Black Headed Gull with breeding plumage. Ettrick Bay on the Isle of Bute 2021 Anne Charnock edited for El Relato by Simon Beckmann

I first became aware of anthropogenic climate change in the 1970s when I studied environmental science at the University of East Anglia. UEA was the home of the newly-formed Climatic Research Unit. I remember a buzz of excitement when Arctic ice cores arrived at the unit for analysis as part of a daring scientific endeavour. The aim being to build a historical record of our global climate — not only from ice cores, but also from tree rings and disparate historical weather records from around the world. Ever since my student days I have remained alert to any events related to climate and, one way or another, I have attempted to keep climate change as a central interest in my working life—as a science journalist and photojournalist, later as an artist, and more recently as a fiction writer. 

In 2005, I helped to launch my local community’s drive to become England’s first carbon-neutral village. This has been a fifteen-year project involving all age-groups and has led to a drop in individual household carbon emissions of between 25% and 40%. And, to our surprise, the project has led to stronger community cohesion; a wonderful spin-off. The Ashton Hayes Going Carbon Neutral Project also established a community energy company that now provides free solar-generated electricity for the local primary school.

Studio shot: Tipping Point #2 (2012) detail. Acrylic ink on paper. 140cm x 100cm.

When I arrived at Cortijada Los Gázquez for my Joya: AiR residency in 2012, my art practice had started to make a close connection with climate change in the form of my ‘Tipping Point’ paintings. My painting process was simple and methodical. I fixed a large sheet of paper to a board and dripped acrylic ink onto the surface. I lifted one edge of the board until a single drop of ink began to run. I propped the board in that position and waited for the ink to dry overnight. Over subsequent days I repeated the process several times, lifting a different side of the board in turn. The viewer can unpick my process. I like to think that the painting can be read.

However, despite being excited about this new work and about my art practice in general, I remember feeling torn. I had finished writing my first novel, A Calculated Life—set against a backdrop of climate breakdown—and I felt I should commit to either writing fiction or making art. In the end, I decided to put my art practice on the back burner at least while I focussed on getting published, and I wrote my second novel, Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind. 

Bridge 108 (2020) Anne Charnock’s latest novel. This dystopian story is told through multiple voices. A young climate refugee treks north from Spain to escape wildfires and drought, but soon falls prey to traffickers.

With four novels now published, I no longer see fiction as a digression from my art practice. In fact, I regard fiction in the same way that I regard any medium. I see it alongside paint, installation, text-art, photography. These are all creative paths allowing me to explore the subjects that mean the most to me.

Redshank at Port Bannatyne Bay on the Isle of Bute. 2021. photo Anne Charnock

Today, I live on the Isle of Bute in Scotland and, during lockdown, I have taken up bird photography as a way of forging a closer connection with nature, allowing me to appreciate bird migrations through the changing seasons. As our climate changes, I wonder if I will notice shifts in the migratory patterns, if I will see fewer or different bird species visiting the island from one year to the next, from one decade to the next. 

And during lockdown I have created a fictional character in a new novel-in-progress. This character is an artist who mimics my own reconnection with nature through birdwatching. Nature-photography-fiction: a continual cross-current of inspiration.

Anne Charnock

Bio

Anne Charnock is an artist and the author of four novels. Her writing career began in journalism and her articles appeared in New Scientist and The Guardian. She studied environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia and gained her MA in fine art at The Manchester School of Art. She is a founder member of Suite Studio Group in Salford. Her art practice has explored the essential characteristic of uncertainty in human intelligence, and her work also reflects her interest in dystopian and ecological literature. 

Her novel centred on human reproductive technologies, Dreams Before the Start of Time, won the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2018, and her novella, The Enclave, won the British Science Fiction Association’s Best Short Fiction Award 2017. Her novel, Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind (2015), is a feminist novel set in the past, present and future. It imagines an art historian in a future Academy of Restitution, which is dedicated to elevating women artists who have been overlooked by history. Anne has also written two companion novels, A Calculated Life (shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award 2013) and Bridge 108 (2020), which are set in a world embroiled in climate breakdown. 

http://annecharnock.com/ https://www.axisweb.org/p/annecharnock/

 Like any other developing country, India is trying to progress, but that often comes at a cost: whether it be in terms of the damage to the ecology, the suppression of climate warriors, or even the loss of lives and livelihoods due to the frequent floods, droughts, and landslides in India.

This poem is based on issues pertaining especially to the lower Himalayas region--a once-pristine area that is now grappling with an increasing number of tourists as well as an increase in hydro-electric dams. While these offer opportunities to the inhabitants of that area, they are unhappy about the damage to the environment. For them, the trees and rivers are their family, and this is expressed in the poem. This poem is also inspired by environmental activists like the late Prof G D. Agarwal and Sunderlal Bahugana, who passed away this week (May 2021) and was one of the leaders of the Chipko* movement in India.

The Man Who Predicted His Own Death

His legs jerking like a lizard’s tail 

while the cops tried to force-feed him,

knew that the dam had been sanctioned,  

the officials bribed, 

the river banks concretized, 

the villages flooded, 

the villagers maggoted into cities. 

Yet, he still fought for the river, warning 

that this river will rage again, if dammed, yet again 

just like this river had once flowed from the heavens with such force 

that all the sages and gods had prayed to Shiva, 

to save the earth from being swept away.

To him this river was his mother. 

Just like the trees were family 

to the women from the villages up the river, 

who chained themselves to the trees, 

blocked the loggers, and sang:

“Kill us if you want to cut the trees. 

We are one and the same”

until the loggers had to leave.

A tree is not a forest. 

But even trees know 

that to survive

they have to offer food through their roots 

and not cross into the canopy of each other.

The Man Who Predicted His Own Death is inspired by Prof G. D. Agarwal who fasted unto death in 2018 in protest against the building of dams along the river Ganga. Also, by the Chipko** (sticking to something) movement that occurred in the 1970s among the villages of the foothills of the Himalayas, in which village women linked hands and formed barricades around trees to prevent loggers from cutting any more trees in that area. Lastly, it is inspired the fact that recent research has shown that trees are known to offer nutrients to each other through their roots, even after they have been cut down (Source: The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben). We have a lot to learn from nature.

Jonaki Ray was educated in India (Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur) and the USA (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign). A scientist by education and training, and a software engineer (briefly) in the past, she is now a poet, writer, and editor in New Delhi, India.  

Jonaki was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem, and won the First Prize in the 2017 Oxford Brookes International Poetry Contest, ESL category. She is a 2019 Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award winner, and has been shortlisted for multiple other awards, including the 2018 Gregory O'Donoghue International Poetry Prize and the 2016 Writers' HQ International Fiction Contest.

