SOIL AND WATER

A series of events in the in-situ parliament on the Toter Mann in Alberndorf/ Pulkautal
A collateral project of the Vienna Biennale for Change 2021 PLANET LOVE CLIMATE CARE

SOIL NOT OIL (Vandana Shiva): A series of talks, workshops and artistic actions on the theme of permaculture and solidarity farming, climate change and water, on “The Land of the Goddesses” and practice models of eco-symbiosis, economy, social structure and situated knowledge.

Elisabeth von Samsonow facilitates meetings with farmers, gardeners and hunters from the area who have in their own way taken the initiative and are setting an example: in terms of the soil (through Terra Preta production, permaculture and agroforestry); in terms of a new model of economic activity (direct marketing, autonomisation, barter); and in terms of climate change (by improving water retention and soil life). The Pulka Valley is also experiencing dramatic soil degradation due to humus depletion, failure of soil retention and a shortage of water. What measures are being taken here, and by whom? What examples and what experiences are there? What mistakes are observed and how can they be avoided? What form of solidarity exists among those struggling with the problems of climate change? The way the soil is cultivated is becoming a contested area, and not just in agricultural practice. In the current circumstances – vanishing small-scale agriculture, corporate-controlled production and capitalisation of food, access to land and resources – the soil has become a political issue of the first order. Establishing communication, solidarity and extended practice is therefore a requirement for resistance against national and transnational dirigisme and the market-dictated dependency of farmers. This series of events explores the hopes, frustrations and visions of those who want to forge a new path. It is about the possibilities that a region has, about the possibilities that each individual farmer has as a landowner, as someone who has a territory. Founder of the Navdanya Biodiversity Farm in India, Vandana Shiva has defined the explication of the “ground” as a current-day activist project as an essential prerequisite for an ecological turning-point It concerns the perception of a threshold, or setting the course for the future, which determines the state of the biosphere THE DISSIDENT GODDESSES’ NETWORK deliberately picks up the thread again that 1970s ecofeminism began to spin by spontaneously interrelating the (then, and in some cases still subaltern) role of women with the (subaltern) role of the earth. What new forms of insurgency and what new forms of subjectivity need to be created today? A forum for “the people of Gaia”, the inhabitants of the planet who are concerned about cooperation with the living Earth.

12th of June 2021
10.00 am
WASSER Brunnenbohrung at the yurt with Roman Wittmann (Hadres postal worker and geologist), Ruth le Gear (water expert, artist “celestial waters”, Ireland), Bernhard Schmid (Schmid Vine School, Hadres Water Group)

02.00 pm
WHAT PLANTS CAN DO Workshop
Workshop and discussion with Josef Widl (arable farmer and shaman, Untermarkersdorf) and Bernhard Schmid (Schmid Vine Nursery, Hadres) , followed by music with Bernhard Schmid and Dorfmusik Hadres

21th of June 2021
ECO FLIRT
Opening of the exhibtion ECO FLIRT, Smolka Contemporary Wien
Students of the Academy of Arts Vienna, class artanthropology, Elisabeth von Samsonow, Co-curated by Kate Strain
duration of exhibition: 22th of June – 24th of July

10th of July 2021, 10.00 am
HUMUS, THE GIFT OF SOIL workshop
Talk with Johannes Autrieth (organic viticulture and organic humus management Hadres), Heinrich Ledebur (permaculture farmer, Pulkau, Franz North (Edenhof Hadres) and Ines Fritz (professor at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, former rector), Students of University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences.

7th of August 2021, 10.00 am
DAS HOLUNDER-GEDICHT
An introduction to the area by the Alberndorf hunters‘ association Robert Diem and Karl Koran followed by a collective performance, a land art theater about the relationship between the goddess Holle or Holly and their tree in the country around Hollabrunn with Elisabeth von Samsonow, crew and Dorfmusik Hadres