And the two snakes suddenly tightened up to each other, intertwined firmly. As if they were trying to fit the skin flakes of their skin, one under the other, as if they were pieces of a single mechanism.

Their bodies slipped over each other, making increasing friction. It all started with a movement that seemed almost like dancing. They had never seen each other before, but they knew for sure that they were born from the same material, from the same hand. Their scales were impressed with the same prints, their skin gave off the same scent. They didn't really know how long they had existed, but they knew that they had been created within seconds of each other; and now the urge to merge into a single form was irresistible. No matter what form they would become, the only thing that was certain was that they had to adhere to each other completely. The spiral created by their bodies became thinner and thinner. Any movement different than a centripetal one had become impossible. They did not know the story of Kay Kay and Treng Treng vilù, of their mythical struggle that led to the division of sea and land, to the creation of mountains, birds and fish. But like Kay Kay and Treng Treng vilù, they could not be one without the other. When the fury of their seemingly endless embrace came to a halt, the only thing left on the surface was the end of their tails, also fused into a single protrusion in the upper centre of this new ovoid form, which breathed with a single movement, a unique rhythm. In its exact middle there was a hole, barely ajar, almost as if it were a wound, from which the breath started and through which life could pass. They did not know the story, the two snakes, they had never heard it, but their flesh knew, their scales suggested to the world that they could not exist without each other; and that, in order to generate and give life, they had to commit to this endless embrace.

The world in which the two snakes lived was made up mainly of dust and water, it was a world in which substance had a life of its own, in which the movement of one form inevitably conditioned that of another, and the only possible motion was that of seeking, to generate and regenerate oneself. The exchange between what happened on the surface and what lived in the profundity was continuous and inevitable, as was the fragmentation of forms and the mixing of materials. Sometimes the air was crossed by flying organisms, most often spherical, which had decided to become lung, containers of breath and stories. Perhaps, these spherical organisms came from an external world, nobody knew it for sure, but it was known that they were keepers of whispered words, that, keeping on blowing, allowed them to hover in the air. One day, one of these organisms, decided to go stretching downwards. To do that she has to open more of her own sphere to the outside world, creating a gap in her almost closed form. In her continuous wandering, from time to time, she happened to carry passengers who otherwise would not have been able to fly in the air. Her balloon collected their stories and used their breath to keep flying. The stories and the breaths mixed inside her body, and when the wind took out moments from them, these were now made up of a thousand fragments. All these fragments were coming from as many different mouths, and the stories that were blown into the air no longer had an origin, but continued to tell themselves always different. The more time passed, the more easily it happened that these fragments of stories, eternally migrating in the air, met, knotted, merged and enlarged, like a cloud that, as it passed, collected the thousands of droplets in its path.

It was from the encounter of a hundred and more fragments that the history of the island of volcanoes was born. It is said that in the beginning the island wandered under water, when her rind was still made of hard, lifeless, resistant and hostile matter. She was built to explore, observe, spy and transport; her body was forged from hard metal to allow warlike passengers to cross and plumb the seabed. No one knows for how many years she wandered, but suddenly, one day, she decided to stop. She decided to rest slowly on the seabed, letting herself be: enveloped by the surrounding materials, crossed by the living creatures in the water. She decided to anchor herself to the seabed; she chose a place in which to sink her roots: after so much wandering, she had found her place.

With the passing of time the substances around her began to adhere more and more to her body, and gradually transformed it. As time went by, her rind changed, now contaminated by the life around it, hybridized with everything it came in contact with; and the more the rind grew and transformed, the longer the roots grew into the ground. Until one day - perhaps the day of the snake dance, nobody knows for sure - a sudden and violent seaquake turned the world upside down, and the island, firmly anchored to the seabed, for the first time found herself observing the sky. Her body, now in contact with the air and exposed to sunlight, starts to change. Her roots had penetrated so deep that they had reached the lava present in the heart of the world, and they were now ready to become pulsating veins, to transport that liquid to the welcoming centre of the body which had become home, which had become matter capable of generating other matter. And this is how the island became an island, positioned at the centre of the world. The four observation towers became four volcanoes which, following a circular rhythm, erupted lava to feed the fertility of the soil and release matter into the surrounding waters. The island was inhabited by many creatures, and many others stopped to rest on her passing by sky and sea.

One of those that from time to time landed on her beaches in search of a brief moment of rest from her continuous wandering, was a creature unable to stay still for too long, and unable to maintain a stable shape. In the first period of her life she was constantly changing aspects, sometimes even after just a few seconds. There were times when she happened to move in such a changeable state that she had several forms at once to cross her body. As time went by, and after so much changing, she finally found a state in which she could recognize herself a semi-stable structure that allowed her to continue to travel through water, air and land. She kept changing shape, this is certain, but she had found - or perhaps we should say she had chosen - three structural states in which her body could mould, opening her wings to take flight, stretching and multiplying as tentacles to move in the depths of the sea and, finally, hardening and articulating them to be able to walk on land. Her primary task was collecting stories all around and helping them to travel through her body. She was one of the main weavers of her period: intertwines stories by her wandering, to keep stable the structure of the world.

