GREEN DAYS

Photo

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 06:24:35 -0500

Photo by Matilde Soligno

Photo by Matilde Soligno

Photo by Matilde Soligno

Photo by Matilde Soligno

Photo by Matilde Soligno

Let's take a position is now part of Centro Zonarelli public garden!

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 06:20:00 -0500

After two weeks Let’s take a position had to find another place to stay. Enrico Vezzi and Anna Santomauro - from neon>campobase - have decided to donate the installation to the multicultural association Centro Zonarelli. On December 10, together with people from San Donato neighborhood, we moved the benches from Parco John Lennon Charlie Parker to the Centro Zonarelli garden, which is very very close. The installation remains public, and everybody can use it. Many thanks to all the people who helped us, it was such an amazing collaborative and metaphorical action.

November 26 at Parco John Lennon Charlie Parker in Bologna.

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:06:33 -0500

November 26 at Parco John Lennon Charlie Parker in Bologna.

Project by Enrico Vezzi in collaboration with La Pillola Curated...

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 05:36:00 -0500

Project by Enrico Vezzi in collaboration with La Pillola
Curated by Anna Santomauro

Opening November 26th at 2:30 pm
Parco John Lennon Charlie Parker Via del Lavoro – Bologna (Italy)

Let’s Take a Position is the title of the intervention that the artist Enrico Vezzi has realized in collaboration with La Pillola at San Donato Neighborhood. The intervention is the result of a research carried out on two different levels: by studying the city and some of its specific areas and by investigating themes connected to ecology and nature in the public space. They both have been developed during the Green Days* nomad workshops held in 4 different countries.
Let’s Take a Position invites people to position themselves in the public space, considered as a house, as a place to belong and has a field of intervention.
Public space hosted Green Days workshops: basic deeds aiming at perceptive and emotive conquest of places have produced a deeper view on human and environmental contexts – both in a rural and urban dimension, through an intense dialogue among the participants and between participants and the surroundings.
Enrico Vezzi froze these moments in dozens of pictures, drawing time after time ideal lines of a new cartography of relationships and positions, analyzing the psychology of these connections and focusing on what Bateson has defined as “ecology of mind”.
“What can we learn from nature?”, a question that has become the leitmotiv of the Green Days project, thus turns into “What can we learn from human beings and from the space?”, as they are an integral part of natural systems and as producers of ideas and thoughts.
The aim is to produce some micro-systems that mirror these positions, that the public can touch and use.
Some benches will be placed in the park: their position matches the position and the attitude that the workshop participants adopted during the moments in which they were talking and discussing.
The benches are mobile: whoever uses them will be able to transform the initial position, highlighting the fact that the simple and spontaneous act of using the space by choosing how to do it is a social and political act.
The benches’ shape is not only inviting people to sit down. Indeed these objects offer them a space for thinking and acting: people can write on their surface, or find some books inside of them, or read the details of the whole Green Days project on the bar codes.
Aware of the historical, social and cultural features of this place, we want this intervention to be an occasion to reflect on the concept of transparency and visibility, on the ecology of social relations and on the physical and cultural energy, the one that leads to transformation. After the two-weeks installation, the artwork will be
donate. People interested in it can send an email to annasantomauro83@gmail.com explaining how they mean to use it in an ecological way.

*Green Days is a multidisciplinary project based on the relationship between urban environment and nature, and on the possibility to “imitate nature” through biomimicry applied to the visual and performing arts in public space. The project involves four european non profit organisations devoted to contemporary art: neoncampobase (Bologna), AAA - Audiovisual Artists Anonymous (Brussels), Radar (Loughborough), Fabrica de Pensule (Cluj-Napoca). During spring, each partner will invite an artist to hold a workshop on site, reflecting on the role of nature and green areas in the urban texture, walking throughout the city in order to carry out a social and urban nomad survey. Green Days is going to contribute to the creation of mental and physical spaces devoted to knowledge sharing and to the experience of collaboration.

Green Days is a project by Viviana Checchia and Anna Santomauro

Supported by European Cultural Foundation

LINK: August 12 - October 14, 2011, Brussels

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 07:39:00 -0400

LINK

Place Fontainasplein (Fontainas square) is a site of intersection between different neighbourhoods, cultures and social groups. It is situated between the Anspach and Lemonnier Boulevards, the major boulevards that succeed each other to connect the North with the South, and the adjacent Fontainas Park, which forms the only public green space in this North-South axis.

