Awana Fabric
Interactive installation module inspired by the concept of weaving, awana, using conductive threads woven into Sarayaku's ashanga basket
The third installation art is Awana Fabric, which is dedicated to the corporeal tensions tamya añanku perform when they weave nests with their bodies. It focuses on the corporeal performances of these ants in relation to the rain from the perspective of awana. Awana means to weave. People employ the term ‘to weave’ (tejer in Spanish, awana in Kichwa) to refer to the handcraft production of both mukawa and ashanga. The ashanga is a basket made of tiamshi, a spirally-shaped liana which bears its Kichwa name from tiam —radical turns.
Awana fabric is an interactive installation using an ashanga basket woven by Santiago, which I intervened with conductive threads. Pressing or manipulating the shape of the basket, modifies sounds and alters visualisations of ants sheltering from rain. The first shelter is woven on a decomposing palm tree in Shiwakucha, held in place, stitched together by ant bodies. The second shelter is concealed inside a fallen tree. Suspended within, the ants shape-shift forms throughout six days, while a creek created by increasing rain begins forming on the bottom. The forms rain ants create with their bodies lie beyond scientific validations and defy gravity and geometrical classifications. Their rhythmic lifeforces entwine with the agencies of rain. The turbulent flows, radical turns, tensile relations, tactile intimacies, chemical metabolisms, and oscillations they perform attune to the topologies and cultural situations of Sarayaku’s territoriality from underneath: a land-based ontology of well-placed sensorial abilities and biocentric sovereignty.
This installation is a tribute to Sarayaku’s community-weaving practices. I was essentially inspired by key observations on rain ants from Franco and Hilda — two important leaders of Sarayaku. They lent me the vision of an invertebrate social fabric that weaves itself with the rainforest. Awana fabric encompasses my claims that community-weaving (rain ants are communities and not colonies), through radical turns (tiam), and rhythmic interferences (taki), facilitates the understanding of the entangled values between species in this land-based ontology of earth beings.
The portrait of tamya añanku weaving rain shelters across the living forest (Kawsak Sacha), in a good land and soil without evil (Sumak Allpa), demonstrates the indivisible ant-territory relation, as well as the intimate rain-ant antagonism. Kawsak Sacha is a large project which the Sarayaku began in 2018 to protect their rainforest territory, find more about it here.
Operations:
amplification
interference
syncopation
convolution
Materials:
6-channel audio, 1-channel video projection, 1 ashanga, conductive threads for reading tactile interaction, 1 Arduino mini micro-controller, Touchdesigner software.
Ashanga
Sarayaku people call awana to the creative and tactful handcraft for materialising social vessels. Awana can also symbolise the strengthening of kinship through a diversity of social enactments and labour forms, like minga: the social labour exchange which ends with celebrations, music, and drinking chicha.
Ashanga is a basket woven by hand with a durable and flexible local liana which grows deep in the rainforest called tiamshi. The name tiamshi (tiam: radical turns) derives from its coiled shape which is wrapped around its tree host. The ashanga is used for carrying, mainly fruits from the forest farms, and especially manihot esculenta, yuca, the main ingredient for producing chicha, fermented alcoholic drink.
Computer Vision and Tactile Interaction
Touchdesigner – creative coding and audiovisual environment – was used to modify the inverted social fabrics according to tactile interaction with the ashanga (different rain shelters suspended from trees were projected onto the back wall of the exhibition).
Pressing or manipulating the shape of the basket modifies sounds and alters visualisations of ants sheltering from rain. This is mediated with thin electrical capacitive yarns inserted in the basket and the capacitive resistance of human fingers are detected, then passed as a set of serial strings to Touchdesigner.
