As a starting point for the growing exhibition Future Gardening, de Onkruidenier, Genomic Gastronomy and Theun Karelse will enter into a dialogue with their invited discussion partners. Representing the three gardens that these artists have been developing in collaboration with Zone2Source in the Amstelpark, participants will discuss the topic of gardening as artistic research.

Gardens have been an inspiration for art for centuries. The artists participating in the Future Gardening project go beyond drawing inspiration from nature, they actively investigate the role we as humans have in the natural environment. It is significant that gardens were (and sometimes are) only seen as an art form when they were no longer utilitarian but were created purely for aesthetic and decorative reasons. This ideological separation between man and nature is, as many thinkers have argued in recent decades, responsible for the ecological crisis which we now find ourselves in.

It is urgent to re-examine how we as humans depend on and are part of complex eco-systems. How can we move from an ideology of control and dominance of our environment to one of care and reciprocity? The artists investigate what gardening as an intervention means when we see ourselves as part of a multi-species community. What is gardening if we assume co-creation and what other language belongs to it? What does it mean to eat and be eaten from an understanding of material exchange, dependency and respect for other life forms? And can we not be guided better by the otter than by humans in shaping urban ecosystems?
Beyond representation, these artists turn gardening itself into art, developing critical theory into transformative and public practice. Using the garden as a microcosm and in collaboration with other people and life forms, new imaginations and practices are explored of what it means to be human on a shared earth.

Speakers: Alice Smits (Zone2Source), Debra Solomon, Jonmar van Vlijmen (de Onkruidenier) and Lisa Becking (Aquaculture and Fisheries WUR), Zack Denfield, Cathrine Kramer (artist collective Genomic Gastronomy) and Anje Poortman (Thuishaven Voedselbos / Toekomstplanter), Theun Karelse (artist) and Jeroen Helmer (ARK Nature illustrator)

Program 

15:30 Walk-in

16:00 Welcome and introduction Alice Smits (director/curator Zone2Source)

16.10 Lecture by Debra Solomon

16.30- 16.55 On speculative taxonomy (Onkruidenier)

16.55 -17.20  On Future Food Imaginaries (Genomic Gastronomy)

17:20 – 17:35 Break

17:35 – 18:00 On animal guidance in life, art and gardening (Theun Karelse)

18:00 – 18:30 Conversation & Q&A

18:30 – 19:00 Reception and opening of the Future Gardening exhibition

The program of the afternoon will be in English.

The program is free but registration is required
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1015409385807?aff=oddtdtcreator