The Planetary Workshop Series is an integral part of the
Planetary Scholars and Artists in Residence Program
. Each semester, the visiting scholars and artists prepare a workshop of one or more days with reference to the Fellowship theme and their own focal points. The thematic orientation as well as the organizational design of the workshop are left entirely to the Fellows, and thus the Planetary Workshop Series features exciting content, creative formats, and unusual perspectives.
Here
you can find information on all past events of this series.
Please note that the event will be held entirely in English.
This workshop recognizes soil as vibrant, alive, and communicative. Starting from the insight that soil constitutes an agency that significantly shapes planetary life,
Soil Translations
asks how humans can better understand this agency and how they may sharpen their sensibilities to become able to read its expressions and translate its semiotics, its text(ure).
Starting with a panel discussion among artists, gardeners, farmers, soil scientists and humanities scholars, the workshop invites participants to think across and beyond disciplines, schools of thought, and human perspectives. Consequently, a guided farm tour and hands-on engagement with soil is to inspire active thinking with this planetary agency and reflection on what it means to be touched by soil-worlds.
The workshop emerges against the backdrop that planetary politics hinges upon the formation of more horizontal relationships to the more-than-human world. Yet in hegemonic understandings, one of the most distinctive features between ‘humans’ and the 'more-than-human’ is the ability to speak and be communicative. Therefore, it seems taken for granted that soil—unable to express itself in human words—is unable to participate in politics. Contrary to these hegemonic understandings, many Indigenous worlds enact cosmologies grounded in mutual exchange with the more-than-human world and lived through relational ways of being—ways in which nature speaks through diverse vessels. And interestingly, the act of "reading" the soil is also part of the daily work within scientific knowledge practices in the Global North—particularly in agriculture.
Through the lens of agricultural practices, art and reflections on translation, the workshop explores how to communicate with soil and asks what it means to listen to it in times of climate change and soil devastation. If humans learned how to translate soil’s expressions, what would they get to know? And how would that knowledge change their understanding of more-than-human agency and its political relations to human society? And how would that change our understanding of what it means to be human? To be democratic?
The workshop welcomes everyone interested in soil, human-nature-relationships and planetary politics – including, artists, gardeners, farmers, and researches from the nature, social sciences, and the humanities.
13:00 | Plant-based lunch (provided for participants)
14:30 | Guided tour -
Soil at Gladbacherhof: Soil Genesis and Current Cultivation
by
Franz Schulz
(Head of Research Farm, Oberer Gladbacherhof, JLU Giessen)
16:00 | Closing remarks / departure to Giessen
Sophie von Redecker
Currently completing her PhD in Organic Agricultural Sciences at JLU Gießen with a scholarship from the Rosa-Luxemburg Foundation. In her dissertation, she proposes the Agrarian Humanities as a new research field, which complements Critical Agrarian Studies with approaches from More-than-Human Studies, Environmental Humanities, artistic research methods, and decolonial science criticism. She is a state-proved actress and has curated exhibitions that arose from scientific-artistic research. She is an associate member of the research cluster "Crisis and Socio-Ecological Transformation" at Rosa-Luxemburg Foundation. She received her first training from strawberries and sandy soil on the organic farm, where she grew up.
Brad Harmon
Studied German and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Minnesota (B.A. 2017) and Scandinavian Literature at the University of Washington (M.A. 2020) before beginning his PhD in the Department of Modern Languages & Literatures at Johns Hopkins University where his dissertation traces an ecopoetics of “flesh” in 20th century German and Scandinavian poetry. He has been a 2023-2024 American-Scandinavian Foundation Fellow in Comparative Literature at Södertörn University (Stockholm), a 2024-2025 Fulbright Fellow in German Studies at FU Berlin and a 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellow. As a translator into English from German and the Scandinavian languages, his book-length translations include poetry by Johannes Anyuru, Katarina Frostenson, Esther Kinsky, Lív Maria Róadóttir Jæger; novels by Monika Fagerholm, Eli Levén, Birgitta Trotzig; and biographies of Avicii and Björn Borg. Since March 2025, he is a guest researcher and guest lecturer in the Department of Northern European Studies at HU Berlin.
Lisa Krall
Postdoc at the Centre for Gender Studies at the University of Cologne (GeStiK). Her new materialist doctoral thesis focused on epigenetics. Lisa is part of a collective that reflects on compost and how to work with compost practically in art and academia. Other areas of interest: interdisciplinary gender studies, feminist science and technology studies, feminist new materialisms, (queer) feminist perspectives on motherhood and care, methodologies.
Wiebke Niether
Holds a Diploma degree in Biology from the University of Greifswald, Germany, and a Master of Science degree in Sustainable International Agriculture from the Universities of Kassel and Goettingen, Germany. She finished her PhD under supervision of Prof. Dr. Gerhard Gerold at the Institute of Landscape Ecology, University of Goettingen, and in cooperation with the Research institute on Organic Agriculture (FiBL), Switzerland. She continued working at the University of Goettingen as a scientific coordinator. Thereafter she was Deputy Head of Cocoa Department at Rausch GmbH, Berlin, Germany. Since September 2020 she is senior scientist at the professorship of Organic Farming at the University of Giessen, Germany. Her research interest are the environmental interactions of crops-trees-soil-atmosphere in natural based farming systems, in particular climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies of complex agroecosystems like agroforestry systems.
