This event is sold out!
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 on 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 1: Multispecies skin
This workshop focuses on the topic of skins and cocoons. What skins do we need to protect ourselves in extreme conditions? We will dye fabrics with natural pigment to make interesting skins that will form the basis of our cocoons. No specific skills are needed for this workshop, just an open mind.
We will work with local materials and fabric and assemble them into cocoons in which plants can grow. Each material will tell a story about the ecosystem we are part of. We will work with multispecies skin manipulations; using different techniques, fabrics will be manipulated to create certain patterns that will become the skin of our extremophiles. Then, the skins will be dyed in a dye bath of natural pigment.
The other two workshops are: Workshop 2 – Multispecies Patchwork (June 1st 2023) and Workshop 3 – Speculative ecology in the Multispecies Living Room (date TBA).
Programme
16:00 -16:30 hrs: Welcome and introduction
16:30 - 18:00 hrs: Fabric processing and dyeing
18:00 - 18:30 hrs: Visit location of intervention + listening exercise
18:30 - 19:00 hrs: Social time and drinks (there will be snacks as well)
Clothing requirements
There will be paint during this workshop so make sure your clothes are allowed to get dirty. Keep in mind that there might be permanent stains on your clothes. If you wish, you can always bring overalls or shorts for protection.
Accessibility
This event takes place on the ground floor in the Amsterdam Science Park and is wheelchair accessible.
Please note! If you are tight on funds but would like to participate in this event, please contact tanja [@] 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.