Her work has been published in Poetry, The Rumpus, Southword Journal, So to Speak Journal, Lunch Ticket, Indian Literature (India’s National Academy of Letters), and elsewhere.

https://jonakiray.com

Bridge to cross the Tirthan Valley, Himachal Pradesh, India.

Deforestation in the lower Himalayas

School going girls, Tirthan Valley, Himachal Pradesh, India.

Development near the Great Himalayan National Park, Himachal Pradesh, India.

Chamera Dam, Chamba, Himachal Pradesh by Amarjyoti Dutta

Himachal Pradesh by Rahul Bakshi

Traffic, Himachal Pradesh by Amarjyoti Dutta

Kullu Valley, Himachal Pradesh, Bikash Ray

Spectres of an Invisible Sun, 2020, 100 x 100 cm, Oil on Linen / Pascal Ungerer

There are several keystones within my practice that I constantly refer to. They often act as a starting point or sometimes as an undercurrent within much of my work. They are primarily: alterity, peripherality, abandonment and decay.

I think one of the reasons I am often drawn to these areas is because I grew up in a very marginal habitat on the edge of Europe on the south-west coast of Ireland.

I have always been fascinated by ruins and there connection to place. Much of rural Ireland has suffered from cyclical rural depopulation over many generations, leaving behind a lot of abandoned buildings and farmsteads and they have almost become synonymous with the vernacular of rural Ireland, so for me the idea of abandonment is also intrinsic to the ecology and spacial culture of the rural.

Temporal Light, 2021, 90 x 90 cm, Oil on Linen / Pascal Ungerer

The Anthropomorphic Ruin By Pascal Ungerer

Ruins often exist in a stasis between construction and neglect, between habitation and abandonment and between use and disuse.

They are peripheral and marginal, often clinging to the edges of the built world, as an ‘other’ or alternative landscape.

They are pervasive and invasive. There ruinous dereliction can metastasise, enveloping surrounding areas, like a foreign body infecting its host. I’ve seen this kind of dereliction spread and take hold in many towns and cities as it slowly creeps its way down the high street or the industrial parks at the edge of town.

One could look at ruins as being prosaic, a banality of the everyday, but it is there eccentricity and unpredictability that contradicts this assumption. They are unhinged, untethered and ungrounded. They are self-perpetuating organisms, at ease within there own degradation and inevitable demise.

They are interlopers, they are subversive. They usurp there own function and place history as they undermine there original design.

Ruins are misanthropic, they act as a counterpoint to the built world and to human intentions. They are connected to the ecology of land, slowly subsumed by all around them as they relent to the vicissitudes of nature and the sovereignty of there own destruction.

They are portents of an uncertain future with there foundations set in a past that no longer exists. Ruins are a testament to time and decay.

Ruins have a voice, it is a quiet voice that whispers in the shadows. If you listen carefully you can hear it, this reverberating noise that oscillates within empty space. An interminable drip echoing on broken glass. It creeks and groans like an ancient tree. It is the wind stealing through a broken pipe, hissing its escape. It is the sound of a distant past as the place memory of its crumbing walls bear witness to ancient secrets and untold stories, while the last flecks of crumbling paint fill another strata of time as it continues its slow and inexorable journey to dust.

Ruins are dark, a crack through broken glass or a hole in a boarded window allows the occasional glint of light to penetrate the void for a brief moment of reprieve.

Ruins are resilient and unyielding. They are distant and remote, they are secretive and peripheral. Ruins are limenil and interstitial. They are always on the cusp and at the edge of things.

Ruins are mortal, the cracks and sinews of there decay maps there journey through time and space, like an arterial body slowly dragging these structures ever closer to the sedimentation of there own demise.

Pascal Ungerer is a visual artist from Cork. In 2019 he relocated to Ireland after three years in London where he completed a fully funded Masters in Fine Art at Goldsmiths University.

He works primarily with paint but has a background in lens based media and has screened his video work extensively throughout Europe. 

​His paintings are primarily concerned with spatial cultures in relation to peripherality, social history and geo-politics with an emphasis on place and the built environment. He has a particular interest in obsolete structures on the margins of urban development and in rural hinterlands, as well as areas of post-industrialisation, ecological degradation and rural de-population. 

Throughout his practice he examines in-between spaces that lie at the intersection of the urban and rural. This liminal and interstitial terrain has become a focal point for much of his recent painting. Central to this is an interest in dystopic topographies and places that are devoid of people that often exist in a temporal and finite state of impermanence.

In his painting work he uses different structures, social-histories or topographies as a starting point and amalgamates them into a fictional landscape as a way to reflect upon wider socio-geographic issues. Though his paintings primarily depict imagined landscapes they are also intrinsically linked to the places and stories that inspire them.

Pascal Ungerer

On the Beach: Simon Linington

There are four stages when filling a sculpture like Bajo la Sierra Larga:

Collecting material

Cleaning and sizing material

Ordering material

Pouring material

´Bajo la Sierra Larga’ Simon Linington (at Joya: AiR)

Collecting material

I spend a lot of time walking in the area surrounding the site of the sculpture to collect materials because I want it to look like it belongs in the local environment. I grew up on the Isle of Wight, a small Island off the south coast of England, and as a young person I would walk along the many beaches and look up at the cliffs, and notice the numerous different coloured sands and the way one would go over and around another. These were caused by collisions under the earth’s surface millions of years ago. 

Alum Bay - Isle of Wight

When I’m looking for materials I’m looking for common colours, colours I like, and colours that stand out. I'm also looking for different textures and as a rule, I usually try to find three different ones. 

Cleaning and sizing material

This is the slowest part of the process. Large materials are broken down with a hammer to make them smaller, and pieces that can’t be broken are taken out so there is a uniformity of size. All materials are sieved to clean them of leaves, twigs, dead insects etc. 

It’s important to clean the material thoroughly because if done well, it creates a disjuncture with the landscape when viewed through the glass. The viewer knows the material is from the area surrounding the sculpture, but it doesn’t quite look like it. 

One of the Bay Series of postcards (Alum Bay) photographed by my Grandfather, George Dean and hand tinted by my mother June.

Ordering material

Sometimes I make a sketch or template which acts as a guide for pouring the material into the vitrine. It tells me how many bands there will be, their depth, and how they move from one end of the sculpture to the other. 

Deciding what order to put the materials in can be a little more complicated. Sometimes I want to start with a particular colour, and at other times I choose one at random; I think what would compliment that colour and I make a plan on the ground in front of me by placing the material containers in a line. It's a loose plan that almost always changes. There are times when I'm trying to create very subtle changes from one band to another, and others where I want the biggest possible contrast. 

With a sculpture like Bajo la Sierra Larga, I photograph the empty vitrine in the landscape and try to decide the shape and colour of the bands by looking at the height of the bushes growing alongside it, or the crest of the hill passing behind etc. I want the sculpture to fit into the landscape, to be a part of it, and I also want it to be bold, to dominate, and achieving both of these things is often trial and error. 

