Un-Tabled is a learning series by Food and Art Research Network (FAR) in which artists from our global network come together, through dialogue or hands-on workshops, to journey deeper into the depths of their creative practices. The series is an international platform, weaving together the threads of artistic research, ecological imagination, and embodied knowledge worldwide.

For our third session in the series, we invite you to a presentation and discussion with Colectivo Amasijo, Calpulli Tecalco and Grace Gloria Denis on ecopedagogies, specifically examining Colectivo Amasijo’s and Calpulli Tecalco project La Milpa, La Escuela. Situating the milpa as the teacher, the conversation examines how human and non-human processes interweave within the context of land-based learning initiatives, germinating frameworks that challenge conventional educational paradigms through place-based, multispecies pedagogical praxis.

La Milpa, La Escuela is a program that functions as an artistic, economic, political, and ritual project. It offers a space in which the pedagogical dimension of the milpa can be remunerated and reverberated. It seeks to recognize those who have preserved the milpa, as well as to re-enchant those of us who were born fragmented from its life-sustaining forces. It seeks to change the language of producer/consumer for languages of collaboration, where we all take responsibility in reproducing soil and generating food. La Milpa, La Escuela seeks to listen to strategies from different disciplines, ranging from creative agents to legal advisors, in the collective care and defense of life. The program, which includes extended stays in the area, is structured into five modules that correspond to the tasks required by the agricultural cycle, as a means to illustrate the strength in collaborative new ways of inhabiting the world.

While dominant educational and agricultural models have privileged monocultural methodologies, these ecopedagogy initiatives convene a multiplicity of practices and perspectives, weaving together a non-homogeneous body of collective knowledge through perennial action. In subversion of the dominant paradigms of mechanization, standardization, and homogenization encountered in both food cultivation and knowledge production, how can land-based learning initiatives cultivate situated sites of resistance and exchange?

What you need to know?

This is an online session. Each session runs for 90 minutes with opportunities for participation and engagement. We ask for a sliding-scale contribution of between $3–$15 (AUD) based on your access to funds. Your support helps us sustain the collective labor that brings this series to your table, including the bare essential needs of the network.

ABOUT

Food and Art Research Network: FAR is a constellation of established artists and cultural workers engaging with the politics and aesthetics of food. It is a network of living relations that nurtures peer learning, exchanges, and encounters in and beyond the field of art.

@food_art_research_network

Colectivo Amasijo

colectivo amasijo is a group of women from different parts of Mexico (Veracruz, Oaxaca, State of Mexico and Mexico City) united in their desire to actively reflect on the origin and diversity of our food. The collective was born in 2016 and ever since has been providing a platform for non-dominant voices: the narratives of women close to the land, stories that tell us the real cost of climate change and show us the way towards the regeneration of the land. As an open collective, they cook collectively as a way to share, learn, care, conserve, relate and celebrate the (bio)diversity of food. Their projects are aimed at making visible the interdependence between language, culture and territory. Through these projects,- that can take the form of gatherings, dinners, research, actions, ceremonies, exhibitions, markets, seminars, film, talks or other – the collective builds the needed structures to form a community in which taking care of ourselves and taking care of the territory we inhabit is priority and we understand food as a network of relationships.

@colectivoamasijo

@lamilpalaescuela

Calpulli Tecalco

Calpulli Tecalco is a transdisciplinary organization dedicated to the research and preservation of the biocultural heritage of Indigenous cultures. It brings together and integrates knowledge from oral tradition, science, social studies, technology, and the arts, working with individuals, communities, and institutions interested in community work, Indigenous cultures, and the environment.

@calpulli.tecalco

Grace Gloria Denis

Grace Gloria Denis’ work converges agricultural research with interactive installation, braiding together edible matter and sound to propose a convivial and comestible approach to critical inquiry. Implementing the meal as both a medium and a pedagogical tool, her work refers to participatory action research models, engaging in collaborations with actors in local food systems utilizing agroecological techniques. Her work considers the quotidian interaction with the esculent realm as a poetic tool of transmission, inviting a reframing of sensorial relations to consumption practices.

@gracegloriadenis

Timezones

Mexico City, Mexico

Sat, 19 July 2025 at 10:00 CST

São Paulo, Brazil

Sat, 19 July 2025 at 13:00 BRT

Los Angeles, United States

Sat,19 July 2025 at 9:00 PDT

London, UK

Sat, 19 July 2025 at 17:00 BST

Cape Town, South Africa

Sat, 19 July 2025 at 18:00 SAST

Helsinki, Finland

Sat, 19 July 2025 at 19:00 EEST

New Delhi, India

Sat, 19 July 2025 at 21:30 PET

Contact the host of Un-Tabled: La Milpa, La Escuela and ecopedagogies