Sharing

For the first time, the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst has commissioned an artist working in the field of socially engaged art. Here, socially engaged art includes artistic practices where artists work with different groups of people as collaborators and develop a project together.

Stretching thresholds, holding streams is a project initiated by artist Jeanne van Heeswijk and developed with Sophie Mak-Schram and collaborators. A growing constellation of invested people from the surroundings of the Museum are being invited to think in and with the museum’s thresholds.

For this exhibition, the SAE Group and the SAE Greenhouse Lab engaged in a variety of activities, including visuals, workshops, readings, and recordings, all intertwined with our research and methods related to streams, water, and rivers.

For the Museum, Matti Barthel exhibited “Meander” & “Confluence” two pictures that were taken on a research trips in Congo DRC and Kenza Benabderrazik a sound piece  “In conversation with …في حوار مع” from/with the SAE Greenhouse.

With Chantelle Lue and School of Commons (SoC), we gathered, in December, to unpack something both delicate and powerful: how knowledge really moves, shifts, and disrupts. The encounter was hosted at the SAE Greenhouse, with Lena Pozdnyakova and Luise Willer (SoC Alumn*) guiding our exploration. The event felt like an intimate gathering of curious minds. We weren’t just presenting research; we were weaving connections, challenging assumptions, and imagining different ways of understanding our worlds. The format of our encounter was inscribed in the ongoing research of the project politics of (dis)assembling, exploring discursive and experimental forms of assembling today. This encounter was a moment rooted in the action of being–of collective imagining , visioning, mobilising and sharing—about decolonial learning, about how knowledge can flow outside traditional boundaries, about creating spaces where unexpected insights can breathe and grow.

We hosted a reading session with arvae on Water, gathered some texts, poetry, articles and recorded the moment to broadcast it on Radio Lora few weeks after.

The Art-Science collaboration with Marie Van Berchem, Braida Thom and Kenza Benabderrazik, started in November 2021 during the first exhibition titled “Helvetia and the Journey of a Cocoa Bean.” Since then, this collaboration has led to a new project aimed at building more connections between HELVETIA, chocolate consumers in Switzerland and the research conducted by the SAE group on the Monitoring and Evaluation of Post-Harvest Cocoa Processing and Farmers’ Support Centers in Soubré, Côte d’Ivoire.

More Information here.

ALIMENTO is an exhibition that investigates the act of nourishing. It brings forward the topic of anthropophagy in order to explore food systems that are based on reciprocity/circularity with the earth, other humans and non-human entities, as well as to challenge extractivist, patriarchal, capitalist and colonial models.
With the participation of artists Paloma Ayala, Kadija de Paula, Lívia Melzi, La Polinizadora, Mu, Pedro Zylbersztajn and scientists Dr. Tania Galindo Castañeda, Dr. Sandra Smith Aguilar and Dr. Benjamin Wilde.

ALIMENTO is the first of a series of 3 exhibitions entitled “Earth is the heaviest element” which addresses the need to de-construct and re-construct our relationship to the earth, other humans and non human entities. It brings together the knowledge and practices of Latin American and Swiss artists and scientists together, in order to suggest alternative ways of co-existing.
The exhibition will be between the Art space La_cápsula and the Greenhouse.
Curated by Adriana Domínguez.
In collaboration with arvae.

Symposium & finissage 

On 13 June, we organised a symposium on loops, reciprocity, fungi and food, as an exchange between art and science.

There were contributions from Paloma Ayala, La Polinizadora, Mu, Dr. Tania Galindo Castañeda, Dr. Sandra Smith Aguilar and Dr. Benjamin Wilde, which covered topics such as circularity in food systems, when art becomes life, labs of intention and transformation, architecture and anatomy of maize cultivars, growing fungi with human waste, speculative imaginaries, daily resistance practices, hegemony of linearity and the value of shit, intersectional dialogues, urine enriched biochar; and going past poop-phobia.