Mireia Molina Costa is a writer and practitioner from Barcelona, Spain. Her work currently investigates the use of an aesth(ethics) of ‘silence' in the context of a poetics and politics of environment, place, intimacy and feminism. She is currently a curatorial student at EINA university in Barcelona and pursuing fluid modes of storytelling between the visual and the literary, the critical and the creative, the bodily and the conceptual, the factual and the subtle. She previously obtained a BA and MA in Modern and Contemporary Writing from the University of East Anglia, UK.

In Spanish - English translation below…

Jaron Rowan es un investigador cultural que actualmente combina la investigación con la escritura y la docencia.

Es coordinador de la Unidad de Investigación y Doctorado de BAU, Centro Universitario de Diseño, en Barcelona. Ha escrito el libro Emprendizajes en cultura (Traficantes de Sueños, 2010), “Memes: inteligencia idiota, política extraña y folclore digital” (Capitan Swing, 2015) y “Cultura libre de Estado” (Traficantes de Sueños, 2016). También ha colaborado y coescrito libros como “Innovación en la cultura” (Traficantes de Sueños, 2009), “Cultura libre digital” (Icaria, 2012) o “La tragedia del copyright” (Virus, 2013) y también colabora con los medios de comunicación y las revistas.

En busca de la intimidad perdida

El pensamiento ilustrado llegó a Europa trayendo consigo, e imponiendo, una forma de entender y hacerse cargo del mundo basado en la razón y la objetividad. Con esto y de forma progresiva se fue menospreciando la capacidad de pensar/entender/vivir el mundo de otras maneras más mágicas, esotéricas o creativas. Con la racionalidad llegó la capacidad de percibir la realidad como entidades discretas, como un conjunto de entes que se podían disociar unos de otros. Todo se podía escrutar, descomponer y comprender en un laboratorio. Esto chocaba con las dos formas epistémicas hegemónicas de la época, el pensamiento mágico y la fé. El primero está caracterizado por tramar vínculos entre entidades heterogéneas (oro--->dios←- pelo rubio) creando conexiones improbables y en ocasiones fabulosas. Pero este no era el objetivo principal de la ilustración. El pensamiento ilustrado llegó para enfrentarse de forma específica a un marco epistémico basado en la fé (las cosas son como Dios ha determinado y la única opción es creer en su palabra), y las relaciones de poder que esta forma de entender/ordenar el mundo traían consigo. La objetividad transmutaba la realidad en objetos medibles, cuantificables, demostrables y datos objetivables. No había que creer en la ciencia para que esta pudiera demostrar sus hipótesis. El mundo se podía diseccionar, racionalizar y explicitar. Con esto se estableció de forma clara la distinción entre los sujetos, quienes piensan/analizan/entienden y los objetos, que inertes esperan a ser comprendidos por quien tenga agencia y subjetividad.

En paralelo, el auge del capitalismo transformó a todos los seres, materiales o entidades en objetos susceptibles de ser comercializados. Con el capitalismo se inventó un tipo de objeto muy concreto, la mercancía. Se establecieron circuitos globales de intercambio por el que animales, plantas, minerales o incluso personas, podrían acabar circulando. No hay cosa en el mundo que no pueda ser transformada en mercancía. Así, la transformación epistémica que transformó la realidad en objetos, se vió acompañada por un sistema capaz de determinar el valor económico de cada uno de ellos. El mundo fenoménico se convirtió en un gran bazar. El valor económico acabó por transformarse en la única medida de valor abstracta y estandarizada. El mundo se sometía a los principios de la utilidad. Así, de forma paulatina fuimos determinando relaciones instrumentales con las cosas. Todo podía ser medido, comprendido, producido o intercambiado. Nos creímos que las personas estaban por encima de las cosas. Que la realidad estaba desplegada frente a nosotros lista para ser usada, medida o comercializada. Perdimos la intimidad con el mundo material, que se nos presentaba como un conjunto de objetos distantes y distintos a nosotros. Todo se podía explotar.

Todo esto ha cristalizado un mundo marcadamente utilitarista. Un mundo en el que el valor de las cosas está en relación directa al uso que les podemos dar. Si las cosas no sirven, parecen perder todo su valor. Inconscientemente clasificamos y valoramos a los animales dependiendo del uso que les podamos dar: el caballo vale más que el saltamontes, el gato vale más que el lince, en buey vale más que un calamar gigante. Lo mismo hacemos con los minerales, las plantas e incluso, con las personas. A medida que lo hacemos, nos vamos desvinculando afectivamente del mundo fenoménico. Podemos llegar a creer que somos autónomos de la realidad en la que vivimos. Que nuestra capacidad para nombrar, categorizar y definir, nos eleva sobre el agua, la sal, los geranios o las sardinas. La ficción de la autonomía nos ha hecho creer que estamos por encima del mundo material al que pertenecemos y del que dependemos para sobrevivir. La creencia en nuestro yo, nuestra unicidad, nos ha hecho olvidar que somos con los alimentos que ingerimos, somos con el agua que bebemos, somos con el oxígeno que respiramos, somos con las bacterias que nos habitan, somos con las comunidades en las que crecemos. La creencia en la supremacía de la humanidad sobre el mundo material nos ha hecho olvidar gran parte de las relaciones íntimas que nos vinculan y nos hacen parte de ese mundo material. Como nos recuerda Donna Haraway en su libro “Seguir con el problema”, se ha impuesto un imaginario basado en la independencia, en lugar de la interdependencia. 

Escribe George Bataille, en su excéntrico tratado de economía denominado “La parte maldita”, que sólo en los actos sagrados somos capaces de reconocer el poder que tienen las cosas sobre nosotros. En los rituales, las liturgias, las ceremonias, prestamos atención y aceptamos que los objetos con los que convivimos tienen poder. Empezamos a ser conscientes de la energía de las cosas. Sólo venerando al sol, a la luna, a la lluvia o a algún artefacto, nos damos cuenta que ese poder que pensamos que tenemos sobre la realidad es ficción. En la destrucción de algo que nos resulta útil reconocemos la agencia de la cosa. Su importancia va más allá del uso que le demos. Sólo escapando a lo útil, empezamos a reconstruir la intimidad perdida con las cosas. Cuando no vemos a un animal, planta o persona como un fin para conseguir algo, ya sea alimento, placer, energía, etc., se empiezan a abrir nuevas vías de ser/conocer/vivir en comunidad. Sólo perdiendo el principio de sospecha acontecen las confianzas que permiten que lo íntimo empiece a surgir. 

