Introduction

The following reflection shares the urgency for a decentring process at an eco-systemic level, focusing on two steps related to: how do we decentre?

Firstly, without being able to decentre the mankind from the dominant western and globalized model, the attempt to decentralize humanity to an eco-systemic level will continue to fail, this is in relation to all the other actors that need to be reconciled and collaborated with.

The second step is to build new frameworks that enable iterative and symmetric conversations with all the actants previously mentioned.

The hypothesis of this text is that southern conditions have powerful elements to foster those steps, giving precious hints on how to foresee possible decentred futures. Two different examples located in Mexico and Egypt will support the arguments by stimulating theory/praxis constant dialectics.

Southern condition

South here is not intended as a geographical condition, it is also a condition in which many territories and cultures have been marginalized throughout history (voluntarily and not-so-voluntarily). There are many drivers that can be considered: colonial/postcolonial, liberalism/globalisation, polarized development, etc. As a result of these processes, South share some common elements (not all conditions must occur simultaneously):

1. 1. Remote territories (peripheral to main national flows and infrastructures)
   2. Urban centres and gates to dispersed and marginal territories
   3. Low local development territories (and GDP)
   4. Territories with risk of mafia / criminal infiltration
   5. Proximity-based relationship and conviviality
   6. Vocation of material and immaterial heritage
   7. Segregation of native cultures/communities
   8. (potential) Tourist vocation
   9. International awards (UNESCO, Slow Food, etc.)
   10. Vocation creative industries
   11. Presence of small proactive entrepreneurial practices
   12. Territories where the third mission of the University is experienced
   13. Communities that tend to be older (ITA only)
   14. Presence of a strong manufacturing / craft culture

In southern environments humans coexist with multiple agents/diseases/issues by showcasing unprecedented collaborative attitudes, facing struggles with deeper strategies rooted in the ancient living cultures. This emancipative perspective links (both informal and formal urban) regeneration to social innovation processes. 

In recent times, the South is taking shape as an alternative[1], offering tools to think about globalization not only as a pandemic vehicle but a generator of a different model, allowing the creation of more diverse, sustainable and fair urban futures. Thus, the South is able to overturn the mainstream western paradigm by giving back value to local links, intangible heritage, power of communities, conviviality and proximity-based relationship. Syncretism and interspecies/actant collaborations are part of this peculiar feature of the South.

These thoughts are the core of Collaborative Agents (CA)[2], an on-going applied-research process and an exhibition aiming to focus on how these collaborative behaviors stem from challenging places, and what actant-related, eco-systemic and environmental values could be produced by them. CA is promoted by MUI[3], a new cultural centre within the Tecnologico de Monterrey, which is an important Mexican (Latin), international private university[4]. 

MUI is a physical/conceptual space, located in the historic centre of Puebla, that tries to answer the question «what is a university museum/cultural centre like in the 21st century?” by engaging a national and international network. Namely MUI is an agent for the 3rd mission of the University that aims to transform its tangible and intangible surroundings through the mobilization of university talents, as well as its audience and other private/public actors.

The Collaboration Algorithm 

The ratio of Collaborative Agents it’s guided by the Collaboration Algorithm, a graphic-textual device – linking theory and practice – that focuses on key concepts: syncretism as a way to foster future identities generation, conscious interspecies collaboration as the new limit to be tackled, systemic thinking/interaction as an operative framework.

The algorithm is made of four linked blocks. The first block includes four “big questions”: (1) What is collaboration? (2) Why do we need to collaborate? (3) How can we collaborate? (4) What results does collaborating produce?

(Fig.1)

Fig.3, the collaboration algorithm

They firstly aim to engage and challenge the future visitors of the MUI. Each of these questions is declined in successive “triggering questions”[6] that, in the second section, are to provide a focus and to establish a first interaction. Then, after the first two questioning sections, the algorithm provides some approaches by offering specific notions[5] accompanied with tools, authors, facts&figures and examples. This third section is the antechamber that leads to the last one, which consists of the works on display. Finally all the apparatuses are supported by thematic bibliographic references.

