This tale carried its beginning in a bag

“This tale carried its beginning in a bag” is a collection of stories and recipes from today's foragers narrated and performed through videos every hour throughout a 12 hour period on the 19th of October 2021. During the final performance, the audience is invited to join “physically” a picnic where foraged food and stories will be shared.




The story of the hunter and his stone-knife, piercing through the flesh of the wild animal - killing - is a foundational tale of our history: that we, as humans, dominate and threaten the rest of nature. The power dynamic in this narrative allows for one-sided practices such as extractive capitalism, intensive agriculture and aggressive relationships to more-than-human beings.


We fail to remember the gatherers. Seeds, roots, nuts, insects and other small animals collected in bags, pockets and other containers constituted the base of primitive hominids' diet*. To be a successful forager, one needs to understand ecological patterns: seasons, flowering and sprouting of each plant, meteorological effects and only to cite a few. Through such practices humans learn to attune to the complex living ecosystems they are part of while surrendering to uncertainty: to the very possibility that there might be nothing to collect.


Sharpening a stone to kill; weaving a basket to collect; those are two stories involving contrasting actions, technologies and above all two divergent relationships to the rest of nature. What happens when we start recounting the tales of the gatherers as origin stories?