Es en lo inútil, en la experiencia estética por ejemplo, en donde empezamos a sentir florecer vínculos con la realidad de la que somos parte. Muerta la utilidad, surge la intimidad. Dejamos de ahondar en la idea de autonomía neoliberal y se nos abre un mundo de interdependencias. De conexiones y vínculos afectivos y energéticos. Muerto el deseo aparece la erótica que nos articula con el mundo. Muerta la ficción de que el humano está por encima de las cosas, se nos dibujan ontologías más horizontales para con la realidad. Se empiezan a establecer intimidades desconcertantes. Vínculos improductivos. Amores sin apego. Sólo escapando de lo útil, nos acercamos a un mundo exuberante y absurdo en el que el orden biológico y geológico se funden, objetos y sujetos se confunden, las categorías y taxonomías científicas se desdibujan. El aire que entra por nuestra nariz se vuelve yo. El calor de los animales es también el nuestro. Los cambios estacionales nos afectan. Las lunas nos conmueven. Nuestros egos se disuelven y apreciamos más a las demás personas. Cuando abrimos el mundo a la intimidad, lo que nos parecían desiertos yermos e improductivos se desvelan como lugares llenos de vida. Lugares en los que podemos re-aprender formas de ser y de sentir. En los que predomina la intimidad perdida. La intimidad con todo lo que podríamos llegar a ser.  

Jaron Rowan

Jaron Rowan is cultural researcher currently combining research with writing and teaching.

 He is coordinator of the Research and Doctorate Unit of BAU, University Center of Design, in Barcelona. He has written the book Emprendizajes en cultura (Traficantes de Sueños, 2010), “Memes: idiotic intelligence, weird politics and digital folklore” (Capitan Swing, 2015) and “Cultura libre de Estado” (Traficantes de Sueños, 2016). He has also collaborated and co-written books such as “Innovation in Culture” (Traficantes de Sueños, 2009), “Digital free culture” (Icaria, 2012) or “La tragedia del copyright” (Virus, 2013) and also collaborates with the media and magazines.

In search of lost intimacy

The Enlightenment came to Europe bringing with it, and imposing, a way of understanding and making sense of the world based on reason and objectivity. With this, and progressively, the ability to think / understand / live the world in other more magical, esoteric or creative ways was undervalued. With rationality came the ability to perceive reality as discrete entities, as a set of objects that could be dissociated from each other. Everything could be scrutinized, broken down, and understood in a laboratory. This clashed with the two hegemonic epistemic forms of the time, magical thinking and faith. The first is characterized by plotting links between heterogeneous entities (gold ---> god ← - blonde hair) creating unlikely and sometimes fabulous connections. But this was not the main purpose of the Enlightenment. This movement challenged and focused its efforts to change an epistemic framework based on faith, that is things are as God has determined and the only option is to believe in his word. A faith-based world produces a very specific set of power relations that modern thinking would challenge and alter inevitably. The introduction of rationality and objectivity transmuted reality into measurable, quantifiable, demonstrable objects and objective data. You did not have to believe in science for it to prove its hypotheses to be right. The world could be dissected, rationalized, and made explicit. With this, the distinction between subjects, those who think / analyse / understand, and objects, which inertly wait to be understood by those who have agency and subjectivity, were clearly established.

In parallel, the rise of capitalism transformed all beings, materials or entities into objects that can be bought and sold. With capitalism a very specific type of object was invented, the commodity. Global circuits of exchange were established through which animals, plants, minerals or even people could end up circulating. There is nothing in the world that cannot be transformed into a commodity. Thus, the epistemic transformation that transformed reality into objects was accompanied by a system capable of determining the economic value of each one of them. The phenomenal world became a great bazaar. Economic value eventually became the only abstract and standardized measure of value. The world was subject to the principles of utility. Thus, gradually humans were establishing and imposing instrumental relationships with things. Everything could be measured, understood, produced or exchanged. We believed that people were above things. That reality was displayed in front of us in order to be used, measured or commercialized. We lost our intimacy with the material world, which appeared to us as a set of objects that were distant and different from us. Everything could be exploited.

All this has given place to a clearly utilitarian world. A world in which the value of things is directly related to the use we can give them. If things don't work, they seem to lose all their value. Unconsciously we classify and value animals depending on the use we can make of them: the horse is worth more than the grasshopper, the cat is worth more than the lynx, the ox is worth more than a giant squid. We do the same with minerals, plants and even with people. As we do so, we become affectively detached from the phenomenal world. We can come to believe that we are autonomous from the reality in which we live. That our ability to name, categorize and define, elevates us above water, salt, geraniums or sardines. The fiction of autonomy has led us to believe that we are above the material world to which we belong and on which we depend to survive. The belief in ourselves, our uniqueness, has made us forget that we are with the food we eat, we are with the water we drink, we are with the oxygen that we breathe, we are with the bacteria that inhabit us, we are with the communities in which we grow. The belief in the supremacy of humanity over the material world has made us forget much of the intimate relationships that link us and make us part of that material world. As Donna Haraway reminds us in her book "Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene", an imaginary based on independence, rather than interdependence, has been imposed on us.

The french philosopher and poet George Bataille writes, in his eccentric treatise on economics called "The Accursed Share", that only in sacred acts are we able to recognize the power that things have over us. In rituals, liturgies, ceremonies, we pay attention and accept that the objects with which we live have power. We begin to be aware of the energy of things. Only by venerating the sun, the moon, the rain or some artefacts, we realise that this power that we think we have over reality is fiction. In destroying something that is useful to us, we recognise the agency of the thing. Its importance goes beyond the use we make of it. Only by escaping the useful, we begin to rebuild the lost intimacy with things. When we do not see an animal, plant or person as an end to achieve something, be it food, pleasure, energy, etc., new ways of being / knowing / living in community begin to open. Only by losing the principle of suspicion does the amount of trust needed grown enough to allow intimacy to begin to emerge.

It is in the useless, in the aesthetic experience for example, where we begin to feel links flourish with the reality of which we are part. When utility fades, intimacy arises. We stop delving into the idea of neoliberal autonomy and a world of interdependencies opens up to us. Of emotional and energetic connections and bonds. Once desire is dead, the eroticism that articulates us with the world appears. Once the fiction that the human is above things is dead, more horizontal ontologies are drawn to reality. Disconcerting intimacies begin to develop. Unproductive links. Loves without attachment. Only by escaping the useful, we approach an exuberant and absurd world in which the biological and geological orders merge, objects and subjects become confused, scientific categories and taxonomies are blurred. The air that enters our nostrils becomes us. The heat that animals produce is also ours. Seasonal changes affect us. The moons move us. Our egos dissolve and we appreciate other people more. When we open the world to intimacy, what appeared to us to be barren and unproductive deserts are revealed as places full of life. Places where we can re-learn ways of being and feeling. In which lost intimacy flows exuberantly. In which we grow an intimacy with all that we could become.

