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I really enjoyed hosting the 3 workshops at the forest school. It was a real pleasure to meet the kids and staff. It was helpful to have different age groups as they all approached it differently. A downfall of the sessions was that they felt quite rushed as I had to accommodate to timetabled sessions, lunchtime and hometime. I would have liked to have more time to go through the steps more clearly and spend time discussing the workshop at the end of the sessions to get a clearer understanding of how the kids felt about the workshop topic as some were not comfortable with writing. Sadly, I wasn't able to keep any of the childrens terrariums as they wanted to take them home,I had plans to display some in the exhibition space which may have been slightly ambitious. On the upside of this, it shows how transportable terrariums are as objects and how it can bring an educational object into the childrens home setting which can further encourage them to observe, nurture and protect their little self made ecosystems. Something important I took away from the sessions is keeping nature available to children as an alternative space for them to learn and flourish. Especially this space being accessible on a school grounds is hugely important for their growth and development. I didn't only conduct these workshops to make aware of how important outdoor space are but to also use the Ecosphere/ terrarium as the educational tool which branches off from my narratives module.

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Ecospheres hold so many Narratives in their own right. A self sustaining ecosystem that is forever changing and developing generating new life holds so many narratives. The narratives of how these organisms exist and self sustain life, how they survive. The sight of which they came from also hold many narratives and education which talk a lot about ecosystems and the perseveration of these sights. Conversation can come out of making these ecospheres, the sharing of skills and knowledge, the learning of a new skill, the understanding of nature and their ecosystems, understanding animals and organisms habitats.

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How to Make an Ecosphere | DIY with materials from home & backyard

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How do I show the personal connection with the individual person and the ecosphere that they make?

1. Personal in the process of making
2.What they learn through the process of making the ecosphere
3. Personal interest of ecosystems and natural environments

How can these be photographed outside or inside ( experiment with composition and space)

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- Empty jars
- Friends and Family's gardens
- Notebooks
- Sunlight
- Natural materials
- Dirty water or the nearest water source eg. ponds, lakes, rivers, canals etc...
- Most accessible woodland area to house for certain supplies

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Gardens can hold so many narratives and its special to each individual person. They hold stories, memories, objects, plants and living organisms. What if you could put some of these narratives in a jar and watch the story unfold. Record the daily narratives and see how they change. Ecosystems are a utopian space where new life has the oppitiunity to develop and live.

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- Plants growing in a dilapidated area full of death and despair
-Overlapping photographs of children on one side of the Berlin wall (showing very little to no plants, just grass)
- Photographs provide history and the reality of the lives of the people that live on one side of the Berlin wall

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Anthropocene Curriculum → Ecospheres: Model and Laboratory for Earth's Environment

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Historian of science Sabine Höhler explores the technoscientific motives and consequences of experimenting with self-contained ecospheres.

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“Our future is in the hands of these crude homemade worlds,”

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“Our future is in the hands of these crude homemade worlds,”

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Anthropocene Curriculum → Ecospheres: Model and Laboratory for Earth's Environment

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"Earth sciences in the nineteenth century as conceptual tools to describe and organize the organic and inorganic realms of the Earth in an ideal spatial form"

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"Earth sciences in the nineteenth century as conceptual tools to describe and organize the organic and inorganic realms of the Earth in an ideal spatial form"

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Anthropocene Curriculum → Ecospheres: Model and Laboratory for Earth's Environment

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"The ecosphere could become a model for exploring questions about the principles of life, both in micro- and macro-scale communities."

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"The ecosphere could become a model for exploring questions about the principles of life, both in micro- and macro-scale communities."

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Anthropocene Curriculum → Ecospheres: Model and Laboratory for Earth's Environment

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"The pond centered the village community and, since the late nineteenth century, it also represented the symbiotic community, or biocenosis, in emerging ecological thought."

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"The pond centered the village community and, since the late nineteenth century, it also represented the symbiotic community, or biocenosis, in emerging ecological thought."

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Anthropocene Curriculum → Ecospheres: Model and Laboratory for Earth's Environment

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"Scaled to planetary size, the ecosphere allowed for an image and a model of the Earth itself as a spherical and wholly self-contained and self-sustained, timeless, and virtually perfect living environment."

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"Scaled to planetary size, the ecosphere allowed for an image and a model of the Earth itself as a spherical and wholly self-contained and self-sustained, timeless, and virtually perfect living environment."

