Practicing

Kenza Benabderrazik and Tara Lasrado started a library of books and resources on art x agroecology which was made visible and accessible in the greenhouse since April 2023. Most of the books were from our own collection and we brought this together as a step to make visible certain voices and practices in environmental discourse that are often unheard, unseen.

From April to December 2023, almost every Monday from 17:00 to 19:00, we opened the SAE Greenhouse Lab for reading sessions. These sessions focused on decolonial feminist perspectives on agroecology. Some sessions were led by invited guests from our community, including Mariana Murcia and Ana Nuñez Rodriguez. Additionally, we were invited to Blackbox Geneva to host a reading session in the Parc du Cropettes.

Since October, our sessions have been concentrated on Palestinian agricultural and food systems. A selection of texts have been made available online. The library has been enriched with the collaboration of Engy Mohsen. The screening of “Foragers” by Jumana Mana was co-organized by Caroline Baur. The continuity of the reading practice has been robust, and we plan to carry it forward into 2024.

Guests and collaborations

On the 4th of March, we will welcome the artist Marie Van Berchem and her project La Bateauthéque. La bateauthèque is a participatory resource dedicated to critical, decolonial, anti-racist and feminist thought. La bateauthèque is nomadic and develops through different locations, different materializations, different collaborations, with the aim not only of providing access to works but also of creating a physical space conducive to reflection and dialogue.

Movie Screening, Talk and reading session with arvae and Les Complices*

The Untold Revolution: Food Sovereignty in Palestine

A film by Ameen Nayfeh

Documentary, Palestine/Germany, 2021, 26′, AR/e

Untold Revolution documents the beginning of the journey of the agricultural movement towards food sovereignty in Palestine from an emancipatory ideological standpoint that seeks to break away from the dependence on the Israeli occupier and the global monopolistic companies. The movement advocates for the adoption of food production systems that are based on natural resources, local production inputs, values of cooperation, and agricultural practices that are culturally, environmentally, socially, economically, and nationally appropriate for the Palestinian context.

Who’s Afraid of Ideology  

Film series and talk with Marwa Arsanios
Who Is Afraid of Ideology? Part I & II,

Lebanon, Kurdistan, Syria, 2017, 27’, AR/e

Who Is Afraid of Ideology? Part IV – Reverse Shot

Lebanon, Germany, 2021, 35’, AR/e

Who is Afraid of Ideology is an expansive filmic quadrilogy that contrasts frameworks of ownership, extraction, and accumulation, with ideas associated with feminism, collectivism, and grassroots revolt. In Part I (2017) & Part II (2019) of Who Is Afraid of Ideology?, Arsanios addresses forms of self-governance and knowledge production that have emerged from the Kurdish autonomous women’s movement. Part 3: Micro Resistencias (2020), takes place in Tolima, Colombia, and focuses on the current systemic war led by transnational corporations against the tiniest and most essential aspect of life: seeds. Part 4: A Letter Inside a Letter (2021–ongoing) examines the issues of inheritance, ownership, property and value through questioning the neoliberal politics of visibility and invisibility.

This event is in collaboration with Les Complices* & arvae.

With contributions from all the many collaborators of the arvae Research residency program, the ALIMENTO exhibition, and some of the scientists of the SAE group, this collection of texts, poetry, drawing, phots, and personal reflections captures experiences, and impressions on the many events, gatherings, and collective moments in the Greenhouse, unfolding transdisciplinary practices on agroecology.

The fanzine was designed by Mariana Murcia and co-edited with arvae is now out and available in the small library collection of the Greenhouse.

“Collage Partage” was a collaborative open-atelier series that took place on two Mondays: June 12 and 26, 2023, initiated by us along with artist and pedagogue Carolina Tokas Wernick. This series encompassed practices of collaging, reading, writing, eating, questioning, and sharing. We opened up the space to embrace vulnerabilities, imperfections, and pauses. It served as an exercise in transdisciplinary exchange and altering the pace. Throughout the day, many scientists and artists participated, turning it into an open process of transdisciplinary exchange.

Reflecting on this experience, Carolina wrote:

“Holding this workshop in the greenhouse space with Kenza and Tara was beautiful because I think it was possible to synchronize moments and understand that we live in a society and culture that prioritizes performance. We don’t have many spaces where we can just exist, share, care, produce things without pretension, without demands, just produce what comes to mind.”

Oh, and we have a beautiful book of collages collectively created by all participants, which is now part of our shared library.

With the participation of Turry Uma Atieno, Kaleb Adamba, Johanna Jacobi, Rafaela Feola Conz, Navya Itty, Sara Frikech, Anne-Laure Franchette.

Arvae is hosting the research-based photographer Ana Nuñez Rodriguez for a mini-residency in the Greenhouse! In the context of Ana’s trip to Switzerland as part of Food Culture Days, she will join us from May 21-24.  Ana’s contribution «cooking potato stories» is part of the Schpensa archive. It is a playful confrontation of different voices and the collision of perspectives. an invitation to immerse in the complex system of meanings and narratives around the potato.

The project Remapping Zurich offers an alternative guide for Zurich. This digital platform proposes a decolonial memory culture of the city, enabling people to engage with different layers of (neo)colonialism, racism as well as with actions of resistance to various oppressive structures and possible practices of decoloniality. It offers historic context as well as decolonial and anti- racist strategies, that were developed as an alternative response to ongoing colonial and racist remnants in the city of Zurich.

In July 2022 the project and the content of the newly created platform: remappingzurich.ch was presented to a broader audience in the SAE Greenhouse

For the International Network for Urban Research and Action Conference (INURA). Claske Dijkema, Senior Researcher at swisspeace and lecturer at the University of Basel, responsible for a seminar on “Decolonising the Swiss urban landscape” in the MA Critical Urbanisms, invited the participants of the workshop “Getting rid of the M-word?” to the SAE Greenhouse.

Together with Maria Ordonez, we presented the work of the collective Decolonize Zürich and the Remapping Zurichproject (presented in june 2022 in the Greenhouse).

With the participants, we drew a map of an imaginary city and how it is linked to colonialism (who). We introduced the topic of micropolitical aspects of colonialism, shifting the reflection to the level of the body, following feminist theory.