Luisa Fernanda Alarcón Criales
Fundación Red Mujer-es Warmi Yuma
San Agustín, Huila, Colombia.
Writing with the birds that sing along the keyboard under the sunshine of a beautiful day surrounded by my most beloved companions, three adorable dogs and two crazy cats, I have to say that so much has happened, yet not much. I’m slowly starting to feel grief of leaving this powerful place and the amazing people I have encountered.
Working with la Fundación has been a learning experience of slowing down and be present with them. They are tremendously diverse in their knowledge and their focus of labor varies in all different factors such as food, art, political organization, animals, herbs, handicrafts, archeology, biology; yet to try to place them in one sort of knowledge for each is to loose them as a whole complex human being. They have been tremendously generous and open, which has allowed me to be.
My initial proposal and idea of what I would encountered has been modified since my arrival. The truth is that there has been little activity, but meaningful things have happened. We have focused our time and my job in here in the auto-ethnography workshop. Their ideas and ways of coming along with a project is unmeasurable. I’m fascinated by what would the final product be off their individual projects. It doesn’t seem soon to be, but we will continue to work at a distance so that I can support them as much as I can.
This territory has taught me to listen, to listen as the form of observing, of learning, of knowing, of being. To listen to its deafening evening silence, to listen to my motorcycle speak to me and let me know when to change speed, to listen to the dogs that don’t like me riding my motorcycle in the middle of the night by myself and in complete darkness, to listen to the roosters tell each other stories, and to the dogs scream from mountain to mountain who is coming down the road. Therefore, my attention is now fully on noise and silence. The acts of silence between women, the silencing of the organization, the noises they produce as forms of resistance, the relationship to noise and silence that the sculptures in the region produce as themselves and the stories they represent.
