Hidden agencies in alto del Buey

About the work

This work, presented at the Cultural Center of Cali, was the result of transdisciplinary research that questions the foundations of modern thought and the Anthropocene. Faced with the dualistic and exploitative vision that reduces nature to a calculable object, this project proposes art as a valid epistemological path to subvert that paradigm. To do so, it draws inspiration from shamanism, understood not as an archaic ritual, but as a political and cognitive practice of translation between species. Like the shaman who interprets the intentionality of rivers and mountains, the work seeks to grant agency to non-humans, using scientific tools—such as sensors and databases—not to dominate, but to translate and amplify the voice of ecosystems, thus promoting interspecies listening.

The fieldwork at the source of the Cali River, in Alto del Buey, integrated the capture of environmental data, radio astronomy recordings, and soundscapes. These elements were processed with SuperCollider and articulated in a Live Coding performance accompanied by an installation with vibrating bowls, which functioned as contemporary shamanic artifacts. Through this technological-aesthetic mediation, the work materialized a profound reflection, inviting the public to a paradigm shift in the human-nature relationship. By making visible and audible the agency of the non-human, the installation not only pointed to an ecological crisis, but recovered, through art, an ancestral mode of knowledge where the river's source is revealed once again as a space of connection and spiritual power.