Vicky Tsirou: Rooted Movements

How do the fruits of the city, and the bodies that perform it daily, claim their right to public space? The research-based curatorial project “Rooted Movements” connects walking as performance with urban vegetation in New Orleans and New York.

The project emerges from a parallel between movement, migration, and the rooting of both seeds and people in new environments, as well as from practices that generate new forms of community – human and vegetal – within the urban fabric.

Loquat trees in New Orleans, a plant of Asian origin locally referred to as misbelief, are themselves the result of the “seeds” of movement and migration of Southern European populations to the “new world”. Mapping the trajectories of fruits and seeds within the urban ecosystem becomes intertwined with human movement, the formation of dynamic communities, territorial claims, and the creation of a second geography layered onto the literal one.

With an emphasis on walking and performativity, the research also engages with the African American tradition of the Black Masking Indians. This is a communal practice that honors the Indigenous peoples of the Americas who offered refuge to enslaved Africans who had escaped captivity. Through costuming and collective movement in the street, it constitutes an act of everyday resistance, dignity, and remembrance – one that honors “roots” while claiming space and visibility within the urban archipelago.

The field research is expected to further develop in New York, focusing on the concepts of the commons, participatory practices, and environmental issues that emerge through the urban and spatial reading of the city.