The finnissage was another beautiful moment of the coming together of our community; and digesting the collaboration and project. Paloma Ayala and Pedro Zylbersztajn proposed dinner and a lecture performance.

We are now planning to continue working on ALIMENTO in 2024, in this constellation of arvae x la_capsula x SAE greenhouse. We experienced a strong collaboration together as a transdisciplinary team (curator, producer and scientist) across many levels – research, content, hosting events, communications.

Being in Morocco 

In May 2024 , we attended the International Society of Ethnobiology Congress in Marrakesh with Tara Lasrado to present “ALIMENTO: Exploring food systems based on reciprocity and circularity.” Collaborating with Tara Lasrado, Adriana Domínguez Velasco, and Paloma Ayala, we explored how ALIMENTO challenges extractivist, patriarchal, capitalist, and colonial models through decolonial practices.

We also hosted a Reading Session for the Harvest Festival at Le18Marrakech, featuring readings from Dr. Simon Gwara’s article on human excreta in agriculture, an essay on mycology as a queer discipline by Patricia Kaishian and Hasmik Djoulakian, and an excerpt from Nada Elia’s book “Greater than the Sum of Our Parts: Feminism, Inter/Nationalism, and Palestine.”

This interdisciplinary project raises awareness about the environmental and socio-economic implications of food production and consumption by transforming research from the Sustainable Agroecosystems group into an immersive experience. Three narratives about food and agricultural systems were developed collaboratively by researchers and a creative writer, then visually brought to life by an illustrator and a visual artist.

The project involved interventions in schools, where students and teachers co-designed interactive elements of the installations. Through workshops held in Gymnasiums across Switzerland (Zürich, Wettigen, and Biel), teenagers explored topics such as biodiversity in agriculture and nutrient recycling, contributing infographics and animations. These creative outputs, alongside pictures, texts, videos, and other research-based materials, were integrated into the augmented reality app AgrArt.

The final outputs include interactive installations exhibited in museums and events, as well as posters and this booklet, which invites audiences to engage with the multiple layers and narratives of our agricultural and food systems. This approach showcases the power of collaboration and creativity in communicating the importance of sustainable food and agricultural practices.

The Greenhouse is hosting 18 artists’ reflections on the future of our plants.
How do we preserve and communicate their biodiversity, what is the role of wild plants, how can agroecology work to sustain cultivated plants? How can the soil be revitalized? What public discussions can we have about these relationships between nutrition, food, and social issues?

These artworks, films and installations, attempt to raise awareness about the future of plants, soil, nutrition, food, and water, and they reflect contact with some of the research of Sustainable Agroecosystems group.

FUTURE PLAN(T)S will be accompanied by two public LASERZURICH panels, featuring talks and discussion with artists and scientists from our Group. These discourses will be held on «The Future of Soil – Plant interactions» (Register here) and «Resilience, Nutrition, Food Systems» (Register here).

Curated by Jill Scott, Dorothea Rust, Ursula Palla Sandro, Sandro Steudler and Barbara Bientenholz and co-organized with Life Science Zurich.

