Book Launch:
Soils Turn - A Field Guide to Artistic Earthly Engagements
with co-editors Alexandra R. Toland and Patricia L. Watts
Published by ecoartspace, 2025, with support from the Bauhaus-Universität Kreativfonds
Designed by Tyler Owens and Dexin Chen, NY; Printed by BuchOne, Germany
Doors: 18:30 CET
Start: 19:00 CET
Admission: free
Language: english
We are delighted that our friend Alex Toland, a few years after her first soil-related co-edited publication, Field to Palette – Dialogues on Art and the Anthropocene, is now presenting a second book, which she co-edited with Patricia Watts: Soils Turn—A Field Guide to Artistic Earthly Engagements.
Alex and Patricia will present the main ideas of the book in a hybrid live x Zoom presentation, accompanied by a soil soundtrack by The Hercules and Leo Case, a live soil sound performance by Samuel Johnstone and Sofia Fernandez, peat plant cuddles by Daniel Hengst, and edible clays by masharu.
"Soils Turn" offers a comprehensive survey of contemporary creative practices engaging with soil materials, soil memories, soil sites, and soil creatures.
The 2025 ecoartspace publication is designed as a practical guide for curators, scientists, students, policy makers and community organizers interested in aesthetic approaches to soil care.
Highlighting practices of assembling, caring, figuring, listening, metabolizing, surfacing, and witnessing, the book pays tribute to the diversity and endurance of earthy artistic agendas that encourage bold and gentle actions to (re)connect with soils. Under pressures of climate change, food sovereignty, pollution, and biodiversity loss, the "soils turn" in the social sciences, humanities and arts emerges as a an urgently needed movement to reclaim soil knowledge and action.
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Alexandra R. Toland is assistant professor for arts and research at the Bauhaus University Weimar, where she directs the Ph.D. programme in art and design.
Patricia L. Watts is founder and curator of ecoartspace. She organizes the annual exhibitions and is publisher of six ecoartspace publications since 2020.
