Soil Assembly

Workshop at the farm La Divina Papaya, Kayambi territory, Ecuador. Credit: Mateo Barriga Salazar

This event launches the Soil Assembly #2 – Tinku Uku Pacha, to be held 8-11 May 2025 in the Intercultural Community Center Tránsito Amaguaña (CICTA) in La Chimba, Cayambe, Ecuador, home to important historical women indigenous leaders from the Andes. Launched in 2023 at a first assembly organized during the Kochi Biennale in Kerala, the Soil Assembly initiative is an emerging network promoting soil knowledge, biodiversity conservation, permaculture and food transition in formal and non-formal art and design pedagogies, connecting the work of creative collectives and individual artists, activists and communities from around the world with new generations of art practitioners, activists, farmers, scientists and hackers to contribute to the collective regeneration of the ruined landscapes of the Anthropocene.

The event will feature an online presentation of the Ecuadorian assembly Tinku Uku Pacha by its general curator Pedro Soler (online); introduce Laboratory Planet journal #6 – Planetary Peasants which elaborates on some of the experiences, reflections and investigations gathered within this network; and hold a public discussion with local guests, the Soil Assembly initiators and the audience. The event will be followed by a visit to the nearby community garden of The Center for Genomic Gastronomy and conclude with a foodculinary experience proposed by Eat artist Maya Minder.

The gathering is also an opportunity to announce and launch a crowdfunding campaign to support the Ecuadorian Soil Assembly #2 organizational community and the preparation of a dedicated Spanish-language edition of The Laboratory Planet, which will then be distributed at the COP30 climate conference in Belem, Brazil, in November 2025.

With Zone2Source, The Center for Genomic Gastronomy (NL), Ewen Chardronnet (FR), Maya Minder (CH), Pedro Soler (ECU), Meena Vari (IN/UAE) and more.

Click here for the Zoom-link to join the assembly online.

Detailed Programme:

2pm – 2:15 pm
Welcome Ewen Chardronnet and Maya Minder

2:15 – 2:30 pm
Ewen Chardronnet presents the Laboratory Planet #6: Planetary Peasants publication

2:30 – 3:00 pm
2 years after its first edition, Ewen Chardronnet (Makery.Info, FR), Maya Minder (Hackteria, CH), Meena Vari (Rizq Art Initiative, UAE/IN), Neal White (CREAM, Westminster University, UK, tbc), Fiona de Bell & Roel Schoenmakers (Cascoland, NL, tbc), present the Soil Assembly initiative.

3:00 – 3:30 pm
Pedro Soler (ECU) introduces the Soil Assemby #2: Tinku Uku Pacha, Ecuador, May 2025(online)

3:30 – 3:45 pm
Q&A

3:45 – 4:00 pm
Break

4:00 – 4:30 pm
Visit to the garden of The Center of Genomic Gastronomy artists’ collective

4.30 – 5:00 pm
Discussions towards a regional Soil Assembly in Amsterdam

5:00 – 6:00 pm
Eat Art with Maya Minder

Registration required!
To participate online please register at ewen@makery.info and we will send you the zoom link to participate remotely.

This event is supported by the More-Than-Planet program, co-funded by the European Union.

https://soilassembly.net/

https://laboratoryplanet.org/

https://www.more-than-planet.eu/

https://zoom.us/j/98322286865?pwd=SzQ2MHZPVFl3anlFU3Z2WUpLc1VXZz09

Bios:

Ewen Chardronnet (FR) is an artist, author, journalist and curator. He is currently editor-in-chief of the bilingual web magazine Makery.info, The Laboratory Planet occasional newspaper and coordinator of the Creative Europe cooperation programs “More-Than-Planet” (2022-2025) and “Rewilding Cultures” (2022-2026). In his work, he is interested in practices, tactics and speculations that connect artistic research and scientific knowledge to the creation of social situations that intertwine discourses and shifts of perspectives in the very fabric of society.

Léonore Bonaccini and Xavier Fourt form the artist-duo Bureau d´études (FR). For two decades, the group has been producing cartography of contemporary political, social and economic systems. In 2007 they co-founded the Laboratory Planet collective and journal with Ewen Chardronnet. For more than 15 years they are engaged in the Ferme de la Mhotte, a place outside the property located in center France, where a group of people organize their uses together to bring out a social project at the crossroads of culture, agriculture and education. https://bureaudetudes.org/  http://fermedelamhotte.fr/

Maya Minder (CH) is an artist and chef working in the field of Eat Art. “Cooking thus transforms us”, is a framework she weaves like a strings through her work. Cooking serves her to reveal the metaphor of the human transformation of raw nature into cooked culture and she combines it to the evolutionary ideas of a symbiotic co-existence between plants, animals and humans. She is also a curator and organizer of projects and festivals independent and in co-production with the International Hackteria Society. https://mayaminder.ch

Pedro Soler is a writer, curator and small-scale farmer who lives and works in the highlands of northern Ecuador. In 2023 he curated the exhibition “Humano, Demasiado Humano” (Human, all too human) in the Contemporary Art Center (CAC) of Quito and in 2024 was awarded the Mariano Aguilera prize for curatorial practices. His work is marked by a fascination for plants and queer beings between realms and the horror of the ecosocial collapse. In “El Tractor de Hamburger”, published by recodo press (2024), he explores the colonial relation of Ecuador with its Orient, the Amazon, and the devastation of fossil capitalism. He is main curator of Soil Assembly #2: Tinku Uku Pacha.  http://word.root.ps

Meena Vari (IN/UAE) Since 2023 she is the creative director at Rizq Art Initiative (UAE) after being the Dean at the School of Media Arts and Sciences and Dean of Contemporary Art and Curatorial Practice at Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore, India, as well as the curator for the Center for Experimental Media &Arts (CEMA). She has engaged with the TATE UK, Kochi Biennale Foundation etc. on artistic and curatorial projects. Meena Vari kickstarted the Soil Assembly initiative.

Neal White (UK) is an artist with a strong interest in the complex threads that link social, political and ecological futures to visual and interdisciplinary contemporary art.His background in art & technology developed into critical investigations of science (STS) and has evolved alongside processes that draw on legacies of post/conceptual art, as well as an interest in social practice and collaborations with other artists, academics, scientists, curators, architects and activists. Neal White is co-director of the Center for Research Education in Art and Media, University of Westminster, London. https://officeofexperiments.net https://cream.ac.uk/

The Center of Genomic Gastronomy (NL) is an artist-led think tank that examines the biotechnologies and biodiversity of human food systems. The center gives itself the mission to map food controversies, prototype alternative culinary futures and imagine a more just, biodiverse & beautiful food system. https://genomicgastronomy.com/