Mescolanza (mixture), a card collection to connect words, places and species

Mescolanza (books, set of cards, reading activities), 2022

“Mescolanza, or mixture in English, is what happens when things are brought together.

For Emanuele Coccia the world is the space of a universal mixture; a space in which each thing is contained whilst also containing other things, and where the act of breathing is what shows our ‘reciprocal imbrication’, or interdependency.

After six weeks spent alongside oaks, weeds, rabbits, birds of paradise, several books and human guests, Mescolanza makes this place appear in motion, like a dance, where a set of specific words emerge and invite you to connect stories of trees with cosmologies, and cosmologies with geese and so on; eventually culminating in the reality that is the Amstelpark together with you and your experience there.” (AS)

Mescolanza consists of a selection of books and set of cards displayed at the Orangerie in Amstelpark. The cards serve both as a research tool and as prompts for two public reading activities: Duck and Goose Politics (with Ege Kökel) and Oryngham (both held in the park on July 3–4, 2022).

Mescolanza was developed for the School for MultiSpecies Knowledges, a project initiated by Irina Shapiro (Open Set) and Alice Smits (zone2source).

You can read more about the project’s development and how the cards work in the conversation with curator and educator Irina Shapiro, here.

Credits: photos by Balans LaB