Solawi Terra Lumbricus
We are a small, diverse farm called
Gärtnerei Terra Lumbricus
(loosely translated, “The Earth of the Earthworm”) in a village between Marburg and Giessen. Our main focus is a vegetable solidarity-based agriculture (SoLawi) with 60 different vegetable varieties and our own seedling cultivation. In addition, we farm a few hectares of arable land, where we grow grains, potatoes, animal feed, and materials for mulch and fertilizer.
alissa mirea weidenfeld
They are on a sensual quest: both themes and materials are explored experimentally and with curiosity; thereby moving between conceptual and intuitive approaches. As a former vegetable gardener they are still growing weeds and vegetables in different ways and various places. For them also their artistic works are like seeds. They care for them and let them grow into something nurturing. Through intense involvement, their processes lead to political positions with a fluidity between topics and fields. Societal fixation on gender roles, exploitation of people and nature are resources of rage in their practice. They have a strength in fragility and authenticity, reflecting their own lines of thinking and experiences, become visible and tangible. Their artworks often build up on one another, the proceeding is reminiscent of composting processes: in playful and tender proposals their works come together in a collage-like manner. Exchange, collaborations and creative gatherings are also a part of it. In their multimedia practice with film and video collages, drawing, text, sounds and performance, ceramic works and other sculptural objects exhibitions are often installation-based. Art is described by them as a constant companion "who can appear, and start anywhere and doesn’t have to end somewhere..." and with whom they "want to turn inside outside, in hopes to touch others and open processes of thinking, reflecting and acting."
Transportation by train on Fri, 24 Oct. 2025
Giessen > Aumenau
Departure
at 09:22, Track 11 with HLB RB 45 (24833) (direction: Limburg (Lahn))
Arrival
at 10:15 |
11-minute walk
(800 m) to Gladbacherhof (expected arrival 10:26)
View connection
here
.
Aumenau > Giessen
Departure
at 16:46, Track 1 with HLB RB 45 (24833) (direction: Fulda)
Arrival
at 17:38, Track 13
View connection
here
.
The Planetary Workshop Series is an integral part of the
Planetary Scholars and Artists in Residence Program
. Each semester, the visiting scholars and artists prepare a workshop of one or more days with reference to the Fellowship theme and their own focal points. The thematic orientation as well as the organizational design of the workshop are left entirely to the Fellows, and thus the Planetary Workshop Series features exciting content, creative formats, and unusual perspectives.
Here
you can find information on all past events of this series.
Please note that the event will be held entirely in English.
Planetary Times Winter Workshop
Reading the Earth & Stars: Field Methods for Narrating Geological & Cosmic Time
by our Planetary Times fellows
Aisling O'Carroll
&
Lukáš Likavčan
will explore methods of narrating different modalities of (more than-) planetary time through the interpretation of observations from astronomy, geology and soil studies. Over two days, a series of talks, participatory experiments, and collective discussions will introduce and test approaches for reading histories in the archives of rocks, soil, planets, and stars. The workshop aims to expand our understanding of planetary time through geohistories found below our feet and in surrounding materials, as well as cosmological histories found in the night sky.
Date
28 - 29 November, 2024
Venue
Conference Room, Physikalischer Verein
Robert-Mayer-Strasse 2, 60325 Frankfurt am Main
Seminar Room 024, Hermann Hoffmann Academy
Senckenbergstrasse 17, 35390 Gießen
Participation
Register by
November 20, 2024
, as the number of participants is limited.
Friday, November 29 | 09:30 – 17:30 | @ Seminar room 024, Hermann Hoffmann Academy | Senckenbergstrasse 17-21 | 35390 Giessen
09:45 | Introduction by Aisling O'Carroll
10:00 | Soil chromatography workshop - part 1 by
Danielle Hewitt
(artist & historian; London Metropolitan University) - STEP 1&2 (40-45 minutes)
Step 1 - 20 minutes: The first step of the soil chromatography process entails preparing the soil solution (sieve and grind soil, mix with distilled water and sodium hydroxide solution). The solution then must sit for 1 hour.
Step 2 - 20 minutes: Whilst the solution sits filter papers are prepared with a silver nitrate solution. The solution is left to spread across the paper, this can take up to 40 minutes.
Danielle Hewitt
:
Soil Chromatography: Producing Images of and with the Soil
Markus Fuchs
(geomorphologist; JLU):
How to Read Time in Sediments through Light
Jan Siemens
(soil scientist; JLU):
How to Assess the Impact of Time and Humans on Soils
13:00 | Lunch break
14:00 | Soil chromatography workshop - part 2
STEP 3 (1-2 hours): Final step of soil chromatography workshop — this is where the soil solution spreads over the filter paper. This step requires occasional monitoring but not active engagement for a period of 1-2 hours.
14:30 | Lecture & discussion (hybrid):
Gaiagraphies: Inside the Critical Zones
by
Alexandra Arènes
(landscape architect, researcher; IPGP Paris)
15:15 | Coffee & tea break
15:30 | Soil chromatography workshop - part 3
STEP 3 (1-2 hours) - Set soil chromatograms out to develop. Results may begin to be visible within an hour and will continue to develop over the next days.
