“Everyday life is invented in a thousand ways of poaching”
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, Volume 1: The Arts of Doing, 1980
A long-term performance & film
by Ewen Chardronnet, Maya Minder, Vivek Vilasini, Quentin Aurat
In collaboration with Grey Filastine and Nova Ruth (Arka Kinari)
Produced by ART2M and Udumbanchola Circle
Muziris is the ancient name of the port of Kochi, which traded spices and food resources across the seas long before the colonial era or fossil fuels. In a context where transport accounts for nearly 20% of emissions from the global agri-food system, ART2M and Udumbanchola Circle are offering a final emblematic performance to the Soil Assembly #3 from January 25 to February 7, Lines to Follow, Soils to Gather, which will examine agroecology, food circulation, and “cultural poaching” in the manner of French philosopher Michel De Certeau (1926-1985). It will involve transporting participants to organic farms in the mountains of Kerala, meetings with custodian farmers, harvesting at artist Vivek Vilasini’s food forest, low-carbon transport of the harvest to Kochi, and its transformation into fermented pickles for low-impact preservation. The performance will conclude with the delivery of the preserves to the Indonesian cultural sailing ship Arka Kinari, with a buffet and music, before it sets sail and returns to West Europe in the summer of 2027, in resonance with the contemporary movement of sail freight.
CULTURAL POACHING
In the 1970s, as a counterpoint to Foucault’s vision of the panopticon and control “from above,” Michel de Certeau proposed a reading of the world from below, made up of discreet tactics and cultural poaching: modest gestures capable of subverting the established order.
Lines to Follow, Soils to Gather is part of this legacy: collective harvesting, conversation and walking, low-carbon transport, shared cooking, fermentation, and sailing become acts of poetic and concrete resistance. These simple but specific gestures trace a path of poaching that follows, diverts, and re-enchants old trade and colonial routes, reconnecting with another ecology of movement—slow, fertile, relational.
With this long-term performance—which will be the subject of a final creative documentary—the artists explore the themes of food, guardians of biodiversity, microbial action, and low-carbon food transportation. This work is conceived as a vehicle for changing the semiotic meanings of ecological and geopolitical action. The project champions food narratives as a relational and performative act.
In 2023, the artists began their research as part of a collaboration for the first Kochi Soil Assembly: this project also draws on the international network that emerged from it.
PICKLING
Fermentation is a hyper-local practice, an ancestral preservation method that predates refrigerators, cold chains, and their energy costs. At the same time, the spices represented in Indian culture bear the weight of colonial history, but also the history of ancient trade routes, such as the spice route and the silk route. The history of spices in South and Southeast Asia is marked by colonial extraction and the capitalist incisions of the “plantationocene” (Haraway, Tsing, 2015). Even today, they are locally referred to as “cash crops” and bear witness to the persistence of colonial capitalism in terms of food production and trade.
Artist Maya Minder highlights fermentation as a more-than-human entanglement in the context of the decolonization of food practices. Food sovereignty, microbial action, and long-term preservation constitute a form of cultural resistance. Inspired by Korean fermentation traditions, her practice advocates for slow food systems in the face of the acceleration of the global food industry and, ultimately, the need for healthy soils to produce food.
As Michael Pollan points out in The Botany of Desire, food is the mediator of our oldest contract with plants and animals, but this contract has been eroded by technocratic systems of control, packaging, and dependence on the cold chain.
SAIL FREIGHT
Sail freight, or sail cargo, is the environmentally-focused transport of goods by sailing ships, using wind power as the primary propulsion to reduce carbon emissions, contrasting with traditional fuel-based shipping by offering a greener alternative for moving cargo with modern or traditional sail technology, often alongside supplemental engines. It’s a modern revival of historical cargo sailing, emphasizing sustainability, ethical transport, and a smaller carbon footprint for goods.
The ferments will reach the West Mediterranean in 2027. Artists will celebrate them in Venice and Marseille, adding new layers to the decolonial heritage and history of European ports specializing in the spice trade. Closing dinners will mark the end of the low-carbon journey of food from the mountains of Kerala, India, to European ports.
By working with the land, microbes, community, and networks, Lines to Follow, Soils to Gather creates a new narrative about global food systems. This project is
both local and global, rooted in the local soil but connected to global emergencies. This work is not limited to an approach to climate justice; it also asserts migratory destinies and people’s desire to connect food to memory and identity. Lines to Follow, Soils to Gather is a shared metabolism, a slow, transformative, and more-than-human work of art.
One that Takes many Forms is a performance work rooted in soil, seed, voice, and collective labor. It unfolds as a slow passage from inner space to outer space, from individuality to collectivity, from extraction to care.The work brings together embodied movement, spoken text, sound, and a living seed ritual, asking how humans relate to land, invisibility, survival, and responsibility.
At the heart of the project is the 2.6-hectare Udumbanchola Circle food forest, cultivated by Vivek Vilasini at an altitude of over 1,600 metres in the high hills of Swargam Medu, in Idukki County, a region of tea and cardamom plantations located in the Western Ghats of Kerala, 130 km from Kochi. This living work of art challenges the colonial and industrial legacy of plantations and monocultures. It is inspired by the agricultural techniques of Masanobu Fukuoka, described in his book The One-Straw Revolution, and offers a model of soil resilience, biodiversity and ecological learning linked to local knowledge of biodiversity.
The maritime network was the original internet, connecting people, languages and ideas in the first worldwide web. The cultural sailing ship Arka Kinari revives maritime trade-routes with culture as the cargo, not in nostalgia for what once was, but in anticipation for the future we must create. Launched in 2019 with a voyage across the Atlantic, Caribbean and Pacific, the Arka Kinari has called for the past five years the Nusantara Archipelago its home waters. Now, we set sail on an epic three-month voyage across the Indian Ocean. The Arka Kinari will drop anchor on ancient ports and seafaring hideouts once connected with one another through stories of trade, cultural exchange, and adventure. Voyaging from east to west, retracting ancestral sailing route, with stories and culture as cargo.