Jaron Rowan

photo Diederik Leutscher

texto en español debajo de esta versión en inglés…

0n re-wilding Joya: AiR #1 / Simon Beckmann / 25 - 10 - 2020

Joya: AiR resides within a restored / previously abandoned farm high in the Mediterranean sub-tropical steppe in the north of the province of Almería, Spain. Within the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada and the Sierra Cazorla to the west, our biome is characterised as receiving inadequate water with summer temperatures as high as 45º C and winter as much as -15ºC. We receive short wet periods in the autumn and spring, often falling as snow. Exceptions to this rainfall are the gota frias, rare but increasingly more common flash flooding. Our proximity to the sea and its summer heat in contrast to cold continental air from the north at the end of summer brings increasingly volatile rainwater inundation. This rainfall is of little benefit as its intensity combined with elevated sedimentary limestone and sun-baked clay, like concrete, only makes the events contribute to erosion, bringing destruction to farmland and human infrastructures.

The folk who lived here previously abandoned the farm in the late 60’s early 70’s as life was tough. Subsistence farmers, they cultivated cereals by hand, grew almonds and vegetables on what is an historically fascinating water catchment system*. They grazed sheep and goats on the common land (now natural park), fattened pigs, raised chickens and hunted rabbits and partridge. Better opportunities appeared and they abandoned their homes for industrialised cities such as Barcelona, the vineyards of France.

What we inherited was a very run-down group of farmhouses, each building the property of individual members of the extended family. This we developed into the Joya: arte + ecología / AiR residency for international artists and writers. We developed sustainable and cultural activity as, in part, the economic means to regenerate land. Land fallen out of agricultural use but, given this climate, unable to regenerate itself apart from the Aleppo pine which has colonised a lot of abandoned land in the mountains. We don’t consider these pines to be regenerative, more opportunist. What they leave you with is a monoculture of species, susceptible to pest and fire and in terms of fauna diversity very poor.

The property is off-grid and carbon neutral, but we wanted to go further and be carbon positive. Initially our 20 hectares of land was not a priority and we contracted it out to local farmers to cultivate cereals. This we quickly realised was a disaster as their only motivation for farming the land was to receive the subsidies from the EU. Subsidies they appeared to receive regardless as to the yield of the crop. In drought years the cereals would germinate and dry out. The land was tilled, the soil denuded of organic matter and they giant tractors used to cultivate the land are significant emitters of carbon monoxide as well as accelerating erosion. Thankfully we quickly realised the error of our ways and cancelled these contracts. But what could we do with the land?

Given the nature of our cultural and sustainable activities it appeared to us that our resident artists might benefit more from returning the land to the native steppe ecology found here 200 years ago. Encounters with native flora and fauna was going to be more beneficial to us and our resident artists both economically and experientially. However, 20 hectares of land in this climate and topography couldn’t meaningfully support animals higher up the food chain. Consequently, how could we hope to benefit from the altered and improved landscape we wished to achieve as a consequence of the now famous trophic cascades? Well, we are fortunate enough to be in the heart of a 22,000-hectare national park. In addition to the north the land is underpopulated extending the areas wildlife could range even further. Our land is bordered by common land, forested mountains all around us. What we could achieve is to be a bridge or corridor between more native habitats. However, we don’t want to replicate that habitat in an unending forest of Aleppo pine, we want to create a landscape more beneficial to flora and fauna. This landscape is already rich in raptors, reptiles, vultures, passerine birds and mammals. The adjacent province of Murcia has given us a head start with the re-introduction of the Spanish Lynx… this in addition to the now established reintroduction of the Lammergeier to the north in the Sierra Cazorla and we are on the way. 

Whilst we are missing keystone species in this region such as bears and wolves, there are resident populations in Spain so one can only hope. Our neighbouring mountain range is the Sierra del Oso, the sierra of bears. So, they did once live here as did wolves. The Lynx will have to suffice in the short term.

Earlier* I mentioned the historic water catchment system on our property. It’s technology that dates back to the Bronze Age in this region. It is a landscape adaptation that sustainably harvests water from the hydrosphere. A gentle but significant erosional channel was located, and a series of giant earth terraces were constructed within this waterway. These terraces put the brakes on rainfall run-off, constraining the water and encouraging it to sink into the ground. Upon meeting bedrock, this now subterranean water continued to flow at an accumulating rate under the surface of the ground. The accumulated rain in the headwater is then accesses at the bottom the catchment in a shallow well or a small dam. This part of the system is called the cañada. Beneath the well or dam is the boquera. This is a series of terracing interconnected with small canals called acequias which are used to direct the water to where it is needed. It is within this zone that the farmers grew vegetables and fruiting trees like olives for the household. For me, what is unique about this system is that it is sustainable. The farmers did not extract ancient ground water and the system was co-evolutionary, benefiting both farmer and flora and fauna.

Land abandonment led the catchment system to fall into disrepair but, during Covid lockdown, we have started the restoration of the terraces in the certainty that we can make the system work again. We may have to augment it to deal with climate change driven increases in the incidence of flash floods but like all these projects they are trial and error.

Taking our inspiration from this water catchment design, over the last two years we have built a Keyline water catchment system closer to the house. This is to be our food forest. Strictly following contour lines, we have coincidentally built concentric system of swales and berms around the house on the land that flows away from the property. The intention is for this catchment system to provide enough water to create an area of diverse planting of edible fruits, berries and nuts. The berms act as insectaries, habitats for predatory insects that will discourage pest insects on our fruit. The idea is to try and mimic the ecosystems and patterns in nature found in this region. We have planted over one hundred fruiting trees in this zone and we have plans for at least two hundred more.

Ultimately the landscape adaptations, historical or contemporary which we have restored or constructed, create living environments for plant life. In turn these adaptations sequester carbon from the atmosphere with the intention of making us carbon positive. Additionally, the combination of land adaptation, moisture retention and living organisms go a long way to prevent run-off, flooding and erosion.

The restoration of degraded land such as ours is highly effective for both carbon sequestration and re-creating habitats for native wildlife. These are two essential mitigations against climate change. We are not certain yet what we should be restoring our landscape too, but we imagine pre-industrial times. This is a subject for further consultation. We know that simply planting trees is not the solution. What we wish for is the wholesale restoration of ecosystems relative to this climate and geography. Restoring the diversity of plant and animal life is a goal that simultaneously benefits wildlife and the climate.