16:30 | Reflections on the two-day workshop & conclusion
Danielle Hewitt
Danielle Hewitt
is an artist and historian, trained in both Fine Art Practice (Goldsmiths) and Architectural History (Bartlett). Her research and practice are archivally led and develop creative and critical methods to explore and communicate complex and often contested histories. Her PhD, recently completed at the Bartlett and supported by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, developed artistic methods of historical research as means to explore the movements of debris from London’s Second World War bombsites both through the archive, and into the contemporary landscape. This and ongoing research explore how plants, soil, and the things of the earth can be read as historical documents, thus expanding the historians' concept of the archive.
Danielle teaches history and theory of landscape on the MA/MLA Landscape Architecture programme at the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL). Danielle is also a Senior Lecturer at London Metropolitan University where she teaches across Art, Architecture and Photography. She is a 2024 British Council / Invisible Dust Creative Fellow.
Alexandra Arènes
Alexandra Arènes
is a graduate architect (2009) and holds a PhD in Architecture (University of Manchester, 2022). Her research and practice focus on understanding and representing landscapes in the context of climate change, at S.O.C (Société d'Objets cartographiques) and Shaā, studio for architecture and urbanism (
www.shaa.io
). She is co-author of Terra Forma, a book of speculative maps published by MIT (2019). In collaboration with scientists from the Critical Zone, she is developing maps of the Earth's cycles at the IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris).
András Cséfalvay
András Cséfalvay
is a visual artist, digital storyteller, and mytho-poet from Bratislava, and is also an Associate Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava. After studying painting and mathematics, he wrote his dissertation on the usefulness and reality of fiction. His work delves into the relationship between culture and technology, and the political and ethical aspects of listening to non-dominant voices in world interpretation. His latest works look at the relationship between astronomers and indigenous peoples in constructing the Mauna Kea telescopes, the flight of dinosaurs as a technology for survival after extinction, and the reclassification of the planet Pluto. He is a recipient of the Oskar Čepan Young Visual Artist Prize, and co-founder of the Digital Arts Platform.
Adriana Knouf
Adriana Knouf
, PhD (NL/US) works as an artist, writer, musician, and xenologist. She attunes herself to electromagic frequencies; studies the interferences of temporalities future, past, and present; and experiments with entities bio, silico, litho, cosmic. She is the Founding Facilitator of the tranxxenolab, a nomadic artistic research laboratory that promotes entanglements among entities trans and xeno. Adriana regularly presents her artistic research around the world and beyond, including a work that has flown aboard the International Space Station. Her work has been recognized by a number of awards, including an Award of Distinction at Prix Ars Electronica (2021), an Honorary Mention at Prix Ars Electronica (2005), BCS Futures Award Longlist selection as part of the Lumen Prize (2023), an Honorary Mention from the Science Fiction Research Association’s Innovative Research Award (2021), and as a prize winner in The Lake’s Works for Radio #4 (2020). She additionally performs with her modular synthesizer as Selestra, and designs and sells modular synthesizer modules through her company selestium modular.
Markus Fuchs
Markus Fuchs
is Professor of Physical Geography at the Department of Geography at Justus Liebig University in Giessen. As a geomorphologist, he is interested in the processes that shape the Earth and the resulting landforms. As a geoarchaeologist, he deals with questions of human-environment interaction and how humans have actively intervened in their environment since the invention of agriculture. As time is a key issue in the geosciences, Markus Fuchs’ methodological specialty is luminescence dating, a dating technique that can be used to date sediments.
Jan Siemens
Jan Siemens
is Professor for Soil Resources at Justus Liebig University Giessen since 2015. He conducts research and teaches on the role of soils as regulators of carbon and nutrient cycling as well as fate and effects of pollutants, particularly pharmaceuticals and disinfectants, in ecosystems. These topics are addressed geographically in Europe, Mexico, China and the Philippines. He has studied geoecology and soil-water-atmosphere at the Universities of Bayreuth and Wageningen. He completed his PhD on leaching of nutrients and carbon from agricultural soils to groundwater at the University of Hohenheim and TU Berlin. He is also a post-doctoral scientist and scientific assistant at TU Berlin and University of Bonn.
The Planetary Workshop Series is an integral part of the
Planetary Scholars and Artists in Residence Program
. Each semester, the visiting scholars and artists prepare a workshop of one or more days with reference to the Fellowship theme and their own focal points. The thematic orientation as well as the organizational design of the workshop are left entirely to the Fellows, and thus the Planetary Workshop Series features exciting content, creative formats, and unusual perspectives.
Here
you can find information on all past events of this series.
The Planetary Times Summer Workshop is realized as a collaboration between Kunsthalle Giessen and the Panel on Planetary Thinking
From the origin of life to the emergence of complex species, the evolution of life on earth has been driven by a corresponding evolution in the way that information is stored, transmitted, and processed. The recent emergence of computation builds upon this evolutionary lineage, weaving together biological and technological domains through informatic feedback loops. In this planet-building endeavour, a two-day workshop will be initiated by Californian media artist &
Planetary Times summer Fellow
Connor Cook
and the synthetic biologist Darren Zhu.
