During a week in March 2024, we had the opportunity to visitCórdoba and get in touch with its territory and local agents. Thanks to Plata Lugar, we could reach the agroecological researchers, producers and artists in the city of Córdoba and its surroundings, also discovering and learning about the more-than-human communities that inhabit the same land. The video presented here is a recap of the places we activated and unveiled while on our case study trip.
‘Suq Centeno’ started as a situated effort of Plata to create a meeting place enabling the crossing of knowledge around food, agroecology and the arts to revitalize the neighborhood of San Agustin (Cordoba). The trip to Córdoba, therefore, was at the core of our research and study efforts. It was the opportunity to interact with the place, the community and the ecology, which we had previously only known from images and stories. Our aim was to uncover the characteristics that shape various aspects of the productive chain of local agricultural products, including decision-making socialization, alternative economic concepts, seed banks, areas of legality and illegality, vegetative cycles, climatic microenvironments, and other methods of information distribution.
Having previously focused our research on soil, the objective of our trip was, therefore, to uncover a network of Indigenous agricultural knowledge, gather insights to widen our understanding of soil and its articulations, and directly engage with the community – its history, its habits, its rituals, its challenges, etc. Ultimately, the overall intention was to bridge our findings to the key initiatives activated by Plata within the Suq Centeno (market, Zuloark, Futurefarmers, etc).
As we wanted to observe soil through the lenses of food, memory, identity, socio-politics, waste, several guiding questions accompanied our research.
How can we understand and express soil as an entity that crosses and connects biopolitical, social, and ecological spheres?
In what ways does soil serve as a connecting link between the realms of non-human and human existence?
How does soil serve as an initial entry point for understanding the identity and collective memory of a place?
In what ways can the historical imprint and unique characteristics of soil inform our ability to establish a connection with it?
The four days of collective studying in Córdoba followed these themes through interacting with actors in the city of Córdoba and its peripheries.
- Huerto de la resistencia
We planted and started the co-creation of a communal garden in an abandoned plot of land next to the neighborhood center Luciana Centeno. Ancient and local seeds were planted in unworked soil after freeing the space from waste. This was an act including the members of the neighborhood to meet, create a climatic islem and assist plants to grow in an area which is threatened by the appropriation of asphalt and concrete.
- Visit La Culturhaza
The opportunity to visit La Culturhaza gave us a glance of how ecology-oriented agriculture looks like: an agriculture in which every plant and animal is there for a reason. Agripino showed us the capacity of ancient seeds, season-oriented cultivation and the fruitful symbiosis between the human and non-human.
- Visit La Fresnedilla
An hour away from Cordoba in Obejo, we were welcomed on the family property of La Fresnedilla, which is a hybrid and multidisciplinary associative project based on cultural management and agroecological practices. We could learn about wild plants, community projects and the possibility of driving practices involving the care for ecology and arts.
- Visit Madinat Al-Zahra
Córdoba’s identity is heavily influenced by its Muslim and Arabic history. By visiting the UNESCO World Heritage Site Madinat Al-Zahra, we could explore this significance for the city and its people. The visit and Ramadan being celebrated simultaneously added an additional layer of tribute to the Arab identity still found in Cordoba, which later came together again in several Arabic-inspired dishes during our communal dinner made with regional and characteristic plants from Córdoba.
Through these encounters, we appreciated learning about Cordoba’s identity, the identity of the land, the people and of its ecologies.