Soil Assembly #2: Tinku Uku Pacha will be held from the 8th to the 10th of May 2025 at the Intercultural Community Centre Tránsito Amaguaña (CICTA) in the indigenous community of La Chimba, parish of Olmedo, cantón Cayambe, province of Pichincha in the Andes of Ecuador, cradle of the Ecuadorian indigenous movement.
Soil Assembly is an international emergent network, launched in 2023 at a first assembly organized during the Kochi Biennale in Kerala, India, assembling artists, scientists, activists, farmers, chefs and communities around the world, sharing their capacities around living soils, biodiversity and regeneration of territories.
Uku Pacha in Kichwa language means the space-time of the interior of the earth and the soil, the minerals and fossils, the subterranean waters, the base of the invisible material of our living world. It is also the dimension of the ancestors and those yet to be born. It is life and death, seed and root, two-headed serpent of eternal renewal. Tinku means meeting, also clash.
The soil is a highly complex living tumult, an inter-species encounter in constant search for equilibrium, millions of beings being born and dying at every instant, diverse and multiple families of micro and macro organisms that are responsible for its fertility and abundance. Life on Earth depends on the life of the soil. Over 30% of the planet’s soils are currently damaged, erosion and desertification is accelerating. Soil is the site of a fierce planetary battle for subsistence in times of climate collapse. Indigenous and peasant women maintain the arts of subsistence. Human, soil and ecological health are inseparable.
The Tinku, or intercultural encounter, between peasants and neo-peasants, between urban and rural, men and women, human and non-human, economy and sovereignty is now crucial for a good life for all beings and to ensure the transmission and development of the arts of subsistence and radical care of territories.
Soil Assembly #2: Tinku Uku Pacha is a collaboration between the Centro Intercultural Comunitario Tránsito Amaguaña (CICTA) of the community of La Chimba, La Divina Papaya and the international Soil Assembly network and is mainly curated by Pedro Soler.
The results of this Assembly #2 will be published as the inside section of the Laboratory Planet newspaper whose current double issue is devoted to Planetary Peasants, imagining a peasant and neo-peasant future, organized in diverse territories, more heterogeneous, more democratic, and therefore more habitable than those of dominant city-centred narrative.
Please register to participate.
NEWS
Thanks to our contributors!
We are happy to announce that thanks to 102 supporters we reached our crowdfunding goal.
PROGRAM
Participation in the activities is free of charge and open to all.
The daytime activities will be broadcast live on the Internet, with simultaneous translation between English and Spanish on Friday.
Thursday 8 May 2025
REGENERATIVE RURAL ECONOMIES
The economy has a direct impact on the environment and ability to live well for all. If rural economies are not taken into account there is no possibility of conserving soils and changing agricultural systems. La Divina Papaya convenes a wide variety of actors to come together with the aim of sharing innovative and sustainable proposals for rural economies and to weave alliances that restore territories, cultures and ecosystems.
09h-10h: Ceremonial opening with community authorities
10h-18h: Debates, conferences and proposals for regenerative rural economies
19h-21h : Inauguration of the exhibition of Tau Luna, Ronny Albuja and Manai Kowei at CICTA with video mapping by Felipe Jácome Reyes
Friday 9 May 2025
ART, SCIENCE & PLANETARY PEASANTRY
Art and science are both ways of investigating, exploring and understanding the world. The combination of these methods reveal the multiple and infinite dimensions of the soil. On this second day, a selection of local and international artists, scientists, farmers and thinkers will share their understandings of soil and the land, revealing its fundamental importance for life, death and regeneration.
09h-18h: International Soil Assembly n°2: Art and science of the soil and planetary peasants
19h-23h: Audiovisual experimentation with Destello, Entrañas, Jatun Mama, Jazziel and more
Saturday 10 May 2025
CEREMONY AND CELEBRATION FOR TRANSIT AMAGUAÑA
As every year, the community honours the struggles and life of their historic indigenous peasant leader Tránsito Amaguaña. This year also brings together indigenous and peasant women leaders to share their visions, concerns and challenges, in order to strengthen each other and chart paths of joint leadership. The traditional songs of the Kayambi women, the coplas, celebrate the living tradition and the joy of the fiesta and the voices of the women.
09h-11h Meeting of indigenous and rural women.
12h-13h Ceremony in commemoration of Tránsito Amaguaña.
13h-14h Pachacamac – traditional cooking in the earth.
14h-19h III Contest of Coplas
Artistic Residencies at CICTA
22 April to 8 May 2025
Ronny Albuja (ECU), together with his team of Santiago Tapia, Daniel Gachet and TierraCroma, work on an audiovisual installation based on the sonorous and visual interpretation of the chromatographies (visual analyses) of the soils of the Chimba territory with digital and ancestral technologies.
Tau Luna Acosta (COL) consults the stones of the territory in search of metabolic alliances and to reinvent the room dedicated to stones in the CICTA, creating a space to explore the intersections of the human and mineral worlds in the territory of La Chimba.
Installation of 2 community laboratories in the CICTA: Soil Chromatography (TierraCroma) and Microbiology (Karen Benalcázar).
Special guest and transhackfeminist godmother: Paula Pin (hackteria.org)
“The land is to the people what blood is to the body” Tránsito Amaguaña
