Your address will show here +12 34 56 78
Drylands Management

Tale of the Mediterranean Drylands in Sunseed

by Drylands Coordinator Agata

A tiny gypsum crystal is carried by the cool water of the river among the roots of the brambles, and among the canes.

Once, a long time ago, he was set at the top of the bushy hill where he enjoyed the best view in the whole valley of the river, like a free swallow in endless skies of light, above endless arid lands.

He found himself surrounded by so many other similar yet different crystals.

The crystal waited patiently for years for the blanket of the small orange lichen spreading nearby to cover it.

A thyme, however, was quicker and wrapped it in its roots. One day, a herd of wild goats swept over the thyme with their fast, hard hooves. So the little crystal also tumbled down, down, down, until it got stuck in a crack of the rock on the ravine.

There a carob tree was already growing, it was thirsty but tough and resilient. The crystal was amazed by the strength and courage of this creature.

The carob tree had put down its strong and deep roots in the crack of the rock, he thought it would be a good place to grow. However, it had not taken into account the burning sun out there. 

That sun was his heart, a heart in tachycardia in the apparent calm of the day, and this sun was pumping water into the wood of the small carob tree at great speed, sucking it out of the leaves. The carob tree arrived exhausted at sunset, but every night it recovered and breathed deeply, so strongly that the crystal was always afraid to fly away. 

The carob tree loved life, it knew that its life gave birth to so many others: to the birds that built their nests on its branches, to the animals, small insects and microscopic organisms that lived in the soil feeding on its dried leaves, its old roots, and the food that the carob tree deliberately released into the soil to attract friendly fungi and bacteria. These friends gave him a big hand by bringing water and nutrients and he could count on them especially in times of trouble, because if he lived they would continue to live.

The gypsum crystal was immensely grateful to inhabit the roots of the brave carob tree and decided to support him in every way he could, clinging to all the soil he could and retaining all the organic matter that happened to be around him: the leaves, the waste from birds, rabbits, goats, earthworms and insects.

The carob tree grew bigger and bigger and after dozens and dozens of years he began to lose his leaves. 

The crystal was extremely worried, but the carob tree reassured him: “Life is beautiful because, although it has an end, it produces more life ad infinitum”. The carob tree had given his all, for all those years, and now it was the turn of others to take his place. The next trees would be lucky because they would have the huge network of friends that the carob tree had built and also a nice, soft, moist cushion on which to lean and put down their roots. 

One spring night, the now old and tired but serene carob tree was uprooted by a great storm. The crystal decided to go with him and soon found himself in the water. When the sun rose, the carob tree was no longer there, and the crystal discovered that he had arrived in the water of the river. It was an incredible feeling! A new adventure had just begun and he was full of faith and ready to live it fully.

=====

Are you interested in joining our Drylands team? We are currently looking for a Coordinator and an Assistant to join our community in the coming months. Contact Agata at drylands.management@sunseed.org.uk 

0

Courses and Events

Festival del Agua 2023 Los Molinos del Rio Aguas Sunseed
Ha pasado una semana desde el Festival del Agua, un intenso fin de semana lleno de sol, charlas, talleres, juegos y música. El espacio se ha abierto con una charla sobre “Culturas del Agua” en la región de Almería, dando cabida a voces activistas y que nos han hablado del valor del agua para la vida, la historia y la cultura de un territorio.

Festival del Agua germinart performance sunseed los molinos del rio aguas
Por la tarde, rutas y talleres de diversa tipología fluyeron por las calles de Los Molinos, con visitas a nuestro proyecto Semilla del Sol y el de nuestros vecinos de la Pita Escuela; la ruta al Nacimiento impartida por el historiador de la zona Andrés Pérez Pérez; y el paseo por las Tierras Áridas con Ágata, Mattia y Rali, nuestro grupo Sunseed que trabaja entre Tierras Áridas y Tecnologías Apropiadas.

festival del agua 2023 sunseed los molinos del rio aguas
Además, talleres de malabares, actividades para niños, música y conciertos en directo por la noche animaron durante los dos días el espacio del mercado, donde los artesanos de la región se reunieron para vender sus productos y celebrar el Río de Aguas.