In the first part of this two-day workshop, we engage with the theory of an “Informatic Evolution of the Planet” through a transdisciplinary roundtable discussion. In an intensive workshop session on the second day, we aim to replicate this planetary dynamic on a micro scale, using a Raspberry Pi-enabled bioreactor (Pioreactor) to create immersive audiovisual worlds. The Pioreactor can cultivate, monitor, and control cultures of algae through real-time two-way communication with a computer. By algorithmically adjusting and monitoring the balance of light, nutrients, carbon dioxide, and algal growth, the Pioreactor acts as a simplified planetary model, illustrating the intricate interplay of biological matter, energy, and information within the Earth system. Registered participants will act as mediators, using the real-time data produced by algae as input to create live audiovisual worlds using the game design software Unreal Engine.
Jochen
Blom
studied 'Computer Science in the Natural Sciences' at Bielefeld University and completed a PhD project on 'Comparative genomics on gene and single nucleotide level' in 2013. At the end of 2013, he moved to Justus Liebig Univeristy Gießen to start a PostDoc position as the coordinator of the M.Sc. course 'Bioinformatics & Systems Biology'. In his cientific work, he continues to work in the fields of 'comparative genomics' and 'phylogenomics'. Further he also maintains the analysis software 'EDGAR' which is used by scientists worldwide.
Christina Lu
Christina Lu is an AI researcher and technologist based in London. She is a doctoral student of Computer Science at the University of Oxford and formerly a software engineer at Google DeepMind. Her work combines rigorous technical research with speculative philosophy to instantiate a more viable future with synthetic intelligence.
Cécile Malaspina
Cécile Malaspina is the author of An Epistemology of Noise (Bloomsbury, 2018) and principal translator of Gilbert Simondon's On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects (University of Minnesota Press, 2017). She is directrice de programme at the Collège International de Philosophie, Paris (Ciph) and Visiting Research Fellow at King's College London and at the University of the West of England, where her program for the Ciph is hosted by the departments of Department of French and Philosophy.
Would you like to be a part of the PLANETARY TIMES SUMMER WORKSHOP?
The working session on Day 2 (10:00 – 18:00) is for pre-registered participants only, whereas no registration is required for the other parts.
Register via
panel@planet.uni-giessen.de
for
Day 2
of the workshop by
May 21, 2024 as the number of participants is restricted to 25 people.
The Planetary Workshop Series is an integral part of the
Planetary Scholars and Artists in Residence Program
. Each semester, the visiting scholars and artists prepare a workshop of one or more days with reference to the Fellowship theme and their own focal points. The thematic orientation as well as the organizational design of the workshop are left entirely to the Fellows, and thus the Planetary Workshop Series features exciting content, creative formats, and unusual perspectives.
Here
you can find information on all past events of this series.
Click
here
to download a PDF version of the event description.
Download the "
wet reader
" to get an insight into Juan Pablo Pacheco's work (participants will receive a print version of the reader during the workshop).
How can we better understand our relationship to the ocean floor, and what can it teach us about our chances for survival? Could a speculative
inhabiting
of the ocean floor open up new insights for the ways in which we relate with our surroundings? In order to address these questions from a coastless city like Giessen, this year’s
Planetary Spaces fellow
Juan Pablo Pacheco
along with Bruno Alves de Almeida have come up with the idea of a
wet workshop
for his residency at the Panel, as an open space to expand how we relate to the multiple bodies of water within and around us. What happens when transdisciplinary conversations unfold
in
water, where our spatial coordinates are shuffled? Through this workshop, Pacheco will intra-act with a river, a lake, a pond, a pool, and an aquarium, through somatic reading and listening exercises and ask: how does water alter our conventional understanding of media, time, and space?
Using the basis of sound as a frequency that vibrates into tissue, we will explore the flesh of bodies as liquid resonator. Contributing to the previous days of research with different bodies of water in Giessen guided by Juan Pablo Pacheco Bejarano, we will dwell for a few hours in the body as water and thus pay attention to the movement that lies within and moves through it. Playful imaginaries and sounding throats will be the material of this part of the workshop.
Catalina Insignares
is a Colombian choreographer and dancer based in Brussels. She’s interested in how to use the sensorial and fictional means of the body and of touch to develop ways to communicate with the invisible. Her practice includes, among others, a duet danced with a participant over a few weeks (us as a useless duet—2015), a night reading addressed to sleeping bodies (useless land—2017), and sensory practices that listen to the connections we have with the dead (landscapes of the dead – 2019; to know the vultures so well—2022). She works always in collaboration and long-term associations for choreography, dramaturgy, teaching and performance. Since 2015, she collaborates with Carolina Mendonça, maintaining close complicity in different manners of working together in: reading groups, telepathic dances, psychic vision sessions, caress and massage populate these encounters. Since 2017, she has been working with Myriam Lefkowitz as a performer as well as in a collaboration that seeks to infiltrate sensory practices in the social and political realities of exiled people (La facultad—2017). From 2019 to 2022 Catalina developed her research as part of DAS THIRD in Amsterdam. Since 2019 she is a co-curator at the Gessnerallee in Zurich, where she developed the festival El Caldo and the curatorial program Discrete.
Would you like to be a part of the PLANETARY SPACES: WET WORKSHOP?
Register via
panel@planet.uni-giessen.de
to the entire program by October 26th.
