[-empyre-] RUDERAL WITCHCRAFT

[Oliver Kellhammer]

As this is witchcraft, the term 'ruderal witchcraft' might have just been
floating around in the ether!
😺
But it does bring up this issue of 'commoning' and how witches
traditionally were associated with wastelands, ruderal spaces and
interstitial terrains plying their craft outside the relations of property.
The plants of these wastelands, the ruderal herbs, paradoxically constitute
some of the strongest medicines. Japanese knotweed for Lyme disease (thanks
for this tip Margaretha!), Plantago as a remedy for skin toxicity, yellow
dock, milk thistle and dandelion for protecting the liver etc. This
'terrain vague' is generative. The ruderal spaces are spaces for conjuring.
What we do there is relatively free from scrutiny, visible perhaps only out
of the corner of capitalism's eye.


On Mon, Nov 4, 2019 at 11:55 AM margaretha haughwout <
margaretha.anne.haughwout at gmail.com> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> I also meant to acknowledge that this term, 'ruderal witchcraft' is wholly
> Oliver's. Thank you for such a generative term Oliver!
> M
>
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> beforebefore.net
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> On Mon, Nov 4, 2019 at 11:48 AM margaretha haughwout <
> margaretha.anne.haughwout at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear empyreans,
>>
>> For this first week of November’s Magick and Technology conversation, we
>> will begin with the topic of Ruderal Witchcraft. We begin with place and
>> plants. With territory, territorialization/deterritorialization,
>> occupation.
>>
>> Drawing from Sylvia Federici’s work on the persecution of witches in the
>> early Modern period, we think about how the work of commoning, of
>> multispecies cultivation, and anti-capitalist resistance have been
>> intertwined. We address how the ruderal is an increasingly global condition
>> in the Anthropocene, and is simultaneously an archive of ruin and a space
>> of possibility, of healing, commoning -- all spaces of witchery.
>>
>> Arguably, the end of Feudalism was brought about by the climate event of
>> the Little Ice Age, the Black Death, and by persistent peasant organizing
>> in commoning environments across Europe. Women, in particular, older women
>> were often central to this organizing. They were skilled in the use of
>> plants and worked with natural cycles that shaped celebrations, harvests,
>> and divination processes. They often held the memory of negotiations around
>> land and resource use. If patriarchal capitalism was to take hold, they
>> needed to be removed. Federici tracks how the demonization and
>> extermination of witches in Europe not only produces the docile white woman
>> but also becomes the template for the demonization, oppression, and
>> extermination of colonized subjects across the European colonies.
>>
>> In this new climate event that is best articulated as the Capitalocene or
>> the Plantationocene, how can ruderal, ‘ruined’ landscapes invite us to
>> renegotiate power relationships, invite gestures of rebellion, of
>> recuperation? How can they be incantatory spaces, magical spaces,
>> transformative, and invite deepened entanglements, deepened
>> responsibilities/abilities-to-respond, in essence: revivified commons?
>>
>> I am so honored to be joined by Oliver Kellhammer and Marisa Prefer this
>> month, and we welcome discussants from other weeks, and the larger -empyre-
>> community to join us in conversation.
>>
>> …
>>
>> Oliver Kellhammer (US/Canada) he/him/his
>> Oliver Kellhammer is an artist, writer, and researcher, who seeks,
>> through his botanical interventions and social art practice, to demonstrate
>> nature’s surprising ability to recover from damage. Recent work has focused
>> on the psychosocial effects of climate change, decontaminating polluted
>> soil, reintroducing prehistoric trees to landscapes impacted by industrial
>> logging, and cataloging the biodiversity of brownfields. He is currently a
>> lecturer in sustainable systems at Parsons in NYC.
>>
>> He is based in New York's Alphabet City and rural British Columbia.
>>
>> Marisa Prefer (US) they/them/theirs
>> Marisa Prefer is an educator, artist, and herbalist who works to
>> translate knowledge between plants and human communities. Marisa
>> facilitates trans-disciplinary projects rooted in queer and marginal
>> ecologies, de-centering human, colonizer and patriarchal perspectives in
>> favor of calling in the invisible labors of microbes, mycelium, mosses and
>> mice to help reimagine relations to land, ownership and food.
>>
>> Marisa is a Horticulturalist-in-Residence at Pioneer Works in Red Hook,
>> Brooklyn; helps to manage Soil Start Farm at Earth Matter on Governors
>> Island, has studied with Rosemary Gladstar at Sage Mountain Botanical
>> Sanctuary and recently contributed to projects Carbon Sponge with Brooke
>> Singer, Swale with Mary Mattingly, and Seeds of Change with Maria Thereza
>> Alves.
>>
>> Margaretha Haughwout (US) she/her/hers, or they/their/theirs
>>
>> --
>> beforebefore.net
>> --
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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