Please go to our KunstAcker – Art’sAcre website
http://www.kunstacker.org
Collective’s Project 2019/20 Art’sAcre in cooperation with and at the International Art Research Location Schloss Bröllin
funded by the German Ministry of Food and Agriculture.
Project begin Mai 2019
The Art’sAcre is an art laboratory on the connection between arts, culture, society and soil.
Model of the Art’sAcre by A. Ketterer
The Art’sAcre of Schloss Bröllin – preparing the ground for culture
The Art’sAcre project is at home at the International Art Research Location of Schloss Bröllin in Germany and focusses on the interdisciplinary theme of the connection of people with their soils. In order to develop on earth, man fundamentally connected to the ground on all levels. This deep connection becomes obvious also in the Latin word ‘Cultura’ referring to the cultivation of our spiritual goods as well as to the care of our soils. In the Anthropocene, however, we exploit the earth, our fundamental connection to the ground, to culture and ourselves is getting lost.
The Art’sAcre gives the local framework to research on this connection in order to bring it back to society’s consciousness. The regional and participatory project transforms a piece of ground into an interdisciplinary and transcultural space for action, a laboratory toward sustainable development. Here, all senses and the intellect will experience, research, develop and adapt in order to sharpen the perception of the relevance of soil and culture within societies.
The art production site Schloss Bröllin www.broellin.de is located in a region of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania with low population density and long distances to cultural centers. For 25 years, the association schloss bröllin www. has been bringing artists together with the public creating space for new development. In 2015, the association gave Decrustate artist Anneli Ketterer a 600 m² piece of land for its artistic development. Project partners from the nearby city of Pasewalk are the town’s museum, its art garden project and the local Nature Conservation Authority. The Art’sAcre is a two-year innovative model project aiming to spreading out to other areas in Germany.
The Art’sAcre is jointly designed and process-based through meetings, workshops and art residencies and develops out of the regional soil network to be established. The art space receives five laboratories: the lab of transformation (compost and soil formation), an earth lab (walk-in ceramic room in the existing clay layers being fired as a sculpture), an open-air dance studio with a dance floor of sand (different technique of body movements), a lab of soil life showing the underground ecosystem and a lab of growth on the topic of how soil is being transformed into food. Through excavation and translocation, the Art’sAcre offers existing earth materials and the appropriate focus for practice-oriented artistic and social research work. Together, science and art make the meaning of the soil sensually tangible. In this way cultural education promotes sustainable, competence-oriented development of the society. Socio-political and ecological topics are cultivated by means of earth objects, installations, land art, music, dance and theatre. Topics include soil sealing and erosion, land ownership, rural exodus, mythologies and ideologies, exploitation of raw materials or nutrition.
In 2019, the Art’sAcre team organizes work meetings and public workshops to establish the soil network and the Art’sAcre itself. Workshops include design and landscaping, building of mud walls and set up of diverse composts, the local production of terra preta and the burning of the room in the clay layers. The natural science and education project Bodenfenster is developing its program for Art’sAcre, and the Nature Conservation Agency is working on the soil ecosystem for the laboratory on soil life. Three residences for national and international artists form milestones in the development of the Art’sAcre. With sculptures, objects, dance and music they make the meaning and function of the ground sensually tangible. A soil harvest festival bundles all work results and opens the Art’sAcre to the public.
In 2020, the Art’sAcre’s five art and environmental laboratories will be further developed with the focus on sharpening the senses. Regional artists in dance and theatre now work in the laboratories. Resulting projects from the Art’sAcre will be adapted and incorporated in the creation of another Art’sAcre for the art garden in Pasewalk. Soil harvest festivals are now taking place in Art’sAcre and KunstgARTen. Finally, the Art’sAcre team compiles a handbook to support the creation of further earth laboratories for art and society nationwide and follow-up funding will be applied for.
Focusing on the soil as the origin of human culture, the Brölliner Art’sAcre is the first soil laboratory of the arts of its kind and is to be established as a long-term project of the schloss bröllin association. The project aims to sustainably strengthen the self-esteem of the rural population, the soil awareness of the urban population and the importance of the arts to society.
© Decrustate Collective 2018