A policy is a governing document with the overall intentions for the area the policy covers. The review provides guidelines to facilitate development.
Kultivator has in spring 2012 worked in a creative school project with children in grades 4 and 5 of Gnesta municipality. The aim of the work has been to create tools for communicating and visualizing desired future scenarios. The focus has been on spatial capabilities, form and system for highrise building and living many together. Work began with sketching and brainstorming in the schools,
and continued inside Artlab Gnesta´s exhibitionspace, with the construction of a three- dimensional policy document that is read by playing. The relationship art – reality and the role of vision, in both cases, is explored in a social sculpture, designed and constructed by a total of nearly 100 people.
Visions and ideas: grades 4 and 5 in Kvarnbacka, Laxne, and Welandersborg schools, approximately 50 kids age 10 -11
Interpretation and construction: Mathieu Vrijman, Jonas Rahm, Alexandre Chapus, Adam Nyandikila, Rasmus Jeppsson, Malena Rahm, Marlene Lindmark, Mia Lindaregård and Malin Lindmark Vrijman. Building kids: kids Ivar and Moa Vrijman, Morgan Stigeborn, Theo and Nora Rahm and Alva, Joel and Signe Jeppsson.
Gnestopia is part of Artlab Gnestas “Green year” and opens June 2 at 12:00 to 17:00., together with the videowork “Grassworks”, by Emma Göransson. On the opening day is also held a release party of the new journal “Fält” and launching of Patrick Dallarts floating islands. For more info, see www.artlabgnesta.se
On the stone planet Earth, a layer has been added since the beginning of life, 3.9 billion years ago: our between 5 and 20 cm thick layer of topsoil. In this thin layer, the major part of all biological activity of Earth is going on. Through our various actions at the place we live or work, we are either nourishing or depleting this layer. The interaction of microorganisms in the topsoil and life above means without exaggeration everything for life’s further progression.
It is as big – and as small – as anything …
For Botkyrka Konsthall, Kultivator makes The Top-soil tombola, a compost bin for the gallery’s visitors and staff. Inside the institution it becomes its own cultural producer, who works during the show to prepare the foundation for any further activity: top soil, the planet’s tenuous utmost cultural layer.
Visitors and staff in the gallery are asked to put their organic waste in the tombola, and then turn it to mix and aerate the process. Then the cultures of bacteria and microorganisms work on for themselves. In September, in time for the Fittja Open, about 50 liters highly cultured local soil, have been formed to continue growing.
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Top-Soil project of Kultivator in Botkyrka is also, and perhaps more importantly, taking place outside the art gallery with an installation of a “worm tower” (vermicompost) in connection with allotment gardens, and a call for creating your own compost and composting on the balcony, in the allotment garden, or in public green spaces.
In the summer of 2012, Kultivator will work further on the concept in Botkyrka, and at Fittja Open in September, the final results of this fieldwork will be presented.
The inspiration for Grans´ University, comes from the initiative of Mrs Vendana Shiva, India, that started up her Grandmothers university in Navdanya, North India, in 2003. “..is aimed at both celebrating and validating the wisdom of our grandmothers, as well as transmitting this to future generations…”
What drew our attention, was that she did this as a reaction on the 9.11 attacks in 2001. The idea of turning to the grandmothers when times get hard inspired us, since they are not usually considered the ones that have the answers when it comes to great challenges of the future.
We are now, far more than terrorism, facing enormous challenges considering the management of resources. At this moment in time, we have the possibility to turn to the last generation in our part of the world that was still around before consumption-society really kicked in.
The show consists of the ornamental notes from Kultivators study trip to Solberg,
North Jämtland, spring 2012.
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.
