Herbologies/Foraging Networks

The Herbologies/Foraging Networks programme of events, focused in Helsinki (Finland) and Kurzeme region of Latvia, explores the cultural traditions and knowledge of herbs, edible and medicinal plants, within the contemporary context of online networks, open information-sharing, biological and hydroponic technologies.
The traditions of finding and knowing about wild food in the local Nordic environment are slipping away from the current generation. How can one attract their attention: With books, online maps, workshops, mobile-guided tours, open-source information or DNA code? Or learn how to grow them yourself, over the dark winter months?
The Pixelache Festival events introduce the different meeting points between the three collaborating partners, including seminar presentations by international artists and Finnish botanical experts; workshops sharing that knowledge with the public; a round-table discussion about foraging in the urban context; and a localised manifestation of the Windowfarms Project
(US).
Following, in a midsummer expedition to rural Kurzeme, Western Latvia, SERDE Interdisciplinary Art Group will lead fieldwork to learn about the cultural heritage of Balts using wild plants, and create documents for the younger ‘digital native’ generation.

Herbologies/Foraging Networks

The Herbologies/Foraging Networks programme of events, focused in Helsinki (Finland) and Kurzeme region of Latvia, explores the cultural traditions and knowledge of herbs, edible and medicinal plants, within the contemporary context of online networks, open information-sharing, biological and hydroponic technologies.
The traditions of finding and knowing about wild food in the local Nordic environment are slipping away from the current generation. How can one attract their attention: With books, online maps, workshops, mobile-guided tours, open-source information or DNA code? Or learn how to grow them yourself, over the dark winter months?
The Pixelache Festival events introduce the different meeting points between the three collaborating partners, including seminar presentations by international artists and Finnish botanical experts; workshops sharing that knowledge with the public; a round-table discussion about foraging in the urban context; and a localised manifestation of the Windowfarms Project
(US).
Following, in a midsummer expedition to rural Kurzeme, Western Latvia, SERDE Interdisciplinary Art Group will lead fieldwork to learn about the cultural heritage of Balts using wild plants, and create documents for the younger ‘digital native’ generation.

Wedding cake of no return

Organized Networks

Cowdown – Seed up

Seed up !
Is a campaign to support the Belgian project seeds for food, initiated by prof. Willem van Cotthem. The project objective is to collect seeds for growers in North african refugeecamps. Just the seeds from tropical fruit and vegetables that we have an abundance of in our supermarkets and on our kitchentables, are expensive and hard to get hold on for people cultivating in the areas where they climatwise easily can be grown. Seeds are by nature hardy and if we collect them from our food, dry them and pack them with some care, they can be used and provide food for people in camps that have very little access to fresh food otherwise. The very grassroot, user friendly character of the action, is also suggesting an alternative to great scale aid projects, and great scale agriculture policies (=monopoly), letting information and seeds travel independently over unionborders

Cowdown !

Kultivator shows two pieces, that concerns the development towards less biodiversity and injust distribution of foods and goods globally, promoted a.o. by European union Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). In both works the link is laid between the restriction on freedom and development that monopoly and closedcode/copyright is causing in software and the same phenomena occurring on farming and food supply.
The Cowdown is an installation with a reconstruction of a now extinct breed of cow, ”The Ölandsko” that used to be common on the island where Kultivator is sited. The cow is modelled 1:1, and standing inside a small ready made greenhouse outside Växjö public library. Inside the library, visible from outside, is a screen with the cowdown terminal animation, showing source code and a large variety of cattle breeds from all over the world. Images of the various breeds and short facts about their characteristics, history and breeding schemes are colored in the terminal green black, suggesting that we are watching a wonderful richness of variety, that needs to be kept, and at best expanded.