thoughtsandtalks

From october 1st till october 7th, I followed a workshop/residence at the Navdanya Farm of Vandana Shiva, in Dehradun, North India.
Participants made up a diverse mix of scientists, strategic thinkers, artists, farmers and students. We discussed Genetically Modified Organisms (a case study: Percy Schmeiser’s war against Monsanto), Biological Commons, Fair Trade and the Organic Revolution.
Before and after the lectures and discussions, we practised yoga in the early morning, worked on the farmland in the afternoons and did some great collective cooking in the evening (all with organically grown products from the farm).
Conclusion: mix tradition with diversity. Take good things from other cultures, but never step away from yours!

PRINCIPLES FOR FOOD SECURITY IN TIMES OF CLIMATE CHANGE
This manifesto is an agro-ecological response to challenge posed by climate
change for ensuring the future of food security by mitigation, adaptation and
equity, based on the following principles:

1. Industrial Globalised Agriculture Contributes to and is Vulnerable to
Climate Change.
2. Ecological and Organic Farming Contributes to Mitigation and Adaptation
to Climate Change.
3. Transition to Local, Sustainable Food Systems benefit the Environment
and Public Health.
4. Biodiversity Reduces Vulnerability and Increases Resilience.
5. Genetically Modi?ed Seeds and Breeds: a False Solution and Dangerous
Diversion
6. Industrial Agrofuels: A False Solution and New Threat to Food Security
7. Water Conservation is Central to Sustainable Agriculture
8. Knowledge Transition for Climate Adaptation
9. Economic Transition Toward a Sustainable and Equitable Food Future

further links:
The Future of Food Manifesto (download)
Vandana Shiva on the Future of Food (download)
The case of Percy Schmeiser : interview in MO*magazine (nl)
navdanya, organic farm

Summary of an interview I conducted with Vandana Shiva during the workshop and seminar ‘The Future of Food’ on the Navdanya-farm in Dehradun, India - early october 2008.

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You can view this info also on PADMA (public access digital media archive).
click here for the excerpt :Vandana Shiva on Diverse Women for Diversity
Press ‘P’ to start the video excerpt.
click here for the transcript of this section.

Beekeeping goes back throughout history and was an art that was closely related to goddess worship in the ancient world. Bees are a matriarchal society, closely related to the feminine.

MELISSA - “bee” was the title given to Aphrodite’s high priestess at the honeycomb-shrine of Mount Eryx, where the Goddess’s fetish was a golden honeycomb. Pythagoreans perceived the hexagon as an expression of the spirit of Aphrodite whose sacred number was six. She worshipped bees as her sacred creatures because they understood how to create perfect hexagons in their honeycomb. In Her temple at Eryx, the priestesses were melissae, “bees” and the Goddess herself was entitled Melissa, the Queen Bee.
Seeking to understand nature’s secrets through geometry, the Pythagoreans meditated on the endless triangular lattice, all sixty-degree angles, that results from extending the sides of all hexagons in the honey comb diagram until their lines meet in the centers of adjacent hexagons. It seemed to them a revelation of the underlying symmetry of the cosmos.

The bee was usually looked upon as a symbol of the feminine potency of nature, because while creating a magical elixir, known for its preservation properties, they were also pollinating flowers, increasing plant fertility, and abundance.

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Flanders 1500’s. The hives were tall straw skeps with a flight entrance well above the base. The skeps were housed in a thatched shelter near the farm buildings. Pigs and poultry were kept near the hives. Women, children and men were involved in beekeeping activities and all wore protective clothing. Similar hives were used up to the 1900’s. (The world history of beekeeping, by Eva Crane).

A Flemish beekeeping scene, by Pieter Breughel the Elder, 1565.
It has been suggested that the men might be stealing the hives.

Meanwhile, wintertime 2010 on a Brussels rooftop garden.
Let’s hope the colonies survive!

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’

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

MMKamp is an international ‘artist residency’ project based on collaboration between non-profit organizations, artists, tactical media activists and ones who don’t know yet what they are and don’t care much. MMKamp concept is an art and new media laboratory, platform for researching, new media experimenting and developing new artistic and communication forms, through self-initiated collaboration among international artists and new media workers.

Everything in Multimedia camp (Multimedijalni kamp - MMKamp) is about freedom. Its about research how to become free through hacking, manipulating, communicating, living, networking, creating, developing… Sometimes its nice to research alone, sometimes you share your ideas, feelings and results with other. In a way, it is a lookout for anarchy, a pirate-ism in the best meaning of a term. Its about making friends, being brave and bald, funny and wacky.

http://mmkamp.gentlejunk.net/about/
http://mmkamp.gentlejunk.net/sudioniciparticipants/