The Planetary Workshop Series is an integral part of the
Planetary Scholars and Artists in Residence Program
. Each semester, the visiting scholars and artists prepare a workshop of one or more days with reference to the Fellowship theme and their own focal points. The thematic orientation as well as the organizational design of the workshop are left entirely to the Fellows, and thus the Planetary Workshop Series features exciting content, creative formats, and unusual perspectives.
Here
you can find information on all past events of this series.
Click
here
to download a PDF version of the event description.
Please note that the event will be held entirely in English. A digital participation via BigBlueButton will be possible for parts of the workshop. The link will be provided after registration at
panel
.
The workshop “Shrinking Spaces & Toxic Zones” is an urgent call to ‘think planetary’ as it delves into the long term environmental catastrophes of Fukushima nuclear disaster and the shrinking of Lake Chad. Can these spaces be restored to their former state? Do these catastrophes lead to inevitable territorial and mental conflicts? Are there strategies of adaptation available to these realities? What can we learn from more-than-humans about such adaptations?
Thursday, 01.06.2023 | Shrinking Spaces: From Mega-Chad to Lake Chad
From once Mega-Chad to present day Lake Chad, Oladosu explores the development of a shrinking space embodied in its name - an ecological catastrophe exacerbated by climate change that has created conflict in the region over the dwindling sustenance of livelihood.
09:30
Transport from Giessen
11:00
Presentation & Discussion: “Using Earth Observation to Restore Shrinking Planetary Spaces: A Case Study of Lake Chad”
Adenike Oladosu - Hybrid event
14:00
Lecture: “Why is Lake Chad Prone to Conflict and Climate Change?”
Patrick Flamm (Peace Research Institute)
16:00
“Climate Change, Long-term Catastrophe, and Mental Illness”
Adenike Oladosu | Jason Waite | Claudia J. Ford (SUNY, Potsdam)
20:00
Exhibition Opening & Reception
Friday, 02.06.2023 | More-Than-Humans’ Adaptation to Toxicity: From Fukushima to Hessen
As we accelerate toward planetary toxicity, how can we learn from more-than-human adaptations to damaged environments? Waite takes you on an exploration observing the behaviour of the same more-than-human species in Hessen and in the Fukushima Exclusion Zone.
09:00
Film Screening & Discussion: “Understanding More-Than-Humans: Rauischholzhausen to Fukushima”
Jason Waite | Kieran O’Mahony (Czech Academy of Sciences)
The Planetary Workshop Series is an integral part of the
Planetary Scholars and Artists in Residence Program
. Each semester, the visiting scholars and artists prepare a workshop of one or more days with reference to the Fellowship theme and their own focal points. The thematic orientation as well as the organizational design of the workshop are left entirely to the Fellows, and thus the Planetary Workshop Series features exciting content, creative formats, and unusual perspectives.
Here
you can find information on all past events of this series.
A video recording of the lecture "Gaia & Indigenous Knowledge" can be found on our
Youtube-Channel
.
Click
here
to download a PDF version of the event description.
Please note that the event will be held entirely in English. A digital participation via
BigBlueButton
will be possible for the lecture and the film screening on Thursday, November 10.
According to James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis (1972), Earth can be conceived as a “self-regulating complex system” or super-organism. If we recognize Earth as ‘Gaia’, ecological connections between humans and the planet become all about being kin, or in relationship with one another. Indigenous ecological knowledge maps onto a cosmology that privileges these kincentric ecological connections. This workshop series reflects on the Gaia hypothesis from an indigenous perspective, to deepen our understanding of planetary materials and their constellations. Understanding the Earth as a cohesive system may help us while trying to create societal responses to environmental challenges.
The workshop series
What Earth is Made Of
connects indigenous knowledge about planetary thinking and planetary materials with the climate crisis. It explores the range of possible shifts in humanity’s environmental knowledge, behaviors and practices. If we think differently about
what the Earth is made of
, will that help us make necessary changes in our environmental behaviors? How can shifts in perspectives help us move towards more sustainable care for ourselves, each other, and the planet?
Exploring these questions through art and science, the four workshops engage participants in storytelling through all of the senses – hands on farm labor, film, creative writing, lectures, listening, dialog and an exhibition of climate change and planetary materials inspired visual art. The arts pay tribute to the methodologies underlying the indigenous knowledge of all peoples, making complex scientific and philosophical topics visible to make them more accessible. The science and art together support the shifts that are needed in our attempts at planetary thinking.
| Community Meal »What’s on Your Plate?« prepared by
14:00
17:00
| Presentations & Discussions: Philipp Weckenbrock, Claudia J. Ford &
Bente Castro-Campos
| Return to Giessen
Agriculture is at the nexus of environment and culture and farming can be the center of healthy, multispecies connections and relationships. There are cultural concepts of soil; soil as soul; social, ecological and inner soils and an understanding of plants and forests as planetary materials, food, networks, archives, and libraries.
