Eduardo Padilha is artist in residence at Phytology, Bethnal Green Nature Reserve throughout 2022, as part of the, We Speak In Tongues About The Thing(s) We Love project curated by Adelaide Bannerman.

Eduardo Padilha has invited Govert Derix and David Luke for an informal conversation exploring personal testimony, philosophical inquiry and scientific study of Ayahuasca, a powerful psychoactive brew shared as a spiritual medicine.

Brings together researchers from multi-disciplinary fields to discuss Ayahuasca: A declaration of love acknowledges multispecies consultation and usage of plants, and on this occasion centres the South American vines and shrubs foraged and concocted to make Ayahausca.

Time - 12pm – 2pm

Date - Sunday 19th June, 2022

Location - Phytology, Bethnal Green Nature Reserve.

Tickets - www.eventbrite.com

Guest speakers include;

Dr David Luke is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Greenwich. His research focuses on transpersonal experiences, anomalous phenomena and altered states of consciousness, especially via psychedelics, having published more than 100 academic papers in this area, including eleven books, most recently most recently DMT Entity Encounters. When he is not running clinical drug trials with LSD, conducting DMT field experiments or observing apparent weather control with Mexican shamans he directs the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness salon and is a cofounder of Breaking Convention: International Conference on Psychedelic Consciousness.

Govert Derix is a writer, philosopher and consultant from the Netherlands. He has published on many subjects, including philosophy, the Amazon, architecture, management and sustainability. He published Ayahuasca, een kritiek van de psychedelische rede (‘Ayahuasca, a critique of psychedelic reason’, which was nominated for the Socrates Award IN 2004. The book is a philosophical, journalistic and autobiographical quest for the significance of the ayahuasca-experience for contemporary thought and society.

Eduardo Padilha is artist in residence at BGNR/Phytology during 2022. His presentation, The Non-existent Gardener (May-July) features new site-specific works onsite at BGNR/Phytology. Eduardo Padilha is a visual artist who works with natural and man-made materials that he manipulates and captures their transformations into sculptures, printed works on paper or fabric and occasionally moving-image. Implicitly his artworks speak about the dichotomies of the migratorial experience. The artworks manifest as proxies of Padilha’s own personal negotiations with the local communities that he is part of and interacts with, his exploration of the urban landscape and its architectures, and the private realm of his studio and home that he opens up to friends, colleagues and other residents where he lives on the Balin House estate, Southwark, through his curatorial project BalinHouseProjects (2006).

Ayahuasca: A declaration of love will be opened with a cello prelude from musician and composer Yoko Afi. Yoko has recently been awarded Future Talent’s Worsley Award and is now part of their Development Programme. She has performed both as a soloist and chamber musician in several Open House concerts at Guildhall, as well as at the Royal Academy of Music and The Reform Club. Yoko studies cello and piano at The Purcell School for Young Musicians, and is generously supported by the Junior Guildhall Bursary, the Christine Brown Trust, The Kathleen Trust, AYM, Future Talent and the SD Whitehead Charitable Trust. This event is generously supported by Arts Council England and the Bethnal Green Nature Reserve Trust.