sunseed festival del agua 2023 mercado
El domingo, tuvimos otro espacio de reflexión y “Diálogos sobre Justicia Ambiental”, donde se recogieron y pusieron en común las reflexiones de activistas de la zona, especialmente de la zona de Lucainena de las Torres, afectada por los megaproyectos de las placas solares, y de El Ejido, una de las grandes zonas de explotación de los invernaderos.

comida festival del agua los molinos sunseed 2023
Para finalizar, durante los dos días Sunseed ofreció la performance resultante de la residencia artística Germinar-t creada en colaboración con Alt Shift en la que, a través de un itinerario por el río Aguas, se presentó una pieza sobre las luchas en torno a la legitimidad.

En conclusión, durante estos dos días, sin olvidar nuestras posicionalidades, pero intentando actuar desde sentimientos regenerativos y colaborativos, hemos hecho nuestro pequeño esfuerzo por sembrar y alimentar saberes territoriales y fomentar diálogos intergeneracionales en torno a la tierra, la memoria y las prácticas locales de resistencia para la salvaguarda del agua.
El festival ha sido un espacio de reflexión y acción, que nos ha ayudado a comprender mejor las historias pasadas del río que habitamos, así como a imaginar su futuro.


Gracias a EUTeens4Green por cofinanciar este festival.
0

Courses and Events

 

In early April, Germinar-t 2 was hosted at Sunseed, exploring “Las Memorias del Río Aguas”.

The degrowth based art-residency returned to the Sunseed Desert Technology community in Los Molinos del Rio Aguas, Almería, after the inaugural Germinar-t took place here in December of 2022. This time the performance group in residency was the Lab of Rooted Imagination from Barcelona, which formed in October 2022 and made their debut with #estudio1 on activist struggles in January 2023.

sunseed 2023 germinart degrowth arts residency

Germinar-t 2.0 took the form of a 10-day process of creating a performance around water cultures, ending in the Festival del Agua, which Sunseed co-hosts each spring with the local community. The process was informed by art-based-research practices: the community collaboratively researched their own relation to water cultures before the performers arrived. These findings were fermented into stories, poems, little plays which were presented to the performers in residency as a process of ‘soaking’ into the place and the territory. During the week, the performers played and created based on the collection of stories they received. At the festival, the performers in residency had the opportunity to present what they worked on during the residency and open up the investigation to the territory.

germinart degrowth art residency 2023 sunseed

The final created performance invited a hike through Los Molinos, engaged the audience on a journey to look for a drop of water flowing up. Defying gravity. Doing the impossible. Rebelling. Defending itself. Getting sucked up. Pumping itself up through its own force like the water in Los Molinos from Río Aguas to the houses of its residents pushes itself through the ram pump.

On their journey they find a group of self-proclaimed activists who are there to defend the river, in search for a direct action, in search for purpose and there to do something against the ecocide. This group quickly loses themselves in the experience of drought, a journey inwards begins in which the activists get existential about experiencing the effects of privatised, accumulated and power-directed water flows of which most people are exempted. It is hard to stay at the margins, in which these effects are sensible first. Next to Spain and France exhausting themselves in games of green growth and police violence supervised by the EU, there are strange bird creatures eating the guts of a coloniser dude from the UK who came to Sunseed to plant prosopis and thereby save the region from desertification. The birds chant cryptic ancestral territorial knowledges and predict the future to be red through capital driven human interventions. When the birds turn slowly on the audience to read some more guts, the poet leads them to the maze in which they re-encounter the activist group which has still not lost their zest for action. The group enters the maze and transforms into a stream of consciousness, moving back and forth, battling for reason, legitimacy and purpose. Wondering what kinds of actions, if any, make sense. No common conclusion is reached. The activists shed tears, laying them carefully into the middle of the maze. The poet ends on: The only thing we can do is share our water even though our only water might be the tears that we shed for the bodies of water we lost in the fight.

Thanks to EUTeens4Green for co-funding this festival.

1