The Future That Listens
Cecilia Vilca Responds to
“What will our future gardens look like?”
I have a practice I use when I approach answering any question. The first thing I do is ask myself what the words involved mean or suggest. By doing so I do not take a position based on assumptions. Even if I don’t get a quick answer, I might get a solid foundation of understanding (or its beginning). I believe that this is an important epistemological exercise especially between transdisciplinary teams, or for teams from different places. It has been, and continues to be a fundamental practice in my experience working with indigenous communities.
So, for me to answer the question “What might we store in the Data Forests of the future?” I first need to ask myself what I understand by “garden” and “future.” The answers, as has been established, will be mediated by my context, my culture, the set of experiences that I have lived. This happens as we saw in the previous class on “AI & Ethics” when the words include even supposedly universal terms, as in the case of “nature” and “human beings,” nature as untouched forests, becomes an uncritical stereotype.
To begin, I think about how the indigenous people who inhabit forests have always modified their environments. Even in pre-Hispanic indigenous civilizations, such as those that were in territory known today as Mexico or Guatemala (Azteca, Maya, etc.) and in Peru (Inca, Chimú, Paracas, Mochica, etc.), these communities considered nature a part of their worldview, and respected agricultural cycles accordingly. In the Andes, Inca built grand agricultural terraces and redistributed products according to “altitudinal floors,” guaranteeing a variety of products were provided locally through exchange. Today the tradition of eating fresh ingredients is reminiscent of these practices. We eat what is provided from the local area because it is fresher, and if it is fresher, it is tastier, and the flavor is associated with the love of the person who prepared it. So, for me it is inevitable when thinking about a garden to imagine a “chacra” (orchard). What can be fresher than growing your own “ajies’’ (chili peppers)? I would like this idea of a garden-farm to be preserved. However, having a garden will depend on the space and resources available to it. In Lima, a desert city, a garden is a luxury, a status symbol.
On the other hand, if I reflect about the meaning of “future”, I reflect on the fact that in Peruvian pre-Hispanic cultures have developed a completely different conception of time, one that is very different from the linear concept of time pervasive in western thought. In Peruvian, pre-Hispanic cultures, the future is behind us because we don’t know about it. Consequently, we do not see it. The past is ahead of us, because we can know it, so we can see it. The past and present overlap, intertwined with the times of death, everything spiritual inhabits here and now.
If I take this question further, which of all the array of futures we are talking about? In the global south, the “future promise” has always been a control mechanism, the past is erased and the present is skipped. Because of that, for me, there is no future without a past and a present, so I think that our future gardens would have to grow with care, and this care starts now. I think that learning to cultivate should be a subject in the schools of our cities: learning to sustain life. I would like these gardens not to have only a utilitarian character: “It gives me peace,” “it gives me beauty,” “it gives me food.” I hope our understanding will also grow, until we notice that we are co-inhabitants with plants, and even more, that within this “flora” our own microorganisms are included: our “body-garden.” This task is for the present-past to become the future.
Today in Peru, farmers grow varieties of crops that we refer to as “natives,” like corn and potatoes, but that don’t have high demand. The only reason they are grown is the want to preserve them. I hope our culinary traditions will endure: those linked to gratitude, that are technologies of care, of sharing, which from the collective allow us to build ourselves together, and which have allowed our ancestral seeds to reach our present, transformed and alive. No matter if this future is in a year or 100 years away, if this has been the case until now, I believe it will continue in the future.
“There is no future without a past and a present, so I think that our future gardens would have to grow with our care, and this care starts now.”
Cecilia Vilca is a Peruvian transartist, chola feminist techno-witch and language activist.
Follow Cecilia Vilca: Insta @ceci_vilca, website: https://ceciliavilca.com/
#ancientfuturetechnology #mitmedialab #microbiome #philosophy
