Practicing

With and within the Greenhouse, we experiment practices, try, learn, unlearn, and continue to practice. We plant companion plants, tropical trees, observe them growing together, close some nutrients loops, harvest tomatoes, herbs, papaya, chilies, and we share snacks, meals and recipes. We practice (with) respect, kindness, care, attention, and critical listening. We practice ways to be with one and another, sustainably, fairly, consciously. We practice decolonial and feminist approaches as much as possible. We practice hands-on experiments based on the theories and concepts presented in our teaching activities. We practice diversity, plurality. We take a critical look at our habits and relationships, at our system and its hierarchical and colonial impositions. We practice, daily, together, in comfort and uncomfort. We practice agriculture in its multidimensional and systemic beauty.

arvae

Tara Lasrado, co-founder of arvae, is on a research residency at the SAE Greenhouse  since March 2023.

arvae, dedicated to fostering transdisciplinary collaboration among artists, scientists, and other practitioners, has been deeply embedded in the Greenhouse’s activities. arvae entered a phase of digestion and research in 2023. This phase questioned practices of transdisciplinary exchange and production while sustaining the projects, conversations, and community built over recent years.

The SAE Greenhouse served as an ideal space for these art-science explorations, supporting agroecological transformation. During this extended residency, arvae and the Greenhouse community engaged in a wide array of activities, including weekly collective reading sessions, exhibitions, symposiums, courses, gatherings, and exchanges with students. Together, they shared meals, held meetings, and planned future initiatives. These interactions provided a platform for experimentation, critical reflection, resistance, and togetherness.

Highlights of the residency included publishing our first Zine, presenting our practices in Morocco, hosting diverse courses, and continuing the reading sessions initiated more than a year ago.

Zine with arvae

After a year long residency of Tara Lasrado and arvae, some texts, impressions and poetry were gathered from our transdisciplinary collaborations with the scientists, artists, curators and more that all contributed in making this year so rich and powerful. A collection of touching contributions that were assembled into a disruptive and strong publication by Mariana Murcia.

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

“in this in-between space, cared for and carried by the many”, by Lasrado T., Benabderrazik K., Murcia M., Ayala P., Tokars Wernicks C., Dominguez A., Thom B., Galindo Castaneda T., Itty N., Koch M., Essoungou Bony Malong T. , Núñez Rodríguez A, Nydegger P. , Muller C., (2024) edited by Murcia M. & Lasrado T. With arvae and the SAE Greenhouse La

Sowing Seeds with Johanna Lena Dobrusskin

“Sowing Seeds” wa workshop about plants as hole systems of entities working together to create worlds of diversity hosted by Johanna Lena Dobrusskin as part of her internship in the SAE Group and SAE Greenhouse Lab and her current Master Thesis in the Eco-Social Design Master of HSLU.

Johanna invited us to learn to sow seeds and care for plants as a tool to understand these green pluralities we are allied to. 

On Sunday 21th of April 2024 we sow seeds, planted plants, discovered and discussed together in the greenhouse.

Collage partage with Carolina Tokars Wernick & arvae

“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.

Artist in Residence with arvae

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.

Remapping Zurich with Decolonize Zurich

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.