Cropped from a much larger picture, this exhibition does not attempt to be a holistic view of time and place, but is rather a cropping of select experiences — specifically, two weeks learning from farmers of Trans-Nzoia county, northwest Kenya. It would be naive to assume that two weeks in any place is enough time to present what life is like in that region, and we make no attempt to claim this. Instead, we merely show what our day-to-day of working there looked like. This is what we saw, everyday and in passing.
When we think of agriculture, in the modern sense of the word, most of us envision the maize fields that pass us by on long train rides, or rows of greenhouses blazing like an omnipresent sun on the horizon. These images,while representative in some locales, are ultimately a highly westernized view of agriculture. A large proportion of the world does not obtain their food this way, with a UN estimate that 25% of the world’s population are subsistence farmers.
In this way, it is both a privilege and a responsibility to understand agroecological systems beyond our own familiar fields. How is farming undertaken in a place where there is no reliable water source? How do farmers ensure the reliability of their crops to feed their entire family year after year? How do farmers living in a place who have never heard of the words “climate change” deal and adapt to the effects of climate change?
Tropical Cropping Systems, Soils, and Livelihoods is an annually-recurring course hosted by ETH Zurich’s Sustainable Agroecosystems group that provides an opportunity to explore responses to these questions (amongst many others).
A key component of the course is a two-week excursion to a tropical agriculture region. In our year, this was to the relatively fertile lands of Trans-Nzoia county in Kenya, under the shadow of the extinct volcano, Mount Elgon. Here, we worked in teams of 6-8 people, composed of students from ETH Zürich (CH), KU Leuven (BE) and University of Eldoret (KE).
Our team worked in the district of Endebess, running a transect approximately 6 km long, visiting 9 farms spread along this line. For each family’s farm, we interviewed members of thefamily, gathered soil samples, biodiversity tallies, and walked through with the farmers as they showed us their rotating crops and planting strategies.
It emerged after several interviews that farmers had never actually heard of the term “climate change” (when translated to their language).
Yet, when asked about changes in the past 5-10 years, nearly were unanimous that harvests were poorer, pests and diseases were on the rise, and rains had become increasingly unreliable and erratic — often too little too late, or far too much all at once.
Farmers however, are adapting in their own way, telling us they now plant earlier, choosing drought resistant species, or planting trees on their properties. In a region where there is no local water system and virtually no infrastructure, adaptation takes its own pace,may seem simple, but teaches us much about resilience.
Having a name to label the problem has never been the pith of the issue, those on the ground dealing day-to-day with the effects of a changing climate have much to teach us. I am grateful for having had the chance to learn about tropical agroecosystems with the people who live there themselves.
Yilin Huang.

Almost a year ago, the students of the « Tropical Cropping systems, soils and livelihoods » course spent few weeks in Kenya.  Together with Eldoret University and KU Leuven, the students of ETH Zürich studied the Agroecological performance and climate resilience of some cropping systems in the Trans-Nzoia County.

Yilin Huang, a master student of the Institut of Science, Technology and Policy, captured her experience in pictures that she will present from September 18th to October 1st 2023 on the Green Floor of the CHN building. The exhibition will then be hosted in the Greenhouse over the month of October and November.

Artistic interventions represent an attempt to look beyond existing systems and engage with new perspectives. The ecological alternatives are a new holistic thinking that connects cosmology and nature in a spiritual way and affirms the need for respect diversity in both human and non-​human forms. To deepen the notion of biodiversity, the home – our soil and soul of our non-​human kinfolks will form a refuge and center for body, art and unity. With „Same things make us laugh, make us cry“, the Body Archive Project established their own language to explore and present new ways of thinking.

With Valentina De Micheli, Catherina De Nicola, Jasmine Gregory, Olamiju Fajemisi, Shuang Li, Manutcher Milani, Mai-Thu Perret, Tabita Rezaire, Jordan Selophane, Ceylan Öztrük June 11 – July 1, 2021

We invite the community and local people to explore and practice critical thinking with us in times of multiplicity and complexity. There will be a focus on the importance of emancipatory action, collective growth and transformation. Artistic interventions represent an attempt to look beyond existing systems and engage with new perspectives. The ecological alternatives are a new holistic thinking that connects cosmology and nature in a spiritual way and affirms the need for respect diversity in both human and non-human forms. To deepen the notion of biodiversity, the home – our soil and soul of our non-human kinfolks will form a refuge and center for body, art and unity. With „Same things make us laugh, make us cry“ we establish our own language to explore and present new ways of thinking. Between the aims and values of our curatorial practice and those of sustainable agro-ecosystem science, there are key similarities in terms of opening up new sustainable systems of knowledge, and implementing concrete solutions. In this regard, we are engaged with biodiversity, the harmonious merging of tradition and modernity, and working to strengthen communities. We are about being pro-active in the community by curatorially trying to set activist and healing gestures.