Frolic

Catalina (U.K.)

[Writing experiment]

Healing in Spirals

DNA, snails, ferns, tornados, and galaxies follow the geometries of a spiral. A curved pattern following a central point shapes a multitude of natural formations. Some attribute a sacred quality to spirals and have inspired ritual architecture in different cultures. Spirals have become a polysemic symbol since ancient times. They represent life, creation, growth, and evolution.  Some consider spirals to embody the cycle of rebirth and the mother goddess. In the case of plants, like the fern, the geometry of the spiral allows the growth while staying secure. The persistent motion of rotation for self-perpetuation is believed to be the most efficient form of growth in nature. 

Urban healing addresses the collective geo-traumas resulting from chronic violence. Framing urban healing as a territorial spiral implies understanding it as a socio-spatial process at multiple scales that follows an enabling trajectory of transformation and rebirth with a sense of security. Urban healing, as a collective process, has its own rhythms moving towards a centre that carries the energy of life. The spiral journey of urban healing faces the open wounds and scars contained in the feelings of being uprooted, broken, devastated, grieving, and dispossessed. Like in the nautilus, urban healing also requires an aperture to the spatial-temporal travel in the territory and nurture from it, despite the sedimentation of pain. Likewise, the territorial spiral of urban healing is configured by several chambers -or cavities-, vectorial in nature, where different stages of rebirth take place in a loop.

In this article, we illustrate the strategies of urban healing as a territorial intervention with communities affected by violence and enduring conflicts:

Evoke: narratives of territorial memory and truth telling

Reclaim: affective cartographies of cuerpo-territorio

Mend: therapeutic circles and collective weaving

Restore: spatial imaginations and celebration 

Reconcile: reparative infrastructures and land restitution 

Re-exist: embodied constructive reparations