The Japanese Knotweed Festival: A three month long multi-disciplinary and multi-sensory event
The Japanese knotweed is a fast-growing plant which in Europe is known for its invasive and intrusive characteristics. What many do not know is that this species has a multitude of positive attributes ranging from its delicious taste and medicinal properties to its potential for being the base of biomaterials. The Japanese Knotweed Festival investigates how, in collaboration with various creators, we can contribute to a way of living together in harmony with this contested plant.
Local
Netherlands
Municipality of Amsterdam
Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Mediamatic Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Camilla Last name of representative: Calamai Gender: Female Nationality: Italy Function: Exhibition assistant Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Dijksgracht 6 Town: Amsterdam Postal code: 1019 BS Country: Netherlands Direct Tel:+31 6 29567904 E-mail:japaneseknotweed@mediamatic.nl Website:https://www.mediamatic.net/
The Japanese knotweed is a fast-growing plant which in Europe is known for its invasive and intrusive characteristics. What many do not know is that this species has a multitude of positive attributes ranging from its delicious taste and medicinal properties to its potential for being the base of biomaterials. The Japanese Knotweed Festival investigates how, in collaboration with various creators, we can contribute to a way of living together in harmony with this contested plant. To do so, Mediamatic will organise a series of publications, workshops, an exhibition, a campaign and a Japanese Knotweed festival with lectures, presentations and dinners placing this plant as the protagonist. The aim of the festival is to influence a shift of mindset, urging people to think differently about this species and finding alternative ways of integrating it into our lives.
Cohabitation
Multisensory
Multidisciplinary
Adaptability
Development
The project seeks to find sustainable ways to live harmoniously with this invasive species. It attempts to draw a symbiotic relationship between ourselves and the environment so that we can grow a deeper appreciation for our surroundings. The Japanese knotweed is in the process of being exterminated in the Amsterdam city area. It is seen as a destructive species, without natural competitors in Europe which hinders construction and infiltrates drainage systems. We want to highlight the positive attributes, known in other parts of the world, of this plant and push ways to cohabitate. We aspire to find ways to balance out this species and protect the ecosystem. We actively support designers and businesses who use this plant to create renewable materials by providing a platform for their research, making our spaces available to them and facilitating knowledge sharing. Through various disciplines we explore alternative solutions to its eradication, in hopes of reducing the amount of waste that would be produced otherwise and limiting the number of resources required to eliminate it.
The key objectives of Mediamatic’s program are artistic quality, innovation, originality, transparency, sustainability and social urgency. We approach these elements in our projects by selecting artists, designers and other creatives that surprise and sometimes confront us. We take an active position in the design and development process by providing space for learning and developing on-site. We believe that a flexible approach in our programming allows us to centre the designer or artist and prioritise artistic qualities and social urgencies as they arise. This way we hope to offer a program that appeals to the audience through connecting with people’s lived experience and by reacting to the latest social and environmental developments.
The Japanese Knotweed festival is exemplary in this process by selecting artists, designers with different levels of experience and projects at various degrees of maturity. This way, our audiences exchange ideas and learn about the research and design process while learning about Japanese Knotweed and its applications. While the festival allows for much flexibility to aid the process of its participants, our aim is to have it annually, for at least three years, to nurture a sustainable change. This way we hope to learn and influence new attitudes across multiple stakeholder levels; from citizens to policy makers. A wide range of audience will be reached through multiple artistic disciplines exhibiting the Japanese knotweed as a beautiful, complex and multipurpose species which can have positive impacts on our lives.
The festival applies inclusion in numerous ways: accessibility for all Amsterdam citizens, the inclusion of status holders both in our programming and our target audience and by focusing on neurodiverse programming and multi-sensory learning. The project aims to be freely accessible to everyone and easily visible to all Amsterdam citizens. Through the spread of city wide campaigns, Japanese knotweed signs and external exhibitions projected on Mediamatic's walls, passengers will be a part of the festival just by noticing their surroundings. With a wide-spread promotional approach ranging across various communication avenues such as posters, newsletters and social media posts we are hoping to reach a large audience, across a multitude of target groups. The exhibitions will be mostly free, inviting people to acknowledge and learn about the nuances regarding the Japanese knotweed.
For the festival we will invite the status holders living at the Marineterrein in Amsterdam, connecting with our proximal environment. Furthermore, we organise a “vrijheidsdiner”, freedomdinner, a dinner which we curate each year on the 5th of May, Dutch Liberation day. For this year’s dinner we have invited Alaan Abu Asad, a critical thinker, artist and researcher, with over five years of experience in researching the Japanese knotweed, to moderate the presentation and later discussion.
At Mediamatic we have a strong focus on neurodiversity and apply this in our projects. We are developing a platform for neurodiverse artists and designers, focusing on individuals who identify as/with the autism and ADD spectrum. We also attempt to bring this focus on neurodiversity to the Japanese knotweed festival through workshops which centre on multi-sensory learning.
We are hoping that through a far-reaching promotional approach and a comprehensive group of artworks and events, the Japanese knotweed festival will explore most facets of the topic and engage an ample audience group.
