thoughtsandtalks

During 1 of tipping point’s Open Space Sessions, Maarten Roels and myself propose the topic: urban agriculture and urban walking. In following document you can read an overview of the points we discussed in our group : points of interest, obstacles, food as basis for change, walking the city and solutions. Conclusion : What will YOU do (the coming 6 months) to tacle climate change?

Download group O’s pdf and add your own solutions.
some more suggestions: download here
DAAD : Do And Act Differently

Above a selection of the tipping point Open Space topics.
Under: the award-winning BEE HOUSE by James Ennis.

The Bee House is a micro habitat encouraging daily interaction to promote and help the survival of diverse insects that are essential to our food production cycles. The flower puppets are ornamental seed-totems, providing ornamentation for a flower bed while awaiting germination.
The bee house, the seeds and their flowers are certified organic and have been studied and selected by a group of entomology researchers from the university of Bologna. Info: positiveflow.net.

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’

(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.

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