exhibition, engagements, writings
curator, producer, writer
SC
Soil Conversations presents a series of propositions, stretching over time and space. Concerning history and possible futures while thinking with soil as something rhizomatic — it questions the concept of linearity, making a case for the interstitial. What does it mean to think with — and of — soil as a space of meaning and identity making? As a space for excavation? And as an archive of history and a political actor?
Under the proposition: “soil is everything” the exhibition offers a look at the granularity of the ground we stand and build life on, as a moment of close observation, where details, parts and particles become traces of a whole. Following the rationale of the relationship between us and earth, the exhibition looks at soil as a planetary boundary and as connecting tissue between material politics and social theory. If we think of the terrestrial as a political actor, then it becomes possible to think about soil through art — grounded in a multiplicity of narratives, knowledges and materials the artists chose to work with.
Soil has often been negotiated as both, public good and private property and with that, has stirred many debates around the rights of access and movement of people, as well as the rights of nature. A notorious historical example for the fight for soil is the Berlin Conference 1884-1885, and the subsequent haphazard division of the African continent amongst the colonial powers. However, contemporary situations of displacement and the rise of migration between borders by people who have been displaced from their home countries, add new nuances and textures to debates about homelands and the right to movement.
As a resource, soil continues to be exploited for its precious metals and capacities. As territory, soil forms the geography by which we identify ourselves and as a concept, it is an embodied mixture of nurture, trauma and cycles of life. In that breath, Soil Conversations follows Puig de la Bellacasa’s observation (2020) that: In contrast with visions of exhausted soils prey to a voracious humanity eating its nest, transformative involvements with soil’s aliveness assert the ecological significance of human – soil interdependency and disrupt persistent binaries between living and inert, species and belonging, the earthly and the spiritual, endurance and breakdown, the cosmic and the domestic, knowledge and mystery.
Carrying de la Bellacasa’s thought further into the discourse of the analogue and the digital — which is forming new territories and can be explored and experimented with as an interstitial space — something that’s recently evolved into a normalised modality, especially after COVID-19 catalysed a global rush to the digital sphere. Paradoxically, voices loudened to reconnect with the earth, while connection had just been limited to a flat screen. But the body remembers — even in the transition between particles and pixels, we carry the histories inscribed into our corporealities into this digital terra nullius. The digital, a space of pixelated dialects, where one can exist beyond the borders and boundaries history and its politics have defined for them, yet is still not completely free from them.
The exhibition investigates the relationship between ourselves and the environment we live in, both in digital and analogue spheres. Topics of land, history, spirituality and the body — as physical manifestation and theoretical representation — are integral parts of the artworks part of Soil Conversations. By defying a linear ontology of history, Soil Conversations seeks to explore the plurality of the past, and future scenarios which lead into the unknown, aiming to engage with the speculative as a defining position of the here and now, and as a relationship between us and the world — the inner and outer space.
Under the proposition: “soil is everything” the exhibition offers a look at the granularity of the ground we stand and build life on, as a moment of close observation, where details, parts and particles become traces of a whole. Following the rationale of the relationship between us and earth, the exhibition looks at soil as a planetary boundary and as connecting tissue between material politics and social theory. If we think of the terrestrial as a political actor, then it becomes possible to think about soil through art — grounded in a multiplicity of narratives, knowledges and materials the artists chose to work with.
Soil has often been negotiated as both, public good and private property and with that, has stirred many debates around the rights of access and movement of people, as well as the rights of nature. A notorious historical example for the fight for soil is the Berlin Conference 1884-1885, and the subsequent haphazard division of the African continent amongst the colonial powers. However, contemporary situations of displacement and the rise of migration between borders by people who have been displaced from their home countries, add new nuances and textures to debates about homelands and the right to movement.
As a resource, soil continues to be exploited for its precious metals and capacities. As territory, soil forms the geography by which we identify ourselves and as a concept, it is an embodied mixture of nurture, trauma and cycles of life. In that breath, Soil Conversations follows Puig de la Bellacasa’s observation (2020) that: In contrast with visions of exhausted soils prey to a voracious humanity eating its nest, transformative involvements with soil’s aliveness assert the ecological significance of human – soil interdependency and disrupt persistent binaries between living and inert, species and belonging, the earthly and the spiritual, endurance and breakdown, the cosmic and the domestic, knowledge and mystery.
Carrying de la Bellacasa’s thought further into the discourse of the analogue and the digital — which is forming new territories and can be explored and experimented with as an interstitial space — something that’s recently evolved into a normalised modality, especially after COVID-19 catalysed a global rush to the digital sphere. Paradoxically, voices loudened to reconnect with the earth, while connection had just been limited to a flat screen. But the body remembers — even in the transition between particles and pixels, we carry the histories inscribed into our corporealities into this digital terra nullius. The digital, a space of pixelated dialects, where one can exist beyond the borders and boundaries history and its politics have defined for them, yet is still not completely free from them.
The exhibition investigates the relationship between ourselves and the environment we live in, both in digital and analogue spheres. Topics of land, history, spirituality and the body — as physical manifestation and theoretical representation — are integral parts of the artworks part of Soil Conversations. By defying a linear ontology of history, Soil Conversations seeks to explore the plurality of the past, and future scenarios which lead into the unknown, aiming to engage with the speculative as a defining position of the here and now, and as a relationship between us and the world — the inner and outer space.
Process functions as a membrane of ‘Soil Conversations’, it consists of traces, references and links. Moments and encounters that we collect and share while the material grows and changes.This is a page to wander through, getting lost and taking detours. Some of these traces are directly related and inform the project in their own way. Others a ephemeral, part of the wider granular universe or connecting points that can lead to other worlds.
2023 Berlin & Johannesburg
curator & author
co-curator: Yolanda Kaddu-Mulindwa
co-author: Lindiwe Mngxitama
.In collaboration with Bubblegum Club
.at JAG, Johannesburg & Galerie im Körnerpark, Berlin
.Funded by: German Federal Cultural Foundation
.Supported by: wherewithall
artists:
Gemma Shepherd &
Rochelle Nembhard
Lungiswa Gqunta
MADEYOULOOK
Io Makandal
Silvia Noronha
Nnenna Onuoha
Natalie Paneng
Theresa Schubert
Mia Thom
performers:
Billy Langa
Sibusile Xaba
Ela Spalding
Helena Uambembe
writers:
Zara Julius
Zayaan Khan
Lindiwe Mngxitama
Nolan Oswald Dennis
Tomke Braun
Kathy-Ann Tan
Mahret Ifeoma Kupka
Magnus Elias Rosengarten
This page is the distilled version of soilconversations.com which was created to show the process of the project online. As the project ended so did it’s page. This is a trace of it.
It was built by Zamani Xolo / Bubblegum Club.
Photography by:
cvk* (Gallerie im Körnerpark & social media, pics & video)
Nihad Nino Pušija (Gallerie im Körnerpark)
Mvelo Midoli (Johannesburg Art Gallery)