SOIL ASSEMBLY INTERNATIONAL NETWORK

08:30 – 08:45 (GMT-05:00)

Alexis Salley (Ch) – Artist, curator | Maya Minder (Ch) – Artist | Pedro Soler (Ec) Curator

IN THE WAKE OF THE METABOLIC: THE SHIFT TOWARDS A REPAIRING AESTHETIC

08:45 – 09:00 (GMT-05:00)

Meena Vari (In) – Curator

In the wake of systemic metabolic breakdowns—both bodily and planetary—artists and curators are increasingly turning to practices of care, repair, and restoration. This talk explores the shift from institutional critique to infrastructural critique in contemporary art, which marks a deeper engagement with the ecological, social, and political systems that shape our world. Rather than focusing solely on critique, artists propose imaginative interventions and construct alternative frameworks based on sustainability, equity, and interdependence. The Soil Assembly, initiated in 2022, exemplifies this approach, positioning soil as a common good and a catalyst for ecological justice, land redistribution, and systemic repair. The talk reflects the ongoing evolution of the Soil Assembly and the fact that curating within this framework requires the creation of platforms for sustained, relational, and interdisciplinary practice. Soil remains fundamental, not only as a material, but also as a collaborator, medium, and metaphor, inviting us to reconfigure our relationships with the planet and with each other.

INSIDE THAT BROKEN PLACE

09:00 – 09:30 (GMT-05:00)

Marina ‘Heron’ Tsaplina (EEUU) – Artist | Violeta Moreno Wray (Ec) Writer & actress | Wayra Velasquez (Ec) – Writer

This poem was “written” by Marina “heron” Tsaplina in December 2023 for a theatrical performance by Soils and Spirit in April 2024. But, more precisely, Marina was the recipient of this poem; it fell into her, almost complete, the words emerging in an exhalation and taking shape. It has been translated especially for Tinku Uku Pacha into Kichwa by Wayra Velázquez and into Spanish by Violeta Moreno Wray. Marina will perform the poem in English and Wayra and Violeta in their respective languages. At the end of Friday’s sessions, a collective poem will be created by all Tinku participants, facilitated by Wayra and Violeta.

ANCESTRAL FUTURISM

09:30 – 11:00 (GMT-05:00)

Daniel Silva (Ec) – Environmental Engineer, Quechua Teacher | Federico Luisetti (Ch) Author | Kindi de la Torre (Ec) – Permaculturist | Larissa da Silva (Br) – Researcher

• Untamed Natures and Earth Beings • 9:30 – 9:45 • Federico Luisetti
  Presentation of “Unruly Natures,” a collaborative research project based in Switzerland. The aim of this initiative is to study socio-natural subjectivities, promote transdisciplinary conversations, and organize eco-political initiatives. The project involves a growing network of academics and activists from different disciplines and is organized around an online journal, collective workshops, lecture series, and conferences. Unruly Natures is inspired by decolonial ecologies and earth beings (see Marisol de la Cadena, Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice Across Andean Worlds, 2015). But what does it mean to think and act with “earth beings” in a Western context? What are natural subjectivities in an infrastructural, industrial, and secular world?
• Ancestral Permaculture • 9:45 – 10:00 • Kindi de la Torre
  Ancestral permaculture is a comprehensive and sustainable approach to agriculture, natural resource management, and community life, based on the principles and ethics of the ancestral and traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples, which seeks to promote harmony with Pacha Mama (Mother Earth), through the fight for biodiversity, community resilience, and food sovereignty, while strengthening cultural identity and empowering people to take control of their own food sovereignty and resource management through autonomy and self-management. Ancestral permaculture is based on principles and practices that seek to imitate the patterns and processes of Pacha Mama (Mother Earth) and the traditional wisdom and knowledge of indigenous peoples. Some of the key aspects of ancestral wisdom. We are seeds of Pacha Mama (Mother Earth) herself.
• The Kichwa language and climate change: a path for action • 10:00 – 10:15 • Daniel Silva
  “There are various approaches to environmental issues, but many focus on cooperation with external entities and pay little attention to the skills that indigenous communities have to adapt to environmental and social problems. Climate change represents a great pressure for indigenous communities as they are more closely linked to places with greater biodiversity and problems related to deforestation and the expansion of the agricultural frontier. Indigenous languages are a transformative force in various processes, including environmental ones. There is a great deal of ancestral knowledge that is inaccessible if you do not speak indigenous languages, such as healing processes, sustainable uses of flora and fauna, and technological practices and adaptations relevant to the community and rural context. For this reason, revitalizing an indigenous language should be an indispensable element of any environmental activity or program to be implemented in the territory.
• Chakras and Chakanas • 10:15 – 10h30 • Larissa da Silva
  Presentation of the book Viviendo Sano: saberes y cuidados de las Chakreras de Cayambe (Living Healthy: Knowledge and Care of the Chakreras of Cayambe), co-authored with Diana Rocha and chakareras from Cayambe, most of whom are organized in the Cantonal Women’s Movement. Chakarera is the self-definition of women who raise the chakra, a space where plant and animal life is reproduced, with a deep symbolic and spiritual meaning for the Kayambi people. Being a chakarera implies not only producing organically, but also caring for this integrated space where different beings coexist in interdependence and harmony. The book arose from the chakareras’ need to make their knowledge and care in agroecological production visible, responding to the lack of recognition of their work. Inspired by Andean ethnobotanical catalogs, the book integrates ethnobotanical knowledge with ancestral wisdom in an ecology of knowledge. Based on “walking interviews” in the chakras of the collaborators, we audiovisually recorded the plants and their uses in medicine and cooking. Together with wise men and women from the region, such as Mario Bustos and Hilda Villalba, we worked on harmonizing knowledge based on the chakana, identifying the sacred energies of plants according to their characteristics and their interaction with the body, the chakras, and other plants. In this way, the catalog not only documents knowledge, but is also part of a broader political project to recognize and value the work and knowledge of the chakareras.
• Round table • 10:30 – 11:00 • Open debate on the four previous presentations.

