DatesTextImagesBios
Slavs and Tatars, Dunjas, Donyas, Dinias, 2012, fibreglass, steel, 52 × 30 × 25 cm. Installation view at CAC, Vilnius, 2017. Photo by Andrej Vasilenko.

The Globalisation of Plants

– curated by Maja and Reuben Fowkes

Cooking Sections, Eiko Honda, Michael Smythe

Saturday, 6 October 2018, 4.30 – 8pm

The Globalisation of Plants

Workshop and Panel Discussion led by:
Maja and Reuben Fowkes (translocal.org)

4.30 – 8pm, Saturday 6 October 2018
An afternoon of botanic interactions on the ecological realities of travelling plants and the emotional reactions that vegetal migration provokes in zealous circles. Why do distinctions made between native and invasive plant species often mirror, evoke or amplify hostile attitudes to human migrants? How have artists and writers sought to unearth the entangled natural and cultural histories that overlay societal attitudes towards the mobility of the plant world? Should ecologically-beneficial visitors be treated as welcome guests rather than alien intruders? And in the light of anthropogenic climate change, is it incumbent on us to make space for vegetal refugees from native environments that are turning hostile?

Schedule

4.30pm – Workshop with Maja and Reuben Fowkes
(Participation is free, but numbers are limited, >>> PLEASE BOOK HERE <<<)

6.30pm – Panel discussion with Michael Smythe (artist and creative director of Nomad Projects), Eiko Honda (curator and researcher Oxford University), Maja and Reuben Fowkes (curators and art historians, Translocal Institute), with a delegated intervention by Cooking Sections (artists Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe).    
(Free attendance, no booking necessary.)

 

Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual & Alon Schwabe) is a duo of spatial practitioners based out of London. It was born to explore the systems that organise the WORLD through FOOD. Using installation, performance, mapping and video, their research-based practice explores the overlapping boundaries between visual arts, architecture and geopolitics. http://www.cooking-sections.com/

Eiko Honda is a PhD researcher in transnational intellectual history, writer and curator. Her academic work investigates non-Cartesian intellectual and cultural histories of nature in Europe and Japan and their relevance to the creative practice of knowledge today. She previously worked as a curator and writer of contemporary art and ideas that conjoins arts and sciences in the context of global history. http://curatingcuriosities.tumblr.com/

Michael Smythe is an artist and creative director of Nomad Projects (www.nomadprojects.org), a vehicle for action-based research within the public realm. Recent projects include Urban Mind (www.urbanmind.info) exploring the relationship between mental health & the urban landscape and Phytology (www.phytology.org.uk) an urban medicine garden and cultural institute for inter-disciplinary research across the arts, sciences and humanities.

Maja and Reuben Fowkes are art historians, curators and co-directors of the Translocal Institute for Contemporary Art, an independent research platform focussing on the art history of Central Europe and contemporary ecological practices. Their curatorial projects include the Anthropocene Experimental Reading Room, the Danube River School, and they are founders of the Environmental Arts and Humanities Initiative at Central European University Budapest. They lead the research project Confrontations: Sessions in East European Art History at the Institute of Advanced Studies of University College London. www.translocal.org