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We have initiated an experiment on the grounds of the Garden colony POG- a community compost area, functional only with community self-organisation and under responsibility of all users. On April 29, 2015, as part of the ONE HECTARE art and participatory exhibition, the notorious urban gardening sensation, Prinzessinnengärten, erected a three chamber composter on the South-West border of the garden allotment colony POW.

Everyone is invited to contribute biologically degradable material (see the list of go’s and no-go’s), to maintain the compost area, and to use the fertile soil produced. Please contact amy.green@iass-potsdam.de with any questions of comments.

Good for the compost: 

green garden waste, fruit scraps (not sprayed), egg shells, caffe grounds, leaves, grass cuttings, hedge clippings, wild grasses (no root spreading weeds), lime and ground minerals, hair, untreated paper and cardboard, old soil from balconies.

Not good for the compost:

scraps of sprayed fruits and vegetables, cooked and spiced food left-overs, oils and fats, plastics, meat, glass, metal, sick plants, slow decomposing organic matieral like leather, bones, larger pieces of wood, root speading plants, leaves with tannin such as oak.

For Google Maps, please click on the image.

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Zoom in by clicking on the picture.

But this resource upon which our lives depend is being stretched more and more to its limits. As the world population continues to grow, the amount of arable land available per person drops. Since 1960 this has more than halved. At present it is slightly more than 2 000 m², or about a third the size of a football field. At the same time, the heavy usage of the available land is leading to soil degradation. This means that the soil is losing its ability to support food production and to fulfill important ecological and climate functions. Once soil has been lost, it is essentially lost for good: it takes 1 000 years for a mere five cm of soil to form.

But we use the land not just for crops, but also for pasture and forests. Thus, when we eat meat or use paper, we are also always indirectly consuming land. We Europeans especially are using more land than we have a right to statistically—1.2 hectares per person annually. This is a global problem. And a very concrete problem that we must face in Germany as well.
The installation ONE HECTARE provides a glimpse into functions of the soil and how it is used worldwide. It sheds light on the dilemma of how to avoid overusing a limited resource, and it shows how we are nevertheless squandering large amounts of this resource. In addition, it asks how land may be distributed more equally and sketches some ways that this precious resource may be used more sustainably.

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one hectare one night /video/ Joachim Mühleisen- canara

12 hours. 1000 bodies/ long durational performance on May 25  9am to 9 pm

with:
Yannis Pappas- Costume design

Joachim Mühleisen- Film

Yiannis Pappas- Costume design

Land. Provides for the fundamental need of all animals. Rest. For it is a human right to sleep securely and soundly, and to be sheltered during this period of utter vulnerability.

How much space does a human being need in order to sleep safe and sound?  And how many sleepers could the 1 Ha provide?  A short film, one hectare one night,  shot from above shows  a person sleeping in the Gleisdreieck Park- canopied by site specific soundscapes, lights, moods, passersby, and body positions of the sleeper in a green dress.

One hectare one day – long durational performance will begin to fill the hectare with the shapes of those who could sleep there. The positions of the performer  marked with chalk, and documented.1000 positions  in 12 hours. Such markings reference also  crime scenes, and sleeping positions of masses of people transported at different times in history forced into such a migration. Due to slavery they have lost  their protection and security. The intervention highlights the need to protect the right to shelter for all people.

One hectare one night

Working from the premise that it is a human right to have enough space to sleep and to be sheltered during this period of utter vulnerability, this piece investigates land and soil in its capacity and duty to provide shelter.

This twofold piece, consisting of a video and long durational performance, explores the questions: How much space does a human being need in order to sleep safe and sound?  And how many places for sleeping could the 1 Ha provide?  A short film will be produced from documentation of a person sleeping in the Gleisdreieck Park- canopied by site specific soundscapes, lights, moods, passersby, and body positions of the sleeper in a green dress. A film team will shoot the sleeper from above

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Rolf Sudmann (Germany)

Installation of a raised garden bed, mobile telephones, metal

A high security crop of 17 mobile telephones are growing in the raised bed before you.

17 telephone numbers  for 17 rare earth elements.

Dial the numbers at no cost to find out what these wonders of nature can do for you.

Rare Earth Elements are a group of 17 elements, whose special magnetic, phosphorescent, and catalytic properties are central to technological advances in x-ray devices, aircrafts, and lasers to green technologies such as wind turbines and electric cars.  Nine different rare elements can be found in an iPhone alone, used for the color screen, the phone’s circuitry, the speakers, and the vibration unit.

Technically speaking, rare earth elements are not rare at all, but rather they are diffuse and not easily extracted from the earth. The environmental impacts of the extraction process are high, due to large amounts of toxic   waste products including radioactivity.