On syncretism and reconciliation

Syncretism and reconciliation are two key elements that go through the algorithm scheme and that are found in some practices and examples. Syncretism is a powerful device for building future identities in cultures. What is syncretism? 

1: the combination of different forms of belief or practice
2: the fusion of two or more originally different inflectional forms[7]

Syncretism is extremely lively in the “southern” framework. In Mexico is, for instance, between (at a general level): (1) the pre-Hispanic or Mesoamerican cultures and (2) the colonial, post-colonial and globalized one representing a western matrix. 

Likewise, syncretism in Cairo (Egypt) generated radical forms of coexistence: between christian, hebraic and islamic cults (Old City), between living and deads (Al-Qarafa mamluk cemetery) and between humans and non-humans (Manshiyat Naser).

Reconciliation is another key element to be considered as a fundamental premise for the creative component of syncretism (that is, the building of future identities for a culture), in order to (re)build new bonds with all the other actants to interact within an eco-systemic way.

In Mexico, Tiemperos or Graniceros are individuals able to interact with supernatural entities and invoke water for the lands or the contrary. Their practice has roots both in pre-Hispanic culture and catholic one.[8] 

As argued by Latour, in order to deeply recognise the integration of mankind within the environment, it is required to engage with non-human agents in a symmetrical and sustainable way.[9] Accordingly, the approach here promoted is not to give voices throughout a proxy but to allow action and autonomy in order to foster collaborations. Thus MUI tries to use the point of view of these other actants: the rock, the river, bacteria, waste, etc., as the following two case-studies well represent.

The Mitla’s loom

Mitla is a small municipality 40 kilometers from Oaxaca, capital of the homonymous Mexican state. By 1519 when Spaniards got there it used to be the most prominent city in the region. Mitla in the Zapotec culture (among the 56 indigenous cultures in Mexico)  is also known as the dead’s city: an important political/religious settlement that was also believed to be a gate to the underworld. Nowadays it is a touristic point of interest and a vibrant centre for craftsmanship, mainly textile. The Zapotec culture is still lively and diffused. The MUI had been working here since a while. 

Don Abelardo is the full-of-energy-and-vision-mayor fostering plenty of spontaneous collaborative practices within the community. The relationship with his office is solid and has generated different projects. For instance, “Zapotech” was an arts residency during which Chacalall, a Mexico City based visual artist, spent time in Mitla with “Taller Cocijo”, a leading Zapotec textile workshop run by brothers Don Gil and Raymundo. 

(Fig.2)

Fig.6, chalalall artwork: somos mitla, Courtesy of MUI, 2020

(Fig.3)

Fig.6, chalalall artwork: somos mitla, Courtesy of MUI, 2020

Technological Craftsmanship is the concept defining this syncretism-led-process: what happens if we put together a traditional technology with a compatible actual one?

Chacalal’s animism deeply resonated with the Mitla’s spaces and the Zapotecs culture and generated an incredible entanglement between worldviews resulting in a positively redundant and intense feedback-loop. Analog becoming digital becoming analog, animations being deanimated and embroidered then analogically reanimated and digitized, collaborative expert-non expert textile works etc. This experience generated a very powerful taxonomy on how it’s possible to work with syncretism. 

(Fig.4)

Fig.4, cocijo at work with chacalall, Courtesy of MUI, 2019

The “Loom Project” can be considered as a byproduct of “Zapotech”. The main idea is to foster the consciousness about interspecies collaboration in the audiences. The project has been organized according to the following steps:

 1 – Ancestral technology: “Cocijo” lent a traditional four pedal loom from Mitla.

2 – Actual technology: together with mechatronics, mechanics and computation students we automated the loom. A machine will be activating it.