Due to its location, the Fontainas square is used by a population of great diversity. Previously known as Eilandje (Small Island) because the river Senne/Zenne used to split here and came together a mere 65 meters further, forming thus a small island, the Fontainas square denotes nowadays a transition from the more central areas, such as the Bourse/Beurs, the commercial Dansaert street and the lively quarter of Saint-Gery/ Sint-Goriks, to the gay friendly cafés of the Marché au charbon/Kolenmarkt and the low-income, prominently Muslim residential parts of the Anneesseens quarter towards the south.

LINK creates a temporary physical connection between the Fontainas square and the Fontainas park. Physically, the two are separated by a small street, while an imposing building almost hides the park from the passersby on the Anspach. However, the low interaction between them is not so much due to those physical boundaries. Despite their proximity, square and park seem to have distinct and almost distant characters.

Clearly belonging in the realm of the Anspach boulevard, the Fontainas square is more of a broad sidewalk, a busy passage, rather than a proper square. A “reluctant” square, built with concrete, with rows of plants and a few merely inviting sitting benches, it is not a public space keenly appropriated by the strollers. If urban identity can be formed through the meaning attached by the users of the city, then Fontainas still seems to be hesitating.

The park is a well gated green oasis with playground facilities, used mainly by the residents and the children of the neighbourhood that behind Anspach. The park’s multiple entrances allow people to come in from all sides. The only exception seems to be the entrance at the Anspach side, which remains quite hidden for passersby as a narrow corridor under the shadow of the high building (the headquarters of the public servants’ Union). Unfortunately, the park is not spared from other activities, like mugging or drug dealing, which find fertile ground at its most remote parts.

Despite recent transformations as well as the ongoing efforts of authorities and various non profits active in the neighbourhood, the park and the area still hold a reputation for being unsafe.

LINK departs from all the above observations and wishes to bring change in this disconnection. It opens up the normally gated side of the park that faces the Anspach Boulevard, it continues over the small street that separates them and arrives at the square.

By extending the limits of both the park and the square, LINK aims to launch a debate on a potential redefinition of this urban site. It shows that a connection between square and park, those neighbouring but nevertheless distant worlds, is possible. However, LINK does not claim to be a definite proposal for the site. It rather wishes to encourage residents and authorities to reflect upon this potential and envision a different, long-term approach for the site. LINK is therefore a starting point of a placemaking process, a proposition towards something else; why not, towards the possibility of Fontainas Island growing into a unique and green interlude in the central North-South axis of Brussels.

LINK demonstrates the continuous fluidity of a city like Brussels and through its physical presence proclaims that “There’s work being done here”. The use of scaffolding for its material refers to public works, and aims to trigger all sorts of associations to anyone crossing the site: change, evolution, restoration, starting of larger works, and the beginning of something new … Locals and passersby are in this way involved and mobilized for the possible change that LINK aims to bring in.

LINK is a test case. It will remain on site for a period of two months, from August to October 2011. These two months will be a period of constant reflection and investigation on the potential for a different urban approach and the possibilities of improvement that LINK aims to set forward in this site.

LINK is the Brussels/Belgian contribution to the European project Green Days which takes place this summer in four European cities and focuses on the relationship between urban and natural environment.

Green Days in Belgium is organised by the non-profit association AAA

LINK is designed by Wouter De Raeve, partner of Dees & Lepage Garden and Landscape Architecture Bureau, and is supported by the European Cultural Foundation (ECF).

LINK runs from August 12 to October 14, 2011

LINK, place Fontainasplein, 1000 Bruxelles/ Brussel

Tram 3 & 4, stop Anneessens, exit Fontainas

Info:

http://www.deeslepage.be/en/projects/greendays.html

http://www.artanartist.org

Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=115753715187853

The day the sky opened in Cluj. After a tour and discussion at...

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 06:06:59 -0400

The day the sky opened in Cluj. After a tour and discussion at the botanical garden, the cycle to the forest was rescheduled as Cluj was overtaken by wind, rain and hailstones, and talks carried on in various cafes, bars and restaurants across the city.

Exploring the buying and selling of produce in Cluj, through...