Thursday, 10.11.2022 | »Gaia & Indigenous Knowledge« | Seminar Room 315 | University Main Building | Ludwigstrasse 23 | 35390 Giessen | online on
BigBlueButton
14:15
16:15
| James Lovelock Memorial Lecture by Claudia J. Ford
| Film Screening »Inuit Knowledge & Climate Change« and Q&A
| followed by an informal gathering at the Planetary Hub, Liebigstrasse 35
There are multiple and different stories about human longing and responsibility in relationship to ‘nature’. What transpires at the intersection between environmental worldviews and Gaia principles given the cultural diversity that drives human society?
Friday, 11.11.2022 | »Klimatrauer, Gedankenexperiment« | Seminar Room 315 | University Main Building | Ludwigstrasse 23 | 35390 Giessen
10:00
13:30
14:30
| Writing Workshop
| Catered Lunch
| Readings & Final Discussion
Earth’s stories are waiting for us. Can we express our climate grief through our creative arts? The writing workshop will be an opportunity to practice and share creative nonfiction environmental writing using planetary materials as prompts.
Art making and storytelling honor different paradigms of research, knowledge making, and knowledge sharing. The artist’s talk will explain the planetary materials inspiration and studio process behind a visual arts collage exhibit. The artwork will be available for viewing and participation.
Want to be a part of the PLANETARY MATERIALS WORKSHOP?
Registration via
panel@planet.uni-giessen.de
to individual parts or the entire program
[Please register for the farm tour by
October 16th, 2022
]
[Please register for the November program by
November 7th, 2022
]
Artist Mathias Kessler accompanied the event with his camera and will artistically process the material in a short film. The result will be available on
YouTube
.
Click
here
to download a PDF version of the event description.
The participatory artwork Planetary Forest: Bring the Forest into the Garden refers to the scientific and cultural-technical construction of worlds. Placed on a free-standing green area next to the newly built greenhouses of the Botanical Garden Giessen, the regional forest soil is relocated and recreated as a living sculpture. The planetary material comes from an ecological disturbance area in the city forest of Rosbach vor der Höhe, Hesse, which was severely affected by forest dieback. The supposedly natural forest is carried into the man made world of the botanical garden. There, it serves as an ethical, aesthetic, ecological, and political disruption that sensitizes visitors to the forest dieback topic and the artificiality of nature. Like a crack in the perfectly constructed reality, a discourse opens up here about the problems caused by climate change and human impact in local forests and in the planetary context.
A project by Dr. Claudia Hartl, Mathias Kessler, and Clemens Finkelstein
Fellows at the Panel on Planetary Thinking of the Justus Liebig University Giessen
With the kind support of the Botanical Garden Giessen, Neuer Kunstverein Giessen e.V., and the city Rosbach vor der Höhe
June 18 - July 2 | »growing« exhibition @ Neuer Kunstverein Giessen e.V.
The exhibition will grow over three weeks to document the preparation, execution,
and projected afterlife of the »Planetary Forest« live.
June 23 | 9 am - 5 pm | performance @ City Forest Rosbach v. d. H.
Narrative walkabout through the Rosbach city forest introduces participants
(registration via e-mail) to the complexity of the forest with all their senses.
Afterwards collective gathering of forest matter as building material for the sculpture.
June 24 | 12 - 5 pm | art installation @ Botanical Garden Giessen
June 24 | 5 - 7 pm | grand opening @ Botanical Garden Giessen
Construction of the forest-sculpture in the Botanical Garden, together with
participants of the performative excursion in the city forest of Rosbach v. d. H.
[Botanical Garden, Senckenbergstr. 6, 35390 Giessen]
June 25 | 1 - 3 pm | guided tour @ Botanical Garden Giessen
June 25 | 3 pm | exhibition opening @ Neuer Kunstverein Giessen e.V.
Guided tour/presentation of the sculpture »Planetary Forest« in the Botanical
Garden and subsequent opening of the accompanying exhibition at the
Neuer Kunstverein Giessen e.V. [Licherstr., Nahrungsberg Corner, 35394 Giessen]
Interested in becoming part of the participatory artwork?
Registration via
panel@planet.uni-giessen.de
Transport organized for a limited number of participants from Giessen
[registration due: June 22, 2022]
Reflections: Planetary Materials-Workshop Series 18 October - 12 November 2022
James Lovelock Memorial Lecture
Writing Workshop on Climate Grief
This year, our fellow
Claudia J. Ford
’s workshop series “
What Earth is Made of
” took place on Oct. 18
th
, and Nov. 10
th
& 11
th
, 2022. The series reflected on James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis from an indigenous perspective to deepen our understanding of planetary materials and their constellations through art and science. The series connected indigenous ideas about ecology with the climate crisis and engaged the participants in storytelling through all of the senses – hands on farm labor, film, creative writing, lectures, listening, dialog, and an exhibition of climate change and planetary materials inspired visual art.
The workshop series commenced on Oct. 18
th
with an excursion to JLU’s
Gladbacherhof
farm. The focus was on one of the most fundamental relationships between humans and the environment – namely food production and nutrition.
On Nov. 10
th
, Ford delivered a stimulating hybrid lecture on indigenous knowledge and Gaia hypothesis as second event of the workshop series took place. The lecture memorialized James Lovelock (1919 – 2022), who formulated the Gaia hypothesis in the 1970s along with Lynn Margulis (1938 – 2011). Ford reiterated that the earth is a living being in a delicate state of balance and harmony, to whose wellbeing we are all obliged. She also paid homage to the French philosopher and anthropologist Bruno Latour (1947 – 2022), whose ideas resonated with Lovelock’s Gaia theory. Ford raised the point that these esteemed thinkers failed in pointing out that their ideas of the Earth being an interdependent system were not all that new. Predating Lovelock’s considerations by millennia, indigenous thinkers and storytellers have been reflecting on how the earth as a living self-aware system may be capable of feedback and self-correction, especially in its self-regulation of the climate.
