We

[wi, wɪ]

Related terms: Agency, Co-Creation, Community, Earthbound, Earthly, Holobiont, Non-Human, Umwelten (German)

»We« does not appear to be a word that requires much deliberation. We all understand that the pronoun allows us to speak with and for others. This powerful word allows multiple voices to be forged into one, pronounced and proclaimed. To speak in such a way can therefore signify both an act of inclusion and an act of exclusion. Who, then, is given this awesome power, this agency to speak for others? Who can and who cannot speak for themselves?

       The understanding that our bodies are sustained by lands we forget (ghost acreage) and that not even the human body is a single entity, but is constituted by many ecologies that live as a temporary whole (holobiont), implies the need to rethink the »I« and assume that it is always already many. To pronounce »we« is to form an alliance that refuses to separate overlapping systems of culture and nature, the atmosphere and ecology, race and gender, habits and Umwelten, responsability and Heimat. To pronounce »we« means to give way to the unheard, the unknown, the silenced, and the ignored.