A Future for Food

Can we break away from current agricultural practices which are intimately connected to desertification, water and soil pollution, antibiotic resistance, climate change and social and economic inequalities? In a two-hour discussion we are interested in considering a sustainable, multispecies perspective to farming, which could start in the soil and progress through thinking about the multiple ways we can consider food. Aquaponics, vertical farming, worms, soldier flies, and permaculture offer real solutions, where food is grown while respecting living beings, and the intertwined ecologies that support them.

Humane food can be grown in urban or rural communities, though the soil is critical. How can we learn and care about living beings we cannot quickly know or see? What is care like in practice? We are also interested in exploring the concept of “citizen eco-artist” as so much of what we do resides in the spaces between actual science, sustainable practice and speculative fiction.

Speakers

Amy Youngs is an Associate Professor in art and technology at Ohio State University. She uses electronics, kinetics, insects, plants and pixels to create artwork about the changing relationships between technology, nature and self. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and her essays about art and biology have been published in Leonardo and Nouvel Objet.

Ken Rinaldo is internationally recognized for interactive art installations developing hybrid ecologies with humans, algorithms, plants, animals, and bacterial cultures. His art/science practice serves as a platform for hacking complex social, biological, and machine symbionts. Inventing and constructing interfaces for animals and plants, allows illuminating and amplifying the underlying beauty, and intertwined symbiosis existent in natural living systems. Rinaldo is author of Interactive Electronics for Artists and Inventors, and is a Professor of Art and Technology at The Ohio State University.

Anna Paltseva holds a Ph.D. in Earth & Environmental Sciences at the CUNY Graduate Center and Research and Program Coordinator at the NYC Urban Soils Institute. She focuses on the assessment of heavy metals bioavailability in urban soils. Anna Paltseva is a lecturer at CUNY – Brooklyn College, New York University, and the New York and Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. Anna develops educational materials, leads soil workshops and coordinates collaborations with international researchers for the NYC Urban Soils Institute.

Daniel Lammel is a Postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Biology (Ecology of Plants), Free University Berlin. His areas of research is soil ecology and mycorrizal symbiosis as well as Soil Fertility, Plant Nutrition, Agricultural Science and Ecosystem Ecology. Originally from Brazil, he studied at the university of São Paulo, before competing his Ph.D. at Univ. of Massachusetts in Amherst.

Regine Rapp is an art historian, curator and co-director of Art Laboratory Berlin. Her current research interests include Installation art, artist books, hybrid art, art & science collaborations. She researches, curates and publishes on 21st century art at the interface of science and technology. She has taught art history at the Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle and is currently a researcher at the TU Berlin Institute of Biotechnolgy, Dept. for Applied and Molecular Microbiology.

Christian de Lutz is a curator, co-founder and co-director of Art Laboratory Berlin, where he has curated over 40 exhibitions, including the series Time and Technology, Synaesthesia, [macro]biologies & [micro]biologies, and Nonhuman Subjectivities. His curatorial work focuses on the interface of art, science and technology in the 21st century, with special attention given to BioArt, DIY Science initiatives and facilitating collaborations between artists and scientists.


A co-production of the Network for Prototyping the Future and Art Laboratory Berlin

Some images from the talks:

Ken Rinaldo: Vegi Worm Bags Sculpture, Urban Arts Center in Columbus, Ohio, 2012. This is a recirculating system for growing edible greens, with kitchen scraps consumed by red wriggler worms to fertilize the plants.

Ken Rinaldo & Amy Youngs: Farm Fountain 4, 2008, Te Papa Museum of Art, Wellington, New Zealand. – This aquaponics garden uses fish waste to fertilize edible vegetables and won a United Nations Green Leaf Award, for its potential to feed the world.

Ken Rinaldo: Cascading Gardens, 2008, Antonio Prates Gallery, Lisbon. – Cascading Gardens are soft recirculating grow bags, made from recycled plastic waste, to grow plants, herbs, and edible vegetables in cityscapes and uncontested urban landscapes.

Anna Paltseva presenting her talk.