Turminta is a transdisciplinary co-creation project with Kichwa communities in Ecuador that explores, through a relational ontology, more-than-human connections with natural phenomena such as storms. Using sound art, sensitive technologies (DIY microphones, hydrophones, sensors), and speculative devices, it activates vernacular knowledge that recognizes thunder, water, and storms as living, communicative beings.

Inspired by the thinking of Eduardo Kohn and the Kawsak Sacha – Living Forest- worldview, Turminta proposes deep listening and observation as a collective practice to engage in dialogue with non-human intelligences. In this living universe, the forest is a sentient being and each storm carries a message, a warning, a memory. By connecting distant territories through the shared flow of water, Turminta weaves together cosmologies, languages, and collective memories that preserve these essential knowledges, fostering an aesthetics of care to counteract extractivist logics.

«I explore the invisible relationships between beings, phenomena, and ecosystems, and the multispecies forms of communication that emerge from them. I have learned that sustaining life means caring for what is unseen, unheard, and formless—yet fully present: this project considers storms, as sensitive to climate change and embedded in symbolic systems across cultures».

Lorena Salas is a visual anthropologist, sociologist, filmmaker, and cultural organizer. For over a decade, she has worked closely with Amazonian, rural, and migrant communities, developing self-representation and artistic co-creation processes as strategies of resistance to systemic violence, displacement, and extractivism. Salas has created fiction films, documentaries, animation works, and sound art in territories such as Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, and Colombia. Her creative and research interests explore the relationships between visuality, aurality, sensitive ecologies, and Indigenous cosmologies.

As the director of SACHA MANCHI, a platform for experimental visual and sound arts, and of De Cámaras a Camaradas, a filmmaking community that amplifies migrant narratives through self-representation with the support of UNHCR and UNESCO, Salas strives to make visible silenced ways of life and thought.