CAMINATA AL ORIGEN DE LA PACHA

10:00 – 15:00 (GMT-05:00)

EXTERIOR

Let’s travel back in time to the origin of our planet… approximately 4.6 billion years ago… What was the Earth like then? What or who inhabited it? What did it sound like? What did it smell like? Along the way, we will discover how life began and evolved on the planet, how the soil, forests, and human beings were formed…

Turn off your cell phone, disconnect your brain,  forget about the present and your worries, let’s just walk and listen… learn and discover… join us…

Learning experience guided by EkoRural and students from the Technical University of the North (UTN) and the Center for Bioknowledge of the Higher Polytechnic School of Chimborazo (ESPOCH)

• 10:00 – 11:00: Caminata 1
• 15:00 – 16:00: Caminata 2

ART AND RURALITY

11:00 – 12:30 (GMT-05:00)

Culturhaza (Es) – Artistic project | Dharmendra Prasad (In) – Artist | Du-da (Es) – Artists | Javier Orcaray Vélez (Es) – Artist | Jazziel Rocha (Ec) – Artist

• Moisture of Empathy? • 11:00 – 11:15 • Dharmendra Prasad
  “Moisture of Empathy” is a disparate search for moisture (empathy) through difficult times in the context of extractive practices. Moisture of Empathy will share the urgencies of the people of Buxar, Bihar, India. These urgencies are collected through field notes, Harvest School meetings, and work on agricultural lands after more than a decade of work by artist Dharmendra Prasad in Buxar Bihar. The rural, the cultural, and the ecological exist in conflicts between castes, extreme bureaucratic power practices, unequal land tenure, the friction between ecological and industrial time, and extractive agriculture. These are stories of extraction, land pollution, the loss of village playgrounds, ponds, mango and mahuwa orchards, and the elimination of threshing floors, commons, a sense of belonging, and cultural practices of time. Rural India is a testing ground for development policies through a complex bureaucracy laden with intense power practices. The duty of democracy is combined with the extractive industrial psyche of the West and a violent pedagogy that feeds this combination to create the current critical situation. What can we do in this critical situation? How can we respond to it?
• This is a bank! • 11:15 – 11:30 • Culturhaza, Javier Orcaray Vélez
  “The village of Villarrubia, on the banks of the Guadalquivir, on the outskirts of Cordoba. What brought dozens of people with such diverse interests together around the Culturhaza collective? Their generosity. Yes, the perseverance of a collective that had a clear and unwavering agro-feminist message: the committed peasant world depends on its relationships with “subversive minds” open to certain utopian, creative, collective actions. For decades, we have accompanied Culturhaza’s crops with conversations under a fig tree, an open forum for scientists from the University of Córdoba and the CSIC, but also for dozens of artists who found connections between nature and politics, between living things that follow cycles and our own desire to slow down our activity and connect it to fertility and poetry. We have long admired the work of preserving an agricultural gene bank at Culturhaza. Yes, it seems obvious, but it is not, because it hardly exists in our geographical context. Who saves their own seeds every year in the Vega del Guadalquivir? Who has the capacity to reverse the scale of value and place the genetic care of a seed before the commercial value of the products that will come from it? And from that tiny perspective, the size of a mole, we see the world, our world, one that we want to remind of the fact that food systems are in danger. And as a reaction to the agro-capitalist mafias, “This is a bank!”
• The path of the penco • 11:30 – 11:45 • Jazziel Rocha
  A journey through ancestral memory that encompasses ancestral knowledge and flavors, the link between Mother Earth and the life of the agave (Andean penco). The magic and connection between the past, present, and future through contemporary art using the plant of the gods, the Andean penco. We walk with the intention of sharing our cultural wealth and the value of our ancestors and our territory with the world.
• Morir chevere (Dying Cool) • 11:45 – 12:30 • Du-da
  We will participate in the Tinku Uku Pacha assembly with a conversation to open the research project Morir Guay (Dying Cool), a critical investigation of hegemonic discourses on death, old age, and illness. This process is also a search for other more sovereign and ecological rituals and imaginaries around dying. Death, old age, and illness have become market niches, and as such, our fears are exploited by the funeral, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and medical industries. We die the same way we live: manipulated by industry to consume unnecessary and polluting products, generating an ecological footprint, disconnected from the earth and the cycles of life. The way to face this is to change our value system. To recover awareness, presence, and care for all the processes that are part of life, including death. To do so with a community-based and interdependent perspective. We will share with you how, over the years, the research has become intertwined with and nourished by personal experiences, giving rise to many sub-research projects and approaches: from the ecological impact of death (design, prototypes, speculation with materials) to the creation of La escuela del más acá (The School of the Here), an educational space for talking about death with children and teenagers.
• Round table • 12:30 – 13:00 • Open debate on the previous presentations.

