transterile | transestéril
by stef assandri and maría del buey cañas
since 2022

stef assandri (Uruguay) and maría del buey cañas (Spain) develop a collaborative practice between the warmth of textile and surrounded by sound, connecting both through writing and reading in duo. Based in Brussels and Madrid respectively, their work transterile develops in between spaces, looking at site-specific and grounded ways of engaging with practice-based research.

Assandri (URU) and del Buey (ESP) develop transterile –a long-term self-sustained project–, where the duo proposes a practice of contamination drawn to considerations on nature/s, gender stereotypes and reproductive patterns.


This is why transterile transits between domestic spaces –specifically artist-run platforms– and academia –concretely those institutions created to produce and legitimate “universal” knowledge. Looking at our own cultural backgrounds and our different relationships to our mother tongue –a colonial language like Spanish–, we work on creative writing and performance to activate the project. Thus, bringing up questions about the more-than-human natures –or about how to become a collective nature with other beings around us–, transterile engages with transfeminist perspectives on ecologism and antispeciesism.

RESOURCES

As part of our research engagement, Transterile is triggered from critical theory contributions by José Esteban Muñoz, Gloria Anzaldúa, Laboria Cuboniks, Anna Tsing Lowenhaupt, Donna Haraway, and Suniti Namjoshi, among others.

transterile in Samenschool
[Antwerp, March 2024]

Artistic residency supported by Ventanilla Abierta-Belgium

*una contaminación en tránsito*
[Madrid, May 2023]

Lecture performance delivered at I International Congress on Ecological Humanities
Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM)

The research performed included some passages of the transesterile diary and relevant cases of study regarding the current ecosocial crisis. Case 1: The case of abuse of power by Boaventura De Sousa Santos at University, with a porposition of change. Case 2: The current hydric crisis at Montevideo, Uruguay. To invoke the needed rain in Uruguay, salty water was offered to the audience exposing the measures taken by the current government as a solution to the lack of drinkable water.

CONTAMINATION #1 | feat Irene Echeverría Altuna
[Online, October 2022]

Drawing from the first contamination held in transterile with Neuro-biologist PhD Researcher Irene Echeverría Altuna (Spain, Oxford University), conversations, reading groups, and collective exercises, contribute to both the research dimension of the project as well as its experimentation with art research methodologies.
Looking further at experimentation within transterile, the performative exchange of the art practices between Stefania and María, reinforces the contamination core of the project.

Sources: "Fábulas feministas y otros textos" by Suniti Namjoshi. Ed.: Paraíso Perdido