On Wednesday a very positive article on the Sydney Morning Herald was written about the food forest project of The Artist As Family.
It made you ponder, and resolved to stitch together a bunch of instances you encountered in the past few years, as you think the relationship of those various sporadic moments of communication are very much linked.
Lets start with the latest. Meg Ulman, Patrick Jones and his 10 years old son Zephyr, present their artistic interventions as a unit, The Artist As Family. You are not going to delve in the merits of such social statement (reconsidering the role of the ‘artist as hero’, presenting a new socially-aware dynamic of engagement, repositioning the role of the artist as a social being, not as a uber-being which hovers over society producing cultural statements, etc) to rather focus on how their latest collaboration has being portrayed in this particular article.
As part of the a current exhibition -In The Balance- the family unit proposed and delivered a permanent installation on the grounds of Anglican’s St. Michael’s church: a garden.
Using permaculture principles as an over-arching design, and with the help of various volunteers from the church, the neighborhood and the art-crowd, a food forest was created, a cornucopia of all sort of edibles which will augment the resident free soup initiative and make a valuable and unmistakable statement about food production in modern society.
The article about the project took then an extremely important -in your opinion- swing, investing the food forest with a christian reading.
What you find interesting is the fact that hardly ever contemporary art (made-up mostly of post-religion individuals) entangle itself on those topics, and even more seldom churches acknowledge contemporary art as forum for exchange.
The reasons for this to happen needs to be sought in several points, you think.
1. statements like “If there’s a positive spin-off to global warming, we call it social warming – that is, grassroots movements becoming active” by Patrick
2. eagerness of Reverend Francis Chalwell to be bold, and creatively engage with new audiences
3. the politics and rhetoric underlying the intervention are NOT politics or rhetoric, but widely shared universal concerns
4. enough with self celebration, entrenched points of views on how to do something about the environmental disaster we facing, enough political side taking, lets just act, now, all willing individuals, beyond factionalism. (ps. you wouldn’t care less if labor or coalition win the elections, they are both irrelevant)
so, back one step.
You were lucky enough to see Carlo Petrini speaking twice during recent travels. Carlo is understood as the galvaniser of the SlowFood movement, which by now is also Terramadre, an international network of slow producers, expressively against the shifting of goods and monocultures as a model for guaranteeing food for the growing world population. Anyway, what is of interest here is the fact that you went to hear him and his fellow travelers in this world campaign, with serious doubt about the hypocrisy of the apparatus which is Slowfood now, kind of like the organic labeling mafia, who dictates what can be branded as such and what not.
But then you saw Petrini and he had something very interesting to say: the issues are beyond politics or childish factionalism, what we talk about here is universal concerns. He has no qualms on whether he can get support from the left or right side of politics, as they both concern themselves with the safeguard of their offspring. On one forum he was sided by the then Mayor of Rome, a self-proclaimed extremist fascist.
More.
a few years back you were collecting interviews of a number of Redfern residents, as part of the ongoing project Redfern-Waterloo Tour Of Beauty by the SquatSpace collective. We were interviewing some incredible individuals, one of which is Jenny Monroe, a long going indigenous rights activist and greatly respected member of the community.
On our question, ‘so, Jenny, what do you think about us, we are privileged white kids, university degree and de-facto bourgeois, and we feel somewhat unease when we go to the Block (Redfern’s indigenous Australian hub n.d.r) and we talk about social issues fully aware that we are part of the problem, we represent the problem’.. she replied that just because we were doing something about it, we were not representing the problem anymore, but rather the solution, and further ” I have no qualms in taking my support wherever i find it”
One more.
Thanks to a fantastic common friend of yours and Lucas Ihlein, Heather Formaini, on Wednesday you met the Senator elected Ms Lee Rhiannon at the MCA and gave a tour of the exhibition. Ms Rhiannon is a Green, from that party that started out of Tasmanian dissent to become what the world understand as the political voice for environmental change.
You will make a post one day about the actual weight a political entity should have especially when is de-facto native, as much as permaculture and keyline systems, but at this stage you just need to profess one important fact: it doesn’t matter, the issues are universal, let’s harness support and energy wherever is offered.