Citizens will benefit from this initiative by learning how to care more and make use of the Japanese knotweed. We are hoping to achieve a shift in mindset, where a previously disliked plant becomes appreciated and integrated into our lives. Through participation in workshops we hope that citizens will actively learn how to recognize and make use of the species, adopt the results in their lives and influence a general change in language surrounding the Japanese knotweed.
Currently, all over the Western hemisphere contractors are employed to solve issues related to the Japanese knotweed. Our goal is to give citizens agency in the matter and involve them in finding sustainable approaches towards dealing with the issues raised by this plant in urban settings.
This initiative is a collaborative project which will include stakeholders from various levels. Most importantly, the festival will be relevant to stakeholders throughout all different levels as the eradication of the Japanese knotweed is a local, national and European issue.
Firstly, we will engage local and regional stakeholders. Amsterdam citizens and individuals from all over the Netherlands will be involved by attending events hosted by Mediamatic. The festival is next to the central train station, so it is easily reached by visitors from various parts of the country. After the festival, the attendees will be able to recognise the Japanese Knotweed in their proximal neighbourhood and hopefully have the knowledge on how to utilise its beneficial properties in their daily lives. We want to reach an ample audience group by collaborating with local and national communication avenues, such as the Parool and the Uit newspaper. In addition, we will be campaigning throughout the city with posters and implementing signs of the Japanese Knotweed together with Hortus Amsterdam. Local businesses, such as Oedipus brewery will also collaborate in the festival.
Secondly, we will work with artists from different parts of the Netherlands and the world, such as Belgium, France and Japan. They will be aiding us with the curation, programming and production of the festival, becoming an integral part of the project. Through this collaborative format, we will be facilitating a variety of voices from different geographical areas and from various disciplines. Furthermore, we will also collaborate with a Japanese knotweed paper manufacturer from Ljubljana, Slovenia.
The European Union sees the Japanese knotweed as an invasive species that needs to be eradicated, through this project we hope to inspire other organisations and creatives within Europe to adopt this framework and to influence a different mindset towards it.
Mediamatic's approach as an organisation is radically cross-disciplinary and thus the aim of the festival is to address the Japanese knotweed through a multitude of angels and visualise its potential in its entirety. To accomplish this we will be collaborating with people and organisations across various disciplines. The project will include visual artworks, in the form of installations and videos. It will collaborate with designers and scientists to create new biomaterials which relay the potential of the plant as their prime ingredient. We will engage with environmental activists who question our current practice of eradicating the species and how it may originate from the language surrounding invasive plants. In addition, the project is grounded in the field of urbanism and seeks to evaluate our position towards the Japanese knotweed within the built environment, urging us to rethink our constructing practice. Anthropology is another field which overarches the Japanese knotweed festival as its philosophy attempts to change people's relationship with their proximal environment and their perspective of what constitutes as invasive and destructive. The project will also experiment with the extraction of compounds like Resveratrol to look at how we can introduce this species into our diet, linking the field of gastronomy and herbal medicine.
By connecting all of these disciplines together, under one festival, we encourage participants to work together and share knowledge - through residencies, meet-ups and the shared use of our labs - to make multidisciplinary proposals in order to build a better relationship with the Japanese knotweed.
What makes this project truly innovative is the wide variety of disciplines that it encompasses. People and organisations from a range of fields will connect and brainstorm together in hopes of creating a ripple effect for future developments on finding sustainable ways of co-existing with the Japanese Knotweed. It will speak to different ways of learning and adopt a multi-sensory approach to teaching. This will occur through the exhibition of visual artworks, the projection of auditory films, learning through applied knowledge in workshops and exploring smell and taste through gastronomical experiences.
The Japanese knotweed is a plant that is rarely discussed but deserves great attention. With this festival we want to spotlight the nuances regarding this species, open a discussion on its useful characteristics and question our relationship with it. This project will be the first Japanese knotweed festival globally that solely focuses on celebrating this plant and themes all of its activities around it.
Furthermore, we wish to challenge our euro-centric perspective on this species. Firstly, by questioning the concept of what constitutes a native species, based on 17th century categorisation, after many years of (human) migration and secondly, by learning from how people and this plant flourish in its original context in Japan. By inviting makers and collaborators to relay this existing knowledge to a European audience we hope to learn about how to co-exist and build a mutually beneficial relationship in the West.
The argument surrounding the Japanese knotweed is not exclusive to the Netherlands. Across Europe, municipalities have exerted efforts to eradicate this species from urban settings. By facilitating a relationship with the Japanese knotweed we are trying to create a methodology outlining ways to cohabitate which could be transferred and applied to other contexts within Europe. The Japanese knotweed deserves attention, far past Amsterdam’s borders and this shift in mindset should be adopted in all places where this plant raises issues.
In addition, the framework of the festival, aimed at celebrating a disregarded plant, can be translated to other species. A similar structure dedicated to the pigeon was already successfully adopted by Mediamatic. The event consisted of a combination of disciplines celebrating the pigeon and aiding a shift of perspective towards its presence in our lives.
