Joya: AiR / Nanina Kotlowski & Patric Redl / Austria

We arrived at Joya with a focus on continuing to work on our permaculture performative lecture and we could not have imagined a better place for it.

The Joya Residency and its surroundings were full of ideal places for us to observe nature and extreme weather conditions with its patterns. Initially we started off by collecting material for our lecture by observing, reading, being a bit overwhelmed by everything that we did not know yet and by simply touching the earth.

The surroundings of the national park and the freedom we felt within this vast nature nourished our creativity in unexpected ways and we decided to reserve some time for spontaneous creative outbursts. Such a healthy thing to do, as in our daily live routines we found it difficult to find this space. We were diving into a movement practice that dealt with the observation of dryness, patterns and the constant falling of our own body in movement. We measured our body parts, as to always have a measure band with us, we recorded sounds of monoculture pine forests, observed and took pictures of dry riverbanks and erosions, built physical water barriers and human catchment systems.

On top of all that it was truly inspiring for us to see how Donna and Simon have created a vivid home and residency space totally off grid, full of creativity and generosity. Thank you for all of that!