 We aim to show that rewilding land and growing food sustainably can be mutually beneficial in reversing species loss and reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Simon Beckmann artist, curator and co-founder of Joya: arte + ecología / AiR

Joya: AiR / red dot / punto rojo

On rewilding / o cómo dejar que la naturaleza recupere su estado salvaje a Joya: AiR #1 / Simon Beckmann / 25 - 10 - 2020

Joya: AiR reside dentro de una granja restaurada / previamente abandonada en lo alto de la estepa subtropical mediterránea en el norte de la provincia de Almería, España. Bajo la sombra de lluvia de Sierra Nevada y Sierra Cazorla al oeste, nuestro bioma se caracteriza por recibir agua inadecuada con temperaturas de verano de hasta 45º C e invierno de hasta -15ºC. Recibimos breves períodos de lluvia en otoño y primavera, a menudo cayendo en forma de nieve. Las excepciones a esta lluvia son las gotas frías, inundaciones repentinas raras pero cada vez más comunes. Nuestra proximidad al mar y su calor de verano en contraste con el frío aire continental del norte al final del verano trae inundaciones de agua de lluvia cada vez más volátiles. Esta lluvia es de poco beneficio ya que su intensidad combinada con la piedra caliza sedimentaria elevada y la arcilla cocida al sol, como el hormigón, solo hace que los eventos contribuyan a la erosión, trayendo destrucción a las tierras agrícolas y las infraestructuras humanas.

La gente que vivía aquí abandonó la granja a finales de los años 60 y principios de los 70 debido a las condiciones de vida características de este lugar. Los agricultores de subsistencia, cultivaban cereales a mano, cultivaban almendras y verduras en lo que es un sistema de captación de agua históricamente fascinante *. Pastorearon ovejas y cabras en el ejido (ahora parque natural), cebaron cerdos, criaron gallinas y cazaron conejos y perdices. Aparecieron mejores oportunidades y abandonaron sus hogares por ciudades industrializadas como Barcelona, los viñedos de Francia.

Lo que heredamos fue un grupo de granjas muy deterioradas, cada una de las cuales era propiedad de miembros individuales de la familia extendida. Esto lo desarrollamos en la residencia Joya: arte + ecología / AiR para artistas y escritores internacionales. Desarrollamos la actividad cultural y sostenible como, en parte, el medio económico para regenerar la tierra. Terreno abandonado para uso agrícola, pero, dado este clima, incapaz de regenerarse aparte del pino carrasco que ha colonizado muchas tierras abandonadas en las montañas. No consideramos que estos pinos sean regenerativos, más bien oportunistas. Lo que te dejan es un monocultivo de especies, susceptibles a las plagas y al fuego. En cuanto a la diversidad de fauna, es muy pobre.

La propiedad es autosuficiente y neutra en carbono, pero queríamos ir más allá y ser carbono positivo. Inicialmente, nuestras 20 hectáreas de tierra no eran una prioridad y la contratábamos a agricultores locales para cultivar cereales. Rápidamente nos dimos cuenta de que era un desastre, ya que su única motivación para cultivar la tierra era para recibir las subvenciones de la UE. Los subsidios que recibieron independientemente del rendimiento de la cosecha. En años de sequía, los cereales germinan y se secan. La tierra fue labrada, el suelo despojado de materia orgánica y los tractores gigantes que se utilizan para cultivar la tierra son importantes emisores de monóxido de carbono y aceleran la erosión. Afortunadamente, nos dimos cuenta del error de nuestras formas y cancelamos estos contratos. Pero, ¿qué podíamos hacer con la tierra?

Dada la naturaleza de nuestras actividades culturales y sostenibles, nos pareció que nuestros artistas residentes podrían beneficiarse más de devolver la tierra a la ecología de estepa nativa que se encontró aquí hace 200 años. Los encuentros con la flora y fauna nativa iban a ser más beneficiosos para nosotros y nuestros artistas residentes tanto económica como vivencialmente. Sin embargo, 20 hectáreas de tierra en este clima y topografía no podrían mantener de manera significativa a los animales en los niveles superiores de la cadena alimentaria. En consecuencia, ¿cómo podríamos esperar beneficiarnos del paisaje alterado y mejorado que deseábamos lograr como consecuencia de las ahora famosas cascadas tróficas? Bueno, tenemos la suerte de estar en el corazón de un parque nacional de 22.000 hectáreas. Además del norte, la tierra está subpoblada, lo que amplía las áreas en las cuales la vida silvestre podría extenderse aún más. Nuestra tierra está rodeada de tierras comunes, montañas boscosas. Lo que podríamos lograr es ser un puente o corredor entre hábitats más nativos. Sin embargo, no queremos replicar ese hábitat en un bosque interminable de pino carrasco, queremos crear un paisaje más beneficioso para la flora y la fauna. Este paisaje ya es rico en rapaces, reptiles, buitres, aves paseriformes y mamíferos. La provincia adyacente de Murcia nos ha dado una ventaja con la reintroducción del Lince Español… además de la reintroducción ya establecida del Quebrantahuesos al norte en la Sierra Cazorla.

Aunque nos faltan especies clave en esta región como los osos y los lobos, hay poblaciones residentes en España, por lo que solo cabe esperar. Nuestra sierra vecina es la Sierra del Oso, la sierra de los osos. Hubo una vez que vivieron aquí al igual que los lobos. El Lynx tendrá que ser suficiente a corto plazo.

Anteriormente * mencioné el histórico sistema de captación de agua en nuestra propiedad. Es una tecnología que se remonta en esta región a la Edad del Bronce. Consiste en una adaptación del paisaje que recolecta agua de la hidrosfera de manera sostenible. Se ubicó un canal de erosión blando pero significativo y se construyeron una serie de terrazas de tierra gigantes dentro de este canal. Estas terrazas frenan la escorrentía de las lluvias, limitando el agua y provocando que se hunde en el suelo. Al encontrarse con el lecho de roca, esta agua, ahora subterránea, continuó fluyendo a un ritmo acumulado debajo de la superficie del suelo. La lluvia acumulada en la cabecera accede por el fondo de la cuenca en un pozo poco profundo o una pequeña presa. Esta parte del sistema se llama cañada. Debajo del pozo o presa está la boquera. Se trata de una serie de terrazas interconectadas con pequeños canales llamados acequias que se utilizan para dirigir el agua hacia donde se necesita. Es dentro de esta zona donde los agricultores cultivan hortalizas y árboles frutales como aceitunas para el hogar. Para mí, lo que es único de este sistema es que es sostenible. Los agricultores no extrajeron agua subterránea antigua y el sistema fue co-evolutivo, beneficiando tanto a los agricultores como a la flora y la fauna.

El abandono de la tierra hizo que el sistema de captación se deteriorara, pero, durante la cuarentena por COVID, hemos comenzado la restauración de las terrazas con la certeza de que podemos hacer que el sistema vuelva a funcionar. Es posible que tengamos que aumentarlo para hacer frente a los aumentos en la incidencia de inundaciones repentinas impulsadas ​​por el cambio climático, pero como todos estos proyectos, se basa en prueba y error.

