To whom does the earth belong? What does planetary flourishing look like to precolonial eyes? 

In the midst of a global pandemic, the epistemic entrapment and sensory deprivation by quarantine governance leave few alternatives. With xenophobia and ethno-nationalist separation on the rise, extractivism and developmentalism continuing to fuel the global climate breakdown, we find ourselves unable to articulate a future beyond popular cliches, or to imagine life free from the immediate and slow violence of capitalist subjugation, environmental destruction, and heteronormative becoming. We believe that returning to the primordial text of Shanhaijing (Book of mountains and seas) from this state is returning to the possibility of a future-enabling speculation. We look to mythology as a space that mediates anti-colonial, anti-categorical, non-linear thinking, a kind of resilience that’s been seeded in the origin.

The stories, creatures, and environments in Shanhaijing (Book of Mountains and Seas) gesture toward a cosmology that is correlational. Cross-pollinated species, transmutable beings, androgynous beasts and humans thrive in the infinite space between heaven and earth, where matter and phenomena are in a constant flow of exchange. This kind of imaginative correlation dilutes the contemporary desire for categorization, destabilizes hierarchical orderings. With roots in Taoist philosophy, Shanhaijing centers the body as an expression of the shape and logic of the cosmos, a way of living and knowing through embodiment. This radical epistemology enables us to think on a terrestrial scale, to form a deep and intimate solidarity with ourselves and our surroundings.

The development of this project has been supported by Shandaken Project: Governors Island and LMCC Arts Center, New York.