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Thrive and twist
2024

Dear reader,
Like you and me, every species has a habitat. There is something that glues the habitat together - exchange of materials, tools, food, shelter, stories and relationships. Take one species and think, how many connections does it create with other species and entities? How do we need each other, adapt our needs, share what we have, invent new practises? Are we glued by chance, “naturally” or by putting effort? What could be some of Lithuania's "cultural keystone species", which plant has so many of those links, so embedded in daily practises, works, songs, landscapes?

Dear reader,
What is “the wild”? Stinging nettles are considered wild plants: capable of surviving and reproducing in natural ecosystems without any need for human cultivation or intervention. However they thrive in habitats shaped by human presence (there are so many of them in the parks, cities, villages...), places with accumulated waste and compost, in transitional spaces, edges, sides, and have specific biological ability to stabilize nutrient levels in the soil, being beneficial for other plants, organisms and people. Rewilding is a term used for restoring natural processes. But can (and should?) processes be purely “natural”, aren't humans part of the habitat? What if nettles don't need rewilding, but humans do? How to know, how to reconnect?

Dear reader,
When you see a nettle, you probably don't come near, and want to get rid of it, if it is in your garden. But nettles are one of the most useful and nutritious wild plants, historically known as a source of textile, food and medicine, and culturally as a symbol of protection. Making clothes from nettles requires to clean, rot, break, scrape, rub, refine, twist and spin - the transformation from wild plant to domestic object, from nature to culture, from animal to human is long, hard and never fully binary. There is a Lithuanian story of twelve brothers, who turned to ravens, and one sister who had to make them shirts from nettle fibers to turn them back to human state. Clothes are what makes us human, but being human means being in (material and immaterial) connection to nature. Do you feel the twisting of the binaries? Do you feel protected and protective? Do you feel enabled to continue the journey?