For some ancestral communities, there are people of the stones, of the mountains, of the water, of the
plants... These non-human people coexist with human people. They are all ecological people. They
resonate, they listen to the echo of other people.

Commissioned for Narratives of the Future in Colombia, Gente del ECO is a collaborative artistic project
developed over two stages. The first stage, held in July 2023 in the KAUKITÁ Nature Reserve (located in
the central mountain range of the municipality of Pereira, Colombia) facilitated conversations between traditional experts, professionals and academics from different disciplines about the relationship between humans and non-humans. The second stage, in November 2023, saw the results of these conversations presented in the Museum of Modern Art in Medellín (MAMM), bringing the participants of the initial conversations together with local audiences. The conversations are also captured in a fabric piece created by Blanquita Richter, mayora [elder] of the Awintukua people of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and a member of Gente del ECO, and in nine episodes of a podcast available (in Spanish) on Spotify.

In stage one of the project, conversations around the themes ‘Law of Origin’ and ‘Plant Thought - Sowing People and Extractivism’ allowed for the hybridisation of ancestral and scientific knowledge. Questions to guide these conversations included: What is the law of origin and how is it understood in your natal village/territory? What do you think is the origin of nature’s pain, and what is its relationship with the law of origin and balance? Are we beings who are disconnected from nature? How do we recognise this disconnection? What are the routes to reactivate empathy with nature and its suffering? In this way, Gente del ECO explored the connection between human and non-human pain, tapping into the concerns of multiple audiences on how to approach ecological issues in various territories, and their importance for communal well-being and the planet.

In stage two, a further conversation was held at MAMM, and members of the public were invited to attend and listen to this discussion. As well as this, recordings of the conversations carried out in KAUKITÁ nature reserve in Pereira were installed and played on speakers in a closed room in MAMM. The conversations were split into seven parts, and people were also given general information and links to listen to the recordings afterwards, since they lasted 197 minutes.

The woven fabric piece created by Richter, which captured the conversations from the first stage, was also displayed here as a sound object. This weaving preserves the intentions of caring for the environment, it is bonded with the heart of mother earth, in line with the tradition of the Awintukua people. It represents the word woven from the heart and around the fire. The textile was placed on top of a speaker on the floor, as an analogy of the seeds from the conversations in ECO taking root in the earth. The piece represents the tight bond between ancestral knowledge through weaving and the earth, which is what drives and sustains the thoughts, words and actions of the people of Gente de ECO. 

Thanks to ancestral knowledge, especially the oral traditions of the north and south of the country and other human cultures, through the podcast Gente del ECO cultivated a renewed interest in the importance of listening and orality in the construction of joint knowledge - this in an era where the hegemony of the visual limits possibilities for other sense-based experiences.

General coordination: Mauricio Rivera Henao.
Participants: Blanquita Richter, Eyder Calambás Tróchez, Johanna Drews Jaramillo, Fernando Hidalgo Hidalgo, Fabián Gíl, Duván Rivera Arcila, Paula Rendón Cardona.