The workshop led by Fernanda Múnera offered participants an opportunity for widening the routines of formal education and opening to more intuitive, embodied ways of learning. It was initially planned to be on Plants’ Agency, which then gradually grew into something broader: an exploration of the many agents of place, some of whom make themselves intelligible through assemblages, or dynamic constellations of heterogeneous elements (human and more-than-human, material and immaterial, organic and technological) that come together temporarily to produce relations, affects, and possibilities.
The workshop started with a lively discussion that emerged from the participant’s wonderings around the role of plants and ‘weeds’. What does it mean to pluck a plant or groom it? Could an act seen as disturbance also be care? How do we know what plants might need or want? What is "touch" for the plants? These questions opened a space for thinking differently about relationality, responsibility, and the ways humans engage with nonhuman life.
The practice unfolded in several stages. The participants co-created with place a series of land installations, each charged with personal and environmental significance. As the workshop progressed the installation and their elements seemed to respond, offering unexpected insights. For many, this was an intense and emotional experience, revealing answers in ways that were surprising, unexpected or even positively unsettling. Participants translated these encounters into creative forms: drawings, poems, or written reflections.