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 05:53:38 -0400

Exploring the buying and selling of produce in Cluj, through market trading and capitalist intervention. A tour of the city led by Fabrica de Pensule, travelling by bicycle across the terrain.

A walk around the village of Wymeswold with Georgina Barney,...

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 05:44:55 -0400

A walk around the village of Wymeswold with Georgina Barney, exploring how the country side is sold. A visit to a local butcher, church, pub, livery and a view of the battery chicken farm.

Some photos from the first and second day in Loughborough with...

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 05:34:04 -0400

Some photos from the first and second day in Loughborough with Georgina Barney. Day one included some poetry reading near the edge of Georgina’s village of Wymeswold. Day two saw the group go to Pat Stanley’s farm, where they breed prize cattle for show.

Some pics of Green Days Workshop in Cluj-Napoca. Thank you...

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 16:29:36 -0400

Some pics of Green Days Workshop in Cluj-Napoca. Thank you Fabrica de Pensule!

what can we learn from nature?: GREEN DAYS Cluj-Napoca (Fabrica de Pensule)

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 16:16:44 -0400

what can we learn from nature?: GREEN DAYS Cluj-Napoca (Fabrica de Pensule):

whatcanwelearnfromnature:

Here are some pictures from the Green Days Workshop in Cluj-Napoca (Roumania), hosted by Fabrica de Pensule, from 18 to 21 July 2011.

Presentation of Fabrica de Pensule, tour of the Factory and the area, talks about the local context.

Visit to the Mihai Viteazu Market, talks by…

An inspiring theory we would like to share with you!

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 15:21:42 -0400

An inspiring theory we would like to share with you!

Green Days Workshop Cluj Program (July 19th – 21st)

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 11:43:00 -0400

Tuesday, July 19

10.00 - 11.30

meeting @ Fabrica de Pensule
breakfast get-together
Presentation of Fabrica de Pensule, tour of the Factory and the area, talks about the local context
(neighborhood, neighborhood development, etc.).

11.30 - 14.30
Mihai Viteazu Market
Ramona Duminicioiu - local producers, organic agriculture in Romania, consumer - producer
Bogdan Rakolcza – Mihai Viteazu Market, Where do we go?

14.30 - 16.00
Lunch break

16.00 - 18.30
The Botanical Garden

18.30
Coșul Verde / Green Basket (bio cafe)
Roxana Pencea, Tudor Brădățan - organic agriculture

Wednesday, July 20

10.00 - 12.30
Urban Gardens / Mărăști
Gyöngyi Pásztor – Hostat population (tbc)

Calvaria / Mănăştur
Cluj neighborhoods

12.30 - 14.30
Lunch, discussion

14.30 - 17.00
Central Park
Veer Klara Luminița – The Central Park

17.00 - 19.00
Hoia Forrest
Laura Panait - artistic intervention in urban space

Thursday, July 21

9.30 - 12.00

Feroviarilor Park
Norbert Petrovici - Lupşa / Clujeana neighborhood, Feroviarilor Park
Adrian Dohotaru - activism and civic movement – Feroviarilor Park
Iulia Hurducaş - Feroviarilor Park, Architecture Days

12.00 - 13.00
Fabrica de Pensule - video projections
Jorge Furtado - Ilha das Flores / Isle of Flowers (12’31)
Janine Benyus - Biomimicry in Action (17’39)
Michael Pawlyn - Using Nature’s Genius in Architecture (13’47)

13.00 - 14.00
Lunch break

14.00 - 18.00
Fabrica de Pensule – Future Forecast workshop (István Szakáts)

18.00
Fabrica de Pensule – Conclusions, closing Green Days Cluj

Green Days Workshop Cluj (Fabrica de Pensule) on July 19th - 21st

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 11:39:45 -0400

Fabrica de Pensule invites you to the Green Days workshop in Cluj, an urban exploration in various spaces of the city. The workshop will include bike tours in the city, parks, green spaces, meetings and discussions with artists, arhitects, urbanists, sociologists, with guests from Italy, Belgium and England.

Green Days is an international multidisciplinary project that proposes a reflection on the relations between urban environment and nature and offers the context of larger dabates on the way we can learn from nature and apply nature-inspired models, schemes and concepts in art, urban space and science.

