IN:overlap,inclusion,direction.SERERE:sow,unite or intertwine.How to imagine more agropolitan cities
In Serere is project of investigation, creation and artistic mediation that uses the technique of grafting as a performative practice of care. The objective is to use this technique to generate relational links between community urban gardens in Rome. The creation of conscious symbiosis, based on care, that favor the transition from an anthropocentric city to a more agropolitan one. Propose imaginaries of interspecific collaboration that move towards a citizen-producer-creator-caregiver.
Cross-border/international
Italy
Spain
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It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
2022-09-15
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Basurama Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Mónica Last name of representative: Gutiérrez Herrero Gender: Female Nationality: Spain Function: memeber of Basurama (horizontal collective) Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Avenida Daroca nº49, callejón, nave Town: Madrid Postal code: 28007 Country: Spain Direct Tel:+34 911 15 23 82 E-mail:info@basurama.org Website:http://www.basurama.org
URL:https://twitter.com/basurama Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): https://www.instagram.com/basuramaoficial/
In Serere is a research, creation and artistic mediation project that uses the grafting technique as a performative practice of care . The objective is to use this agricultural technique to generate relational links between community urban gardens in the city of Rome. The creation of conscious symbiosis, based on care, that favor the transition from an anthropocentric city to a more agropolitan one. Integrate forms of alternative productivity, favoring the exchange of knowledge and promote new models of sustainability. The project works with citrus trees, not only because of the close relationship that Spain and Italy have in their cultivation, but also to recover the idea of "citrus chimeras", well known in the Medici era, new varieties that appear either by spontaneous mutation or by hybridization and which were kept and cared as true treasures. Recovering chimeras as a metaphor for the need to preserve plant genetic diversity. The hybrid, the mutant, the diverse allow us to speculate about possible futures at the same time that they serve as a mechanism for reflection against the prevailing homogeneity in our cities today and as contrary to the dominant neoliberal model of consumption. In Serere wants to propose imaginaries of interspecific collaboration that move us away from the citizen-consumer and towards a citizen-producer-creator-caregiver. Make visible and collaborate with citizen movements that help to imagine better futures.
care
community
future
non-human
production-consumption processes
_Community Engagement, society and cities are more and more individualistic but if the pandemic has show us somethings is that whenever there is a community, humand bonds, solidary and collaboration networks arise. Communities as they way societies are build, are grow and adapta themselves to changes, community as a way to build a more democratic society, more participative one and with a wider imagination to propose new ways of doing.
_Biodiversity, the lost of biodiversity both in agricultural and in wildlife is one of the most important environmental problems we face. The lack of consideration of biodiversity as genetic patrimony is very serious. It is necessary to inform and communicate to the general population about its importance as a reservoir of solutions to face an unpredictable climate future.
_Care, as tool as and actitude as a way to change the way we relate to each other and to the environment and no-human beings living among us. Care in oposition of consumption. Care as an actitude towards the future Care as a political positioning. Care between each other, but also take care, in this case, of the grafted trees,of the relations between the plants and the relationsbetween the human participants.
_Network, we need to design our cities and our development towards a more collaborative and interrelated world. In our case we have focus on community gardens and orchards, working together to value them, exapand to create bigger communities and support the the existing ones by making visible and communicate their labour.
The project started from and artistic point of view, art as a mediation tool to provoque dialogues in places where dont usually happen. I have collaborated on the project with community gardens and orchards in the city of Rome and with citizens whom I call "ortists" (from ortelano and artist). The orchards as places that are built in many cases in the ruins of the city (the landfills or the margins discarded by capitalism). Places were communities are been generated and consolidated, of citizen links, of solidarity networks but also as places of memory and learning, of sharing agricultural knowledge that today is disappearing from the cities and that can be fundamental to guarantee survival in the future. Spaces that exist in the present but that question the way cities are designed, merely from an anthropological point of view and not taking into account the "non-human" beings that also inhabit them.
Co-creation is a base objective of the project, horizontality, communication and discuss desion taking process because we belive those are the pilars for making projects more transparent democratic and inclusive. Working on public space and with already existing communities also help to make projects more inclusive, whenever you have a organized group of citizens and you make links to art collectives, researchers, university teachers, and so many other stakeholders link began to be created and networks start to work.
Being protagonist, experiencing the project process is key for questioning ourslevces and the reality that sourrounded us. In Serere is not as functional as inspirational, is a project which aim is to start a debate a conversation that has not jet arrive to citizenship altough is already set on a more academic and research ambience. Knowledge and Culture are created trough dialoge and the more diverse and multisectorial the better.
Rome is a city with a lot of selforganization and a strong associationist movement. Citizens self-organize and self-manage projects in parallel to the institutional framework. Many of them are examples and prototypes of other ways of designing, living and thinking about the city. The orchards are undoubtedly a clear example of a citizen organization that has subsequently been accepted and validated by the institution, but which initially emerged as community meeting places, places of learning, defense of greener environments in the cities and as spaces for testing new forms of food sovereignty in the city. Any project that supports citizen proposals and work together with them help civil society both in a local and global scale as it sets example of what could be dream and what could be do.
To achieve more resilient cities they must also be more diverse and this can begin by increasing the production of vegetables and fruits within them, but also as a tool for the generation of community ties, due to their capacity to be places of intergenerational learning and places of transformation of imaginaries about the city itself.
CARE and COMMUNITY as a process, as a tool and a strategy for future of life and adaptation. Rethink our relationship with the environment that surrounds us and the non-human beings that inhabit them.
