Rimanakuy, between Rosemary and Coca

Workshop on Amerindian Languages

Workshop

Vista de la exposición Eva Lootz. Hacer como quien dice: ¿y esto qué es?, Museo Reina Sofía, 2024 — View of the exhibition *Eva Lootz. Making as if Wondering: So What Is this?*, Museo Reina Sofía, 2024

Held on Wednesday, 3, and Thursday, 4 July 2024 - 6pm

Location: Nouvel Building, Workshops -1, and Sabatini Building, Floor 1
Capacity: 30 people

Eva Lootz’s installation La agonía de las lenguas (The Agony of Languages, 2020), which is part of the exhibition Eva Lootz. Making as if Wondering: So What Is This?, warns of the extinction and invisibility of Indigenous Amerindian languages resulting from the continuance of colonial dynamics. Through metaphors and material processes, the artist addresses the breadth and originality of these languages, as well as the paradox in much of academia’s failure to consider them languages of culture and, therefore, their regulated teaching as something token. From these ideas, the workshop looks to debate where these languages lie in official education and place value on their uniqueness in modifying our experience and relationship with the world.

The activity is set out in two sessions featuring the participation of the artist Eva Lootz. In the first, Azucena Palacios, from Spain, Marleen Haboud, from Ecuador, and Nadiezdha Torres, from Mexico, linguists, philologists and university lecturers, speak about how we can decolonise the linguistic and cultural diversity of Indigenous languages from Hispanic America. Therefore, an analysis will take place of the historical stigmas that have blighted the teaching, consideration and status of these languages for centuries.

The second session sees Hildy Quintanilla and Chinî, writers, poets and willakuq (narrators), stage a live narration of Quechua and Guarani in a journey through the rooms devoted to the Eva Lootz show. The aim is to raise awareness of these two languages and, through them, explore questions such as the syncretism between nature and society, the circular concept of time and learning through pukllay (play), takiy (song) and tusuy (dance).

Participants

Chinî self-defines himself as a “poet and queer”. He studies biology and researches frogs and toads from Pirivevui (a historical Paraguayan town), and migrated to Madrid in 2019, following the footsteps of his mother and sister. He has been a Guarani Jopara speaker from a young age and a lover of terere (a Guarani drink made from yerba mate, ice water, and pohã ñana, herbs for medicinal uses) and mbeju, a Guarani yucca cake.

Marleen Haboud holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Oregon, and is a lecturer at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador and a specialist in the study of Indigenous languages and the linguistic and social effects of contact. She directs the projects Oralidad Modernidad (Orality Modernity) and Ethnographic Lexicons and Ancestral Practices in Andean Ecuador.

Eva Lootz is a pre-eminent experimental artist within Spain’s artistic landscape. The exhibition Eva Lootz. Making as if Wondering: And What Is this?, held in the Museo Reina Sofía, puts forward a journey through her five decades of thought and experimentation on matter, language and themes such as the environment, feminism and human intervention in nature.

Fernando López is the Museo Reina Sofía’s exhibitions coordinator and the curator of the exhibition Eva Lootz. Making as if Wondering: So What Is this?.

Azucena Palacios holds a PhD in Spanish Studies from the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) and is a lecturer in the Spanish Language at the same university. Since 2006, she has coordinated UAM’s research group (HUM F-022) Cambio lingüístico en situaciones de contacto (Linguistic Change in Situations of Contact), and her research deals with the contact of languages: Spanish and Amerindian tongues.

Hildy Quintanilla Ocampo (Q´inti- Colibrí) is a stage producer, poet, willakuq (narrator), a researcher of Andean theatricalities and oralities, and a pilgrim of Qoyllirit´i as part of the Quispicanchi nation. In Madrid, she develops the self-managed project Arguedas, migrant oraliteca, which brings orality and Andean and Latin American literature closer together to strengthen migrant identities and intercultural dialogue in Spain.

Nadiezdha Torres holds a PhD in Linguistics from the College of Mexico, and is currently a lecturer at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Her PhD thesis explores bilingual Tepehuán Spanish from the south-east/Spanish part of the Mexican State of Durango. She is part of the Autonomous University of Madrid’s research group Cambio lingüístico en situaciones de contacto (Linguistic Change in Situations of Contact).

Programme

Wednesday, 3 July 2024 – from 6pm to 8pm

Session 1. The Agony of Languages. Can We Decolonise the Linguistic and Cultural Diversity of Amerindian Languages?

— With a presentation by Eva Lootz and Fernando López, and the participation of Marleen Haboud, Azucena Palacios and Nadiezdha Torres

This session gets under way with a tour of the installation La agonía de las lenguas (The Agony of Languages) with artist Eva Lootz and Fernando López, the curator of Eva Lootz. Making as if Wondering: So What Is this?, held in the Museo, and continues with professor Azucena Palacios directing a study session with the specialists Marleen Haboud and Nadiezdha Torres. What does it mean when a language is in danger? What difference is there between marginalised and minority languages? And what role does Spanish and its institutions play in the loss of linguistic diversity in this context? These are some of the questions approached here, along with case studies such as the influence of Amerindian languages on varieties of Spanish and examples in Mexico, with over 364 Indigenous languages, and Ecuador, with a noteworthy revitalisation.
Thursday, 4 July 2024 – from 6pm to 8pm

Session 2. Rimanakuy, between Rosemary and Coca

—With Hildy Quintanilla and Chinî. Accompanied by: Eva Lootz

The Quechua term rimanakuy describes a reciprocal dialogue that stems from the customary practice of Andean communities to resolve important matters for the common good. Thus, the word is fitting for defining the dialogue between Eva Lootz’s oeuvre and the work of Andean poet and narrator Hildy Quintanilla, in the company of the Guarani poet Chinî. The session unlatches a conversation between different latitudes — ephemeral yet engulfing and mysterious — for instance the powers of rosemary in northern lands and mamacoca in the south. The willakuy (myths and poems in Quechua and Spanish) clear space to speak to Pachamama via the basic principles of Quechua and, in the words of Hildy Quintanilla, “flow with the Andes”.