The Soil Symposium is a cross disciplinary meeting place for artists and researchers to discuss the matter, memories and futures of soil.

The focus of the seminar will be the work of Swedish art and agriculture group Kultivator, who will share their commission for The Experimental Field called the Soil Faculty.  

The symposium is a gathering site for the researchers from many different fields who have contributed to the Experimental Field to connect in an interdisciplinary environment. Departing from the artwork presented by Kultivator, the symposium is a practical way to share inter-disciplinary perspectives on the vast topic of soil as experimental matter. 

Curator and moderator of the Soil Symposium is Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris, Project Leader Researcher Collaborations at Accelerator.

The seminar is between 1-5 pm.

View a full documentation of the event Accelerator’s YouTube-channel or listen to the podcast via iTunes.

Agenda

1-2 pm
Soil Faculty with Kultivator
with Artist Malin Lindmark Vrijman on behalf of Kultivator with special guests: cultural workers Lumbricus rubellus (red earthworms) and Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris.

2-2.30 pm
Soil Matters: Life in Soil Shapes Life on Earth
with Associate Professor Stefano Manzoni from the Department of Physical Geography(SU).

2.30-3.00 pm
Food for Resilience Present ‘Aralashak’: Flour of a Thousand Grains
with Dr L. Jamila Haider from the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SU) with an introduction by Dr Amanda Wood and Dr Malin Jonell, research leaders for Food for Resilienceat the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

3-3.15 pm Digital Break Grounding with artist Emmeli Person.

3.15-3.30 pm
Art+Research reflections on experimenting in the fields.

3.30-4.45 pm
See the Soil! with the Humus Economicus Collaboratory and the Forest Garden
with Lecturer Christina Schaffer from the Department of Physical Geology (SU), and Artistic researchers Dr Janna Holmstedt (SHM) and Malin Lobell.

4.45-5.00 pm
Final Words with the Worms
with Curator of Soil Symposium and moderator: Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris

Contributors

Malin Lindmark Vrijman behalf of Kultivator, an experimental collaboration of organic farming and visual art practice, situated in the rural village of Dyestad, on the island of Öland on the southeast coast of Sweden. By installing certain functions in abandoned farm facilities, close to the active agriculture community, Kultivator provides a meeting and working space that exposes the parallelsbetween provision production and art practice, between concrete and abstract processes for survival.

Lumbricus rubellus (red earthworms) are cultural workers who are developing top soil in the newly crafted Soil Faculty of Stockholm University. Previous work includes soil maintenance and management on Öland in collaboration with Kultivator’s art and agricultural practice.

Stefano Manzoni is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Physical Geography at Stockholm University, where he continues to develop models in the broad area of eco-hydrology to capture the hydro-climatic impacts on vegetation andsoil processes from plant to global scales.

Jamila Haider is a researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre and leader of the Resilience & Sustainable Development research theme. She studiesthe relationships between cultural and biological diversity through the lens of food.

Amanda Wood’s work explores how food policy, governance and multi-stakeholder collaborations can support healthy and sustainable food systems. Wood takes an interdisciplinary approach to characterising current food systems and identifying ways for food system actors to support an integrated health and sustainability agenda.

Malin Jonell is a researcher at the Beijer Institute, KVA and the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and leader of the Food for Resilience research theme at SRC. Her main research interest is sustainable food production.

Emmeli Person is an artist working with the collaboration between film, sculpture, material learning and oral storytelling. Her research and practice organizes itself in playful and speculative ways, as it looks at how we collectively can challenge and re-tell our ecological and phenomenological realities. 

Christina Schaffer is an academic and cultivator.She teaches interdisciplinary courses that touch on sustainable development at Stockholms University. Her interests include a sustainablefood supply and urban ecology in both theory and practice.

Janna Holmstedt is an artist and researcher especially interested in listening and situated practices. Through installations, soundwalks and process-oriented works she explores parasitic, socioecological and biocultural relationships. She is the initiator of the art- and research project Humus economicus at National Historical Museums (SHM), where Malin Lobell is one of the researchers. See: www.humuseconomicus.se

Malin Lobell is an artist and gardener who has worked for many years with soil-related issues, community gardens, the political role of plants, food production, regenerative agriculture, and human and more-than-human relationships. Founder, together with Janna Holmstedt, of the art- and research collective (P)Art of the Biomass.