KOSHI KENÉ: GENERATIVE JUNGLE
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"According to Shipibo-Konibo thinking, the designs made by women are a materialization of the energy or positive force, called koshi, of plants called rao. Koshi energy is not visible to the naked eye, but it can manifest itself in visions of bright and colorful linear designs when people ingest rao plants." (Gebhart-Sayer 1985: 145; Illius 1994: 194)


Koshi Kené, generative jungle, is a transdisciplinary project that combines art, science and technology and whose methodology is based on the deep understanding of the ancestral art of the Peruvian Amazon Shipibo-Conibo. Koshi means in Shipibo-Conibo language “powerful knowledge” and "Kené" means “design”. They are geometric patterns that are ritually accompanied in their creation by the ceremonial songs Icarus. It is a feminine art that is passed down from mother to daughter.

The goal of this project is materialized this wisdom and reflected all this process, knowledge, science, traditions, healing, ritual, that together are this ancestral art called Kené, that is not only the designs. This wisdom materializes in a generative and performative project that makes visible the impact of climate change and the connections that exist between culture and environment in indigenous communities.

Koshi Kené reflects of ways of creating and acquiring knowledge that are different from the traditional logic of West, because they escape the dictatorship of aesthetics and linear narration, are sensorial, integrate man, community and space. Also, they are collaborative creations and prefer processes to products, understanding that culture and identity come from a greater whole that includes nature. Technology understood not only as a device, but as a process, is perceived as a bridge to ancestral knowledge.