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Anthropocene Curriculum → Ecospheres: Model and Laboratory for Earth's Environment

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- Over growing Ivy engulfing statues
- Gradually growing and changing as statues will eventually be fully overgrown
- Statues seem to resemble black people dressed in outfits similar to slaves
- Separating the context of this piece, I am super interested in the ivy as a material. A material that is able to change and grow over anything in its path

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Ecosphere making workshop

- Everyone bring a jar with them
- Trowels

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In the early 1990s, Biosphere 2, a series of glass domes in the Arizona desert, was famously occupied by eight residents who attempted to tend to a closed ecosystem without any resources from the outside world. The project cost $200 million and was a media sensation, albeit one depicted as an entertaining flop that allowed for voyeuristic schadenfreude at best and a fraud at worst.

In his novel Mount Analogue, about an expedition in search of an imaginary island, French mystic René Daumal wrote, "It must be unique, and it must exist geographically. The door to the invisible must be visible." Spaceship Earth, a new documentary about Biosphere 2, begins in the 1960s, with a group of dreamers inspired by Daumal. Over the course of several decades, they undertook a series of communal projects that escalated in scale - from a sustainable ranch to a massive steel sailboat to the construction of Biosphere 2, a self-contained microcosm of our planet. The three-acre terrarium was designed as a prototype for a vessel that could be sent into space were humans to exhaust the Earth's resources, as well as a way to collect data about sustainable living while we're here in the meantime.

Comprised of rich and abundant archival footage, Spaceship Earth is a reframing and reappraisal of the project. It's a wild and enlightening explication of a half-century's worth of social and political dynamics, and as such, it's also a film about systems. Director Matt Wolf meticulously examines the reactions that occur when the forces of environmentalism, ratings-hungry commercial media, avant-garde theater, public relations, investment capital, and interpersonal relationships alchemize.

The story of Biosphere 2 is instructive. The "Biospherians" managed to build Daumal's "visible door" in Arizona ... and then, in a memorable scene, they struggle to close the actual door to Biosphere 2 behind them as their grand experiment begins. Ahead of Spaceship Earth' s digital release, we spoke to Wolf about the film over video chat.

***

Hyperallergic: It's about 45 minutes or an hour before the film brings the audience inside the Biosphere project itself.

Matt Wolf: Yeah, it's an hour. It's halfway through the film before you get inside. It's a little counterintuitive, but I think so much of what's interesting about Biosphere 2 is the ideas that led to it. I wanted to understand how this project was countercultural, even though it was certainly framed as a pop culture phenomenon in the context of '90s television. But the group, the Synergians, they were convinced of the historical significance of what they were doing, so they documented everything. And when I became aware of the complexity of all of their projects that led to Biosphere 2, editor David Teague and I decided to make that prehistory a substantial focus of the film.

The nature of the experiment itself is fascinating, but to me, so much of the drama and saga surrounding Biosphere 2 is media spin and hype. What interests me about the actual mission is looking at Biosphere 2 as a metaphor - for a kind of model for sustainability, for intentional community and group coalescence, but also for the failure of human ambition and the limitations of that kind of idealism.

H: How do you sort out the balance between making a film that's about big ideas - capitalism, ecology, utopia - and providing us with character specificity? That's something I also thought about a lot with your last film, Recorder.

MW: My ultimate goal is to get people to have an emotional relationship to ideas. I think I usually make stories that are portraits, centered around individuals who become vectors for these bigger cultural histories and conceptual ideas. And this film was particularly challenging because it is a huge tapestry of characters; there isn't a singular focus to it, and so it was important to be conscious of the particularities of those individuals. But the thing that was easier about this than most of the films I've made is that it had a Byzantine plot and a dramatic story with all these twists and turns.

H: There are two things happening simultaneously with Biosphere 2. The Biospherians are constantly trying to prove to the world that they're scientists, because the media narrative becomes 'Are these real scientists or are they some sort of spectacle?' But they're both doing real science and have their practice rooted in theater and art. You can't decouple the art from the science.

MW: The word 'experiment' is very loaded in an institutional context. It has the baggage of academic protocol or governmental protocol, in terms of being goal-oriented around a hypothesis, and having a particular model of working to narrow the scope of one's thinking to get results and tangible knowledge that builds on a body of scientific inquiry. But if you come to it from a point of view of art, it's a much broader, kind of spirited term. And in this film, there's a lot of experimentation.

There's an experimental community, the kind that found expression in the back-to-land counterculture movement. There's theatrical experimentation in avant-garde theater that their group, the Theater of All Possibilities, pursued. And then there's the kind of experimentation that they characterized as "voyages into the unknown" or a "lifetime experiment." I interpret that as pursuing projects and ideas that have never been pursued before.