Transition movements have something to say about that, but lets just post this for now.
Getting ready for the first of a series of tours in Sydney, first up The Domain, this coming Saturday, still places available, book via education@mca.com.au or 9245 2484..
The Domain. This is a great way to start, as just over the ridge from where the meeting point is, ( the Art Gallery of NSW) is the site of what was the first farm in New South Wales, Farm Cove.
Looking at it in terms of recent history, the years immediately following the first wave of invasion of this ‘great southern land’, the establishment of the first farm gives an indication on how to read the current state of the environment in Australia.
The colonist came ashore with cows and sheep, pigs and horses, chickens and ducks, and brought along a host of seeds to aid the process of acclimatisation.
Lots can be disputed on how much they learned from the local population of indigenous australians, the Cadigal clan of the Eora nation, who successfully inhabited and flourished on this shores, taking advantage of the seasonal abundance, for tens of thousands of years, the longest continuous partnership between men and land.
Surely there were lots of exchanges, violent or less, regardless of which the militarized intervention with the environment opened a floodgate and new plants, animals, insects, viruses were -both purposely and not- introduced.
This lead to the start of the ecological make-up of today’s Australia, in its variety and eclectic mix of nature, cultures, stories and denials.
The Domain is somewhat a difficult site for talking about spontaneous botany, as hardly no corner is left untouched, unadulterated, un-’managed’.
Yet, nothing as resilient as pioneer plants, and along the way of the weedbook tour | The Domain you will talk and present to the viewers dandelions (taraxacum officinalis), wood sorrels (Oxalis spp.) and sow thistles (sonchus spp.), chinese elms (celtis sinensi) and sweet pittosporums (pittosporum ondulatum) and many more, exotic plants along side native invaders, all of which are the natural reaction to contained landscapes.
You are producing a map and a leaflet for the occasion too, which will be freely available to download.
Ok, so you are going to offer 5 tours in the next month and a half, in 5 different locations.
This is nothing new to your practice, as you have been using this ‘delivery’ concept as far back as 2002, when you first produced Weedkiller/Pestcotroller in an abandoned Drive In at Kingswood, Western Sydney.
Since then you have employed all sort of strategies in an attempt to provide an alternative reading of the environment, see the tab above for an incomplete list of them.
In the past you have offered this tours in conjunction with Weedbuster week, a national campaign subsidised by the various primary industries agencies of the States and Territories of Australia.
Weedbuster week goes from the 6 to the 12th of September, but activities get enlisted on their website for up to 8 weeks after that.
The aim of the campaign is to rise awareness on the damage weeds bring to the Australian environment, presenting and promoting weeding days, educational activities, festivals, displays, ‘swap a native for a bag of weeds’ initiatives and so forth.
So in the years you have been ‘weeding’ Weedbuster week with your own activities too, offering weed talk and weed identification workshops while presenting a more complex scenario.
You have the bad habit of having problems with dualities and hypocrisy, as we all know a ‘weed’ is just a plant growing where we human would rather have it not. Anthropocentric views of the environment are dangerous, they brought us were we stand now, on the brink of ecological collapse, so rhetoric that a plant would ‘invade the natural bushland’ is just denying the fact that the bushland has been damaged by our practice more than any plant could ever do.
So here you are, still at it, presenting your argument in forums that would probably rather not have you saying it, willing to discuss and find common grounds, as we all love the environment, we all love to do good, and we all understand ‘crusade style’ attempts at ‘doing good’ are actually dangerous as they simplify the complexity of it all.
There is no single solutions, and wordings in the style of ‘war against bush invaders’, ‘garden escapes’, ‘noxious weeds’, ‘threat to the environment’ are just far too evangelistic and blindfolded..
uhmff
You’re open for discussion, eager to listen to arguments that would convince you that a piece of land which is trying to diversify its own biota with plants that might not necessarily look good in a mono-cultural crop (or have any immediate economic return) is guilty, to the point that the plant themselves become ‘illegal’.
To the point that farmers, gardeners, ground and park managers are legally obliged to kill species in an attempt to coerce nature into something obviously isn’t.
