Syntax will host the collective COYOTE from the 26th to the 29th September. Public event presenting COYOTE ongoing research at Syntax on September 30th at 19:00. (Bring anything shareable to put in the common pot, the com-post.) COYOTE (Grégoire Benzakin, Tristan Bera, Nuno da Luz, Elida Høeg, Clémence Seurat, Ana Vaz) is a collective formed in 2015 as a dérive and aftermath of their experience at French philosopher Bruno Latour’s experimental laboratory in arts and politics at Sciences Po, Paris. COYOTE is a cross-disciplinary group concerned with art, ecology, ethnology and political sciences. --------------- Dear Coyotes, For “Sud e magia”, Syntax has been painted with lime whitewash and iron oxide – one room in ochre, the other in red – to host circles of plants and lights that talk with each other: the lights do it in a kind of Morse code that is sound activated and devil's weeds do it by growing, bearing fruit, releasing seeds… and dying. Both are clues taken freely from Carlos Castaneda's books on his so-called shaman apprenticeship with the Yaqui sorcerer Don Juan. I got to read Castaneda a few years ago as a curiosity on California 60s anthropology studies but as we have tried to read through Roy Wagner's “Coyote Anthropology”, I realized more and more how Castaneda is such an important storyteller, a trickster (another coyote in the history of trickery). By the way, Ana and I covered some connections between Castaneda and Wagner during our "no longer innocent or guilty" event in New York. It has been printed as a newspaper sheet and plenty of copies are available at Syntax. And so, for our coming together starting on Sept 26th, I propose that the space is used as a common room for working (crafting) for a week. Hence, things might and should move around and new things should be added, brought in, spatially, sonically, invisibly. For now, I just want to leave you with the truest of coincidences: when in Japan (collaborating with Ana on a film project), I got to know that the plants at Syntax were sick and dying. Later that evening at Kita-Senju station, I saw an “ikebana” arrangement combining branches of devil's weed, bearing fruits with yellow daisies, and, as I was taking a photo, an email notification from Clémence appeared on my phone's screen, chaining together this huge “South of the heart”. This leads me to ask you to bring things to craft together… in the spirit of “ikebana” arrangements. — Nuno. P.S.: Ana Vaz is coming with some images from her detour to Fukushima, bridging real and potential contaminations via the new Japanese release of “Shin Godzilla”. Speaking of contamination, Tristan Bera has found this poem by a Mohawk poet Peter Blue Cloud alluding to our fetish animal – should we say totem or taboo? – the coyote. Clémence Seurat will be drawing on witchcraft. Elida Høeg will be bringing some North in the form of stones and stories. * taken from Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of life in Capitalist Ruins
