Point Of View

Summer of Soil

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This post comes to you from Cultura21

summer-of-soilJune 15 – August 15, 2013

Summer of soil : A Green Exhibition in Järna, Sweden

Summer of Soil is a 5-week, multi-disciplinary accelerator program designed to awaken and inspire a collaborative movement to rebuild and maintain living soils. The program will include a series of hands-on soil-related courses, an exhibition of regenerative growing practices and the 5-day Living Soil Forum for bringing conversation to action.

The Exhibition serves as an entrance space into Summer of Soil, and aims to educate and raise awareness about the state of soil. It aims to give insight into the amazing substance soil really is, as well as showcasing different growing practices which promote soil regeneration in both rural and urban environments. It includes a pavilion with small scale “Do It Yourself” solutions, Ekoleden – an eco-tour around the local sustainable food society, a “2000 square meter project” –The Exhibition is open to the public and consists of three interconnected areas; the Pavilion, the Kulturcentrum Trädgårdsparken (Garden and Park) and the Ekoleden, helping to understand and realise the conditions of soils from a global point of view. The Soil Lab invites the visitor to experiment with soil, put your hands in the dirt, smell the soil, look at the roots and use your senses to experience the magic.

This summer, the park grounds will feature Summer of Soil’s Story of Soil, an intiative designed to raise awareness about soil. This will be achieved by identifying and explaining various processes connected to soil as they appear around the campus.This project aims to inspire people to care for the land and show how a good relationship with our earth can create a positive, creative development for our planet and for our fellow humans.

For more information about the project : click here

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

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Wendell E. Berry Lecture | National Endowment for the Humanities

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This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

Suzaan Boettger drew attention to Wendell Berry’s Lecture “It all turns on affection”, given to the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Wendell Berry is one of the great advocates for places and for a way of life that is committed to place and nature.  There are some standout parts of this lecture.

His critique of capitalism and philanthropy is damning,

“If you can appropriate for little or nothing the work and hope of enough such farmers [or for that matter any other workers – ed], then you may dispense the grand charity of “philanthropy.”

When arguments are made for philanthropy, remember that there is a choice: perhaps not accumulating great wealth might in some cases mean that more people have had better lives and more environments are less depleted.

But Berry’s argument for imagination is the most important, developed and illuminating aspect of this lecture.

The sense of the verb “to imagine” contains the full richness of the verb “to see.” To imagine is to see most clearly, familiarly, and understandingly with the eyes, but also to see inwardly, with “the mind’s eye.” It is to see, not passively, but with a force of vision and even with visionary force. To take it seriously we must give up at once any notion that imagination is disconnected from reality or truth or knowledge. It has nothing to do either with clever imitation of appearances or with “dreaming up.” It does not depend upon one’s attitude or point of view, but grasps securely the qualities of things seen or envisioned.

I will say, from my own belief and experience, that imagination thrives on contact, on tangible connection. For humans to have a responsible relationship to the world, they must imagine their places in it. To have a place, to live and belong in a place, to live from a place without destroying it, we must imagine it. By imagination we see it illuminated by its own unique character and by our love for it. By imagination we recognize with sympathy the fellow members, human and nonhuman, with whom we share our place. By that local experience we see the need to grant a sort of preemptive sympathy to all the fellow members, the neighbors, with whom we share the world. As imagination enables sympathy, sympathy enables affection. And it is in affection that we find the possibility of a neighborly, kind, and conserving economy.

Wendell E. Berry Lecture | National Endowment for the Humanities.

ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.

It has been established by Chris Fremantle, producer and research associate with On The Edge Research, Gray’s School of Art, The Robert Gordon University. Fremantle is a member of a number of international networks of artists, curators and others focused on art and ecology.
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