ANTHROPOGENIC SOILS
Tarpaulin breaking down and becoming part of the soil formation, the sludge bank, Kirkenes
For the duration of 2023 I was artist in residence at the cross-disciplinary research project Anthropogenic Soils. The residency was spent following the project SOS, Soil Organisms in the sub arctic at Svanhovd research station in the Pasvik Valley on the Norwegian-Russian border with Susanne Bauer (STS), Ursula Münster (multi species anthropology) and curator Hilde Methi.
A site specific project engaging with the sør-Varanger soils and layers of history is in process and will be shown summer 2025.
More on Anthropogenic Soils
The project asks how do we know, experience, and imagine soils in the Anthropocene? How can practices of soil care help us better understand and value the life beneath our feet? How do people across the planet recover unsustainable human-soil relationships?
The multidisciplinary research project “Anthropogenic Soils” at the University of Oslo studies the ways people in different parts of the world have invented, practiced, and imagined ways of recuperating soils. We conceptualize soils not as natural resources to be exploited, but as “anthropogenic”, as lively and dynamic natural-cultural composition responsive to human recuperation and healing.
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