We will dedicate the coming two sessions to soil with a selection of texts recommended by Alex Toland, who is a researcher in visual arts, soil culture, urban ecology and the anthropocene. In session #13 we will read poems, papers in a garden and delve into the soil.
I am on the ground beside the fire,
and slumber grabs my arm.
My shoulder tingles, falls asleep
completely numb.
The ringing in my ears subsides,
My heart is full of yearning.
And little cinders of my soul
burn out before the morning.
My palm is sticky from the sap,
The rain pours down my shirt.
I’m apt to the soil, the earth,
I’m cozy in the dirt.
“The Campfire” Y. Koumpan, “To Join the Real and Mental Place: The Written Earth” Suzanne Mériaux, “Soil and Culture” ed. Edward R. Landa and Christian Feller, Springer, 2010, 192.
Alexandra Toland is a visual artist and landscape planner based in Berlin. She was a German Research Foundation (DFG) fellow in the “Perspectives in Urban Ecology” graduate research group in Berlin, and recipient of an Andrea von Braun scholarship in 2013. She has lectured at the Technical University of Berlin, Leuphana University, and the University of Arts Berlin, and has co-chaired the German Soil Science Society’s (DBG) Commission on Soils in Education and Society since 2011. Since 2018, she is Junior Professor for Arts and Research at Bauhaus University Weimar. Her interests include: environmental art, urban ecology, soil protection, and transdisciplinary processes. She is also an enthusiastic beekeeper, vermicomposter, forester, and mother of two.
In ‘Between Us and Nature – A Reading Club’ we read together texts related to natural sciences, art, anthropology, postcolonialism, and (post)anthropocene, chosen from a female perspective looking beyond disciplines.
Please rsvp via email to betweenusnature@gmail.com and we will send a selection from the book to those who would like to attend the reading session.
What: The Reading Club is in english
Where: IN A GARDEN – in collaboration with Zabriskie Buchladen für Kultur und Natur
When: Thursday 12th of July 2018, 19.30 (sharp!)
Who: small group of lovely people who would like to meet you (rsvp only, not suitable for children)
Note: Bring your copy of the text as print out or on a digital device
Hosts: Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky, artist, and Sina Ribak, environmental & cultural manager, host the reading club – to be inspired and “reminded of nature’s ability to hold us in the moment to force us to inhabit the present.”
