thoughtsandtalks

BRUSSELS – 25th and 26th JANUARY 2010
This pan European event is a collaboration between TippingPoint, the British Council, the European Commission, the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC), the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) and the Kaaitheatre Theater in Brussels. A major European gathering of individuals from across the cultural sector, including artists from all art forms, together with a broad range of scientists involved in the world of climate science will take place, symbolically, at the heart of the European institutions, in the building of the EESC in the centre of Brussels. A number of key climate change policy makers will also take part.

TippingPoint aims to ‘harness the power of the imagination to help stabilise the climate’. We offer a range of activities centred on exposing creative artists to the enormous challenges of climate change; at the heart of this lies a series of meetings involving very high quality, intense dialogue between artists, scientists and others close to the heart of the issue. These encounters provide a chance to explore the broader cultural challenges precipitated by climate change.

Tipping Point or how to change the mentality of the world population? : conference report by Eva Peeters on the BAM-website ‘Kunst en Ecologie’

(more…)

download the article: ‘Kunstenaars en Stadsbijen’
published in the book HONING, written by Karin Swiers.
click the image:

We started to make a database of the wild plants and flowers that grow in our rooftopgardens. The plants are indigenous and their seeds are brought to our rooftop locations by the birds. All pictures are photographs from our own plants. The texts come from a guidebook on wild flowers, and give a taxonomy and a topology of the plant, as well as a description of its specific features, e.g. medicinal plant and/or other properties.

In MAHILA (women), the filmmaker steps between different worlds, going from West to East, from urban to rural surroundings. Her encounters with the experiences and observations of rural Rajasthani women provoke reflection on the process of empowerment. In an artistic ethnography we see and hear how they are using education, technology and politics to redefine their destinies. As we trace the film-maker’s memories we are taken into questions about story-telling. How are the women fighting to get their stories heard? Can the filmmaker tell other women’s stories?

screenings:
Brigittines Brussels, 5 december 19u
Lazareti Dubrovnik (croatia), 10 december 19u
Netwerk Aalst, 17 december 19u

okno’s harvest day is set up as an open_lab where visitors can explore the projects conducted by artists and researchers in the open_green rooftopgardens. We will exchange ideas about the different processes of social and cultural issues related to the urban, green environment. We will share everyday procedures as cooking algorithms with ingredients forthcoming from the seasonal harvest of the connected urban gardens. We intend to explore via public discussions and onsite/online presentations the character, properties and the expressions of different natural processes.

2pm: Your hosts of the day are Olivier Meunier and Annemie Maes.
Throughout the afternoon they will give an overview of the setup of the okno gardens (materials, decisions, technology) and introduce the artistic projects -the beehive observatory, the spiral-dye, the connected domes and webcams- located in the gardens.
2:30: we start for a walk through the city to collect berries and plants for Bartaku’s mini-lab on solar cells.
4pm: workshop featuring natural dye sensitized solar cells and Preb 501, an experimental light amplifier. This arts/science research project is fused by Bartaku’s PhoEf.
4pm: workshop on absinthe-making. Various Artists will go beyond Toulouse Lautrec and create natural alchemy with local plants: Aude Thensiau - 50%.
6pm: the honeybee observatory by Christina Stadlbauer.
Spring 2009 the 2 honeybee colonies arrived at the connected rooftop gardens. The ladies enjoyed a rich season of urban blooms and rewarded us with the first harvest! A taster of urban beekeeping techniques and a view on the harvesting fields will be offered as well as some spoons to evaluate the city honey of Brussels.

Across workshops and presentations samples of homemade bio products can be savoured: pickled russian cucumbers, sundried tomatoes, pinjur, city honey, absinthe, blueberry wine, kosovar pita, courgette-soup, … Bring your recipies to share them with us!

and some other micro transformations by Bartaku

recipies by Various Artists

Download here the spreadsheet overview of the evolution of the vegetables in the so-on garden, 2009.
The information mentions:
the origin of the (bio) seeds, sowing date, growth, potting date, planting date (outside), location in the rooftop garden, companion planting, flowers and fruits evolution, harvest, seed-harvest, pictures.