The Green Days workshop will be organized as an urban exploration in different areas of the city – parks (Parcul Feroviarilor, the Central Park), markets (Abator Market, Mihai Viteazu Market), the river banks, Mărăști and Mănăștur neighbourhoods, green spaces like the Botanical Garden, Hoia Forest. The workshop is a process of exploring not only the urban geography, but also an attempt to map different themes connected to urban ecology, green activism and the role that green spaces play in the urban and social tissue. At the end of the urban exploration, there will be a film projection session at Fabrica de Pensule, on the theme of biomimicry, as well as the Future Forecast
workshop, conducted by István Szakáts.

Participation at the workshop is open to anybody who will subscribe by sending an email at corina@fabricadepensule.ro (please mention your name and the part of the workshop that you would like to participate at). The tours in the city will be on bikes; there is a possibility to use the bikes offered for free by the Green Revolution Association, through the national bike-sharing program I’Velo (please mention in the email if you would like to use a bike).

Some pics of the last day in Loughborough (July...

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 17:32:54 -0400

Some pics of the last day in Loughborough (July 6th).

Reflecting on Bakewell heritage and then shopping at Tesco.

Some pics of Green Days Workshop in Loughborough (July...

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 17:23:00 -0400

Some pics of Green Days Workshop in Loughborough (July 5th).

Touring the village with Georgina Barney and Alice Carey.

Some pics of Green Days Workshop in Loughborough (July...

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 17:18:00 -0400

Some pics of Green Days Workshop in Loughborough (July 4th).

Meeting Jo Hasbury and Gillian Whitley at Beneath the Pavement A Garden shed.

Green Days Workshop Loughborough, UK. ‘How is the countryside sold?’ Georgina Barney, artist with Alice Carey, curator Includes ‘The Knowledge (Factory) Farm’ led by Dr Gillian Whiteley with Jo Hasbury.

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 11:45:00 -0400

Introduction

Idyllic representations of the countryside consistently arise problematic in a metropolitan-based discourse of contemporary art. Artist Georgina Barney grew up in the village of Wymeswold between Loughborough and Nottingham. A concern with the rural continues to guide her practice, for example in working recently with curator Alice Carey, on Farming Fiction. For Green Days, we aim to question the Englishness of our subject matter; remember Robert Bakewell, Loughborough’s globally influential agriculturalist; ‘update’ its artefacts, a genre of historic livestock paintings (such as A Gentleman Farmer, below).

The first day, travelling to and around the village of Wymeswold on 5th July, will introduce participants to key figures and places in the popular conception of British rurality. In particular, the butcher Mr. Collington will educate us as to the aesthetics of a carcass, and link to our theme of agriculture. A walk behind the scene of the English idyll, at once nostalgic and habitual, will prepare us for our visit the following day to Pat Stanley’s herd of pedigree Longhorn cows.

On the second day, 6th July during the workshop Pat Stanley, farmer, will introduce the group to her pedigree herd of Longhorn cattle at Spring Barrow Lodge Farm, and demonstrate showing and the aesthetics of breeding, by walking with a prize-winning beast. We will then gather in her gallery of historic rural artwork for a discussion that leads on from Brussels and Bologna Green Days workshops. This day will also include site visits to Dishley Grange, near Loughborough where Bakewell farmed, and to a Tesco supermarket, revealing a rich historic trajectory from local breeding innovation to global commodity infrastructure.

Background to the work

Pat Stanley and her husband John breed pedigree ‘Blackbrook Longhorns’ at Spring Barrow Lodge Farm in North West Leicestershire and deal in historic farm animal portraiture through the Blackbrook Gallery. Pat Stanley is an active member of the Dishley Society who are concerned with the legacy of Bakewell, and has written a book on Robert Bakewell informed by her first-hand experience of breeding, caring for and showing cows.

In 2007, Barney made an 8-month tour around UK farms. She lived and worked on agricultural operations, spanning small-scale kitchen gardening to industrial salad and vegetable production. In her home county of Leicestershire during this project (www.gbfarming.co.uk), she discovered Robert Bakewell. His favoured breed, the Longhorn cow, caught her attention on the estate where she was working.

