Mycorrhizal Encounters III: In Conversation with Chido Govera

Chido Govera is a farmer, activist and lecturer from Zimbabwe. She promotes pioneering social enterprise initiatives to end poverty, abuse and food insecurity. She is dedicated to growing mushrooms from waste products with an emphasis on skills development and education for girls and women. Chido will be speaking with Elspeth Mitchell and Lenka Vráblikova.

The talk with Chido will be the third session in the Mycorrhizal Encounters series, which gives voice to female and male artists, activists, and researchers working with the versatility of fungi and the ingenuity of mycorrhizal communities. Throughout the series, the different types of practice and theoretical approaches that the invited guests and panelists bring will connect mycorrhizal mycelium and underground root systems to a multitude of other worlds full of intricate connections and networks: to the riverine, crop, and technological networks that crisscross the landscape; to the neural connections in the bodies of some organisms; to the global capitalist marketplace; to kinship ties and other kinds of association and belonging.

In the pilot episode of Mycorrhizal Encounters, Tereza Porybná spoke with author and founder of the Radical Mycology movement Peter McCoy and Slovak sound artist and organizer of the mykoLOM festival Jonáš Gruska about the possibilities of accessible mushroom cultivation, mycoremediation and medicinal mushrooms. In the second session, Mexican multidimensional artist Xalli Zúñiga debated with Lenka and Elspeth about collaborative drawing and thinking and being with mushrooms as an eco-feminist practice and anti-colonial political project.

In the following episodes, we introduce Thai Shani, a British artist working on psychedelics, feminist history and myth, and Anna Tsing, British anthropologist and author of The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. In the pilot episode of Mycorrhizal Encounters, Tereza Porybná spoke with author and founder of the Radical Mycology movement Peter McCoy and Slovak sound artist and organizer of the mykoLOM festival Jonáš Gruska about the possibilities of accessible mushroom cultivation, mycoremediation and medicinal mushrooms. In the second session, Mexican multidimensional artist Xalli Zúñiga debated with Lenka and Elspeth about collaborative drawing and thinking and being with mushrooms as an eco-feminist practice and anti-colonial political project.

The discussion will take place ⓁⒾⓋⒺ on November 18 at 7pm via Zoom and will be streamed. A recording will be posted later.Join the conversation via Zoom:
bit.ly/JOINmyccorhizalencounterChidoGovera
Password: mushroom

Chido Govera is a social entrepreneur, founder of The Future of Hope Foundation / www.thefutureofhope.org / and a Young Global Leader awarded by the World Economic Forum. She is the founder of a pioneering initiative to cultivate mushrooms from coffee grounds produced in coffee shops, inspiring entrepreneurs around the world. The Foundation enables Chido to pursue her life’s mission of ridding Africa of poverty, abuse, self-pity and the role of victim through grassroots activities focused on food security and supporting women, girls and orphans. TFoHF’s flagship project is the Mushroom Integrated Food Production System (Mushroom IFPS). This food production approach is based on fungiculture and is built on a combination of recycling and upcycling of agro-industrial lignocellulosic biomass.
IFPS complements conventional agriculture because it is based on the conversion of the ubiquitous agro-industrial lignocellulosic biomass into nutritious and highly valued fungi, with the by-product being usable as fertiliser or even animal feed, increasing the availability and diversity of food. This simple, circular and easily adaptable mushroom cultivation process motivates people at different levels to seize the opportunity of entrepreneurship in food production, both in developed and developing parts of the world, urban and rural. Chido also strives to ensure that women and girls participate in socio-economic development and can reach their full potential. For more information, contact les@are-events.org.

The Mycorrhizal Encounters is jointly prepared by Lenka Vráblíková, Eslpeth Mitchell and Tereza Porybná as part of the festival Descendants of Mushrooms and the (Eco)Politics of Sharing.

The Descendants of Mushrooms and the (Eco)Politics of Sharing festival is organised by the collective Les – a community for cultivation, theory and art and in collaboration with Are and the Anxiety Institute.

For more information contact us at les@are-events.org

UPCOMING MYCORRHIZAL ENCOUNTERS:

24.11.2021 19.00 Thai Shani– Moderated by Lenka Vrábliková and Elspeth Mitchell.

The project is realized with the support of the City of Prague, Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the Municipality of Prague 7 and the State Fund for Culture.