• University of Amsterdam

• Academic,
• Artistic research,
• Interdisciplinary

• Sustainability,
• Nature & Environment

Clashing Rhythms of Embodied Soil Care Praxis

An embodied investigation into the rhythms of the urban soil organism, its renewal and restoration and futures

Talk by Debra Solomon, Open Set Seminar session #2 - Scales of Rhythm: From Bacteria to Crowd

A three-year collaboration with the more than human community of Urbaniahoeve's Amsterdam North food forest resulted in a soil organism of extraordinary qualities from an all-species perspective. Opening the possibility for observational and nurturing relationalities, the restored soil, simultaneously a work of landart, a utopian tool, a grounds for an experiential Commons, a biotope provocation in all its baroque fertility that is technically capable of changing the effects and course of Climate Crisis, signifies an ability to nurture and repair a city's ecosystem. Investigating the effects of the embodied methodology involved in this process is proving to yield insights that could positively shape municipal techno-managerial practices for public space greenery. Applying a method titled Radical Observation that brings humans into close contact with more than humans, the presentation will excavate how embodied practices change perspectives through praxis. In a hands-on session, participants will test both technoscientific and embodied methodologies to critically question how research methodologies create more than praxis.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivu_01DdCWw&t=275s

Debra Solomon is a PhD candidate at the University of Amsterdam in the Urban Planning programme group. In her professional life as an artist working in the public space, she has carried out action research within several urban agriculture projects, developing expertise on the subjects of urban food forestry and urban soil-building. Her vision of urban public space as an ecologically coherent landscape posits a productive, radically greened and socio-natural city. As an action researcher, Solomon has collaborated since 2009 with local communities to produce food-bearing ecosystems in park-like food forests at public space locations in Amsterdam and The Hague. In 2010 she founded Urbaniahoeve Design Lab for Urban Agriculture, which in Dutch means “the city as our farmyard” and which developed examples of community-founded ecological (food-system) infrastructure. Using past and current projects as case studies, Solomon is pursuing a PhD on multispecies urbanism with professor Caroline Nevejan and professor Maria Kaika at the Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research at the University of Amsterdam.