And then when we're inside Biosphere 2, it becomes clear that beyond a scientific experiment rooted in a different method of a closed system or total system, it is also a human experiment. That it's as much a spectacle of environmentalism as it is of human relationships in confined spaces and under scrutiny. But that's also part of what's so interesting about Biosphere 2. It's all these things that don't usually coexist, and they did - kind of uncomfortably in this case, and in ways that were to the detriment of the project. But they were also at the core of its vision, and what's special about it.

H: The media is so suspicious of the project. As it proceeds, it feels like they're almost counting down to its failure. Is this kind experimentation so threatening, that we are somehow programmed to think of their ideas as pernicious?

MW: If you pursue a project that has no precedent, and you're kind of hazy or open-ended in terms of how you define its intentions and goals, and you're open-minded to it not going as planned, then to be held accountable to standards of success and failure is kind of irrelevant! But when you pursue a project that costs $200 million and you court the attention of the international media and engage in a kind of theatrical spectacle, you should expect that people are going to have more binary conceptions of what your project should or shouldn't be, or how it succeeds or fails. So to me, it's not a surprise that the project was rebuked.

It actually took me a long time to understand and define what the purpose of Biosphere 2 was from the point of view of its inventors. They're so defensive because they were so attacked in the media. I think such defensiveness dilutes the significance of what they were doing.

H: There's a real tension between the experimental nature of the project and capitalism. One of your subjects clarifies: 'We weren't a commune; we were a corporation.' That tension is carried all the way through; ultimately, their fate lies in the hands of investment capital.

MW: Yeah, I wanted to trace neoliberalism through the film. Basically, these people weren't hippies precisely because they identified as capitalists, even though they operated within a model of patronage. Still, they were venturing to create enterprises that could be both ecologically and economically sustainable. That was their argument for Biosphere 2: It would lead to all sorts of green technology and patents to facilitate Mars colonization in the future. It seems a little out there that that would be a viable business model, but they had a partner in Ed Bass, who was not holding them to short-term profit maximization.

One limitation of capitalism is that new ideas take a long time to work. The project operated on such a scale that its long-term mode of thinking wasn't feasible. It wasn't just that they were betrayed by the forces that funded them; it was that they hadn't created something that was ecologically and economically sustainable. They had intended for their experiment to go for 100 years, and that wasn't going to be viable.

H: I think a lot about the way radical movements, as they travel through history, often have all the radicalness ironed out of them.

MW: That's a big interest of mine. The continuum from radical to mainstream forms part of the argument in Fred Turner's book From Counter Culture to Cyber Culture, which is a portrait of neoliberalism through the prism of Stewart Brand. People who wanted to reinvent the world and went off the grid had this unexpected connection to technology and tools, they became architects of the neoliberal system, and these radical ideas became mainstream. In my film Bayard and Me, about Bayard Rustin, there is this idea of gay guys adopting each other to get equal rights, which was so radical at the time. But it's actually a precursor to gay marriage, which is now a very mainstream notion of civil rights.

And part of the downfall of this project is that they had radical ideas and thrust them into the mainstream. Did the Synergists and Biospherians belong on Good Morning America? Probably not! But they were.

H: There's such a wealth of archival material that it's easy to forget as you're watching how amazing it is that this breadth and scope of coverage exists.

MW: Often shot from multiple angles, or with cranes! It's unprecedented. I've never had access to material like this.

H: You're not asking us to keep looking at the archival material as having its own narrative, as you did in Recorder. But by the time we reach the end and you hear that all the data they collected was lost, I thought, 'Oh, but you documented everything!' It's a very different kind of data, but it's here.

MW: It is data. Actually, Mark Nelson, one of the Biospherians, says that the footage shot inside is a tremendously valuable form of data. And yeah, it wasn't just to create a story. It was to create a comprehensive archive of what they had done.

In so many senses, all this work was in vain, as it was lost or has been discounted. But you're right, actually it wasn't all lost; it just hadn't yet been reappraised and put toward meaningful research. And that is what we tried to do, look through their archive and the things they had so diligently collected to reappraise what they had done. Instead of just saying that they were interesting, we were able to show that they're interesting.

H: Early in the film, one of the Synergists says that if you want to make a contribution to history, you have to notice these moments of opening and act. That statement really resonates with this moment we are in right now.

MW: I felt that when I was a gay teenage activist. Matthew Shepherd had been murdered, Ellen DeGeneres came out. I felt invisible and oppressed, and it was a moment to do things of real political consequence. It's not only the domain of youth - although I think it largely is - but I do think there are moments when something is hugely significant to you, and the time and circumstances are right, in which you can actually throw yourself into that. People need to be open to that, particularly now that the world is completely destroyed.