SEEDS OF REGENERATION: THE UKRAINIAN ECOVILLAGE MOVEMENT

12:30 – 13:00 (GMT-05:00)

Maksym Zalevskyi (Ukr) – Coordinator of GEN Ukraine

A frontline perspective on Ukraine’s ecovillage movement amid war, displacement, and ecological degradation. The talk explores how communities have turned abandoned land into thriving permaculture sites, how displaced people have become land stewards, and how ecovillages are becoming decentralized hubs of resilience. Drawing on the work of GEN Ukraine, the talk covers grassroots soil regeneration efforts, food sovereignty initiatives such as edible forests near the front lines, and the integration of Web3 tools such as Gitcoin, Octant, and Hypercerts for climate action financing. Maksym will present Ukraine not as a periphery, but as a testing ground for regenerative systems under pressure, where healing the land also means healing communities. He will also reflect on the strategic alliances being built across Europe to restore both ecosystems and capacities to respond to the geopolitical crisis.

LUNCH BREAK

13:00 – 14:00 (GMT-05:00)

ART AND SOIL

14:00 – 15:30 (GMT-05:00)

Alicia Franco (Ec) – Biologist, permaculturist | Gabriela Quinatoa – Researcher | Julian Chollet (Sl) – Researcher | Marcela Armas (Mx) – Artist – Nano Castro (Ar) – Digital artisan

• Collaborative soil exploration • 14:00 – 14:15 • Julian Chollet & Nano Castro
  Nano and Julian will share their experience in hands-on soil exploration workshops. Their talk will focus on how tools such as soil microscopy and chromatography not only help us better understand the complexity of soil, but also foster meaningful learning experiences. Using these methodologies as a starting point, participants are invited to engage with soil in ways they may never have experienced before: observation, shared discovery, and sensory exploration open the door to curiosity, collaboration, and peer-to-peer learning. The talk invites us to reflect on the deeper role that workshops can play, not only in teaching about soil, but in building communities of practice rooted in dialogue, experimentation, and care for the earth.
• La Cuica Cósmica • 14:15 – 14:30 • Alicia Franco
  “Compost is a cornerstone in the cultural paradigm shift of our society. On a personal level, it allows us to reconnect with life and death as a continuous cycle of transformation. It also helps solve the problem of organic waste, which is responsible for the third largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. At the community level, compost can be a key tool for rebuilding the social fabric through community composting, which in turn enables the transformation of cities into greener, more inclusive spaces for other species, regenerating ravines and allowing us to occupy green areas and parks with vegetable gardens and edible forests. Compost is not just a fertilizer: it is a probiotic, a soil regenerator, a source of information that “turns on the Wi-Fi” of the soil and our own bodies.
• Mirrors of the Holobiont • 14:30 – 14:45 • Marcela Armas
  Mirrors of the Holobiont is a transmedia investigation that explores the interrelationship between two mirror territories, the human body and the earth’s soils, taking as its starting point the study, practice and relationship between iridology (the observation of the human iris) and soil chromatography for the qualitative analysis of soil health. Both methods allow us to approach the unique stories of farmers or communities that grow food, proposing an inquiry into the impact of agribusiness and patented biotechnologies in contrast to free knowledge, tools, or technologies. A reflection on the situated meaning of concepts such as complexity, diversity, and resistance, observing different scenarios and levels of adversity in the interrelation and belonging of humans to nature through agriculture and food.
• Cosmologies of the Kayambi people and soil microbiota • 14:45 – 15:00
• Round table • 15:00 – 15:30 • Open debate on the previous presentations.

