Agropoetics Reader

The Agropoetics Reader unfolds as a collection of texts that informed, grounded, and nourished SAVVY Contemporary’s Soil Is an Inscribed Body: On Sovereignty and Agropoetics’ (August 30th–October 6th, 2019), an exhibition and research project curated by Elena Agudio and Marleen Boschen. The project was conceived in the framework of The Invention of Science, SAVVY Contemporary’s 2019–2020 programme, devoted to questioning the presumed universality and objectivity of the scientific canon. In this context of reflections and cogitations about the epistemic violence perpetrated by the West against other forms of knowledges, Soil Is an Inscribed Body examined anti-colonial struggles of past and current land conflicts across the world in order to address the invasiveness of neo-agro-colonialism and its extractivist logics.

Invited to contribute to the exhibition and to present an artistic position, The Institute of Endotic Research (TIER) proposed to edit a publication together with the curators. The path was longer than expected, the diverted tracks were not few, but here—for the use of readers and many other agropoets—you can find a materialisation of this collaboration. You can linger on a selection of sources that inspired this research and exhibition, retrace the discussions that appeared along the way of its realisation, and engage with the ideas that grounded and sprouted from the project. At the same time, interwoven, you also encounter texts and materials suggested by TIER in dialogue with the curators. The reader has contributions by: Elena Agudio & Marleen Boschen, Lorenzo Sandoval, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Filipa César, Bouba Touré, Mirelle/Jennifer/Alex Ungprateeb Flynn, Marwa Arsanios, Benji Akbulut, Marisol de la Cadena, Mijo Miquel, Ayesha Hameed, Hervé Yamguen, Maria Ptqk, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, Luis Berríos-Negrón, Huying Ng, INLAND, Asuncíon Molinos Gordo and Yemisi Aribisala; designed by Cleo Wächter.

The reader is edited by Elena Agudio, Marleen Boschen and Lorenzo Sandoval; co-edited by Onur Çimen and Cleo Wächter