About Zone2Source

Since 2013, Zone2Source has served as a dynamic testing ground for art and ecology, spanning its diverse pavilions, artist gardens, and the surrounding outdoor spaces of Amstelpark in Amsterdam South. Drawing inspiration from the park’s history as the site of the 1972 Floriade international horticultural exhibition, we collaborate with artists and the public to host exhibitions, research residencies, outdoor projects, performances, workshops, expeditions, and debates. Together, we explore new visions of the evolving relationship between nature and culture in today’s world.

As a testing ground for art and ecology, the Amstelpark has become a living lab for artistic experiments that radically reimagine the relationship between humans and nature. These experiments allow us to imagine and train new practices for a sustainable future by critically addressing and revealing the dominant colonial, extractive, and destructive power relations that connect the climate crisis and increasing social injustice. Our program is not characterized by doom and gloom but by imagination, inviting people to reconnect with all life around us and reshape this relationship by giving space to more-than-human entities and actors. The urban park becomes, in times of climate crisis, a contemporary space where fellow city dwellers (human and non-human) meet, and practice radically inclusive multi-species practices for a better society for all life. We see ourselves as a bridge between artistic research and the public, where artists’ research into ecological issues becomes a collective exploration.

More and more people see that a happier, healthier, and sustainable world is possible when we stop centering humans. When we center life at the heart of the debate, we find that ecological crisis cannot simply be solved by focusing on technology and economic growth. As we look closely, we find that the ecological crisis is a profound cultural crisis that requires addressing how humans coexist with the planet’s vast diversity of life. Reckoning with this vast ecological and cultural crisis urgently requires new images, new stories, practices, and experiences where humans and their creations are no longer seen as separate from nature, but as an essential part of it. This task does not fall only on the scientist – this particular task calls for artists and designers.

Zone2Source believes that art is a specific form of knowledge, alongside science, that plays an important role in one of the most pressing issues: teaching us to relate differently to our living environment. Our city is not only made up of nearly a million people but also billions of interconnected lives that actively teach us about the potential of learning from diverse cultures, human and non-human alike. Zone2Source aims for radical diversity and inclusion by giving a platform to these diverse human and non-human perspectives and celebrating the beauty of their interconnectedness. With Amstelpark as its testing ground, Zone2Source aims to set up transformative artistic research programs, projects, and exhibitions while experimenting with and imagining cocreated futures characterized by more-than-human communities living in balance on a shared planet.

INGREDIENTS OF THE TESTING GROUND

A site-responsive location

Zone2Source is uniquely located in the middle of the Amstelpark in Amsterdam-Zuid, a fantastic place to meet a very diverse audience. In addition to art lovers who come to view the exhibitions, many unsuspecting park visitors encounter our projects both inside and outside the pavilions. The Amstelpark, as a former Floriade park, has a wide diversity of both flora and fauna, unique gardens, and various pavilions. With Amstelpark as their host, Zone2Sources network of artists, designers, landscape architects, researchers, and the public explore the potential of a 21st century park as a place of nature-culture encounters and a site of dialogue between artists and a broad audience, including the gardeners, ecologists, and the plants and animals living there.

Zone2Source is found in the following Amstelpark locations:

      The Glass House: In this glass pavilion, we organize four exhibitions per year lasting two months, with workshops, lectures, and covering and exploring the exhibition’s theme. In the winter, we keep the space available for various short-term events.

      Park Studio: Between mid-May and October (when the plants are green and blooming outside), we invite artists to work in the Orangerie greenhouse. As an open studio, it is a perfect place for site-specific work, presentations, and public interaction because not only does it encourage the artist to collaborate with other experts and visitors, but it also allows the public to come into contact with artistic processes.

      Rietveld House: Our office, which is also used for workshops and occasionally as a workspace for artists.

      The Belgian Monastery Garden: In early 2022, as part of the “Vrije Ruimte” (Free Space) initiative by the City of Amsterdam, we were given access to the Belgian walled monastery garden, which we are developing into an artist garden with the Onkruidenier collective. Renamed the Shadow Garden, this collective is working here on Future Gardening.

The Amstelpark

We commission outdoor artworks, (sound) walks, performative interventions, and regularly update an art map, so people can experience art and ecology in the park seven days a week.

Living Lab

We use the Amstelpark as a living lab for research, experimentation, and public interaction with ecology. A research exhibition is not merely a static presentation of the final result of an artistic process, but rather a challenge for artists to continue their research within the ongoing, ever-forming exhibition. We provide artists with access to our indoor and outdoor locations, connect them with a network of ecologists, gardeners, the nearby Zuidas Botanical Garden, scientists, other knowledge networks, and, of course, the highly diverse park visitors and residents.

We create special exhibitions in which new work and research emerge within the context of existing work, so that meaningful connections are highlighted for both the public and the artist. We have noticed that both artists and the public experience this very positively. The artist can test their work and receive feedback in a public setting, and the public gains more insights into the artist’s working and thinking processes.