We decorated the toilet of the artbuilding in honour ofDr. Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of the many times awardedSulabh Sanitation Movementin India. His work is an example of a single individual’s initiative that has led to increased well-being of millions. Since its inception in 1970 the movement has installed more than one million Sulabh toilets, which in addition to giving people and especially women in slum areas, access to clean and safe toilets, also reduced the need for India’s dirtiest and most degrading occupation; excrement collector. Just the fact that the Sulabh Sanitation Movement in its starting point is a social project, makes it especially interesting to hold up as an example of sustainable development. We would suggest that ecology, culture and social structures can never be detached from each other, and that all work for a better environment must function as well culturally and socially as ecologically.
Like the toilets developed by Dr. Bindeshwar, this Mullis toilet has a container that collects the excrement, so that it that after some time can be used as fertilizer. The microorganisms that make this possible, Jumptails, are also presented in the room in drawings by Kultivatormedlemmen Jonas Rahm.
This is the tribute nr 2. It is estimated that about 80% of all organic material on the planet passes through these microorganisms digestive system. They are with this a prerequisite for all emerging and hence all life on earth. Without these organisms, invisible to us, we would not last one day. Agriculture may now be conducted “without soil”, with artificial nutrient solutions supplied to for example tomato plants. But the job to break down our stools, and the remains of, for example, a tomato salad, we have no synthetic method for.
For Barents Spektakel the Swedish groupKultivator will try to process a cheese
with mixed milk from the four countries of the Barents Region.
To develop the Barents cross-culturalcheese, they will work with the local cheese-master
Ivar Øverliand get herbal advice from the local Sami people,
as well as use the festival energy to stimulate its fermentation.
The project will be carried out at the exhibition space,
and samples of the first cheese will be served at the seminar Visionary Arctic.
The post (r)evolutionary exercises are the outcome of a meeting/friendship/project that started in summer 2010, when we took part in "Goings on" seminar in Beirut, Lebanon. In this seminar, curated by Cecilia Andersson, Scandinavian and Middle east art groups were invited to meet and learn about each others practices. That's what we did, we got along really well, and we started at once to think of ways to do something together again. After the seminar, The Danish group rum46 applied for money to get everyone to Denmark and Sweden in summer 2011, in a project called Camp.
Then in between, as we know, the Arabic uprising came – our new friends stood on the Tehrir square, or struggling in Damascus and so on, and we felt that when they came to us, that is what we wanted to talk about; What now? What do you do after the revolution? We wanted some kind of physical outcome of the talks, and choose posters, also so that we could distribute them to the people taking part afterwards. And then finally, in August 2011, when everybody (except sadly, the Syrian group that did not dare to travel because of the violence in Damascus) had arrived and were gathered on the farm, we all as usual began to do "the farm things", (like slaughtering, fencing, milking, etc,) someone came up with that "this is actually what you must do after the revolution"; building up again. So we discussed, and sketched, and identified these "exercises". Intended for anyone who hopes to live through a revolution. They are illustrated with pictures from projects we have made, some from the actual meeting that summer with the Middle East art groups, and some from previous events taking place on the farm.
And yes, we took the design from a manuscript of William Morris, the radical frontiers person of the Arts and crafts movement in the late 19th century in England. Nowadays, these patterns are popular interior decorative, but then they represented a criticism on industrialisation and its enslavement of the masses. It had nothing to do with bourgeoisie or elitism, just like we don't believe that art or farming should be elitist, or conservative. I suppose the design kind of underlines this contradiction on the surface, to be radical and yet traditional. We like to play with that.
The posters have been shown at Alt-CPH 11 and V.art 11, where they were given away with wallpaper glue and pencil in a nice bag if people would hang them in the public space.
Lunch with cows
28th August in Tammenpää milk farm
in western coast of Finland.
The framework of the event is Halikonlahti Green Art-project,
an initiative of artist and curator
Tuula Nikulainen andSunny Future association.
The exhibition, called Food Chains,
will be opened at Salo Art Museum
next Friday, 9th September.
It is curated by Tuula Nikulainen
and Ulla Taipale. More information
about the exhibitionhere.
photos: Sami Perttilä, AndreaVanuchhi
Since almost ten thousand years now, we live very close to each other, and has indeed affected each others lives and beings a great deal. Our relation has been practical and very close physical, but we have not yet really grown into exchanging a lot of thoughts, or even trying to meet at an intellectual level. This informal lunch meeting intends to be a small start of a more mature and interesting way of being together. We have no prepared speakers, no translators or list of topics that must be discussed, but! Questions about our future relation, and sustainable survival may come up!
-A cross cultural workshop in rum46 with the artist groups from the first Goings On
– a seminar organized by Cecilia Andersson that took place in 98weeks project space in Beirut Lebanon
from the 24-27 June 2010.
Goings On participants were: Cecilia Andersson / werkprojects
(Sweden), 98weeks project space Mirene Arsanios (Lebanon), Iz Östat / cura bodrum residency
(Turkey), Mohamed Allam / Medrar (Egypt), Luba Kuzovnikova / Pikene på Broen (Norway), Malin &
Mathieu Vrijman / Kultivator (Sweden), Thorbjørn Reuter Christiansen / rum46 (Denmark), Alicia
Jimenez / El Hervidero (Spain), Omar Khoury / Samandal (Lebanon), Khaled Sedkis / Interruptions
(Jordan). (See attachment from Goings On in Beirut and the brief CV of the participants)
Description:
Workshop ”The camp” will take place in rum46 from arrival of the artists on 9.8.2011 until their
departures on the 17.8.2011. The aim is to follow up on the participant’s art practices and to know
each other better.
We want to develop “a factory of ideas”, which will be a cross-cultural collective happening doing the
workshop. Participants will be asked to bring “materials” from their cultural background; this
“material” will be used in shaping the process. In the evenings, during the workshop in rum46, there
will also be public presentations from the different groups and social dinner parties. Together the
artists will make a collective exhibition that will be shown in rum46. This exhibition will become the
rum46´s summer exhibition and will be shown until the end of August 2011.
After the workshop,
from the 13.8.2011 to 17.8.2011, the participants will visit the artist group Kultivators farm on Öland
in Sweden and learn about the fusion of agriculture and art.
