Words
The Glossary of Wisdom and World Making
The conventional written format of a glossary is transfigured into an event programme which unfolds throughout the project period of roda – soft water on hard stone. Each event is based on a word chosen by artists or thinkers and interpreted into various formats and mediums opening for multiple understandings rather than set definitions.
Imaginação
Roda
The journeys forming part of roda – soft water on hard stone are sea voyages crossing distances in friction with the ocean. Three maritime journeys connect destinations linked to colonial history, which are still core geographies in the ongoing exploitation of the ‘Global South’: the first from Europe to South America, the second from South America to West Africa, the third from West Africa to Europe. The project sets sail not to exploit or conquer but to listen and unlearn. It is an attempt to invoke a vision towards the future as well as the past, considering the implications of the global flows of people and natures that have radically transformed the planet since the 16th century. Reversing the direction of the triangular colonial trade route is a symbolic action, not to undo history but to defy its effects on current ways of thinking and acting, confronting the logic of eurocentrism, othering and racialization, disturbing our notion of linear time and progress and learning from the human and more-than-human worlds that constitute our existence.
Sharing the extended time and limited space of an oceanic crossing, these journeys are envisioned as collective learning situations, from the exchange and discussions within our circle to the embodied knowledge cultivated while sailing. They are an effort to unlock histories and world views, to think within dilated communities and kinship across the boundaries of people, species and oceans. Each of the sea journeys involve a gathering in the destination, organized in collaboration with local independent research programmes to share thoughts and practices, xow.rumi in Brazil and Àsìkò in Nigeria.