We baptised the project Pilli Pallis, the Portal of Palli, as a connecting place where locals can go to explore relationships between humans and nature. The field is growing into a forest garden, for which an encounter portal is being created using natural and found materials in collaboration with insects, animals and plants. More and more, Pilli Pallis is a testing ground for interventions that help us understand the field and what we want to grow there. As we don’t hold all the answers, we invited knowledgeable locals from the village and the forestry school to help us identify plants and to hear about the history and climate of the bioregion.
Inspired by local weaving traditions and last year’s plant explorations, I initiated building a giant loom and creating large-scale weaves from local hay, reed, and cotton. I see these works as “displaced vegetation,” left on the land to decompose, to seed, and to shelter.
In spring 2024, the last picture I took before I left the village of Dikaia was a cotton truck.
I felt that I would come back to it. Greece is a significant cotton producer within the EU, with a historical focus on cotton cultivation dating back to the late 19th century, and accounts for 80% of the EU's cotton area and production today. Hungry for weaving materials, we went to handpick cotton flowers with Teodoro’s on a pick-up truck, close to the Bulgarian frontier. With the helping hands of TAAT, cotranspose and passing visitors, I attempted to weave the raw flowers, leaving the seeds inside with the hypothesis that they might sprout with rain and time. This work is part of my research with TAAT on “displaced vegetation” as weaved architectural interventions.
My work on dyes extended to cotton and wool, and to almond leaf ink to print posters announcing our first event on the field : weaving, music and tea! People came to test the loom, to play the amadinda and to drink camomille tea brewed in the sun.
in collaboration with Martin Simpson, Efrosyni Tsiritaki, Λίγεια and Gert-Jan Stam.