Ford emphasized that in the face of the current climate crisis, the stories we tell about ‘nature’ must shift from global to planetary imaginaries. To do so, she called for acknowledging and drawing on existing indigenous knowledge in Western science, as they offer alternative paradigms that are truly transdisciplinary. The extensive bibliography researched for her lecture can be found
here
.
The lecture was followed by the film screening of the documentary “
Inuit Knowledge & Climate Change
” (2010), the first ever Inuktitut language film directed by Zacharias Kunuk and Ian Mauro. The film took the viewers on a journey with the Inuit elders and hunters whilst exploring the social and ecological impacts of a warming Arctic. The day wrapped up with an informal gathering at the Planetary Hub where the Panel and the guests closed the evening with vegan fingerfood and pleasant conversations.
On Nov. 11
th
, Ford conducted a writing workshop to express climate grief through creative arts. Participants got an opportunity to practice creative nonfiction environmental writing using planetary materials, which they found in their immediate environment as prompts. Afterwards, the participants voluntarily shared their pieces of writing with the audience.
In the evening, the workshop series came to a grand conclusion with a festive opening of the exhibition “Planetary Origin Stories”: a collage exhibit at
MAGIE - Makerspace Gießen
created by Ford during her fellowship.
Mehr Impulse
opened the reception serenading the event with their melodies, and Ford explained her inspiration behind the exhibit during an artist’s talk. The exhibit was intricately woven around the subject matter of ecological destruction and climate grief (one might consider unpleasant) yet the beauty and finesse of Ford’s pieces paid tribute to the color, shape and form of the natural world and recounted our collective responsibility to safeguard the Earth’s beauty and resources.
Our sincere gratitude goes to Claudia for conceptualizing this multifaceted program, to our keen participants, as well as to Johannes and the team at the
Makerspace Giessen
for their support to make this workshop series a huge success!
Artists Talk by Claudia Ford during the opening of the exhibition Planetary Origin Stories
Nov 10 & 11, 2022 - "Narratives of Environmental Knowledge in the Anthropocene" & "Sacred Feminine Birthing the New" - Responses to "What Earth Is Made Of"
We are delighted to announce the participation of two expert scholars in our Workshop-Series: Dr. Ayşe Dayı and Dr. Matthias Klestil will kindly be giving responses as part of our Planetary Materials Workshop-Serie „What Earth is Made Of”.
Matthias Klestil
delivered a response titled "Narratives of Environmental Knowledge in the Anthropocene" following Claudia J. Ford's James Lovelock Memorial Lecture.
He is Postdoctoral Assistant in American Studies at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria. He received his PhD from the University of Bayreuth, Germany, and was Bavarian Fellow at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. In his doctoral thesis he examined the interplay of mankind and nature and explored African American texts from an ecocritical perspective. Klestil’s first book
Environmental Knowledge, Race, and African American Literature
is forthcoming with Palgrave Macmillan (2023); his recent publications include scholarly articles on Colson Whitehead and Ted Chiang’s short fiction. Klestil’s current research project focuses on narrative theory, the Anthropocene, and contemporary North American fiction and film.
Dr. Ayşe Dayıs
contribution "Sacred Feminine Birthing the New" responded to Claudia Ford's Artist's Talk during the opening of the "Planetary Origin Stories exhibition" (Nov. 11, 5:30 p.m.).
She is a psychologist, medical sociologist, healer and mindfulness trainer. After receiving her PhD from Penn State University, Ayşe worked over 15 years in universities in the U.S., Turkey, France, Switzerland and Germany, teaching and conducting research on women´s sexual/reproductive health rights. Her latest publication is the book “
The Politics of the Female Body in Contemporary Turkey Reproduction, Maternity, Sexuality
” which she co-edited with Drs. Alkan, Yarar and Topçu (2021, IB Tauris). In 2020, Ayşe established
Orca Dreams: Platform for Mindful Living
(
www.orca-dreams.com
) where she provides education and consultation on holistic health and mindfulness to individuals and organizations around the globe. In this platform Ayşe integrates her academic and activist knowledge on health with her mindfulness knowledge and practice to support individuals, groups and institutions through the great transformation of consciousness experienced by GAIA and ourselves. She will facilitate a women’s healing circle
Remembering & Honoring my Sacred Feminine
February-March 2023 at VHS-Mitte, Berlin.
On Oct. 18, the kickoff event for our Fellow Claudia Ford's workshop series "
What Earth is Made of
" took place. The event series serves to rethink the human relationship to the earth and its materialities by combining diverse perspectives from applied fields, science, and the arts. In the first workshop, the focus was on one of the most fundamental relationships between humans and the environment - namely food production and nutrition. To this end, our excursion took us to the
Gladbacherhof
farm, which combines organic farming and research: on the productive organic farm, research is conducted in cooperation with the JLU to further develop sustainable concepts for organic farming.