This tours are going to be a light stroll into various locations, and along the way we will see and name a number of local plants. They are the one who season after season resist dominance, placement, delimitation.
This are also the plants best adapted to us, the one have been following humans along since immeasurable time.
Yes there is a fantastic indigenous flora in Australia, there is also a fantastic non-indigenous one, all of which live on the same soil.
Acknowledge, respect, be humble
The tours are FREE, bring hat and suitable shoes
Limited numbers, please book via education@mca.com.au or 9245 2484
Saturday 4 September, 2>4pm Tour of The Domain looking at the local weeds and what they mean to us all.
Saturday 18 September, 2>4pm Tour of Harold Park looking at the local weeds and what they mean to us all.
Saturday 2 October, 2>4pm Tour of Centennial Park looking at the local weeds and what they mean to us all.
Saturday 16 October, 2>4pm Tour of Sydney Park looking at the local weeds and what they mean to us all.
Saturday 23 October, 2>4pm Tour of Casula Golf Course looking at the local weeds and what they mean to us all.
You came across the NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio.
So much there to share, you begin with the short 10 sec video below which shows the changes in carbon sequestration by plants in the past decade 2000-2009.
Credit to NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio for the video, look here for a better quality version
How has the Atmospheric Carbon Uptake from Plants Changed in the Last Decade?
Plant life converts atmospheric carbon dioxide into biomass through photosynthesis. This process, called fixing, is one of the main ways in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere and is a major part of the carbon cycle. Plants release a fraction of this fixed carbon by respiration in order to get energy to live and to move carbon to other organs. The amount of carbon removed minus the amount of carbon respired is called the net primary productivity (NPP) and is the amount of carbon turned into biomass.
The change in NPP due to rising global temperatures is a very important factor in the response of the Earth to climate change. Measurements of radiation and leaf area from the MODIS instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite have recently been used to calculate the change in NPP for the whole world for the last 10 years. This animation shows a time sequence of annual NPP deviation from normal (or ‘anomaly’) on land as measured by MODIS during the years 2000 through 2009. Annual NPP, especially its departures from a long-term mean condition, will demonstrate the effects of environmental drivers such as ENSO (El Nino) events, climate change, droughts, pollution episodes, land degradation, and agricultural expansion.
Earlier studies of productivity between 1982 and 1999 showed that prouctivity went up as global temperatures rose, because longer, warmer growing seasons were better for plant growth. This new study indicates that this is still true in the northern hemisphere, but that increased temperatures have meant increased drought and dryness in the tropics and the southern hemisphere. As a result, the global net productivity has actually decreased in the period from 2000 through 2009.
Regionally, negative annual NPP anomalies were mainly caused by large-scale droughts. In 2000, droughts reduced NPP in North America and China; in 2002, droughts reduced NPP in North America and Australia; in 2003, drought caused by a major heat wave reduced NPP in Europe; in 2005, severe droughts in the Amazon, Africa, and Australia greatly reduced both regional and global NPP; from 2007 through 2009 over large parts of Australia, continuous droughts reduced continental NPP.
Oxalis, living in enclosed environment, a terrarium.
This growing plant is part of an exhibition at the MCA, opening this Friday, In The Balance, a show about art and environment.
You have made a terrarium before, and this latest ones (5 of them) have been constructed by the expert hands of Ian and Matt, two of the gallery assistant, so all credit goes to them, as yours involvement only went as far as collecting the soil from 5 different locations in metropolitan Sydney.
The ‘sample grounds’ have been selected using some basic guidelines, one is that they had to have some sort of ‘wild’ corner, as in an area where the ever-reaching keen gardener did not made sure no other plant but the selected ones would sprout. Another is the aim of representing a variety of micro-climates (seafront, urban park, abandoned areas, never-been-built-areas and sub-urban environmental reality ). And lastly, an attempt at championing different social demographics as well, in terms of users and managers.
As one of the narratives to discover through this ‘botanical-reality-check-boxes’ is the various human-nature relationships, it would be quite difficult to read the individual terrariums without acknowledging the source.
