Artist’s country of origen: Colombia – Francia
Materials: Video, sound recording, audiovisual archive.
Size: 13’10 Mins
Year: 2023

Synaptic Emancipation contrasts the narratives embedded in Western technological objects—designed to access the mysteries of the brain—with the ways in which Indigenous communities activate their own technologies by chewing coca leaves to awaken consciousness. Receiving the visions of coca through dreams opens a space of telepathic communication that does not entail the destruction of any ecosystem, unlike the production of so-called “high technology” in the West.The video features Luis Aureliano Yunda, a The’ Wala (traditional healer) from the Nasa community, who has been a close friend of the artists for over fourteen years. Their friendship has been intertwined with traditional medicine and with ceremonial, philosophical, artistic, and ritual experiences that foster collaborations between visual arts and ancestral knowledge.