Have you been into composting lately? Making soil definitely is a good idea. We also ask what soil is. Soil is home to 90% of the world’s fungi, 85% of plants and more than 50% of bacteria – and 59% of life overall, a recent study says. Let’s look closer at soil organisms through the art and science practice of a microbiologist, who brings the tiniest soil world to light.
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Up to 90% of living organisms live or spend part of their life cycle in soils. 95% of our food comes from soils. Most soil is degraded. In a time of planetary change, we want to expand our views on soil.
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A Seed holds all its potential of its future.
Seed is self organised. Symbiosis is the way nature works.
Vandana Shiva
At the beginning of the year we reconnected with the teachings of plants and the diversity of knowledges. At the celebration of Earth Day, Vandana Shiva spoke about the oneness of seeds.
Read more: Between Us and Nature – A Reading Club #44Another seed brought to us in a conversation with a friend, was the Agricultural Cooperative of Somankidi Coura. While we were researching gleaning, she mentioned this initiative in Mali from the end of the 1970s, that has not been on our horizon yet. Starting to read about immigration, struggles and “The chili peppers strike” in “Sowing Somankidi Coura – A Generative Archive”, we would like to learn more together with you about this territory and the people establishing a self organised agricultural community, named the ACTAF initiative.
“The Somankidi Coura cooperative was established in a region, on a territory, that was the scene of multiple historical episodes, from the colonial period characterized by predatory exploitation of workers and land, to the attempt by Mali’s first independent president Modibo Keita to develop agricultural communities and lead his country’s return to the land. However, in contrast to the forced migrations of the colonial period or the managed migrations implemented by Modibo Keita after the country gained independence, the ACTAF initiative revolved around another type of mobility: a voluntary migration, an intentional „return to the land“ from Europe, towards Africa, outside of any migration management policy.”
Between Us and Nature is an ongoing reading club that chooses texts related to natural sciences, art, anthropology, postcolonialism and the (post)anthropocene from a mostly female* perspective. Attendees read passages together out loud, and share experiences and thoughts about the nature they live in. Looking beyond disciplines, the group creates a space to learn from and with bacteria, algae, fungi, soil and multinaturalist narratives.
NOTE the TIME: We start at 18:30 CEST. We have 2 hours of reading together.
Come and join us with an open mind here:
What: The Reading Club is in English language
Where: Zabriskie, Reichenberger Str. 150, 10999 Berlin
When: Wednesday 10th of May, 2023 18:30 CEST (sharp!)
Who: small group of lovely, people who would like reading collectively (personal rsvp is necessary:
RVSP: betweenusnature gmail com
Why: to read together, be inspired and meet people
Hosts: Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky, artist, and Sina Ribak, researcher for ecologies and the arts
In collaboration with Zabriskie Buchladen für Kultur und Natur.
References
Citation from the talk by Vandana Shiva at the Opening of the Spore Initiative in Berlin-Neukölln, 22.04.2023.
Raphaël Grisey & Bouba Touré (eds.): Somankidi Coura – A Generative Archive, Archive Books, Berlin, 2017.
Read More« Le jardinage se prête au modèle gestionnaire dépassant les limites du jardin. On comprendrait qu’une société s’en inspire – c’est l’enjeu du Jardin Planétaire – à condition d’en percevoir les dérives et de les éviter. »
Gilles Clément
Read MoreIn gathering roots, just plunging in will get you nothing but a hole. We have to unlearn hurrying. This is all about slowness. “First we give. Then we take.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer
How does an ant perceive the smell of compost? This could be one of the more-than-human stories gathered in “The Book of the Ten Thousand Things” created for documenta15 by La Intermundial Holobiente. “Inbetweenery” is the proposal by artist Claudia Fontes, philosopher Paula Fleisner, and writer Pablo M. Ruiz to translate “intermundial” into English.
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Read MoreThe traditional ecological knowledge of indigenous harvesters is rich in prescriptions for sustainability. They are found in native science and philosophy, in lilfeways and practice but most of all in stories, the ones that are told to help restore balance, to locate ourselves once again in the circle.
Robin Wall Kimmerer
FRACTO 2021’s theme “Appropriation” alludes to found footage and other practices of (re)contextualisation in experimental filmmaking. textîles approaches akin forms of creative (re)appropriation – weaving timelines, crossing archives, engaging with speculative fiction and worlding – while also taking critical and radical stances on predatory appropriation, extractivism, dispossession and restitution. This edition of FRACTO – Experimental Film Encounter features a parallel special program presented by Occulto in the ACUD Gallery space: textîles – threading speculative archipelagoes.
For the closing of this textîles episode, you are invited to a physical public collage reading, where theory, fiction, practices and poetry interweave in different languages. We are not experts on textiles, but share the desire to activate the archipelago for collective, nonlinear storytelling. A collage reading guided by Sina Ribak. textîles are: Filippo Bertoni, Alice Cannavà, Chiara Garbellotto, Sybille Neumeyer.
Sunday 24th of October, 17.00-19.00 at Acud Gallery. Entrance is free, but rvsp is mandatory. https://www.occultomagazine.com/registration-textiles-at-fracto-2021/
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“[…] solastalgia is the pain or sickness caused by the loss or lack of solace and the sense of isolation connected to the present state of one’s home and territory.” [Glenn Albrecht, 2005]
Last time we met, we became aware that forests are burning around the equator. On the raft of the Floating University we read about xapiri (images of mythological animal ancestors) trying to imagine a Yanomani worldview of the Brazilian Amazon. Why imagining an oceanic worldview? No forests could exist without the dust from the deserts, without the winds and oceans.