But I also think what she's really talking about is about relationships. You meet someone and feel a gravitational pull to them, and if you begin a relationship it will change the course of what you do. I think these people jumped into a relationship with each other, and it empowered them to react to all their circumstances. That's totally how I want to live my life. If I gravitate toward someone to pursue a meaningful relationship, that might not just turn into a project, but also expand how I think. That does change the course of our lives, through the expansion and redefinition of community and family.

Spaceship Earth is available to stream via a variety of platforms starting May 8.

Related

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What Happened When Eight People Were Sealed Inside a Self-Contained Ecosystem

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In the early 1990s, Biosphere 2, a series of glass domes in the Arizona desert, was famously occupied by eight residents who attempted to tend to a closed ecosystem without any resources from the outside world.

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-What areas could these spheres go into?
-Think about different communities and spaces I want to work with eg. Forest school, Digbeth community garden,

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In the summer of 2021 at the event of Claudy Jongstra's first solo exhibition at Galerie Fontana in Amsterdam a series of interviews was initiated about the materials and processes involved to create her works of art. In Atelier Talks II Joris Montens tells us about the Fontana's match with the artist Claudy Jongstra.

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In the summer of 2021 at the event of Claudy Jongstra's first solo exhibition at Galerie Fontana in Amsterdam a series of interviews was initiated about the materials and processes involved to create her works of art. In Atelier Talks II Joris Montens tells us about the Fontana's match with the artist Claudy Jongstra.

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Utilising the Grand union visit to collect materials while walking around Digbeth. Documenting and using different spaces to gather knowledge and materials  

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Collective collection of materials for ecospheres

Canal water, shrubbery and moss, rocks

Something I learned that day was that canal dirt is in fact toxic!!! full of lead

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Sparked interesting conversations with people about ecospheres and what they are, how they're made and exchanging my knowledge of the subject. The question I had most was why I'm interested in this topic.

Leanne asked interesting questions about the content and was interested in experimenting with putting mushrooms in her ecosphere.

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The making of ecospheres- 16th November 

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-A selection of images of me conducting a one to one workshop on making an ecosphere.

-Workshop mainly consisted of me guiding and providing Chloe information about Ecospheres and how the different elements help Ecospheres to self sustain itself

-I conducted the same workshop throughout the day while people popped in and out, had to adapt to different peoples timescales and available time.

- Ecospheres are easy to fit into a 10-15 minute timescale, making this method of making super flexible

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Ecospheres- collection of close up images of Ecospheres made on the 16th November 

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Previous plan- Collectively make ecospheres with class mates, record progress of them over the coming weeks to see what new types of forms are made, recording these through photography and completing a PDF document of how the jars progressed over time

Current plan before Christmas- Some jars have gone bad and not worked, looks as though water may have gone mouldy or shrubbery has not reacted well with a certain element in the jars, also lack of exposure to sunlight. Mine and Zaras seem to be holding up well so will be keeping these

Action plan to resolve this:
-Throw away mouldy jars back into the earth
-Plan to remake these when we return from Christmas break ( preferably at a different location with different water source and materials, can make this an open call across the uni)
- Take photographs of these newly made Ecospheres and compile a PDF document of all the photographs ( they won't be made long enough to track them weekly but this can be either a main project or side project on through till next semester)

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Reading into why some of my ecosphere may not have worked

My main thoughts
- Not enough exposure to light so the plants cannot photosynthesis', however too much sunlight can also damage the ecosphere. Solution: manage the amount of sunlight time they have
-Temperature, these were sat next to the radiator the sudden exposure to intense heat didn't react well to the Ecospheres. Solution: place them away from sudden heat, heat from the sun should be enough
-Canal water might not be the most suitable thing to use when doing Ecospheres. Solution: try a different sight with different water and see if that affects it
-The bugs that were put into the Ecosphere aren't made for water environments. Solution: use only water insects such as fresh water snails and crustaceans, however I could only use what was available to me

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Submission for Narratives module, a complied PDF document of 15 images of close up inspections of the Ecospheres.