Alice Carey comes from a Norfolk farming family, and currently lives in London where she works curating and administrating public art projects. Her recent Masters thesis examined how The Idea of the Farm is culturally produced and popularly imagined. Barney and Carey have collaborated in art+farming research since 2009 through their shared passions for ideas, images and the culture, practice and politics of the ‘f’ word (farms and farming).

Robert Bakewell is one of the most important figures in a world-wide history of agriculture. At the end of the eighteenth century, Dishley Grange was a test site, a sort of outdoor laboratory. His experiments there helped usher in modern food production, through selective breeding in particular. Firmly shutting the door on the end of the medieval age, it was a moment of seismic change: the splitting up and intervening into land spaces for production; rapid industrialistation
that demanded a new class of capitalist farmers for fuel; the possibility of ‘improving’ the quality of animals for consumption and other uses, gave beasts measurable economic, as well as physical attributes.

In an age of pressing challenges, for example depletion of oil, scarcity of water, and social isolation in the rural, this work raises a much-needed realism. Problems facing the food and farming industry are so easily greeted by sentimentality and nostalgia that prevail as obstacles of thought in wider audiences. The meeting point of cultures, art and farming in the ‘Bakewell – Livestock portraiture’ story provides a catalysing precedence - towards changing attitudes in contemporary art. Barney and Carey’s combined local knowledge, experience of the subject in practical, relational and academic terms, and accumulation of skills across two practices promise a deeply engaging series of events in Loughborough and rich results for the viewing public.

Programme

Sunday 03/07/11
Arrival of participants from partner organisations in Europe, accommodation on Loughborough University campus

Monday 04/07/11
THE KNOWLEDGE (FACTORY) FARM: BIOMIMICRY ON CAMPUS
Loughborough University trail led by Dr Gillian Whiteley with Jo Hasbury, Sustainability Manager. Focusing on the concepts of ‘cultivation’, ‘contagion’ and ‘community’, this will be an interactive exploration of the urban campus environment as knowledge ‘farm’. Starting and ending with discussions at the Shed, around the key concepts, the discursive trail will highlight many points of ‘green’ interest and will explore the campus’ aims to provide a sustainable future. Key features such as Nils Normans sculptural installation ‘Open Assembly No 1. Loughborough. Insects, Worms, Mushrooms, Birds and Students’ will be activated through participative debate.

10.00 am – Group meet at Beneath the Pavement A Garden shed, near Car Park 5
10.15am – Tour of Loughborough Campus
12.00pm – Tour concludes

Tuesday 05/07/11
UNTITLED (VILLAGE WALK)

10:15 Group meet Alice and Georgina at Stand H, Baxter Gate Loughborough.

Please bring an example of meat packaging from a place where you regularly shop. We are interested in the imagery – and text - that is used to sell the countryside back to us. Does it look ‘authentic’? Can you think of paintings (or other think artworks) that are evoked by your packaging? What personas are at play?

NB There will be no cash points available during the day.

We will be touring the village, meeting different proprietors and figures: from the church to lunch in the Three Crowns Pub; in the afternoon we’ll hear from Mr. Collington, the butcher in Wymeswold and enjoy Afternoon Tea at Georgina’s family home.

20:00 Travel back to Loughborough

Wednesday 06/07/11
BAKEWELL AND HIS LEGACY

9:30 Start at Loughborough University

Please bring clean boots/ shoes that have been washed thoroughly since any contact with livestock. All participants will be required to dip their footwear in disinfectant.

The day consists of journey through sites historic and current tracing Robert Bakewell’s influence, and includes a workshop in livestock showing. Lunch will be provided.

17:00 Arrive back Loughborough town centre

Thursday 07/07/11
Free day
Participants from partner European organisations free to choose how to spend the day, a list of suggested activities will be provided.

Friday 08/07/11
Departure of participants from partner organisations in Europe

Final day for Green Days in Bologna. Chapter II Lab and talk...

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 05:06:52 -0400

Final day for Green Days in Bologna.

Chapter II

Lab and talk with Biodivercity

Eugea talk about urban biological fight in parco John Lennon and Charlie Parker

Final talk in Liber Paradisus.

Final day for Green Days in Bologna. Chapter I Massimo Brunelli...

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 04:39:23 -0400

Final day for Green Days in Bologna.

Chapter I

Massimo Brunelli and underground tour of Bologna

lab and talk with Biodivercity