Mosquito-infested fields and mosquito-free fields

Date:
17. Aug. 2024

Presenter:
Hu Qindi, Jiang Ziqi



About the presenter ：
Jiang Ziqi: Artist concerned with seeds, domestication, caring relationships, and ecofeminism.
Hu Qindi: She's learning about sounds and flora and fauna,  and has been obsessed with birds since last year.

Over the past few months, our good friends Qindi Hu and Ziqi Jiang have been doing fieldwork in the Altay region of Xinjiang and in the mountains of the Jinsha River Valley in Yunnan, respectively. Qindi Hu has been doing volunteer work in the Beaver Reserve to conduct research on the White-crowned Climbing Sparrow, and Ziqi Jiang has been participating in the Farmer Seed Network's residency in the Stone City of Baoshan, Lijiang, Yunnan. In their sharing sessions, the two girls talk about their respective experiences in the region: Bourgogne River Valley The mixture of river water and cow and sheep feces in the forest became an ideal place for mosquitoes to breed, and mosquito prevention became an essential daily side task for Hu Qindi in the field. Ziqi, far away in the Jinsha River's dry and hot valley, doesn't need to protect herself from mosquitoes even when she wears shorts and short sleeves in the terraced rice paddies. Hu searches for the nests of climbing sparrows, observes their nesting behavior, incubates eggs and raises chicks, and keeps records, while Ziqi works with villagers in the farmland where birds are a major threat to the crops, and witnesses the villagers' bird-proofing tactics. Their experiences in the field were very different, but they both had relationships with local creatures and people in the form of daily labor and life. After returning home, two good friends who have not seen each other for a long time will come here to have a chat with us.