This workshop is part of Met andere ogen: Landschapsfestival. English will be spoken.
What does a landscape want to become? How can imagination, experimentation, mysticism and fiction contribute to a different view of the living city? Over the past few months, the ecosystem futurists of de Onkruidenier explored the urban landscape of the Amsterdam Science Park. Through design research, they are working towards a shared green space, where humans and other life can live and play together. The artists are inspired by the relationships between humans and other life in this place. They experiment with making the environment more green and biodiverse.
Suppose you were tiny and imperceptible to the human eye. What is your survival strategy in a landscape when it is extremely hot, cold, dry, wet, salty or fresh? At the edge of the swamp, de Onkruidenier makes space for the Multispecies Living Room: a temporary intervention in the outdoor space of the Amsterdam Science Park, which makes the relationships between humans and more-than-humans palpable in a special way. We get to know all the more-than-humans living in these extreme conditions.
For example, did you know that the plants madder and jute are heat worshippers and thrive extremely well in the warm urban climate of the Amsterdam Science Park? What can we learn from micro-organisms that survive under the most extreme conditions? Based on their fieldwork, de Onkruidenier developed three workshops working towards a multispecies living room.
Workshop 2: Multispecies Patchwork
In this workshop we will assemble cocoons with local materials and think about how we adapt and find shelter in extreme circumstances. We will focus on exploring the space in a performative way with our made cocoons and set up the Multispecies Living room. We will finish with planting the cocoons.
The other two workshops are: Workshop 1 - Multispecies Skin (May 19th 2023) and Workshop 3 – Speculative ecology in the Multispecies Living room (date TBA).
Programme
16:00 - 16:15 uur: Welcome and introduction
16:15 - 16:30 uur: Mapping of the Multispecies Living Room
16:30 - 16:45 uur: Gathering of materials
16:45 - 18:45 uur: Assembling the cocoons
18:45 - 19:00 uur: Reflection + drinks (and snacks)
Please note! If you are tight on funds but would like to participate in this event, please contact tanja [at] waag [dot] org.
This intervention was developed by artists' collective de Onkruidenier as part of Met andere ogen: Landschapsfestival.
Met andere ogen: Landschapsfestival invites you to set your senses on the Amsterdam Science Park and discover the city as a living place, together with artists, local residents and scientists. During this landscape festival, we will build a different relationship with nature together. Workshops, installations and biodiverse interventions will shift our attention from bricks and structures to critters and soil during the summer months.
Founded in 2013, art collective De Onkruidenier consists of Jonmar van Vlijmen, Rosanne van Wijk and Ronald Boer. The collective explores historical, cultural and potential transformations of nature and its potential for human evolution. They do fieldwork, collecting plants, the stories and histories associated with them. As ecosystem futurists, they speculate on aquatic culture to arrive at new interpretations about the relationship between humans and (urban) nature, both above and below sea level. In developing their work, interactions with audiences and experts such as farmers, residents and scientists create new narratives.
About T-Factor
This programme is part of the international project T-Factor. How can we create urban initiatives in an inclusive way and for a variety of life forms, such as people, plants, animals and microbes? Over the next two years, within T-Factor, Waag will investigate these and more questions about interim initiatives at the Amsterdam Science Park.