SCIENCES OF SOIL

15:30 – 17:30 (GMT-05:00)

Alison Pacheco (Ec) – Agricultural Engineer | Diana Rocha (Ec) – Bachelor’s Degree in Biology | Elizabeth Bravo (Ec) – Doctorate in Microorganism Ecology | Javier Carrera (Ec) – Seed Guardian

• Microorganisms as subjects of rights • 15:30 – 16:00 • Elizabeth Bravo
  “When we talk about microorganisms, we associate these tiny living beings with diseases, epidemics, and pandemics, especially after COVID-19. In the agricultural world, they are associated with plant or animal diseases. That is why most studies on microorganisms focus on pathogenic microorganisms. But life on Earth as we know it has been made possible by microorganisms, which have played important roles in the history of life and in biogeochemical cycles. We analyze the role that microbial communities play in nature, the functions they perform in geo-bio-chemical and evolutionary cycles, and the symbiotic relationships they establish with other organisms, contributing to their survival, which makes them subject to rights, as recognized by the Constitution of Ecuador. We also examine the dangers these organisms face due to the industrial urban system, extractivism, and their penetration into ecosystems.
• From the soil to the sky Ecuador • 16:00 – 16:15 • Diana Rocha
  The conversion of native habitats into agricultural systems at the global level causes changes in biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, particularly in high Andean ecosystems due to their vulnerability and policies that promote agricultural intensification and expansion. These changes affect the composition and structure of biotic communities. Birds are a group that is highly sensitive to changes in the environment, making them ideal for studying the effects that land use change and loss of vegetation cover can have on an ecosystem. In the tropical Andes, birds constitute a numerous taxon that plays fundamental ecological roles such as pollination, pest control, and seed dispersal. These functions maintain the dynamics and stability of ecosystems, which in turn provide ecosystem services that are vital for humans and other forms of life. Therefore, understanding the role that species play in ecosystems allows us to anticipate possible actions that could cause irreversible future damage to the environment. In this context, the following presentation will discuss how soil health is reflected in its biotic communities, particularly in bird communities. We will also address the current situation of agroecological production systems as an alternative for long-term bird conservation. We will go through the phases of agricultural production and how these two dimensions coexist and enhance ecosystems at each stage.
• Water and Soil in Andean Chakras • 16:15 – 16:30 • Alison Pacheco
  “The efficient use of water and soil in Andean chakras represents a challenge in the search for resilient agricultural systems, especially in contexts of climate change and water scarcity. Chakras, traditional production systems of indigenous communities, integrate ancestral knowledge with agroecological practices, promoting integrated natural resource management. In particular, the interaction between soil, water, and organic matter is important for optimizing irrigation efficiency and maintaining long-term soil fertility. Efficient water use depends not only on the irrigation technology used (drip, sprinkler, among others), but also on the physical characteristics of the soil that determine its capacity to retain and distribute water. It is concluded that in Andean chakras, traditional soil and water management has historically been based on empirical observation and knowledge passed down from generation to generation. Currently, this knowledge can be strengthened by scientific evidence that validates and optimizes ancestral practices. The integration of local knowledge and technical expertise is essential for developing sustainable management strategies that respond to the current challenges of small-scale family farming and climate change.”
• The body and the soil are one • 16:300 – 16:45 • Javier Carrera
  This talk explores the soil as an organism and its similarities to the human body in terms of nutrition and health.
  This approach helps us better understand the similarities between seemingly different organisms and develop better strategies to care for the well-being of both systems.
• Round table • 16:45 – 17:30. • Open discussion on the four previous presentations.

COLLECTIVE POEM FOR SOIL

17:30 – 18:30 (GMT-05:00)

Violeta Moreno Wray (Ec) Writer & actress | Wayra Velasquez (Ec) – Writer

Following a series of questions, participants in the Assembly create a collective poem. Facilitated by Wayra and Violeta.

DINNER

18:30 – 19:30 (GMT-05:00)

CONCERTS: LAYER LAYER LAYER

19:30 – 00:00 (GMT-05:00)