About this Event
Introduction by Alice Smits (curator/director Zone2Source)
Together with the artists of the artists’ gardens in Amstelpark – the Onkruidenier, Genomic Gastronomy, Theun Karelse – we will engage in a dialogue about gardening as artistic research.
Gardens have inspired art for centuries. But these artists are taking it further, actively exploring what role we as humans have in the natural environment. Gardens became an art form the moment they ceased to be utilitarian, and started to be created purely for aesthetic and decorative reasons. Many thinkers have argued that the ideological separation between man and nature is to blame for the ecological crisis which we currently find ourselves in.
We need to re-examine how we as humans are dependent on and part of complex ecological systems. How can we move from an ideology of control and domination of our environment to one of care and reciprocity?
The artists in Future Gardening explore what gardening as an intervention means when we see ourselves as part of a more species-specific community. And what does it mean to eat and be eaten from the perspective of material exchange, dependence and respect for other life forms? And aren’t we better off being guided by the otter than by humans while shaping our urban ecosystems?
Genomic Gastronomy, Theun Karelse, and de Onkruidenier move beyond representation and turn gardening itself into an art that means to turn critical theory into transformative and public practice. Using the garden as a microcosmos in collaboration with other people and other life forms, new imaginations and practices explore what it means to be human on a shared earth.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Zone2Source, 4 Amstelpark, Amsterdam, Netherlands
EUR 0.00