Food Agriculture and Climate Change at La Biennale di Venezia
Three Special Projects, highlighted for their “Food, Agriculture and Climate Change” dimensions are shown at the Arsenale of Biennale Architettura 2023, in Venezia. This mega-event, taking place from May 2023 to November 2023, will allow to discover more, about unbuilding and (may be) rebuilding territories.
Details are on https://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/2023/food-agriculture-climate-change – and to get a first view, see the descriptions hereafter shared by the Biennal.
BOTHAND GROUP
The Landscape Rehearsals
Jarek Adamczuk (Zamość, Polonia, 1992) lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland; Alice Clarke (Summerhill, Irlanda, 1992) lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland; Andrew Ó Murchú (Limerick, Irlanda, 1991) lives and works in London, UK; Kate Rushe (Galway, Irlanda, 1992) lives and works in London, UK
This installation is an investigation conducted by BothAnd Group into Indigenous land management practices, situated in landscapes in Ireland and Nigeria. The reciprocal coupling of these two landscapes across time and geography seeks to advance a renewed understanding of local ecologies, informed by Indigenous ways of knowing and management of lands. As Britain’s first colony – and therefore, capitalism’s first frontier – the Irish landscape offers an instructive example. Drawings are used to look closely at the Indigenous ‘roinn dáil’ land management practice of Ireland’s past landscapes – prior to, and in the process of, colonisation.
Achille Mbembe describes the African continent as “the last frontier of capitalism”. In Nigeria, Indigenous land management practices are examined, with video projections capturing the practices of transhumance and companion species taking place across Nigeria’s landscape.
These are conversations which pose, address, and open further avenues for research and discussion on the emergence of alternative agricultural futures.
GLORIA PAVITA
[na Bulongo]
Gloria Pavita (Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, 1995) lives and works in Cape Town, Republic of South Africa
This installation is a spatial and experiential exploration of narratives that centre practices of care, repair, reclamation, and repatriation through soil. Soil is a body that holds and hosts the extractive, exploitative, and violent practices of the colonial and apartheid regimes, from the context of Philippi in Cape Town, South Africa, to that of Camp Mutombo in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo. This project manifests in scenes that occur across the contexts between Philippi and Lubumbashi. To distinguish these scenes, characteristics of soil and from soil are used as literal/figurative devices to connect to the narratives expressed in each scene to pay homage to the themes of care, repair, reclamation, and repatriation.
MARGARIDA WACO
5.5706° S, 12.1976° E Sedimentary Myths
Margarida Waco (Cabinda, Angola, 1992) lives in Stockholm, Sweden and works in Stockholm, Sweden and London, UK
5.5706° S, 12.1976° E Sedimentary Myths chronicles a love letter to Cabinda. Nestled at the mouth of the Congo Basin and engulfed by the Atlantic, our soils and waters – two disobedient bodies keeping records of centuries of extractive violence – echo the broken stutters of a disputed territory. A territory home to the peoples and ancestry of Bakongo, to the wonders of Maiombe, and to the black gold – dug and stripped from our underground reservoirs; ascending, circulating, and dissolving in thin air.
Tracing the contours and continuum of a planetary system – thriving, mutating, and sickening upon our soils and waters – Sedimentary Myths yearns toward surfacing intertwining (hi)stories aggregated and written into our repositories in a single gesture, allowing us to project onto a future where we conjoin our voices to chant “Dipanda/Independência.”
More at the Arsenale and the Giardini in Venice.