China is currently the world’s leading producer and consumer of Rare Earth Elements, responsible for 95% of production in 2010.  A monopoly on precious resources generates  geo-political power.  This year China finally eliminated export quotas for Rare Earth Elements, whose fluctuations throughout the past decade created a nervous market and inspired many countries to reduce their reliance.

Recycling processes are being developed to harvest rare earth elements from electrical and electronic waste known as WEEE. The trend towards smaller chips will mean a reduction in of the use of rare earth elements, but also a more difficult and costly waste extraction process.  Intelligent product design, which plans for the recycling of rare earth elements s is crucial.

Photo credit: CC Terence Wright@Flickr

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Lerato Shadi (Berlin/South Africa)

Medium: video, single channel video projection; to be shown in the Container

Duration 5‘

Video camera & editing: Erik Dettwiler

The video Matsogo shows a pair of hands crumbling a piece of cake and reshaping it into the same triangle shape that references the beginning slice.

Through the process of deconstruction to reconstruction, the essence and consumability of the piece of cake is undermined and lost. Although it is reformed into an object that resembles and has the same elements, as the cake it has lost its original function.

The sound track combines two songs from two different popular Setswana folktales. The songs are mixed together, thereby confusing and convoluting the narratives of the folktales in such a way, that there are three to five characters in an ongoing polylogue, that revolves around belief and disbelief, trust and betrayal.

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Andreas Greiner

A figurative sculpture representing the goddess of agriculture, grain crops, and fertility is displayed inside a glass case. This goddess was worshipped as Demeter in Greek and Ceres in Roman religion. Cast in a mixture of plaster and a nutrient solution imbued with microorganisms, colonies of lush and delicate fungi and mold colonize the statue decomposing it during the course of the exhibition. The sculpture is in a continuous process of change as the nutrients are transformed into living biomass. The deity´s body with its classical proportion succumbs to the seemingly chaotic natural process of nutrient cycling. According to antique mythology, Ceres embodies both the aspects of life and death- the awakening of life in nature as well the breakdown and decay of organic matter, and thus the entire cycle of life.  Offering a basis for sustenance, and thus allowing growth and proliferation, the sculpture of Ceres is broken down and re-organized by the microorganisms.

Fertility, or nature’s ability to sustain itself, has been an important object of adoration until today. For modern urbanites, fertility sculptures have lost their significance, as we continually lose our connection to the sustaining force of nature as well as to our food. Carrying out important destructive natural processes, highlighted by The Sixth Distinction (Ceres), fungi and mycorrhiza play a very important role in our food security as they enable the nutrient cycling in soils.

The title The Sixth Extinction (Ceres) refers to the concept of Holocene extinction, describing the disappearance of species, caused by the human impact on the environment in our present epoch of the Anthropocene.

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A film by Oliver Ressler, 18 min., 2013

In recent years, countless extreme weather events clearly indicate that climate change is not only a future phenomenon but is already taking place. Some effects of global warming—desertification, more frequent droughts, less frequent but more intense precipitation, lower crop yields—inflame existing social conflicts. In the Global South, climate change aggravates the crises of poverty, violence, and unrest that result from the legacies of colonialism and neoliberal capitalism. This vicious circle fuels humanitarian crises and civil wars that amplify political, economic and environmental disasters.

Despite clear warnings, the ruling powers do not have a political agenda with a serious strategy to reduce use of fossil fuels, the main cause of global warming. A fossil-fuel fundamentalism seems to dominate throughout the globe.

Recently, some of Norway’s politicians have advocated extracting petroleum in one of the largest fish and aquatic life spawning grounds on the planet, the sea encircling the Lofoten archipelago. The deepwater drilling would have unpredictable effects on the fish populations and some of the world’s cleanest waters. With the idyllic landscapes of the Lofoten archipelago as its background, Leave It in the Ground describes the climate crisis not as a technical and scientific problem, but as a political problem. The film discusses how ecological and humanitarian disasters caused through global warming might topple old orders and open up possibilities that could lead to long-term social and political transformations, both positive and negative.

The film is accompanied by three photographic works evoking scenarios of a post-oil world.

Director and producer: Oliver Ressler
Narration text: Oliver Ressler & John Barker
The text is partly inspired by Christian Parenti, Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence (2011); Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell (2009); Naomi Klein, Capitalism vs. the Climate (2011).
Narrator: Andrew Golder
Camera, film editing: Oliver Ressler
Sound design, mix and color correction: Rudolf Gottsberger
Music from the album: Kate Carr, Songs from a Cold Place (2013)
Footage: Mosireen; Anonymous video makers
Special thanks to: Bassam el Baroni, Dorian Batycka, Derek Jarman, Tadzio Müller, Maren Richter, Odd Arne Sandberg, Berte Tungodden Ynnesdal

The film was commissioned by LIAF – Lofoten International Art Festival 2013, supported by BMUKK.

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