3 – Human-to-Machine relationship: the loom won’t just weave by itself. It will be able to detect human presence in the room and stop weaving and teach humans to weave

4 – Digitizing uncommon things: thanks to mocap (a motion capture device) it has been possible to digitize the intangible of the intangibles: gesture. Don Rodrigo and Gil were open to suit-up and being digitally captured while weaving: thus we managed to secure an extremely fragile and non-transferable element.

(Fig.5)

Fig. 5, mocap digitizing process, Courtesy of MUI, 2020

5 – Machines performing humans: the machine automatizing the loom will perform the human gestures digitized.

(Fig.6)

Fig. 6, machine performing humans, Courtesy of MUI, 2020

6 – The part of bacterias: the output of the process will be a diagram revealing the nature of each agent involved: human textile patterns will differ from machine ones and cotton is dyed by bacteria cultures.

(Fig.7)

Fig. 7, bacterias dying cotton, Courtesy of MUI, 2020

A dive into Garbage City

“Garbage City” is the most common nickname identifying the Manshiyat Naser settlement, on the outskirts of the Mokattam Hills within Cairo’s sprawling metropolitan area. In this area live a marginalized community of people named Zabbaleen, an Egyptian Arabic term that means “Garbage People”: a minority community of Coptic Christians that originally migrated to Cairo around 1940s, due to the city growth, establishing themself in the eastern area during the 1970s.

Zabbaleen live among waste: the settlement – in all its components (humans, animals, buildings) – acts like a sort of circular ecosystem that is able to transform on a daily base the surplus coming from wealthier districts of Cairo into a new nutrient, allowing the city not to be submerged by waste.

This chaotic and challenging environment is an emblematic example of radical coexistence between humans, animals (pigs, pigeons, chickens), bacteria and waste. The local community live with dignity, have organized lives and have developed a strong resilience to high rates of diseases.

(Fig. 08)

Fig. 08, Garbage City, Courtesy of Maurizio Carta, 2019

(Fig.09)

Fig. 09, Garbage City, Courtesy of Maurizio Carta, 2019

The organic waste is a vital input in the local ecosystem, since it is used for pig rearing, which is forbidden for the Muslims. Therefore, pigs are the main source of income since they sort organic waste from the recyclable materials with their mouths, allowing the Zabbaleen to profit from the garbage in three ways:

– by selling pork to fellow Christians at market;

– by selling truckloads of manure to rural farmers as fertilizer;

– by selling recyclable materials to workshops. 

(Fig.10)

Fig. 10, The pigs of the Garbage City, Courtesy of Maurizio Carta, 2019

Other kinds of waste and materials are processed through the buildings, a very perfectly organized gears that allow the complex system of the neighbourhood to function[10]. Bacteria are the agents that activate a massive and distributed natural fermentation process that transforms matter into other matter. Thanks to their action, waste serves as an interspecies transfer.[11]

According to an object-oriented-ontology (OOO) perspective, thanks to the collaboration between humans, animals and bacteria, the matter never dies, instead is regenerated and kept alive throughout a continuous relational stream[12]. All this is an example of a situated systemic design process without (professional) designers, but where everybody designs.[13]

Due to this organization and the investments (for trucks, plastic granulators, paper compactors, cloth grinders, aluminium smelters and tin processors) the Zabbaleen are able to recycle up to 80% of the waste that they collect through their family-run micro-enterprises that generate jobs, including those for production of handmade crafts from rags and paper, and incomes from some 40,000 people. Hence, this chaotic settlement has avoided being a landfill or a mere place of decomposition, to become instead a place of creation full of thriving vitality.

Conclusions

This reflection doesn’t have the ambition to define what the South is, but it is a first attempt to figure out a map of relevant, ubiquitous and common elements between different territorial areas. In this sense, linking southern territories also helps to reduce distances and build bridges, even with differences, and to understand what the common factors are and reinforce them in order to offer visions of a new cultural avant-garde. 

Moreover, what has been proposed here is a starting discourse that will be further implemented within a transnational project/process called From South to South linking the TEC (MEX) with the University of Basilicata (IT) and other urban regeneration practices based in Mexico and Italy.