[-empyre-] RUDERAL WITCHCRAFT

Tue Nov 5 12:47:07 AEDT 2019

Yes, the loathed Japanese Knotweed is a powerful ally of mine, as it helped
cure my Lyme disease, and grows in areas where Lyme is rampant. I think
it's beautiful.

Interesting also to consider the magical herbs in the ruderal terrain, like
Mugwort -- such a good one for invocations and for dreams. But also for
clearing the liver, and as a warming bitter.

I conceived of 7 plant signs in collaboration with the techno-botanical
coven I am a part of called APRIORI (http://www.weareapriori.net/). In our
cosmology, plants conveyed 7 signs at the dawn of modernity that indicated
new naturalcultural formations, the rise of capitalism, and which helped
witches prophecy the rise of intelligent machines. In our cosmovision these
signs also point to ways out of modernity. Mugwort is the sign of the
Fugitive: when medicine becomes a weed (I recently developed a plant walk
and installation with APRIORI around these signs for the Queer Paranormal
show at Bennington College to be discussed later this month with Rachel
Stevens et al). It continually shows up in different elements of the
project so it figures strongly for us.

Inspired by my collaborator Efrén Cruz Cortés' spell writing ability
(across algorithms and natural language) I tried to write one for mugwort:

THE FUGITIVE
*Mugwort and burdock make the fugitive sign*
*Ignored, wasted, based on abstract lines*
*That mark in and out, what is prized*
*Once medicine, now weeds, once loved, now despised.*

*Empty lots, highways edge, on the superfund site....*

*The fugitive and ruderal now please:*
*Circumvent machines and their sight*
*Align with crops and make food forests free!*

I also wrote one for the sign of the Scab: when plant labor is cheap but
also heals. Plantain is a scab sign.

THE SCAB
*Scabs cover already disturbed soil*
*Where humans, machines, and food crops toil*
*The sign of the scab betrays and heals*
*(Scabs are beings with incredible zeal)*

*Healing soils for more diversity later*
*The scab is is misunderstood as invader*
*Scabs: teach machines to renew drained*
*Lands -- distribute wealth while capitalism wanes!*

I have some more but I'll hold off for now, haha.

But yes, it is endlessly fascinating to me where medicines grow, and what
kind of relationship they have with place. I am fascinated how, for
example, from what I understand bloodroot is hard to find in new forests in
upstate NY, but I frequently find it amidst 'invasive' loosestrife and
garlic mustard in the runoff on the side of roads.*... *And then
considering how bloodroot is a skin cancer remedy and how this might speak
to soils and locations....

... And yet -- I hesitate to harvest, as not enough is known about
toxicity.... And I don't know enough about my new home in NY yet... And can
we really consider these wasted, ignored spaces spaces of empowerment, or
emancipatory? What do you think?

M

--
beforebefore.net
--

On Mon, Nov 4, 2019 at 5:31 PM Oliver Kellhammer <okellhammer at gmail.com>
wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> 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
>>
>> --
>> beforebefore.net
>> --
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 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
>>> --
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
>
>
> --
> http://www.oliverk.org
> twitter: @okellhammer
> mobile: 917-743-0126
> skype: okellhammer
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20191104/0f542ac1/attachment.html>