CALL FOR ARTISTS, SCIENTISTS, DESIGNERS, ARCHITECTS & WRITERS
SOILS TURN
OPENED FOR APPLICATIONS March 18, 2024
DEADLINE June 1, 2024
"…human beings are not in a separate compost pile. We are humus, not Homo, not anthropos; we are compost, not posthuman." Donna Haraway
Haraway’s call to reimagine human as humus reflects a recent 'soils turn' in the social sciences, humanities and arts that seeks to diversify mainstream soil knowledge and empower people to reconnect with soils. Heeding this call, SOILS TURN will be the 2025 ecoartspace annual online interactive + printed book, which will be realized as a compendium and directory of artists, scientists, designers, architects and writers who engage with soils.
Under pressures of climate change, food sovereignty, pollution, and biodiversity loss, care of soils is urgently needed and must be addressed from multiple perspectives. Helen and Newton Harrison knew this already in 1969, with the creation of their first collaborative ecological work, Making Earth. Newton performed combining sand, clay, sewage, manure, leaves and worms to generate arable earth which he watered and turned over the course of four months. Helen documented this process and then used the soil to grow strawberries for her piece Making Strawberry Jam, 1972. Fifteen years later, Meg Webster began making sculpture with soils, both indoors and outdoors, beginning with Concave Earth, 1986 (above). Since these important precusors, there has been a surge in soil-related initiatives in art, design, public programs, and academia, from the rise of “ecoart” in the 1990s to a range of activities during the 2015 UN International Year of Soils.
What soil-related issues, materials, inhabitants, and sites are artists, designers, curators and cultural institutions currently engaging with, and with what methodologies do they approach their work with soils? In 2021, ecoartspace launched a monthly Soil Dialogues on Zoom to find out. Since then, there have been over 100 artists active in these dialogues with 30 currently participating in a textile burial project. These works and the stories behind them will be presented at a pop-up exhibition and conference session in May 2024 on occasion of the 100th anniversary of the International Union of Soil Science in Florence, Italy. During the Dialogues practical insights on soil testing as well as artistic techniques were shared. It became clear that knowledge transfer beyond the scope of a single exhibition or single method (textile burial) was needed. From artists working with soil chromatography to designers making mycelial plastics, to musicians using piezoelectric sensors to sonify groundwater, the methods of working with soil materials and sites are as telling as the outcomes.
We invite you to share your work ..... reimagining soils!
89 words for the word soil: Āferi, Ala, Augsne, Av, Bodem, Boden, Bodn, Buedem, Ciidda, Đất, Dheu, Din, Dirvožemio, Dojō, Édafos, Eleele, Erd, Gleba, Grond, Grundo, Grunt, Ħamrija, Hlieba, Hogh, Ierde, Ile, Inhlabathi, Ithir, Ivhu, Jarðvegur, Jord, Ƙasa, Khörs, Łeezh, Lemah, Lepo, Lupa, Lurzorua, Maaperää, Mannu, Maṇ, Maṇṇu, Mittee, Miṭī, Mobu, Mulda, Myayselwhar, Mātī, Māṭi, Māṭō, Niadagi, Nofon-tany, Nthaka, Nēla, Oneone, Pochva, Počvata, Pridd, Prst, Pôdy, Pāṁśu, Půda, Soil, Sol, Solo, Suelo, Suolo, Talaj, Tanah, Taneuh, Terra, Tla, Tlo, Toprak, Topurak, Topıraq, Torpaq, Toyang, Tuproq, Turba, Tè, Tǔrǎng, туфрак, Ubutaka, Udongo, Ùir, Umhlaba, Yuta, Zemlya
Image: © Meg Webster, Concave Earth, 1986/1990, installation view, at Stuart Regen Gallery, Los Angeles, 1990. Photo: Susan Einstein
COEDITOR: Alexandra Regan Toland
Dr. Toland is associate professor for arts and research at the Bauhaus University Weimar, where she directs the Ph.D. programme in art and design. She earned her MFA from the Dutch Art Institute (DAI) and a doctorate degree in landscape planning from the TU-Berlin as a DFG fellow in the Perspectives of Urban Ecology Graduate Research Group. Toland has held lectures and published on topics of art and environment, especially in context of soil protection issues, air pollution, and urban ecology. She co-chaired the German Soil Science Society’s (DBG) Commission on Soils in Education and Society (2011-2015), and since 2022 is IUSS co-chair of the Commission on the History, Philosophy and Sociology (and Arts) of Soil Science. Toland coedited the book Field to Palette: Dialogues on Soil and Art in the Anthropocene published by Routledge (2019). In her artistic practice, she explores social and cultural issues of urban soils, vegetation, and air in the Anthropocene, and has exhibited works, for example, at Ars Electronica (Prix Honorary Mention in 2017), Museum Schloß Moyland, the German Hygiene Museum Dresden, the Centre for Contemporary Art Glasgow, and Art Laboratory Berlin.
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COEDITOR: Patricia Lea Watts
Watts is the founder of ecoartspace, conceived in Los Angeles (1997). She has curated over thirty art and ecology exhibitions, including Performative Ecologies (2020), Contemplating OTHER (2018), Enchantment (2016), FiberSHED (2015), Shifting Baselines (2013), MAKE:CRAFT (2010), and Hybrid Fields (2006). Since 2020, Watts has organized the annual ecoartspace exhibitions online with printed books, including: ecoconsciousness (2020); Embodied Forest (2021); Earthkeepers Handbook (2023); and The New Geologic Epoch (2023). She has also produced pop-up exhibitions, including: Fragile Rainbow (2022) in Brooklyn, NY; Some Kind of Nature (2023) and As Above, So Below (2023) in Santa Fe, NM; and Transmissions (2024) in Austin, TX. Watts has conducted video interviews with over thirty ecological artists, including Bonnie Ora Sherk, Basia Irland, Mary Miss, and Mel Chin. She’s written Action Guides of replicable social practice projects including Eve Mosher's HighWaterLine and Tattfoo Tan's S.O.S.. Since 2014, Watts has edited and published fourteen monographs and exhibition catalogs including Basia Irland, Repositories: Portable Sculptures for Waterway Journeys (April 2023). She will be speaking at the 100th IUSS Soil Congress in Florence, Italy (May 2024), where she's working with Alexandra Toland (above) to present a pop-up exhibition of textile soil works at Il Conventino/Artex. For summer 2024, Watts has organized a mineral and botanical pigments workshop/retreat in Taos, and is curating a natural site-works exhibition in Santa Fe, both in New Mexico.