Maya & Reuben Fowkes - POTENTIAL AGRARIANISMS: Pluralised Histories and Reparative Futures

Maja and Reuben Fowkes in conversation with Santiago del Hierro, and Ursula Biemann

16.05.2022
POTENTIAL AGRARIANISMS: Pluralised Histories and Reparative Futures

The exhibition Potential Agrarianisms set out to rethink the human and non-human histories, social and environmental relations, and ecological prospects of the terrains of the countryside, the rural, agriculture, and the land. The diverse associations, entwinements and urgencies of these intersecting terminologies come together in the expansive notion of agrarianisms. In this presentation we will discuss the multiplicity of aesthetic, geographical, and political positions from which the art practices brought together in the show engaged with and activated the ecological potentialities of the physical and conceptual fields of the agrarian. How might the uncovering of other social and environmental, but also legal and political histories of the land contribute to debates over the need to diversify, detoxify, and de-intensify agriculture? What can be salvaged from the chronicles of peasant rebellions and the legacy of agrarianism as a mid-century political project for today’s struggles against corporate power and populism in the countryside? To what extent do non-western, traditional and alternative rural cultures provide models and knowledges for the restoration of caring and reciprocal relationships with the natural world?

Dr Maja Fowkes and Dr Reuben Fowkes are founders of the Translocal Institute for Contemporary Art and co-directors of the Postsocialist Art Centre (PACT) at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London. Their publications include Art and Climate Change (Thames & Hudson, 2022), Central and Eastern European Art Since 1950 (Thames & Hudson, 2020) and Ilona Németh: Eastern Sugar (Sternberg Press, 2021). Their curatorial projects include the exhibition Potential Agrarianisms at Kunsthalle Bratislava, the multi-year programs of the Anthropocene Reading Room and the Danube River School, and the group shows Walking without Footprints, Like a Bird and Loophole to Happiness. www.translocal.org

The event is part of the lecture series
SESSIONS ON TERRITORY—Urbanism & the Countryside.

CONCEPT AND REALISATION
Chair of Architecture and Territorial Planning, ETH Zurich Department of Architecture
Prof. Milica Topalović
Dr. Nitin Bathla
Dr. Nazlı Tümerdem
Hans Hortig

VIDEO RECORDING AND EDITING
Aymane Hayyene Filali

GRAPHIC DESIGN
Goda Budvytyte

SESSIONS ON TERRITORY is a series of public debates on the political economy of architecture and territory. Focusing on agriculture, the upcoming series will draw upon relationships of care and reciprocity with soil and biodiversity from the past and present, to help move beyond consumerist techno-fixes, and toward more self-sufficient and ecological land practices. Through a series of debates with invited guests, the seminar will explore the critical agrarian questions emerging under 21st-century (extended) urbanisation. Every intervention by a guest speaker is followed by a panel discussion with invited respondents.

Please find all lectures here: https://topalovic.arch.ethz.ch/Course...

CHAPTERS

00:00 Intro
12:23 Maja and Reuben Fowkes' presentation
1:01:02 Milica Topalović starts the discussion
1:07:33 Ursula Biemann
1:13:09 Santiago del Hierro
1:28:36 Nitin Bathla
1:35:13 Milica Topalović
1:39:22 Ursula Biemann
1:47:55 Nazlı Tümerdem
1:54:00 Questions from the audience
2:01:13 Milica Topalović closes the session