Between Cosmopolitics and Florestania, a Third Nature

Concepts like cosmopolitics, florestania, and third nature connect as coordinates that group works and ideas within Referentes, and they also reflect the theoretical framework that programs like Flora and the Museum of Art at the National University consolidated around a series of artistic practices and discourses. These ideas represent a departure from Western civilizational logic and signal the entry of nature into the political realm. Cosmopolitics is the epistemic and ontological framework that can reconcile multiple entities and forms of knowledge. As the word itself suggests, a politics of the cosmos cannot be reduced solely to humans and their technologies; it must include all living systems and their realities. The idea of florestania, conceptualized by Antonio Alves and disseminated during the government of Jorge Viana in the state of Acre, Brazil, in the 2000s, emerges from the union of the words 'selva' (forest) and 'ciudadanía' (citizenship). It is a cosmopolitical concept, which, in the words of Alves himself, is 'an attempt to draw attention to the fact that humanity is not the center but an integral and dependent part of nature,' and in this sense, it 'seeks a new social and natural pact, where humanity arrives at a new arrangement with nature ... where the decision of nature intervenes in the processes.' Florestania belongs to the repertoire of pluriversal strategies for degrowth proposed as alternatives to the rentier logic of developmentalism and suggests an equivalent concept of citizenship for the inhabitants of the forest, meaning belonging to the collective entity called the forest that comes with rights and responsibilities, such as respect for the environment and the use of its resources without destruction since this political entity includes humans, animals, and the forest itself.

However, this edition is titled Third Nature, a concept that continues the idea of the first nature, that wild and bucolic nature that has never been interfered with by human action, and the second nature as that domesticated and cultivated by human action (parks, plantations, domesticated animals). The third nature would be a shared and intervened environment involving multiple species. It exists in situations and contexts in which structures made by and for humans are occupied and used by other species, resulting in ecosystems co-produced through interspecies relationships. A cosmopolitical view, in which nature constitutes a political entity, can see these successive natures as manifestations of the production relationships typical of capitalism. Building on ideas developed by William Cronon in Nature's Metropolis, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing elaborates this as follows in her book The Mushroom at the End of the World: 'The first nature is ecological relationships (including humans) ... the second nature refers to capitalist transformations of the environment,' and 'the third nature comprises everything that manages to live despite capitalism ... assemblages of forms in entangled forms of life that converge in coordination through many types of temporal rhythms'.

Many of the artists and works exhibited in this edition of Referentes operate within the discursive coordinates of cosmopolitics, florestania, and third nature, mobilizing, through art, these interspecies assemblages where humans, plant and animal life forms, and technologies created by human intervention converge. Throughout the exhibition, we see works that suggest the power of this third nature, of these assemblages that are essential for the survival of all living beings in the current world and in the context of the unprecedented ecological imbalance generated by capitalism. The painting by Alberto Baraya, Red Fox and Horse in the Shipyard of Gdansk, 2020, offers a very eloquent image of the co-production of ecosystems by different species and technologies, a coexistence of species in the spaces of capitalism that is present in the works of the duo Mazenett Quiroga, María Teresa Hincapié, Alexandra McCormick, Jonier Marín's Sao Paulo Project (1976), and Antonio Caro's Achiote (2001). María Elvira Escallón's Encounters with Notable Beings introduces us to the humanizing dimension of nature inherent in the cosmopolitical visions that unfold throughout Referentes.