Among the other - many - creatures that inhabited the island and its surroundings, there were two almost opposite in their being, one of the earth and one of the sea. The first was born from a lava puff coming directly from within the world, and was the only creature in the all word keeping a stable shape. She was a very old being, perhaps the oldest of them all, and belonged to a time when it was not yet known that bodies could mutate, and all creatures lived enclosed in one form, one role for all life. Since there were stable and unchanging bodies, at a certain point roles and hierarchies were created, and these were brought with them power dynamics with which it was thought, it would be easier to govern the world. Fortunately this happened a long time before, and now she, the only survivor of that world, had decided to keep her form unchanged in order to remind everyone of that past and never wanted again. She lived in the belly of the island, under a volcano, and from there she collected the stories of the world by perceiving its vibrations with her body, through the living matter of the world. The second was also very old, almost as old as the first, and also lived in a body that, by choice, did not change shape, but gender. She was a creature that based herself on the relationship, on the other, on who she met. It was always her, always the same, but every time she met another creature, she changed a little bit. It was mainly an inner changement. She lived in water, she preferred it to the other elements: water allowed her to keep fluidity in her body and in her being; to move easily and with a sinuous motion, peeling among the particles of matter. Like the first one, she too witnessed a different past period. She, too, was the only one left of her species, but unlike the first, she lived in a state of continuous wandering, of continuous encounter. Almost as if she had to take her story to every corner of the world, take it to the most remote recess.

This story was born by interweaving the narrations and stories of a July morning in Kaisersthul/Hohentengen and the conversations that took place during an intense week of exchange and sharing. The morning started the night before, actually, when we "refreshed" the sourdough who lived with us in the kitchen of the house where we were staying: which simply means that we fed it. But to do so we used our hands, and the bacteria that lived there met those who lived in the dough for an instant. They mixed and multiplied together. During the night the dough grew, and we were able to shape it as the story was born, follow the shapes of the narrative and let the story take inspiration from what our hands, together, created.

The pretext that led us to tell a story - more stories - was that of a workshop in which we tried to narrate by making bread and creating figures with the dough, together.

The people who contributed and made this story possible are:

• Vanesa
• Paloma Ayala
• Anne-Laure Franchette
• Andrea Herrera
• Jocelyn López
• Carolina Opazo

One day, we digged a hole
in a ground that fed us, by the shore of a river that hydrated our listening, reading and walking bodies.

Thinking of Ana Mendieta's series of "Siluetas", we digged an Anamen-fire to cook Anamen-soup, Anamen-rice and Anamen-vegetables.

By the third day, we were calling ourselves witches. Not because we thought of us as such (with the exception of the PlanteSorcieres Collective and Jocelyn Lopez, our relation to the notion of a woman with mystical powers was more about looking at reproductive work, care and maintainance chores, as a form of knowledge potentially able to change the many negative structures framing women) but because some ladies from the town called us 'Hexen'. For real. And we liked it.
As witches, we walked the shore path by the Rhein river, north and back from Kaiserstuhl to Hohentengen. At some 5km north from our base town, the huge Eglisau-Frauenfeld Wasserkraftwerk stands. It belongs to Axpo AG, the biggest energy producing company in Switzerland, which also owns the shore land where we were walking, gleaning and digging.
As witches, we encountered the hydroelectric and its power in different ways. First by observing the obvious monster of structure, it's height, the loudness of the water turning turbines round and round, the history told by Axpo, explaining that 60% of Swiss energy comes from water since about 100 yrs. Then by enjoying the movement of people that practiced a funny sport were row boats managed to use the turbine water release, to move against the current and back in a cyclic motion. Finally, by crossing the bridge and noticing the arrested environment that the dam creates.
Oh! And not to forget, the hydroelectric happens to be the only international bridge that stays open for walkers, during pandemic times, which in the case of one of our members, it was important since she was having migratory issues with the German state.
It's quite spectacular how this, and the other human infrastructures that we encountered on the way, make sure that natural processes become economical services. Big gestures, neat energy, orderly habitat. This grandious and picturesque look of power.
So as witches, it became significant to perform care work right at the piedmont of this huge power generating structure. We made sure to give space for such gestures. We greeted the river with a sound ritual led by Andrea Herrera Poblete... so simple and beautiful it is to make stones crash in collectivity. We meditated at sundown led by Jocelyn Lopez. We digged slowly and constructed an Anamen-fire inspired by Ana Mendieta's work. We read stories and cooked all sorts of Anamen-things and while feeding ourselves, we thought of feeding the world with good food and stories.
The Anamen-fire events give space to reflect on the intersection of our imaginations -personal space, collective space- with the natural spaces and the forces that surround and nurture, change or destroy it. Our witchy persona is alos about having visions of what was or can be.

Drawing by Jocelyn López

AND NOW:

This is an angry story.
FUCK YOU European immigration policies.
Change NOW!

Our Readings:
'Derek Jarman's Garden'
Anne-Laure Franchette and Elise Lammer

Video filmed by Andrea Herrera Poblete, edited by Paloma Ayala

Our Readings:
'Canción sin Miedo'
Vivir Quintana

Our Readings:
'L'hymne des Femmes'
Paroles for Protest

Drawing by Jocelyn López

Our Readings:
'Letters from Onion Island'
Paloma Ayala

This website was pleasurably coded and put together by Paloma Ayala
Edited by PlanteSorcières -Caterina Giansiracusa and Andrea Herrera Poblete-
Photographs by Andrea Herrera Poblete and Laura Rodriguez

Typesets: FIREPROOF, MashedPotato, Firework

2020