My Own Inner Trilobite w/ Fuzzy Earth

Workshop

14.00 – 17.00

Šopa Gallery, Hlavná 40, Košice

 

“Humus can inspire the cultivation of collective and collaborative responses against fierce competition and regressive individualism. With humus, humans can elaborate strategies to rebuild ‘a world that contains other worlds’… As Donna Haraway wrote: We are compost, not posthuman.” – Romakin and Saracino, Humus

 

We invite you to join an engaging workshop led by the creative studio Fuzzy Earth, featuring Tekla Gedeon and Sebastian Gschanes. This workshop is part of the accompanying program for the current exhibition, “Mingle and Fuse,” showcasing the work of Katalin Kortmann Járay and Karina Mendreczky.

 

My own inner trilobite is an engaging workshop that addresses the phosphorus crises and enhances soil literacy through sharing stories and collective making. We would like to invite participants to emerge themselves in the world of soil. We will travel to the deep geological past of Budapest’s fossils, explore the humus under our own feet using traditional agricultural knowledge and imagine collective futures through the creation of decomposing fossils. Participants will enrich the land, create new alliances with human and more-than-human communities and discover their own inner Cambrian creatures.  

 

How we garden, grow food, and treat our soil affects the world around us. Caretaking can easily become a harmful routine under sincere hands, causing disruption on multiple levels. The overuse of agricultural fertilisers endangers the health of the land and the surrounding waters and threatens the food security of humankind.

 

There is a subterranean battle invisible to the human eye. By sprinkling dressing to the soil to aid the production of crops, a high dose of phosphorus is released into the land, far more than plants can access. Phosphorus enters creeks and lakes and triggers entangled biological warfare between worms, bacteria, fish, and algae for nutrients and oxygen. Phosphorus is also the cause of global conflict. 80% of phosphate is mined in only three locations (Morocco/Western Sahara, China, Algeria), and most countries are expected to run out of their domestic phosphate supply in the next generation, bringing about a worldwide food crisis.

 

Fuzzy Earth is in search of the origin of Fertility. My own inner trilobite is a continuation of their ongoing research into soil literacy, agricultural protocols and gardening habits. They collaborate with scientists and agricultural experts to map out the use and the ecological effects of Phosphorus. They apply various soil testing methods and review crop use to visualise the overpowering presence of phosphorus in the landscape. 

 

My own inner trilobite works with local soils and histories. We will engage with the soils of the workshop location or invite participants to bring soil samples from their own gardens and neighbourhoods. Throughout the event, participants will familiarise themselves with these samples in new ways. As a tangible outcome of the workshop, participants will have the opportunity to create decomposing sculptures formed from a mixture of organic soil-enhancing matter tailored to their soil samples. After the event, they can place these sculptures in their gardens or public spaces to rot, melt, and decay, slowly releasing aids and healthy matter into the soils. The sculptures will be inspired by ancient arthropods, such as trilobites, raising awareness of the creatures whose skeletons contributed to the sediments and rocks that fertilise our crops and eventually become part of our own DNA.

 

The workshop is FREE OF CHARGE.

The workshop will be conducted in English.

Registration for the workshop is required:https://forms.gle/TA36xNcVKtS5nEGZA

Capacity is limited to 12 people.

If you have any further questions, please contact us by email at petra@sopagallery.sk

 

The program of this gallery is supported using public funding by the Slovak Art Council.

The Slovak Art Council is the main partner of this project.