In collaboration with the community of Coquí in the coastal rainforest of Colombia, the project is dedicated to regenerating connectivity with local ancestral knowledges through reciprocal exchange. The School of Lost Knowledges has laid the foundations for infrastructures, built architectures and developed social/educational pedagogies to stimulate dialogue between the human body and local plant life. The Coquí community has invited Gradinger and Etkin to continue to return in order to further body-centred practices that regenerate socio-ecological resilience. Such continuity would deepen and nourish mutual learning based on reciprocity, rather than the typical models of import/export and extraction/production that are prevalent in artistic projects.
Shelley Etkin and Jared Gradinger met through their gardens in 2016. They collaborate as artists to cultivate relations among bodies, gardens, plants, people and places through socially engaged art and choreography.
