Packing the Agelgel (አገልግል). Nourishing Reciprocity and Collective Survival in Addis Ababa, Dar es Salaam, and Vienna

We are artists, scholars, and community workers from the Alle School of Fine Arts and Design in Addis Ababa, the Institute of Social Work and the Department of Creative Arts at the University of Dar es Salaam, and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Across three gatherings in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), and Vienna (Austria), we explored how our surroundings are shaped by extractivism and dispossession, and how artistic practices can foster care, witnessing, mourning, and also an imagination of worlds beyond extraction. In the Agelgel (አገልግል) — a traditional Ethiopian food basket crafted for travel and filled with nourishment to be shared with companions and strangers along the way — we have found both a metaphor and a method to think about collective survival. While extractivism narrows relations to objectification and accumulation, the Agelgel reflects a different orientation: a mobile archive and methodology for sharing, remembering, and nourishing reciprocity across geographies. At each site, we ‘packed’ our Agelgel with stories, artistic practices, and forms of hospitality that aim to sustain relationships across difference. What we carry becomes who we are.