Each terrarium has been planted with dirt from the site alone, and after the initial watering to start-up the germination, nothing else is added, making it a self-contained and self-sufficient unit.
They are all quite different, as expected, some growing more than others (due to the richness of the soil) and each sporting his own set of plants. Some plants are in all of them (like oxalis) while others are a peculiarity of a particular soil sample.
More should be written and analyzed about this terrariums, but in the meantime you busy yourself with the facebook campaign attached to it, and the 5 tours of the locations, see here for details, where you will take people to see where the dirt comes from and what naturally grows out of the area.
you in Bundanon for a couple of days, left the hyper communication behind opting for a more rewarding, considered exchange with fellow artists and scientist as part of Siteworks 2010: laboratory and forum.
As the website say:
SiteWorks, an ongoing conversation between artists and scientists investigating the empirical and interpretive possibilities of the Bundanon property .
SiteWorks is a key strategy to engage the broader community in artistic and environmental issues with specific reference to the site of Bundanon.
Bundanon is redolent with meaning, from the stories of Indigenous, Colonial and Boyd occupation, to the rhythmic traces of the flooding of the Shoalhaven River over thousands of years. The participants will explore the potential of the Bundanon site to inspire, inform and support independent research.
So far is been fantastic, you loved meeting Sunny, the local Aboriginal Land Council manager, who pointed at the area owned by the community. He had great stories to share, about wombats, their state of health, water, gold, early farming of the valleys and logging..
You have been here a few times already, starting form a residency back in 2007, (read the blogging here) and back again to see various projects, including Ten Trenches, see below the video.
indeed weedbook, the facebook platform, is ready to roar in view of the launch!
There is going to be the launch of an FB application, weedbook, a gift-generator application which you can use to send to your friends.
Each card (about 20 at the moment, but more will come lol) feature a plant, some of them are also on facebook, so you can actually befriend with the botany, in a virtual platform >> within the human bubble that came to be our social networks <<
At the same time there is going to be 5 tours coming up, in 5 different locations of greater Sydney:
Starting at the Domain to then spiral straight out west, up the Georges River:
And yet another great radio documentary by ABC Radio National, this time written and presented by Noëlle Janaczewska.
Touching on many aspects of the complexities that weeds inhabit, from wildlife xenophobia to cultural heritage Vs environmental integrity, this documentary makes extensive use of film and music excerpt. You really enjoyed the impersonation of the legisaltion, when actors where employed to narrate the legal jargon in relation to botany.
big thumbs up.
You can listen to the program from the site here, or can download it from this link here.
Patrick Jones is an artist, permaculturalist and dad from Melbourne.
At the moment busy with the setting up of a food forest as part of the incoming show at the MCA, In the Balance, check out the progress here and some more of his writings here.
Here you would like to share an article by him about foraging weeds:
so, you have been bragging about spontaneous flora from a while, and it somewhat feels strange this, but you are now involved in a garden project, www.tending.net, where in collaboration with Lucas Ihlein and anybody else who would like to join in the adventure, are going to somewhat grow things!
yes, that’s right, actual seeding, planting, watering and minding.. or rather, tending.
So, in view of the aforementioned exercise, you brushed up your knowledge of garden plants, the sorts humans have been crafting and selecting out of the wild counterparts since the start of it all: agriculture.
About 10-15,000 years ago, in several parts of the globe, various inhabitant started to domesticate nature, animals and plants, instigating the process of delimitation of space, control of environments, property.
Uhmm, we dont wonna go there with this post, but rather have a look at the selected species nowadays available commercially for our consumption.
You did your own selection and in a twin posting between here and tending’s blog, propose a list.
You exert comments, suggestions and counter-lists.
Your own selection takes in account few factors:
1 you need to see results in a relatively short time frame
2 there is water, but at this stage we are not sure about who can be the actual watering person every day, so tough plants are preferable
3 a few have been selected because of their peculiarity (see individual entry)
You have browsed the Diggers club for this selection, but more ca be found in other sites, like Eden seeds.
Admired for their unique and complex flavour profile Marionberries have long been revered in the US. Their vibrant purple color packs a powerful nutritional punch that catapults Marionberries to the top of the antioxidant charts. With an underlying earthiness, hints of sweet and a lively tartness no berry garden is complete without one.