The methodology of this project has a multifold action plan. It starts with researching, acknowledging and framing the current situation of the Japanese knotweed. This will be achieved through the implementation of signs across Amsterdam to indicate the presence of the plant. It will follow with botanical drawing and aroma creating workshops, teaching people to identify its physical properties and scent.
The second section of our methodology focuses on critically addressing the issue through a variety of perspectives and disciplines. We will spread poster campaigns across Amsterdam raising the visibility of the species. Visitors will go on a theatrical journey through a series of radio plays searching for the plant in its (urban) habitat. We will coordinate walks with artists and scientists discussing the history and current status of the plant, while also showing how to use the municipal maps of soil quality. Artist Pauliene Wiersema, will develop an online cooking show that explains the foraging and cooking process of the plant. Mediamatic ETEN will create dinners centred around the species and collaborate with local breweries to create a Japanese knotweed beer and soft-drink. Mediamatic’s clean lab, in collaboration with local designers, will experiment with fermentation techniques with the plant as the basis for biomaterials. We will hold exhibitions, connecting different artistic forms to display the story of the Japanese knotweed.
The third section focuses on imagining and developing new approaches to tackle the issue. We will encourage citizens to take agency and share the knowledge they gained during the festival. Furthermore, we will invite designers and artists to develop their ideas on-site, investing our resources to nurture proposals and sharing them with other stakeholders for future collaborations. Lastly, we will act upon newly gained competences for further programming and stay open to new ideas and collaborations that may arise.
Our urban environment serves as a micro-cosmos in which many of our global challenges collide. Where there are problems, we invent culprits. Many urban challenges such as ‘failing’ neighbourhoods and lack of affordable housing, access to social services, crumbling (water) infrastructure are attributed to Japanese Knotweed. Furthermore, many global challenges like large-scale globalisation, climate change, rapidly changing the flora and fauna through intervention and human displacement are at the root of or share the language surrounding Japanese Knotweed. We have to learn how to shift the narrative of the culprit from something that distracts us from the real issue to something that can be educational. This way, we can learn to face these challenges and adapt to rapid changes while simultaneously seeking ways to restore the environment.
In collaboration with artist Debra Solomon, we are looking for other ways to help rebuild the balance of local biodiversity by planting other species near Japanese Knotweed. Debra Solomon, with her social lab for urban agriculture Urbaniahoeve, has been exploring how we can better work with our urban ecosystem. For example, she previously presented a natural food forest as the Dutch pavilion for the Venice Biennale.
The Japanese knotweed has been a topic of research at Mediamatic for over three years. This has resulted in small standalone projects: we have served it in our restaurant and we started a public information and visibility project, the Guerilla Hortus, in 2021.
In November 2022 we started the production of the project, reaching out to stakeholders, possible collaborators and participating artists and designers (a list of whom attached as a supportive document in this collaboration). In February 2023 the first research residencies of designers and artists related to the project will start. We have organised regular meet-ups with participating artists, designers, local businesses and stakeholders to share ideas and nurture collaborations within the programme in April.
Since the start of this process we have already agreed with the municipality to make learning tools available for responsible removal or foraging of Japanese Knotweed that we will share through our festival. We agreed to combine existing public resources, maps of Japanese knotweed growing places, soil health and quality with the ambition of making them widely available. For the coming year we hope to further this collaboration with the municipality by freeing up a budget for soil research and the effect of soil quality on forageable plants.
For our festival we have been awarded a budget by the 4&5 mei comitée (committee for the celebration of national liberation day after WWII) for hosting a dinner and public dialogue around freedom of migration. For the dinner itself we will serve dishes based on Japanese Knotweed.
We have funding from Creative Industry Fund and Amsterdam Art Fund. Our goal for the festival is to organise it three times annually, influencing a slow change in mindset across an extensive time span.
Our festival and Mediamatic as a whole underwrites the importance of working, creating and living sustainably. We do not simply present or display knowledge in order to learn, but we actively apply it and engage with it to sustainably embed these competences within our environment. This ranges from promoting a local and plant-based diet through our restaurant and the festival to providing hands-on workshops.
The Japanese Knotweed festival embraces many of the complexities within sustainability, placing footnotes at what constitutes as worthy of protection and what should or should not be ‘sustained’. While the festival presents many uses of the plants as a way to ‘solve the problem’ around Japanese Knotweed, it also asks why we value other species based on their usability within our society, and that which is not usable constitutes waste. By framing the problems surrounding the plant through different disciplines -design, art, urbanism and gastronomy- we aim to unpack these questions.
During the festival, Mediamatic will function as a breeding ground for new innovations and experiments towards finding a more sustainable future for the Japanese Knotweed. We will utilise the combination of design and science to show that a more circular usage of waste materials is possible. On top of that we will involve the municipality of Amsterdam. Even though they have opposite viewpoints, we understand that they will be the ones making the policies.
Mediamatic’s strength lies in its multifacetedness and its multidisciplinary approach towards sustainability. Because of these qualities, all sustainability competencies are already present in Mediamatic’s daily practice. Because the Japanese Knotweed project is formed as a festival, it gives us the opportunity to combine all our competences towards a concrete goal and hopefully be exemplary on how all of us can combine strengths in order to actively move towards a greener future that is inclusive for all.
