Milena Bonilla | Ferals and Ruderals. History through the Cracks: Performative Walk

For the final session of 𝙁𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙡𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙍𝙪𝙙𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙡𝙨–a year-long series of workshops exploring the plant life in the WG-terrein in Amsterdam, learning from their dual capacities as medicines and poison–𝗠𝗶𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗮 𝗕𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗮 takes us on a performative walk through key historical sites in the WG-terrein. Picking up the threads that emerged during her year-long research, Bonilla will unpack the spatial politics of this place with the help of plants, their seasonal memories, ecologies and medicinal powers. The walk concludes with a “research deviation” presented at If I Can’t Dance by choreographer and acupuncturist 𝗧𝗼𝗻𝗶 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗻𝘀, who collaborated with Bonilla throughout the year. 

The walk will depart from the former asylum, the “Buitengasthuis”, dwelling on the unrealized proposal to transform it into an ethnographic museum. From there, it will proceed to the Women’s Clinic, the “Vrouwenkliniek”, where If I Can’t Dance is located. In bridging these two sites, questions around spatial practices of division and control will be considered, exploring the entanglement between colonial expansion and modern medicine, as well as the resonances between practices of enclosure and the structures of herbaria and plantation systems.

What does the shaping of a city and its spaces for healing say about coloniality, the objectification of life forms, and confinement? And how might plants help us rethink historical cycles beyond the linearity of historical discourse? Can we exert political imagination beyond historical determinism?

Mapping soil, structure and space as characters, witnesses, and comrades of ruderal plants, we will enter into an assembly of memory through biochemical companionship and the architectures hosting it.

Meeting point: If I Can’t Dance
📍WG-Plein 881
🕔 Saturday 19 September
16–18hr
(walk-in: 15:45)