Quarantine – cannot post to: NZ WA
Now, that’s a must if you were going to do any gardening, and just lucky the quarantine limitation is only for Western Australia!
Create a column of fragrant sweet strawberries perfect for a sunny balcony or verandah. Includes one strawberry bag which can hold 10 strawberries and 10 Cambridge Rival strawberries for planting. Can produce 5 kilos of strawberries or up to 20 punnets! Water regularly in hot and/or windy weather.
Quarantine – cannot post to: NZ QLD
This one quarantine restriction is for QLD.. lucky again. You want to have some strawberry growing somewhere, great finger-food for passers-by
Use leaves in lamb and beef stews, slightly tangy, lemon flavor adds zest to salads and is especially good with fish and to make soup. Perennial with large, long, wavy, light-green leaves. Greenish yellow to red flowers in midsummer.
Quarantine – cannot post to: WA
This is funny, as you can probably point at wild rumex acetosa’s growing a bit of everywhere, so you might just do that, go and collect some seeds from the local variety in Callan Park (the park adjoining the Sydney College of the Arts grounds, where the garden is) and grow them both, see who does best.
Again, quarantine limitations.
This is the true green basil favored by continental cooks. Grow half a dozen plants and you will have enough to fresh pick all summer, and to make pesto that you can freeze for quick pasta dishes in the winter. The perfect companion for your tomatoes.
Yep, Basil, we gonna have some tomatoes for sure, so we need basil to grow beside them.
Slate grey leaves topped by panicles of blue. Flowers and leaves can be added to summer drinks. 45 sds.
Now then, this is a plant with which you have sentimental attachments. It grows wild in northern Italy where you grew-up, and from spring to late summer is the perfect plant to cook buttered, absolutely yummy!
With bronze fern-like foliage, this fennel is as valued for its decorative quality as it is for its insect attracting ability. Non bulbing. 120 sds.
Quarantine – cannot post to: NZ TAS
And here is another one that you can pull out of Callan’s wilderness, grow beside and see what happen.
Also to be said is that most of those plants quarantined in whatever state, are also somewhat restricted all over Australia, maybe not legislated against, but surely enlisted in the ‘environmental threat list’
..but let’s carry on
Spearmint is used to flavour roast lamb and other meats, sweets, oils, jellies, drinks, and tea. It also is an attractive, spreading ornamental ground cover.
Here’s another wild one, not restricted, but it will not have problems to settle and survive whatever.
The yellow flowers and leafy shoots can be used to make a yellow-green dye or repel ants and flies.
This one is for environmentally-friendly controll of ants and mozzies, you’ll let Lucas with his freshly acquired Permaculture knowledge go off on the benefits of this one.
A prized heirloom Butternut that sets the standard by which other pumpkins are judged. Classically shaped fruit with a small seed cavity so you get more usable pumpkin. Soft yellow flesh and a great nutty flavour. Harvest in 133 days, 6kg/plant.
We have to have a pumpkin growin! it would go big, asserting itself on whatever space, ooking glorious and a fantastic visual achievement to be proud of.
You can already see a fantastic Pumpkin soup coming up in late autumn!
Tall, green strappy form containing lots of biomass to incorporate into the soil after the grain harvest. Sterile hybrid that will not cause any weed problem. Quarantine – cannot post to: WA
So, this is a man-made variety, which despite being reduced to a sterile being (uhmff), still is restricted.
Sorghum is also one of the first crops human domesticated..now a threat.
This sweet currant is the world’s smallest tomato, yielding hundreds of the sweetest fruits from mid summer to late autumn. If your kids won’t eat tomatoes, they will be converted after trying these little lollies (just don’t tell them they are tomatoes!).
Quarantine – cannot post to: TAS
And finally, the Tomatoes!! You choose those ones as they are the kind that needs little to no attention, and yet produce proficiently small yummy finger food.
So, you didnt mean to, you honestly just went through the list available online, but yet the selection for the garden end up being a selection of toughies, yes, but also a selection of restricted plants (8 out of 13!)
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