Series Editors: Alessandra Pomarico & Nikolay Oleynikov
A project of Free Home University and Chto Delat
A group of artists gathered in Castiglione d’Otranto in southern Italy in the hot summer of 2019. They came from the broader region of Puglia—some had migrated there from across the world—and they came from Europe, Russia, and North America. That summer session of Free Home University was typical in its eclectic assemblage of people, activities, and concepts. But the outcome was very unusual: a film that was a “reflecting-with, a call-and-response, a reverberation of questions across completely different contexts and geographies” as Alessandra Pomarico describes it in her introduction. The practice of resonating with Zapatismo was something that Russian collective Chto Delat had been doing in their film series, titled “Slow Orientation in Zapatismo” of which People of Flour, Salt, and Water is the second iteration.
This series on ArtsEverywhere is an online adaptation of a book that emerged from the filmmaking process. When the Roots Start Moving—To Navigate Backward—Resonating with Zapatismo is a collection of essays, artistic works, and histories, edited by Alessandra Pomarico and Nikolay Oleynikov. The introduction by Alessandra explains their editorial process, imagining how the book became “the place where we could keep gathering our thoughts and hearts, in a moment of separation due to Covid restrictions. Our pedagogy of the encounter had to be articulated differently, activating other forms of affective resonance.” ArtsEverywhere hopes this online space serves to expand that resonant space even further.
The Film: People of Flour, Salt, and Water
People of Flour, Salt, and Water is the second film made by Chto Delat as part of their series “Slow Orientation in Zapatismo.”
When the Roots Start Moving
An introduction to the book and learning process: Chto Delat and Free Home University in resonance with Zapatismo
Dispatch from Puglia
ArtsEverywhere editor, Sidd Joag, joins Free Home University in the summer of 2019 for the making of People of Flour, Salt, and Water.
Making Films Zapatistically
The film director’s remarks on the guiding principles used to create recent films by Russian art collective Chto Delat.
Travel to Salento Zapatista
Journalist and activist Christian Peverieri writes about his experience of community-embeddedness at Free Home University with Casa delle Agriculture.
Zapatista Timeline
An annotated timeline of the Zapatista’s 30-year trajectory of resistance and re-existence.
The fate of an insect that struggles between life and death somewhere in a nook sheltered from humanity is as important as the fate and the future of the revolution.
Two film artists’ scene-by-scene analysis of the learning-film, People of Flour, Salt, and Water.
Zapatista Civic Pedagogy in a Time of War
ZAPATISTA CIVIC PEDAGOGY IN A TIME OF WAR To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it ‘the way it really was’ (Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memory as
Re-activating language: The work of Chto Delat and the Logos of the Revolution
An exploration of the ethos behind the Russian art collective Chto Delat.