Black Tent Meetings: The ecological wisdom of the Tribuga Bay in Colombia and the Dujiangyan water system in China by Cao Minghao & Chen Jianjun, Más Arte Más Acción

The Black Tent Meetings by lumbung artists Cao Minghao & Chen Jianjun is a series of events that reflects on grass, sandification, pikas, yaks, black beaches, and global environmental crises. Such reflections correspond to the gesture of making nature a subject of constitutional rights, such as in the 2008 constitution of Ecuador, thereby challenging the anthropocentric principle of the modern constitution. The concept of the black tent carries a similar concern. By connecting multiple actors, it can reactivate existing resources. In this sense, the black tent is an existing form rather than an invention for the future.

Ancient transborder species never stop making life-giving connections between sites on the planet, and they give us a sense of what species systems are capable of. But as global ecological issues come to the fore, wherever we are, we are experiencing the fact that the planet’s climate and ecosystems are rapidly changing. Attempts to perpetuate the ecological wisdom of non-modernity at places like the Tribugá Bay in Colombia and the Dujiangyan water system in China are connecting specific local contexts and technologies to global issues around climate change. They practice forgotten and abandoned tools and methods that question the prevailing capitalist and development paradigms.

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