and connection in Berlin could be followed along an accompanying livestream. The broadcast of day 1 is now available to be revisited here and on our Vimeo channel.
Eliana Otta offers more details about her concept Virtual Sanctuary for Fertilizing Mourning, a virtual space to commemorate the deaths of Indigenous leaders assassinated in Peru.
From October 15 – 17, 2021, Driving the Human presents 21 concepts proposing new visions for sustainable cohabitation on our planet.
We are thrilled to announce the 21 concepts chosen as a result of a successful Open Call.
Eliana Otta (Lima, 1981) is an artist with a Master in Cultural Studies, who inquiries about our relations with nature and precarious labor in neoliberal, extractivist economies, and also gender inequality, intersecting feminism, poetry and politics. She addresses these questions creating spaces for conversation, trust and curiosity through shared intimacy, with projects that involve pedagogical, curatorial and editorial work. Her current PhD project Lost & Shared: A laboratory for collective mourning, towards affective and transformative politics, aims to investigate the ways in which art can enable the collectivization of mourning, creating dialogues between theory and affective labor, through collective experiments that connect emotions, critical thinking, body and space. She coordinated the curatorial team of Lugar de la Memoria (Museum of Memory) in Peru (www.lum.cultura.pe), has taught at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and co-founded the artist-run space Bisagra (www.bisagra.org). She is currently Candidate at the Phd in Practice Program at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. She is represented by the Galería 80m2 Livia Benavides. She founded the first shop dedicated to young fashion designers in Lima, Pulga, and has an eternally amateur alter ego, dj Flaquita.
(photo: Camille Blake)
Credits
Concept, camera, edition, texts
Eliana Otta
3D captures, production assistance, color correction, permanent advisor
Nuno Cassola
Sound correction
Dion Christodoulatos
Translation from Ashaninka
Herlin
Translation from Cacataibo
Yuliza Meléndez
Translation from English and subtitling
Santiago Guerra
Research, additional camera
Diego Vizcarra
Post-production assistance
Nickos Myrtou
3D reconstruction, web design and programming
Hermanos Magia, with the direction of Gabriel Alayza
Acknowledgments
Carmen Loyola
Leader Emilio Maraví and members of the Nuevo Amanecer Hawai community
Leader Marcelino Tangoa and members of the Unipacuyacu community
Leader Elías Mozoline and members of the Puerto Nuevo community
Leader German Guerra and members of the Sinchi Roca I community
This project was made possible thanks to Driving the Human.
Special thanks to Freo Majer, Nikola Joetze, and the DTH team.
