Field to Field: Envisioning the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove As Prototype for Evolving Ecologies

FIELD TO FIELD ENVISIONING THE OSUN-OSOGBO SACRED GROVE AS PROTOTYPE FOR EVOLVING ECOLOGIES

The Osun Sacred Grove is a Yoruba ecological, cultural, and spiritual landscape, preserved as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005. In addition to its presence as a physical embodiment of traditional Yoruba practices, the grove is also a space of immense environmental significance as one of the only remaining forest ecologies in southern Nigeria, a result of the impact of centuries long colonial ravaging.

Entering into the site through digital documentation, the sanctity of the grove is evident even through a screen. We exist as ethnographic observers watching the Princess traverse the sacred grove, her vestige clad in yellow to honor the deity Osun, the spirit of water and fertility. We see how footsteps and chants are deliberate acknowledgements of appreciation an exchange of energies between body and environment.

O sun

Sa

cre

Osog

ia ve

1

ig e r ,N

d G ro

bo

My virtual exploration into the Osun Sacred Grove began as a process of collective discovery. Working with four teammates, we each selected a video of the landscape from our class catalog and observed an array of sensory happenings in each, ranging from movement and sound to shadow and texture.

After documentation, we identified qualities of erasure, origination, transformation, migration, actors, and agents present in the grove to ultimately identify the operational fields at play. We interpreted the categorization as a series of cause and effects, which in turn informed my individual proposal for positioning the Osun Sacred Grove as a prototype for rethinking ecologies across an array of contexts.

The operational fields used as a starting point for my recommendations follow the logic of paring an action or process with a subsequent reaction.

Some of those identified in the grove are: Movement of bodies|policies|forces around the grove Flows Decay through repeated flows Scattering Transfer of solar energy into biomass Solar Support Transfer of weight between energies or bodies Circular energy shifts through space and chants Vocalization Erosion and weathering Walking Walking These observed operational fields are the intellectual posture from which my recommendations stem. The following outline illustrates my process for translating these forces and their subsequent effects into a series of considerations: considerations

1. The Osun Sacred Grove is an ecological and social sanctuary that encourages flows of movement across different scales and actors.

2. Do the contemporary landscapes I occupy most embody these same circular exchanges?

3. Thinking about landscapes I have entered, lived in, or studied, I constantly observe how indigenous and spiritual spaces have been replaced with calculated, orchestrated, and built “park landscapes” that are spaces of social exchange and movement, but lack the ecological sacredness we see in the Osun Grove and other energy fields we’ve studied this semester.

4. Understanding this disconnect, I’m motivated to explore the OsunOsogbo Sacred Grove as a prototype for rethinking relationships between bodies and landscape across urban and peri-urban environments in West Africa and an array of other landscapes.

5. How can the operational fields observed in this spiritual forest inform how planners, landscape architects, developers, performers, sculptors, ecologists, or citizens generally, build more conscious links between spirituality, movement, and ecological preservation?

6. From an academic, artistic, and social approach, what are tangible ways to acknowledge and apply learnings from Yoruba traditional practices into other environmental contexts?

These six considerations are further addressed in three pointed inquiries I will discuss in the context of my proposal, informed by this sacred space.

Principal Inquiries

I.

What forces allow the park to exist?

II.

What is the potential to recreate sacred groves in West Africa or other landscapes?

III. How can the grove be prototypical even

though it is the last of its kind? Can it be the first of a new type of grove that can be replicated?

3

1. Park Forces

Combining operational fields to produces prototypes.

4

Prototypes should possess two qualities: first they should proliferate and be catalysts. Second, this proliferation should hybridize. Recognizing the amalgamation of forces that co-exist within the park, there are assets and opportunities embedded within this conjunction that can be looked at as prototypes for other ecological sanctuaries, or landscapes broadly.

By identifying the forces present in and around the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove, we can begin to extrapolate and assess how certain links work to preserve this site as a spiritual space, and recognize those that threaten its vulnerable identity. The constant movement and evolution of forces and actors manifested through forms of spiritual chanting, West African dance, ecological systems, river streams, and ebbs and flows of spiritual practitioners and visitors, each contribute to the diversity of this greenspace. The combination of sacred rituals and mandated UNESCO guidelines help to keep these movement flows in alignment, presenting opportunities to reconsider how other ecological locales like the Nelson Mandela Freedom Park can diversify their flows of people, biodiversity, and social exchange. Other forces however present opportunities to rethink strategies for contending with detrimental energies, actors, and agents like invasive species, limited community capacity, or restrictive maintenance guidelines.

