Fanzine workshop: Collective book The Memory of the Forest

On March 15, a group of thirty people of different ages met to share experiences and memories about the native forests of La Araucanía and their relationship with wild foods. The fanzine workshop ” the memory of the forest” took place at the Curarrehue Municipal Library. Participants created a collaborative book using materials from the forest, such as soil, native plants and lichens.

The activity was directed by the artist, editorial designer and director of the Estudio Repisa platform, Sandra Marín, and the educational project coordinator of Fundación Mar Adentro, María Jesús Olivos. The objective of the workshop was to promote reflections on biocultural memory and its relationship with the native forest. Through the exchange of knowledge and collective creation, the participants captured in the book their relationship and reflections with the territory, food and practices such as harvesting, through drawing and different creative exercises.

For the elaboration of this book the participants used pigments and artisanal dry pastels, made from the collection of samples of native soil, plants and lichens obtained from Bosque Pehuén, a private conservation area of ​​Fundación Mar Adentro, located in La Araucanía Andina. The book as the final result of this experience is available in the collection of the Municipal Library of Curarrehue.

The experience also included the presentation of a sound postcard with fragments and testimonies of interviews with five orchardists women from Curarrehue municipality. In this sound capsule, the participants reflect on wild fruits, seeds, pine nuts and peas, foods typical of the region’s temperate forest ecosystem. The diversity of these foods is due to the work of the orchardist women, who, through their seeds – transferred from generation to generation–, protect wealth and ancestral knowledge, allowing the diversity of innumerable species of the territory to be preserved.