Inspirándonos en este diseño de captación de agua, durante los últimos dos años hemos construido un sistema de captación de agua Keyline más próximo a la casa. Este será nuestro bosque de alimentos. Siguiendo estrictamente las curvas de nivel, hemos construido casualmente un sistema concéntrico de cunetas y bermas alrededor de la casa en el terreno que fluye lejos de la propiedad. La intención es que este sistema de captación proporcione suficiente agua para crear un área de siembra diversa de frutas, bayas y nueces comestibles. Las bermas actúan como insectarios, hábitats de insectos depredadores que desalentarán los insectos plaga en nuestra fruta. La idea es intentar imitar los ecosistemas y patrones de la naturaleza que se encuentran en esta región. Hemos plantado más de cien árboles frutales en esta zona y tenemos planes para al menos doscientos más.

En última instancia, las adaptaciones del paisaje, históricas o contemporáneas que hemos restaurado o construido crean entornos de vida para la vida vegetal. A su vez, estas adaptaciones secuestran carbono de la atmósfera con la intención de convertirnos en carbono positivo. Además, la combinación de adaptación de la tierra, retención de humedad y organismos vivos contribuye en gran medida a prevenir la escorrentía, las inundaciones y la erosión.

La restauración de tierras degradadas como la nuestra es muy eficaz tanto para el secuestro de carbono como para la recreación de hábitats para la vida silvestre nativa. Estas son dos mitigaciones esenciales contra el cambio climático. Todavía no estamos seguros a qué deberíamos de restaurar nuestro paisaje, pero tenemos en mente tiempos preindustriales. Este es un tema en necesidad de mayor consulta. Sabemos que el simple hecho de plantar árboles no es la solución. Lo que deseamos es la restauración total de los ecosistemas en relación con este clima y geografía. Restaurar la diversidad de la vida vegetal y animal es un objetivo que beneficia simultáneamente a la vida silvestre y al clima.

Nuestro objetivo es demostrar que la reconstrucción de la tierra y el cultivo de alimentos de manera sostenible pueden ser mutuamente beneficiosos para revertir la pérdida de especies y reducir el dióxido de carbono atmosférico.

Simon Beckmann artista, curador y co-fundador de Joya: arte + ecología / AiR

artwork Taïs Bean

Joya: arte + ecología has invited contributions to the Joya: website in the form of esoteric essays. We all agreed to keep alive and hearten a conversation with past and potential resident artists. We looked for an iconoclastic chinwag, a discursive nosedive into art and ecological thinking and to perk up the tête-à-tête amongst convergent thinkers in an era of profound change.

We asked that contributions should be around the themes of aesthetics, ecology, pedagogy, water rising, activism, language, the Anthropocene, the 6th mass extinction, the built environment, painting, food, a change in the weather, autonomy, travel and doing the right thing. Or anything you like.

We would love it if you would like to contribute, full credits (obviously) plus links to wherever you like. No word limit beyond a minimum of 500.

El Relato #2 / Taïs Bean

"These texts are an ensemble of written and visual archives from a near future, a world in which human technology mark a clear divide between trans-humanists and trans-speciests.

Mind Upload Technology extends human life and promotes immortality as the ultimate achievement of our species. Its fervent supporters also consider that any other life forms is a ‘resource’ whose sole purpose is to benefit humans.

Meanwhile, The Human Institute for Trans-Species Studies has created a device enabling two way communication with any form of life, in the hope to establish a collaborative relationship with the rest of the living world

In this context, ’The Radical Animists’ are a group of activists ( made of plants, fungi, minerals, mammals, insects…) fighting for the dignity and respect of all Life in All its Forms, and raising awareness on the importance of death.

Today you can go through one of their review ‘The Radical Animists’, as well as archive documents from the Human Institute for Trans-Species Studies."

Taïs Bean

Joya: arte + ecología has invited contributions to the Joya: website in the form of esoteric essays. We all agreed to keep alive and hearten a conversation with past and potential resident artists. We looked for an iconoclastic chinwag, a discursive nosedive into art and ecological thinking and to perk up the tête-à-tête amongst convergent thinkers in an era of profound change.

We asked that contributions should be around the themes of aesthetics, ecology, pedagogy, water rising, activism, language, the Anthropocene, the 6th mass extinction, the built environment, painting, food, a change in the weather, autonomy, travel and doing the right thing. Or anything you like.

We would love it if you would like to contribute, full credits (obviously) plus links to wherever you like. No word limit beyond a minimum of 500.

 On Joya: arte + ecología / AiR - Simon Beckmann

“If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. ... We need not wait to see what others do.”  Gandhi

 Something of the two years we spent in India rubbed off. As artists Donna and I backpacked with a giant portfolio of paper across the continent and way up into the Himalayas. When we came to a standstill we painted, not predictable exotic landscapes but a continuation of our studio practice back in London.

In an everlasting experience, five thousand six hundred and thirty eight meters up on a rocky ridge in Zanskar, we ate lunch watching a raven. Airborne, but static. Just enough given wingspan, just enough updraft, he flipped, remaining in the same position but upside down. Flipping back again he spread his wings and soared into the sunlight above. Closing his wings, he dropped back to the same position as before, flipping upside down again. Over and over again he repeated the same action. At that moment, like the raven we connected, briefly, with what defines us, trying to be in possession of all the requisite feelings that make you happy. Not wrapped up in ourselves happy, but a quality of unlatched happiness, untroubled and integral.

 Seven years later, married, in London and with two-year-old twins we only had a notional link to the concept of changing ourselves, to living sustainably, to approaching that complete sense of happiness you can achieve by living in the same air, the same clean air, as that raven in Zanskar.

 Something had to change, we needed to relocate and create and live with nature.

Donna chose Spain. Her Grandfather was Consul General during the civil war in Barcelona. He looked after the interests of British citizens in Spain especially one particular French speaker from Haiti whom he subsequently married. Their children grew up speaking Castellano as their first language, English their second. Donna’s great auntie was three times Spanish ladies tennis champion and the first female tennis player to wear a backless dress at Wimbledon. Another great aunt married the famous Spanish racing driver Pierre De Vizcaya in the 20s but sadly he was killed in 1933 in a bizarre accident. Spanish family fable for Donna was part of growing up. She is English, but not entirely, so Spain was an obvious choice for her. For me, being an environmental activist and artist, the Andalucían province of Almería was the obvious choice. Where were the first signs of climate change going to manifest themselves in Europe other than in the alpine desert, we now call home?

We bought an abandoned property, Cortijada Los Gázquez in 2006. This is the full name of the property. Cortijo is the word for farm in Castellano and a Cortijada is a collection of small farm houses. Gázquez is the family name of those who once lived here. Cortijada Los Gázquez at 3281 ft. up, is a 50-acre ‘off-grid’ rural farm and arts residency in the heart of the Sierra María-Los Vélez Natural Park, Almería, Spain.