The day started with a tour of the newly built dairy cattle research barn, where fully automated milking machines and a fully automated feeding and cleaning system are intended to enable both the study of climate gas emissions in organic farming as part of the
Green Dairy project
and, in terms of animal welfare, a greater degree of self-determination for the animals.
After a lunch prepared by
Veganatural
with the farm's own products, the group heard scientific presentations on various topics. In addition to considerations on decision-making criteria for farmers in dealing with sustainable technologies, new approaches in agroforestry and a plea for more care in agriculture were discussed. There was also a tour of the on-site laboratory facilities.
Lastly, the agroforestry techniques discussed in the lecture could be seen in application as Philipp Weckenbrock showed the group around the
agroforestry
area of the farm. Agroforestry uses a specific planting strategy in an attempt to arrange multiple levels of food production into a single cohesive system. Specifically, the farm's experimental setups are designed to examine the productivity of mixed systems between trees and traditional agricultural crops such as cereals or potatoes. Although they have not been widely used in practice, agroforestry systems promise some advantages, such as greater resilience and resistance to climatic changes, erosion, and increased water storage capacity of the soil.
The field trip allowed us to gain in-depth insights into a fascinating combination of research and agricultural practice in organic farming.
Oktober 18 and November 10 - 11, 2022 - Planetary Materials Workshop "What Earth is Made of"
Planetary Materials Fellow
Claudia J. Ford's
workshop series will take place on October 18 and November 10 and 11. Ford's work focuses on our relationship to planetary materials. As a scientist and artist, it is important to Ford that participants experience their own relationship to the Earth with all their senses. Accordingly, the series kicks off with the excursion to
Gladbacherhof
on October 18, where the experience of agricultural work will lead us to reflect on our relationship with food and its production. The events on November 10 and 11, broaden the focus and direct attention to experiencing one's own relationship with nature in the context of society and the current climate crisis. What role can James Lovelock's Gaia Theory and a relational understanding of our Earth play in this setting? In addition to exploring scientific aspects in a lecture and film screening, participants will also be invited to engage creatively with the question in a writing workshop on climate grief and a vernissage with collages on "Planetary Materials." We cordially invite all interested parties to join us at one or more events of this exciting program.
Here
you can find more information about the individual events and registration.
Poster: What Earth is Made of
June 23-25, 2022 - "Planetary Forest - Bring the Forest to the Garden": workshop, vernissage and accompanying exhibition
The performative action
"Planetary Forest: Bring the Forest to the Garden"
from June 23-25, 2022 was the highlight of the first cohort in the
Planetary Scholars and Artists in Residence
program. This first year of the program centers around the theme "Planetary Materials" and the first Fellows,
Claudia Hartl, Clemens Finkelstein, and Mathias Kessler
, approached the topic from very different perspectives. As an integral part of trees and thus the forest, wood became the planetary focus material of the semester as well as the central leitmotif for the Planetary Workshop: Led by the Fellows, on Thursday morning a small diverse group explored the planetary dimension of human-forest-climate interactions in the Rosbach City Forest. Clemens Finkelstein, employing a historical and socio-cultural perspective, offered interesting insights into the forest's history of use and the relationship of people to "their forest". Claudia Hartl was able to provide participants with a climatological and dendrochronological point of view: She demonstrated how to take a drill core and used the sample to explain the broad field of tree ring research and the complex relationships between forest health and climate.
In addition to sharing knowledge, experiencing the forest and exchanging ideas in and with the group formed a central part of the day. Thus, among others, a member of the local BUND group, an expert in hydrogeology, an employee of the JLU fleet, various colleagues of the department 09, and temporarily even the Rosbach mayor Steffen Maar added to the workshop with their expertise. The latter was available for questions and explained the background of the disturbed area as well as the planned reforestation measures for the site. Afterwards, participants and Fellows alike collected forest material for the living sculpture planned by Mathias Kessler: litter, dead wood, topsoil, roots and even the odd seedling found their way into the trailer. Mathias Kessler also accompanied the trip with his camera and will artistically process the recordings in a short film - soon available on our
YouTube channel
.
On the following day, the Fellows designed the living sculpture as an image of a forest habitat in the Botanical Garden. For now, the fenced-off piece of a disturbed forest site will remain untouched for three years, and its development will be watched expectantly: Will the forest make its way into the garden, will the garden reclaim the area, or perhaps nothing will happen for a while? The sculpture was opened in the festive setting of a vernissage with catering and live music, to which we were also pleased to welcome the President of the JLU, Prof. Dr. Joybrato Mukherjee. In a subsequent
article
(in German), the Gießener Allgemeine newspaper praised the action for its character as planetary food for thought. We cordially invite you all to visit the living work of art and send dated photos to
panel@planet.uni-giessen.de
. Experience the Rosbacher City Forest in the Botanical Garden Giessen!
For two weeks, the Neuer Kunstverein Gießen e.V. also hosted an accompanying exhibition at its premises, which documented the work of the three Fellows at the Panel on Planetary Thinking. On display were, among others,
Line Drawings
and
"The Arctic Ocean - Failed Hope"
by Mathias Kessler,
Vibrascapes
by Clemens Finkelstein and Dendro Art by Claudia Hartl.