The jungle regions of the Amazon River basin and others like Catatumbo have been sites of dispute since the colonial period up to the present day. Regions once inhabited by indigenous peoples who lived in close relationship with nature were devastated, deforested, their biodiversity replaced by monocultures and extractive activities, with the human conflicts that this process of systematic destruction brought with it. Mary Louise Pratt in her book Imperial Eyes, Travel Writing, and Transculturation talks about the colonial gaze that saw nature as a passive entity, as "empty landscapes" that only had value in terms of a capitalist future and its potential to produce wealth. Scientists and traveling artists, from Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland to Maurice Rugendas and Ferdinand Bellerman, to name just a few, contributed, albeit unintentionally, to consolidating this colonial European view that turned these ecosystems into landscapes to be exploited for their natural resources, resulting in the deterritorialization of the indigenous peoples who inhabited these lands. José Alejandro Restrepo's series Equinoctial America, and much of his work in general, offers a critical view of this construction and iconography of nature and its paradoxes. While Humboldt always had a vision of the interconnectedness of all entities in the natural world, a vision that in some way also allows us to think of a cosmopolitical perspective, the epistemological, political, and economic imperatives that governed these exploration journeys were deeply intertwined with the colonial logic of extraction and deterritorialization of indigenous populations. Works like Jonier Marín's Amazonia Report (1976) in the 1970s documented the realities of extraction in the Amazon basin and its human consequences among the various peoples living there. Noemí Pérez creates a fictional jungle from memory and emotions in her paintings to explore the conflicts that have devastated the cross-border region of Catatumbo, which has served as a backdrop for large-scale cultivation of sugarcane, cocoa, coffee, oil exploitation, and more recently, the cultivation of coca and its implications for the Colombian armed conflict. In a way, Pérez restores nature to nature through her drawings and paintings of this territory, where she was born, which has been historically disputed. This restitution through the representation of the various beings and plants that inhabit the jungle is also present in the works of artists like Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, from the Yanomami people, and Abel Rodríguez, from the Nonuya people, whose drawings contrast with the Western representation of the jungle landscape, while reflecting an experience of that landscape as "intensely humanized, saturated with local history and meanings, where plants, animals, and geographical formations have names, uses, symbolic functions, stories, and a place in the construction of indigenous knowledge." This humanized jungle, with its own agency and attributes, is the shared territory of indigenous artists who are currently mobilizing an unprecedented epistemic shift in the history of art. Their worldviews bring us closer to the condition of "florestanos," inhabitants of the jungle, and the complex codes that run through their representations. The works of artists like Aycoobo (Nonuya people), Carlos Jacanamijoy (Inga people), Tahuanty Jacanamijoy (Inga and Wayuu people), and José Ismael Manco offer unique images of these indigenous worldviews and the peoples who live near the land and the magical entities that inhabit it. Other works, such as those of Jesús Eduardo Correa Nache (Nasa people) and Julieth Morales (Misak people), intertwine the natural world and the connections to the land with the rituals and social customs of their peoples. Florestania is a concept that can be applied to indigenous and native communities around the world and their ways of relating to the land. This is also the case for the Tao people in Taiwan, who have managed to keep their traditions, worldviews, and relationship with the land alive despite the onslaught of economic, political, and climatic forces. Lanyu - 3 Stories by Charwei Tsai (in collaboration with Tsering Tashi Gyalthang) explores the rituals and spiritual traditions of this indigenous people and "the impact of environmental and social factors on their lives." The works of Julieth Morales and Charwei Tsai highlight the parallel that exists between these cultures separated by time and geography, and the role of weaving in these cultures, not only from a utilitarian perspective but as a transmission of knowledge (in the case of Morales and Tsai's works, matrilineal transmission), a factor of community cohesion, and an expression of the worldviews of these peoples. This is reflected in the works of the exhibition by Olga de Amaral, Antonio Pichillá Quiacaín, and Carolina Caycedo, where the materiality of weaving carries this load of meanings.

A cosmopolitical vision promotes relationships with the land and its resources from a conception of the Earth as a living, thinking, and sentient entity. Rivers are the veins of the Earth, and projects by artists like Carolina Caycedo, Clemencia Echeverri, and Miguel Angel Rojas emphasize the centrality of rivers, denouncing the threat that extractive activities pose to the balance of aquifer systems. Similarly, the recovery of ancestral knowledge emerges as an alternative for countries in the global South, whose cultures, forms of knowledge, and relationships with nature were suppressed, making them dependent on industrialized products that return raw materials extracted from their own contexts, transformed and processed. As mentioned in the text of the Selva Cosmopolítica program of the University of the Andes Museum, a cosmopolitical practice is biocentric, considering nature as a "cognitive, semiotic, historical, and political" entity, and it works "transversally, through art and memory," in exchange with communities inhabiting these territories, forming assemblages with indigenous and native peoples. This type of practice also describes the work that Uriel Orlow has been engaged in for over a decade, especially his work with communities around the world, particularly in African countries, to recover knowledge that was eroded by centuries of colonial rule through art and collaborative processes. Muthi is a word in Southern Africa that designates traditional medicine, which was practically eliminated by colonial authorities. However, the pharmaceutical industry recognizes the medicinal properties of these plants and, in a way, maintained a presence of these plants in their original contexts through cultivation for industrial purposes. Muthi, created in 2017, explores the complex networks and interconnections between technologies, knowledge, and the natural world in a global economy. Just as Orlow explores the complex intersections between global economies and local realities as part of a framework where the land and its resources occupy a central position, the works of Ximena Garrido-Lecca document the tensions between ancestral knowledge, the land, and mining in Peru. The work Micro-Resistances by Lebanese artist Marwa Arsanios, carried out in Tolima, Colombia, speaks of the resistance strategies of smaller rural communities "against the war waged by transnational corporations against the smallest and most fundamental element of life, the seed" and the threat that transgenic maize poses to the food sovereignty of the peoples.

The specter of colonialism that runs through these works is also evident in the works of Elvira Escallón and José Alejandro Restrepo, which refer to the role of the church in the colonial enterprise and as a determining factor in the promotion of Cartesianism, which sought to suppress indigenous knowledge and worldviews but was also in conflict with the Christian mysticism that prevailed in the Middle Ages. Both works allude to the imagery of the Baroque as an expression of the epistemic tumult that was occurring in Europe following the encounter with the New World. The fundamental ruptures that the Renaissance brought about with the medieval world confronted a radically different and unknown world, resulting in the Baroque as a device of signification, as an epistemic machine that fueled the colonial enterprise. These epistemic forces and devices were reactivated with the rhetoric of modernity and development, intensifying the cycle of dependency that still afflicts nations shaped by colonial processes, as is the case with many countries in the global South.

A cosmopolitical vision then proposes an alternative to the Cartesian logic that separates the mind from the body, nature from culture, what Isabelle Stengers identifies as the pharmakon, not only in the Platonic tradition but in the pharmaceutical sense, something that is both a cure and a poison. For Stengers, the art of dosing obliges us to find a new relationship between scientific and non-scientific practices, leading to a negotiation process that results from collective intelligence. The cosmopolitical proposal points towards that collective intelligence, the dosing of science and non-science, productive negotiation between citizens and florestans, between different species, technologies, and ecosystems in the third nature.