Making Kin - The Vanishing of the Gran Chaco
Collaboration with Carolina Genoni

From this remix of stories we decided to embarque on an investigation project to develop a VR Experience. In this world, due to the deforestation of the Chaco, the character’s journey through space and time, starting from the disappearance of the landscape and traveling to a speculative future where species are interconnected and mixed, envisioning an interspecies world.

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Cant Quiet Let Go, in Arooo 
Berlin 28.06.2024

Ecologies of Collapse, 18th edition, VideoClub
Berlin 27.08.2024

Merging the narrative of the deforestation happening nowadays in the Gran Chaco and the speculative narrative from ‘The Camille Stories: Children of Compost’ allows making room for different reflections and solutions for the present. We speculate to talk about us in the present.

This far future seeks to ask and answer the fundamental question: how do we want to live together starting from now with what we have already done?

The Chaco region is the most extensive dry forest formation in South America and second biggest. (Naumann & Madariaga, 2003). Between 2000 and 2019 9.5 million hectares of the Chaco region has been deforested (de la Sanchez et al., 2021). This is a consequence of the lax laws, administrative irregularities, secret pacts between private enterprises and the government, who widespread noncompliance with regulations that have contributed to the relentless expansion of the agricultural and livestock industries. This is not only threatening biodiversity but also changing the frequency of droughts and floods, and relentless native species from regenerating in their habitats.

This experience speculates a world where collaboration for the common good becomes essential. This future envisions us staying with the damaged land, acknowledging the harm we’ve caused but refusing to forget our responsibilities and embracing for actions. By embracing the concepts of making kin and sympoiesis, we can foster a consciousness centered around collaboration.

From Donna Haraway’s notion of sympoiesis: “Sympoiesis is a simple word; it means “making-with.” Nothing makes itself; nothing is really autopoietic or self-organizing” (2016, p. 58). Making kin challenges the traditional bourgeois conceptions of heredity, suggesting instead that becoming kin is an intentional, extended process of attention, perseverance, and care among humans and non-humans.

This is a statement for a world where collaboration and interconnectedness with all species are paramount. It advocates for a conscious effort to coexist, repair, and thrive together, creating a future where we make kin and build a world with care and cooperation at its core through different disciplines, knowledge, languages.

We believe that the more we talk about this situation in El Chaco, the more it allows us to see similar realities in other parts of the world, where natural resources are being appropriated by large enterprises for the benefit of a few. We believe in the strength of people, communities, and words to change the current situation.