Plant Exploration

C-PLATFORM × De Onkruidenier

 

Project Description

 

Fieldwork Station 

A mobile studio for the work of de Onkruidenier that facilitates all the steps from fieldwork and harvesting plants to creating new narratives on site. The Fieldwork Station is launched during exposition BAL! at Paleis Soestdijk between the wild plants that late Queen Juliana loved so much.

 

Power to the wild  

At the deck of the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam thirty wild plants were presented as a cloud of many qualities; devotion, barometer and power food. Visitors of the exhibition were allowed to take seeds of the plants and bring it home to their own backyard, street or city and spread wild quaities around.

 

Sweet – Sweat 

How can we evoke salt inclusive life? SWEET — SWEAT is the latest conception of on-going research project ‘Halotolerant man’. SWEET — SWEAT #01 took place in the southern coastal part of the Netherlands, where in 1953 a big flooding took the lives of many Dutch families. This disaster lead to one of the biggest protection projects, called ‘Deltawerken’. 65 years after the flooding we created a new experience based on sweet and salt water, conected to the restrictions of our food system.

What can we learn as humans from plants adapting to their changing living conditions? Cultivating plants has been subject to change, according to human preferences. What happens if we would change the perspective to plant life; how can we involve the climate adaptive capacities into human evolution.
Three seeds telling the story of the sugarbeet. In large parts of Europe, farmers are obliged to use the blue pill, containing one seed with chemicals around it to protect the plant in the first six weeks. Sugarbeet originates from the wild ancestor the seabeet, growing along the coastline of Europe and Asia. The seed most right on the picture is the seed of a non chemical sugarbeet.
Nowadays, many of us are living near the coast. Despite sea level rise, we’re trying to protect the land from the influences of climate change. With all our means we try to get rid of salt percolation of the fertile soils. How sustainable is this system? What can we, as humans, learn from the evolving qualities of halotolerant (salt tolerant) plants, using salt to their benefit.

 

Gardening without boundaries

Researcht project in collaboration with Satelietgroep in which we observed the various landscapes of Terschelling through the eyes of the users, of the east part of the island. On the picture: an edible handscape representing the various interactions with local specialists, residents and farmers. Refugium for wild plants of Terschelling, including work stations for water, soil and vegetation; a garden where visitors were guided along the differnt parts of a storyline about the landscape surrounding them.

 

Related Information

In their collaborative practice, de Onkruidenier, Jonmar van Vlijmen (b. 1980, NL) and Ronald Boer (b. 1981, NL) explore forms of symbiosis between the realm of the cultural and the natural world. Through on site fieldwork and research, their artistic practice develops new interpretations on the relationship between human and nature. Their work transforms familiar everyday actions of classifying, cultivating, preparing and consuming of plants into experiential narratives.

 

 

Date

2018年12月17日

Category

Future Institute