As you can check in the relational map(attached in the images) the stakeholders are wide and diverse, from agronomic research centers (IVIA), Private Foundations (Todolí Citrus Foundation,Fundación Cerezales Antonio y Cintia), collectives (Stalker,, SALAD, Orizzontale, Riscarti, Zapata Romana …), Public bodies (Academy of Spain in Rome, , Associations ANECOOP), Universities (Universidad de Valencia, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Catania University, Padua University, ), Enterprices (Oscar Tintori Vivaio, Batú, Hortus Hesperides, Bagolaro....), Citizens, Art Centers (Centro de Arte Lo Pati)...etc.
You can check the relational map here https://embed.kumu.io/aa731d547515cff1de52fd50f1db60ce
The project have been mainly developed in Rome, but part of the research have been also done in Spain.
_Public bodies: spanish ministry of cooperation was the one funding the proyect and the exhibition of has been held at the Spanish Academy in Rome. On the other hand
_Citizens: protagonist, creators and esential part of the project. They are the ones that have help design the project and are the ones that implement the project and the ones taking care of the trees so they are also the sustainers of the project itself.
_Universities both in Italy Sapienza University in Rome (art department) and Spain Valencia University (art Department), Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (Environmental psicology Department) and Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Art Department), Catania University (Agronomic Department). They rol has been as experts and advisers on the research part of the project and a support on the decision making regarding environmental and historic issues.
_Research Centers, in this case IVIA in Valencia specialized on citrus plans, has been a masive suporter and adviser together with Catania University.
_Enterprises: collaborators on the research and production part of the project.
_Art: as a transversal tool itself and of course other artists, collectives,curators and galerist to share and beeing inspire.
_Cultural Mediation: a discipline that is between art, society and research, this is where almost all the project of basurama takes place. Our practive revolves around already existing or identify need of society and we work together with ground collectives to raise questions, their problems and discuss posible solutions in other places, creating network that help us all solve the contemporary problems, which will not be solve solve from only one prespective or from a technical prespective.
>Network of orchards have been created (and an active whatssap group is working where they share activities, exchange seed and humus ….etc)
>Network of people working around sustainability, urbanisim, participation, research around italy and spain has been created.
>Prototiping on grafting as a way to create personal links and links between humans and not humans have been postive. We belive, inspire by the concept of Susan Leight Star that grafting could work as a “boundary object ”, objects that could sustain cooperation between different communities of practice.
>Hybrids trees have been created and we hope they could create chimeras in the future (we are doing follow up with the ostistas and we plant to visit once year if posible)
>The project also help to arise questions about the way humans and no-humans could relate in the cities, how to change our antropocentric point of view in design and urbanisim both between citizenship and on an admistrative and cultural sphere (MAXXI museum in Rome was very interested in the project).
Active participation of citizens is a goal that most cities are challenging, but the participation proposal that are doing are not going further than some pulls or quiz or chosing between already decided things. I belive that culture and art could be very helpful tools not only to engage citizens into participation but also for incorporating the environmental variable on a transversal way in all public policies as it has been sugested by the EU on the new Green Deal. Climate emergency is urgent and art is also a driver in achieving the SDGs; a creative instrument for each society to explore its own path at the local level, to advance towards those new imaginaries of which we speak. In Spain, the environment is considered one of the 3 most important issues facing the EU and is one of the lines of political commitment adopted as a country and as a society. But for this we must overcome the blame-blaming environmentalist discourse and focus on proposals and imaginaries for the future that lay the foundations for a contemporary environmentalism.
Incorporated art as a tool to reimagine contemporary cities and have collaborated with citizen processes, investigating the cultural impact of citrus fruits in various regions of the country and exploring the potential to transcend established meanings: trees become become mediators for larger contexts.
The project has a participatory aproach, our role has been as conceptual designers and cultural mediators as well as facilitators for creating the contacts and meeting between the diferent stakeholders.
Main methodological steps of the project are the following.
>Historical research (to identify which plant, vegetable, tree …. has cultural relevance and it could be meaninful for project developement)
>Identification of project partners (mapping of orchards and community gardens)
>Research on methods of production and consumption
>Network generation (both among the agents participating directly in the project and with external agents)
>Participatory process for the identification of species based on the characteristic environmental variables of each of the participating orchards.
>Workshops for learning agricultural techniques (grafting)
>Exchange of grafts and their follow-up.
>Long term follow up of grafted trees to check if chimeras would apear.
In Serere uses grafting (an agricultural tedchnique) as a tool, the project have designed a methodology that allows others to adapt it to their local contexts. We did aim to prototipe a practice and check if it could work for streghten communities and promote biodiversity and we demostrate that it could work.
Tackeling biodiversity not only from a conservationist point of view but from a social a cultural prespective I think is one of the main succesfull elements of the project and key to replicate and scale it, of course, as I already mention adapting to each local context.
The project is adressing 3 main sustainable goals:
>SDG11 Sustainable Cities and Communities: by strengheting the link between community based project that were not related between each other but that could generate new solidary networks, education networks and colaboration networks. Connecting this biodiversity island as a why to increse diversity, but also to make more efficient the resources use, to enhace collaborations and dialogo.
>SDG12 Responsible Consumption and Production: food sovereignty and food production and one of the more revolucionary movements that have been adress lately in the cities. The project support and visibilize ways of food production that preserves cultutal patrimony, that transfer knowledge between generations, that rethink the way cities have been designed only oriented to consumption but where production could also be a part.
>SDG13 Climate Action: increasing the surface of vegetation, involve citizens in the care of the environment that sorround them. Adress the existence of non-humans being in our cities from which we could learn and which whom we could learn to adapting to the newcoming changes.
Setting examples of transitional spaces where change could happen, generating new narratives of a share future. This allow to go from local to global, to make change at local level while you are generating new imaginaries to adress global challeges such as climate emergency or biodiversity loss or inequality or individualisim.
