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In times of ecological crisis, can the garden become a place where we can reshape our role in the ecosystem? A place where we can collectively, together with humans and other organisms, employ different practices and experiences for a more symbiotic coexistence?
What is a garden in times of climate change? How do we deal with biodiversity? What does gardening mean as an intervention if we assume co-creation, care and adaptation rather than control and domination? What role can the garden play as a testing ground for suggesting new ecological practices for the city?
The Gardeners Assembly will consist of a series of ‘Stories from the Garden’ told by various Amsterdam-based gardeners and garden artists. After which we will actively engage in small-group discussions around specific questions around practices and experiences in the garden, led by the artist-gardeners the Onkruidenier with Samar Nasrullah Khan, Genomic Gastronomy and Theun Karelse, who each have a long-term garden project in the Amstelpark. We will conclude with a circle discussion in which we will explore how we can come together and form a network to learn and exchange from each other and address the pressing challenges we face.
Anyone who is interested in gardens and gardening and their relation to artistic research is welcome!
13:00-13:05
welcome and introduction
Stories from the garden
13:05-13:20
The Sick Garden
Toni Kritzer
Toni Kritzer questions in this lecture performance narratives of disability and sickness in ecosystems and in ourselves, asking how healing might be possible beyond restoration. .Slipping between documentary and speculative methodologies, the sick garden is a story of slugs and viruses, molds, contamination and care.
Toni Kritzer is a trans* nonbinary performance artist. Their work is interdisciplinary and hybridizing: from performance, writing, herbalism, to communal gardening. They run a roof top project garden at DAS Theater.
13:20 – 13:40
We Love Nature but we are not sure if nature loves us back
The 4 Siblings
Muge Yilmaz and Emiel Wolf present a screening of We Love Nature but we are not sure if nature loves us back. The main protagonists of the film are our more-than-human collaborators: the land, sunflowers, corn plants, bees and wasps, the water and a snake. We love nature, but nature doesn’t want us the way we want it.
4Siblings is an eco-feminist art project and a community garden initiated in Nieuw West, Amsterdam in 2018.
13:40 –13:50
Voedselpark Amsterdam
Iris Poels
Iris Poels will share the story of the Lutkemeerpolder, the last piece of fertile farmland in Amsterdam, and how we are fighting to save it from being turned into industrial warehouses.
Iris Poels is the climate mayor of Amsterdam and an active part of Voedselpark Amsterdam where she organizes monthly walks, workshops and film nights. She also is an entrepreneur involved in projects related to the living environment.
13:50 – 14:00
Api Noir
Lorenzo García-Andrade
Lorenzo García-Andrade from Pleasure Ground will present Api Noir, a performative lecture, chronicling an ongoing search for the oldest apple in the Netherlands.
Pleasure Ground is a garden and art collective at Broedplaats Baggerbeest at Zeeburgereiland, Amsterdam.
14:00 – 14:10
The Garden department
Sophie Dandanell & Amalie Oroe Jensen
The Garden Department will speak about how the garden can establish interdepartmental green corridor(s) and become a place of the commons within artistic education and research through hands on embodied and practical approaches.
The Garden Department is a para-educational platform & agroecology garden on the grounds of the Rietveld Academie & Institute in Amsterdam.
14:10- 14:20
Moestuinschool Amsterdam
Nancy Wiltink
Because most vegetable plants are annual, you can grow a new garden every year! There is one catch though: the plants need a lot of care. At Moestuinschool Amsterdam people learn how to grow them, right in the heart of the city.
Nancy Wiltink, with a background in theatre and storyteller, runs a school for urban farming, teaching city people how to grow their own food: Moestuinschool Amsterdam.
14:20 – 14:35
Japanese gardens
Jonmar van Vlijmen, de Onkruidenier
Jonmar van Vlijmen from artist collective de Onkruidenier wil share his findings of his recent research into Japanese gardens during an artist residency in Kyoto.
De Onkruidenier sees themselves as ecosystem futurists, with their work practice they develop scenarios to learn to adapt to the changes in our living environment. Since 2022 they run the Shadow Garden in the Amstelpark.
14.35- 15.15
Drinks and planting procession
Collectively we will bring the plants, now part of the installation of Genomic Gastronomy in the Future Gardening exhibition, to the Genomic Gastronomy Garden.
15:15-16:15
Sharing practices, challenges and questions from the garden
3 group discussions led by Zackery Denfeld (Genomic Gastronomy), Theun Karelse and Jonmar van Vlijmen & Samar Nasrullah Khan (de Onkruidenier).
16:15 -17:00
Circle discussion: summaries and sharing of ideas for a Gardeners Assembly network
17:00 – 17.30
Drinks & bites
The Gardeners Assembly takes place on the last day of the exhibition Future Gardening: gardening as artistic practice for multispecies worldbuilding and is also the last opportunity to view the exhibition. The exhibition links the gardening practices of the Onkruidenier, Genomic Gastronomy and Theun Karelse, who each manage their own artist garden in Amstelpark. The exhibition will still be open on 1 December and all artists will be present.
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