Spain, within Europe, is ground zero for de-population of rural areas. Even up to 1970s life for the Gázquez family was hard. No electricity, no running water, no schooling. Living as subsistence farmers, scraping a living from pre-industrial farming methods, using livestock for ploughing and carrying loads. The abundant resources of colonial Spain had passed them by. In the 1930's the civil war had brought them to their knees. After time the autocratic rule of Franco prevented the development of rural areas. Once the slowly emerging awareness of other people’s better fortunes elsewhere came upon them their collective desires drove them to leave. They left for the factories in Valencia, Tarragona and Barcelona. They left for the vineyards of France. Many searched out their former Republican supporting family, the exiles once caught up in the vortex of civil war. The Gázquez family, along with many families in this region, relinquished their homes in search of better fortunes in the cities of Spain or abroad in the mid 70s.

In 2006 Donna and I started a long road in the pursuit of restoring Los Gázquez and the land that surrounds the farm. We created a challenge for ourselves, a task that exhausted the skills we already possessed and left us in need of acquiring new knowledge. Conventional aspirations were thrown aside and once Joya: AiR, the residency, became a reality so did the reality that our continued existence here was more inexorably intertwined with the land, how we live and how we take responsibility

Donna and I, with our four-year olds became parishioners of the village of Vélez Blanco. Population, two thousand, though we have never seen them all at the same time. Seventy-five percent of the village is over the age of seventy-five. Villages like this are called pueblos blancos, white villages, very redolent of the traditions of communal living in Andalucía. The white reflects the summer heat and the close proximity of house to adjacent house provides shade and a cool cross breeze. As a crown the 16th century castle of the Marques de Don Fajardo y Chacon sits above the village, warden to its vassals living beneath. It in turn, like the unseating cuckoo chick, is built upon the former 7th century citadel built by the Moors. Ironically, if you know New York and are familiar with the Metropolitan Museum you may have entered the heart of this castle, the Patio de Honor, the renaissance courtyard, sold in 1905 by the wardens of the long-gone lineage of the Marquesado. Via a circuitous route the marble pieces were transported to Paris before a US industrialist’s aspirational installation in his New York mansion. The museum was gifted the courtyard in 1963.

Half an hour from the village, through the natural park, via dirt tracks winding through the pine forests, the almond groves, the dry fluvial systems called barrancos, you reach our project. Back then the roof was partially collapsed and needed replacing entirely. The walls were field stone bonded with clay and lime washed. The rooves were pine beams, crossed with cane and clay and clad with terracotta tiles. Ceilings were distinctively coated in undulating gesso, the floors brushed dirt, no glass in the windows just shutters, no light but candles, no stove but an open fire. What remained of the Gázquez family, those who yielded to the harshness of life here, were the unmade beds, the wash bowls, individual potties and empty coat hangers.

We took on an Ecuadorian builder, Segundo San Martin San Martin and he and I started the task of reforming this fragile ruin. First, we cleared the collapsed elements of the building, salvaging what we could, burning what we could not. Then came the reconstruction. Twice a week I would take my old 4x4, trailer, water tank, pump and generator an hour away to gather water from the nearest river. We could only make concrete with water and this was the nearest source. Once the roof was on, the building sealed the next problem was services. Too remote to access public needs in the village we had to be autonomous, non-polluting and we wanted to be carbon free. We installed photo voltaic panels and a wind turbine to create electricity. We fixed solar panels on the roof to create hot water. We plumbed two giant bio-mass burners for underfloor heating and a rainwater catchment system to harvest water from the roof. And we claimed back our waste water with an elaborate system of reed beds. But most importantly we preserved the vernacular character of the building. We took the unconscious design principle of the Gázquez family, who built this place, and refined their irregular white-washed surfaces into a new vernacular, sculptural form, clean and minimal and organic. Three years later we were ready, notwithstanding global financial crises, high winds destroying wind turbines, partial building collapse as a consequence of intense rain, and raising a family. What we had made was a beautiful space that is virtually 100 percent carbon neutral.

The Joya: residency came slowly as we eased ourselves gently into what was to be our ultimate goal, a cultural and sustainable destination for international artists and writers. Ten years later we accept approximately 170 artists and writers from the 400 who apply annually.

Now, the poor yielding clay soil, the pine forested limestone mountains, the gullies and the high plains are home to an international assortment of transdisciplinary, poets and writers, dancers, painters, sculptors, performance, video and installation artists. Our wild spaces are populated with chroma keyed Lycra onesie wearing Irish video artists or Chinese installationists sleeping in bucolic desert landscapes whilst being filmed. The main studio has been turned into a giant camera obscura to film the summer equinox. We have had Nigerian and Welsh performance artists transforming the appearance of our location merely by their presence in the landscape. Japanese calligraphers building paper kites to mimic the wild birds, the eagles and vultures. Abstract painters from New York and graphic graffiti artists from Sydney. Poets from Washington State and painters from DC. We have had sculptors from Argentina, conceptual artists from Uruguay, painters from Brazil, activist artists from Chile and Colombia. Many artists arrive here via the work we do with graduate Fine Art courses at the University of the Arts London, Goldsmiths and Granada. Without fail all the artists and writers we have hosted over the years have responded to this place in ways only the most perceptive can. With intelligence, wit and an unbridled creativity. On one memorable occasion we hosted a young graphic illustrator born and bred in Barcelona. She was super excited to be here as she was a descendent of the family Gázquez

For many artists and writers, the experience they have here is transformative. Artists are not here to finish projects but to research their practice, to evolve, to integrate with a like-minded community and cultivate new thoughts and ideas. And as a group, we give back. As a cultural and sustainable destination in an area fraught with climate and cultural issues such as land abandonment, desertification and an un-replenishable aging population our activities breathe new life, inspiration, initiative and hope.

 Thirteen years later our children are about to start university in Spain as artists and film makers. Donna’s family has returned to Spain and like the raven in Zanskar we have connected with what defines us, we have recast ourselves in a world full of extreme challenges and we have changed into what we wished for.

 Postscript:

 The world has become different in a lifetime. Fifty years on from the days the original family lived here successive Gázquez offspring come to visit during the fiestas in summer. Wherever they found themselves after their exodus they gravitate back to the land of their ancestors, even if only in mind. They share their stories of life here with us. They never talk of hardship, of lost children or of hunger. They talk of toil, yes, but they also talk of happiness. They were self-reliant, they produced food from such scant resources. They swam in water. Their life was one co-evolved with all the flora and fauna that mutually benefitted from their culture, their invention.

Over the last eighteen months here at Joya we have begun an ambitious sustainably designed forest garden. Phase one has seen us plant over 50 trees on a terraformed water catchment system. Stage two will see us plant over two hundred trees in 2020. Unlike the Gázquez family we don’t just need to produce food. Unknown to the subsistence farmers here fifty years ago the hyperobject known as climate change means we plant trees to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. We no longer live in isolation as our futures are inextricably linked in a fight to maintain a global environment that can sustain all of us.

Simon Beckmann co-founder and curator of Joya: arte + ecología / AiR