Understanding these layered energies can inform recommendations related to creating potential replicas of this sacred space across different landscapes.

5

11. & 111. Recreate and Prototype In the translation of operational fields into prototype, the driving inquiry questions how we can think about flows of movement present in the grove to assess preservation and activation tactics for other green alcoves around West Africa, the continent at large, or even in other urban networks.

As the last of its kind in the region, the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove illustrates scales of movement [invasive species, movement of people through dance and procession, exchange of capital or materials] which ultimately present the grove as a site of constant exchange.

Using sacred energy as a tool for landscape preservation and diversification Design ,landscape architecture, history, biology, ecology, and many other disciplinary courses can look to the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove for preservation techniques and greenspace gatekeeping protective measures that can be applied in other contexts. This can catalyze a reconceptualization of parks as “landscapes [of] collective heritage” (Makhzoumi, 228), rather than as just sites of spontaneous interaction or visual markers, as we see in the Nelson Mandela Freedom Park and many other instances informed by Wester design standards.

Understanding movement flows as outlets for developing haptic connections with space Outdoor recreation activities, movement and dance classes can each look to the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove as ways to bolster learning in the environment. Recognizing ecological energies as an integrated part of body expression can allow artistic or design intervention to move from representation of nature to an embodiment of organic qualities present in green spaces. This has the potential to strengthen an understanding of

6

site in potential design or policy proposals, and work to remove lingering qualities of western exceptionalism present across many professional arenas.

Precedents: 1. The African Environmental Dance Challenge, launched in 2020, sought to draw connections between the arts and ecology across the continet. The competition raised questions like, “is it possible that practicing dances makes us more attentive to the needs of nature? That dance can teach us to pay more attention to our environment? And what could forms of contemporary dance look like that deal in new ways with our relationship to nature in all its facets?” Dance in Yorubaland is an acknowldgement of spiritual energies protecting bodies of flesh and land. By engaging the body fully, as we observe in the sacred grove, this may aide to resituate these religious practices as opportunities to learn more from nature and posit more embodied interventions.

11. “The Collective Creativity of Anna and Lawrence Halprin” illustrates another opportunity to build intersections of design and movement. In the 1960s, Anna Halprin, a modern dancer, and Lawrence Halprin, a landscape architect, launched the San Francisco dancer’s workshop where Anna offered dance lessons to architecture and design students to develop deeper understandings of how “different spatial arrangements affected one’s kinesthetic response” (Hirsch, 2016).

Recognizing beneficial and detrimental movement flows in the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove By cataloging the range of beneficial and harmful flows in the grove, researchers, ecologists, planners, architects, and more may assess how traditional practices have adjusted to these forces. In the planning of other green or sanctuary spaces, traditional biodiversity management practices can be called on to think about mitigating potential issues, or sparking a richer connections with ecological energies. We can better determine what is sacred about this space and apply that logic to other landscapes.

7

Sources African Environmental Dance Challenge, (Dancing Opportunities, Oct 15, 2020). https://dancingopportunities.com/african-environmentaldance-challenge/ Alison B. Hirsch, “The Collective Creativity of Anna and Lawrence Halprin.” (GIA Reader, Vol 27, No 2, July 2016). https://www.giarts. org/article/collective-creativity-anna-and-lawrence-halprin Jala Makhzoumi, “Colonizing Mountain, Paving Sea: Neoliberal Politics and the Right to Landscape in Lebanon,” The Right to Landscape: Contesting Landscape and Human Rights, Shelley Egoz, Jala Makhzoumi, and Gloria Pungetti, eds. (Florence: 2011, Taylor & Francis Group, 2011), 227–244.

Jonathan Onyekwelu, Lawal A., Reinhard Mosandl, Bernd Stimm, & Aladesanmi Agbelade, “Understory Species Diversity, Regeneration and Recruitment Potential of Sacred Groves in South West Nigeria” (10.21203/rs.3.rs-49207/v1, 2020).

8