First Festival Network of Grounded Practices

The CHASE Network Atlas of Grounded Practices brings together researchers, artists, and practitioners working with land-based practices in Latin America and the diaspora, particularly those engaging local knowledge systems and ecological work beyond extractive frameworks.
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The First Festival of Grounded Practices is a way to launch the network and invite new researchers to join, collaborate and celebrate together. The two-day festival reflects the epistemologies and practices the network centres through workshops, talks, screenings and activities led by Latin American practitioners on themes of body and territory, food sovereignty, sound, and language.
This event is possible thanks to CHASE funding and hosting by Center for Art and Ecology at Goldsmiths, Univeristy of London
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The event is open and free for everyone to attend. However a ticket is needed for any workshops you would like to participate in and for the collective meal in order to receive a meal . Tickets for all other activities are encouraged, as spaces are limited by venue capacity.

Program
June 18th

_Coffee in the Garden \ intro with LARC _5.30pm
welcome w/ Coffee in the Garden and a mediated round of introductions with Latin American Research Community (LARC)

Panel Discussion \ T.Daniela + J. Manzi_ 6.30pm
panel discussion on archives and social movements with researchers Tania Daniela and Javiera Manzi

Film Screening \ Taller de Cine Minero _8pm
Miguel Errazu’s Taller de Cine Minero (Miners’ Film Workshop) screening of three recovered super 8 short documentary films

+++ drinks

June 19th

_Workshop \ Archive and Language_12 pm
*separate ticket needed

archive and language workshop by mothertongue studio with researcher Vania Gonzalvez

_Workshop \ Food as Method_11am
*separate ticket needed
workshop food as method: cooking and the senses facilitated by Amir Garmroudi (Kitchen Research Unit) with guest chef Keshia Sakarah

_Collective Meal _2 pm
*separate ticket needed

collective meal with food prepared in food as method workshop facilitated by Amir Garmroudi (Kitchen Research Unit) with guest chef Keshia Sakarah

_Backyard Talks \ Inhabiting Rivers _3.30pm
backyard talk on inhabiting rivers with researchers Adriana Arroyo, Isabelle Donetch, Natalia Figuiredo

_Workshop \ These Anxious Maps_5 pm
*separate ticket needed
workshop these anxious maps, somatic counter cartographies with researcher Adriana arroyo

_Sonic Session \ Amazonic Sounds _8pm
listening session on Amazonian soundscapes with researcher Natalia Figueiredo
+++ drinks

Info: This will be a mediated round of introductions - each researcher is invited to introduce their research project through an object or image accompanied by coffee and treats

Info: Taller de Cine Minero
Miguel Errazu’s Taller de Cine Minero (Miners’ Film Workshop)

Screening of recovered super 8 short documentary films from the ‘Mining Film Workshop’ (Telamayu, Bolivia, 1983). The workshop trained 16 sons and daughters of miners in documentary research techniques and methodologies in direct cinema. It was a joint initiative between the Union Federation of Mining Workers of Bolivia and the Varan Association of France.

Info: w/ Amir Gamraoudi (Kitchen Research Unit) + guest chef Keshia Sakarah \ Led by Amir Gamraoudi of the Kitchen Research Unit with guest chef Keshia Sakarah, the workshop brings together decolonial approaches to food, migration, and heritage. Through cooking, discussion, and collective making, it will explore food as a site where questions of ecology, memory, migration, and care can be engaged through practice. This workshop will result in a collective meal, please grab a ticket to eat with us!
*Amir Gamraoudi is a London-based anthropologist, chef, filmmaker, and intervention designer whose work focuses on collaborative sensory ethnography and more-than-human food worlds. Keshia Sakarah is a chef, writer, and researcher exploring Caribbean foodways, memory, and contemporary approaches to decolonial food culture through research, writing, and culinary practice.

Info: The collective meal marks the culmination of the Cooking Matters workshop, bringing participants together to share dishes developed through conversation, collaboration, and hands-on cooking. Rooted in the themes explored throughout the session; food, migration, ecology, memory, and care, the meal becomes both a gathering and a form of collective research. Drawing on decolonial and community-based approaches to cooking, the dinner invites participants to reflect on food not only as nourishment, but as a medium for storytelling, exchange, and social connection. Prepared collaboratively with Amir Gamraoudi, the Kitchen Research Unit, and guest chef Keshia Sakarah, the meal creates a space for discussion, hospitality, and shared experience around the table.***please grab a ticket to eat with us

Info: Backyard talks is a conversational space for art, architecture, and politics staging experimental and cross-disciplinary thinking in informal, domestic-scale settings where ideas are allowed to be tested, played with and remain unresolved. This particular conversation brings together Natalia Figueiredo, Adriana Arroyo, and Isabelle Donetch to think through the river as a political, ecological, and embodied ground across different geographies and scales. Through their different practices, the discussion will touch on questions of ecology, borders, territory, inhabitation, memory, and the relationship between bodies and water systems.

Info: The San Juan River, flowing along the border of Nicaragua and Costa Rica, is the focus of Adriana Arroyo’s research into the relationship between coloniality and ecology. Stretching from inland forests to the Caribbean Sea, the river passes through one of the world’s most biodiverse regions while carrying histories of extraction, violence, and resistance. Since the mid-19th century, colonial governments and corporations have sought to transform the river into a profitable transoceanic route, imposing systems that continue to shape the territory and its communities. Drawing on Cian Dayrit’s “Militant Mapping: A Template Toolkit” and Steve Paxton’s “The Small Dance,” this workshop uses clay, movement, and mapping to explore the connections between bodies, landscapes, and colonial histories. ***Participants are welcome to bring a map that is personally meaningful to them.

Info: This listening session focuses on sound system culture in the Brazilian Amazon known as aparelhagens. It will explore how musical circulation, radio culture, and port networks shaped the soundscape of the Atlantic Amazonia from the 1950s onwards. From bolero and merengue to brega and technobrega, the session traces the emergence of a distinct sonic culture rooted in collective listening, dance, and sound system parties.

Natalia Figueredo is a Latino-Amazonian architect, urbanist, and cultural theorist from Belém (Brazil), currently based in Barcelona. Her work sits at the intersection of urbanism, cultural studies, and urban anthropology, with a focus on critical ecologies, decolonial thought, and feminisms, connecting Amazonian contexts to global debates.

Info: Mother tongues is an interdisciplinary and research-led collective applying decolonial, feminist and queer theory in exploring language and identity within collections.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Goldsmith, 41 Lewisham Way, London, United Kingdom

Concerts, fests, parties, meetups - all the happenings, one place.

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