PhD Valencia-Tobon Alejandro

Co-existence: public art, citizen science and post-conflict forest biodiversity in Colombia

After signing a peace agreement with FARC guerrillas in November, 2016, Colombia is transitioning from almost six decades of violence to a post-conflict period. In such a process, members of society have to re-establish dialogue and learn to co-exist. Based on artistic, biological and anthropological evidence gathered during previous interdisciplinary projects in rainforest ecosystems in Colombia (involving anthropologists, musicians, ex-combatants, community leaders and biology researchers), during this residency programme I aim to reveal that bioacoustic data, sound recordings and participatory art can offer a way to enact the multiplicity of relations between humans and non-humans as multispecies entanglement, while at the same time translating scientific knowledge into the public domain. The main product of the residency will be a series of public art strategies produce as baseline guidelines to help in the creation an environmental education programme to train citizen scientists in Colombia. I will contribute to the residency and Saari Well programme by designing two public workshops (during the first and second month of the residency) that will show how in disciplinary terms ‘biodiversity, ‘public art’ or ‘bioacoustics’ are inherently valuable but when combined, in the context of a bio-rich, post-conflict-landscape Colombia, they are also productive of new relations, expertise and development opportunities.