Seed Keeping in Times of Crises - Reza Mirabi

LifeLong Burning Residency, MDT Stockholm

18th - 30th October 2023

Seed Keeping in Times of Crises

Reza Mirabi

Introduction

During the 12-day residency at MDT, I dedicated myself to my research, "Seed Keeping in Times of Crises." My experience with seeds and seed-keeping dates back to 2007, encompassing diverse projects such as a reforestation initiative in India, involvement with a seed-saving organization in Iran, collaboration with the Jineology Institute in Kurdistan, and work on an organic farm in Portugal. But it was over the last year when my understanding of seeds shifted:

In September 2022, the tragic death of Kurdish woman Jina (Mahsa) Amini in Tehran, targeted for "wearing improper Hijab," ignited the Woman Life Freedom revolution in Kurdistan, Iran, and beyond. This event prompted me and a group of friends to organize protests, solidarity events, fundraisers for Kurdistan and Iran, and engaging conversations and radio shows.

In October of the same year, amidst the ongoing protests, I stumbled upon a graffiti in Meydoon-e Shush, a Tehran neighborhood, just around the corner from my grandmother's house. Days after Jina Amini's killing, this graffiti, written by women in Kurdistan, proclaimed: "تخمشو هم ما کاشتنه آزادی داریم "-' Freedom needs to be planted; we have the seeds.' The graffiti, an expression of the ongoing underlying resistance, was fleeting—visible for perhaps a day—before the fascist regime quickly removed it, fearing its potential to grow.

Yet this graffiti left me with questions:

- What do these seeds the graffiti speaks of represent?

- What seeds can plant freedom?

- What seeds are essential for a radically feminist revolution and for a complete paradigm shift?

This experience with the graffiti compelled me to reimagine seeds, recognizing their potentialities beyond the botanical realm. Seeds, in various forms—practices, principles, conversations, dances, invitations, sentences, encounters, songs, moments, and interventions—have the power to make another world possible, a critical endeavour in times of crises.

As I write, we navigate manifold crises—political, ecological, psychological, and health-related— intimately entangled rather than separate. We urgently need tools to cope with it all. Amid the 6th mass extinction, having lost 93% of our seeds in the last 50 years, the urgency to tend to and protect the seeds we carry, finding ways to pass them on, is critical and has always been our responsibility.

Next to seeds, I seek the ground to plant them in—Friendships, Care, and other forms of togetherness.

At MDT

I envisioned the residency at MDT as a seed exchange—a meeting with artists, urban gardeners, dancers, and eco-feminists from Stockholm. These interactions were choreographies, based on listening and imagination, an attempt to co-compose a sense of meaning for this moment. Gratitude extends to those unfolding these choreographies with me: Stella d’Ailly and Jenny Salmson at their urban garden Odla ihop for a tea in the fissures of the city, with Malin Lobell dreaming about hibernation as a way to survive our current mass extinction, with Siriol Joyner evoking forgotten dances and tongues and moving them out of dead archives and back into our bodies, and of course with the wonderful members of and around MDT including Sara Bergsmark, Terry Johsson, Anna Efraimsson, Maja Freiberg and the other residency guest Stella Kruusamägi.

If seeds can manifest as practices, principles, conversations, dances, sentences, songs, artistic interventions, and friendships, then we all carry seeds—passed down, cared for, practiced, and kept alive. I appreciate the generosity in sharing these seeds and emphasize the importance of tending to friendships as the grounds for their cultivation.

Presentation

To conclude the residency, I shared nine non-botanical seeds in various forms—a story, a song, a poem, a graffiti, this moment, a rhythm practice, a genetically modified seed that detects land mines, three words, and an article about two sisters in Gaza practicing birdwatching.

Addendum

My residency coincided with the violent actions of the IDF in Gaza, the West Bank, and South Lebanon. Protests and grief became integral to my time in Stockholm, utilizing the residency as a platform to address the ongoing oppression, genocide, and horrors.

For me, choreography always emerges through urgency. To move and be moved—to use each other as portals to address current problematics and problematic currents in solidarity. I believe dance can become a reservoir to cope with today, process immeasurable grief, hold space, and find ourselves in it, reminding each other never to lose sight of the imaginary.

(This residency is part of Life Long Burning – Futures lost and found project (2023-2026) supported by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the EACEA can be held responsible for them.)