Reflections on previous module:
- Thought the photographs looked very interesting, otherworldly/ dystopian others have described them as. Would potentially like to explore this in Global Innovations
- Learned a lot through this process, especially when things went wrong and have learned to use these turning points to my advantage.
- Feel as though these Ecospheres exist in a different Environment outside the university.Planning to get in touch with local Forest Schools or Grand union to conduct workshops

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Super helpful chat with De'Anne about my practice

Things I took from this
-Use community's available to you family, friends, galleries, will make working a lot easier for planning, time management and organisation as plans can be pre-organised/ set in stone
- Exert all angles of the topic and how it can be explored, Don't be afraid to continue exploring one topic throughout all modules
- Try not to be dictated by marking schemes, forget about it for now. Critical appraisal is when you tie your work and marking scheme together. Enjoy what you're making in the moment

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Obtained a connection to a Forest School through one of my old teachers from school who taught me for Alevel. Local independent school located in Kidderminster local to home. Complied an email to the institution of hopefully working with their students to make Ecospheres and conduct a number of guided workshops surrounding this topic. Gaining this sort of connection will allow me to work continuously with a community and record the journey throughout this next module

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Collection of images from Forest school visit, took place on Thursday March 2nd. To observe the space, materials and create conversations  about hosting workshops around the topic of Ecospheres with a selection of different age ranges. Discussions of dates and plans will also follow on through email

My next steps from this point on
-Devise a lesson plan and how the session will pan out
-Figure out what materials are needed and if any adjustments need to be made
- Create scavenger hunt sheets for when foraging materials to help with the visual learning aspect of the lesson

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Brief rough layout of lesson plan for Forest school workshops including list of materials needed

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I wanted to create something visually appealing for the kids to follow while the workshop is taking place. Specifying at each step what they will need to do and simplifying the basis of the workshop. This is to be scanned in to produce multiple copies for the kids to write on and interact with.

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These workshops will take place in late April after the Easter Holidays. A number of 3 sessions will go ahead with an age range of children. Dates and times are as follows

Monday April 24th 8.40am till 11am
Tuesday 25th 1.30pm till 4pm
Wednesday 26th 10.40am till 1pm

I have had regualr email contact with Clair to set up these workshop dates as we agreed to proceed after Easter due to there also being planned trips. With this being so close to the deadline it'll be a good way to conclude this module and decide how I go further with this

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The Place We Imagine Exhibition
Attended in person on June 12th 2022

Greenwood Zak (2021)

9 minute long video created by children responding to a narrative by the writer Peter Rumney. The children filmed locations in the woods and open spaces, developing their own versions of the story. After they developed a script and recorded their own voice overs. The main aim of this workshop was to engage the children in playful exploration through landscapes and objects utilising a space they were so accustom to everyday, seeing it from a completely different perspective, highlighting its creative possibilities. Also touching upon the topic of utopias formalising a 3rd space through their imagination surrounding or on the grounds of their place of learning

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Seeing as I need to make an adjustment with the kids and make Terrariums instead of Ecospheres I did a bit of background research into how to construct a well balanced environment and what the essential steps are for making successful Terrariums. Feel as though this kind of research is necessary due to last modules failed Ecospheres and I want to also make sure that I'm providing the correct steps while hosting the workshops

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How to Create a Closed Native Terrarium | Ecosystem in a Jar

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Clair went round and took some photographs of the kids doing different tasks while the workshops were taking place. There is a selection of different age ranges starting at 7 and ending at 10

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An element I quite enjoy about these images is the quality, in a way it reminds me of my own childhood and the feeling of playing outside in the sun.

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A PDF document of an already existing lesson plan with the subject of making Terrariums. Reading through this, I can start thinking about how I will approach the session and what materials will be needed throughout the sessions. How do I want the session to take place, what do I want the kids to take away from the session, what do I want them to understand/ learn? Will they find the session fun and inviting? But most importantly what is achievable in the time I will be provided

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"To sensitize, motivate and educate students and staff about environment conservation. To create awareness among society about environment and related issues"

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Families and young people | Heart of England Forest

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The Heart of England Forest is a charity registered by the Charity Commission for England and Wales (no. 1097110) and a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales (no. 04309564) whose registered office is Colletts Farm Office, Dorsington, Stratford-upon-Avon, CV37 8AU.

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- Utopian, euphoric atmosphere
- Overlapping collage
- Ideas for Zine making with images from workshops

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- Exploring post-apocalyptic topics surrounding family history and the Biosphere 2 experiment of the late 80s early 90s
- Responded to in the forms of video game, publication and voice piece
- Raises questions of how I can merge the topics of Terrariums and utopias together

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Going back to Level 5 we did a workshop as apart of the artist Holly White's work where we had to create characters and state its traits and special skills

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Critical reflection on Forest school visit 

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Critical reflection on Forest school visit 

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Thursday 5th March

This visit was definitely needed to get a sense of the surrounding area and what kind of materials I will have access to. Also to see if Clair was serious enough of letting me come and work with the kids. She was super lovely and seemed up to letting me host a number of workshops. Only issue I came across on my visit was no access to water!!! and clean water just won't do. Clair did mention a pond but said it was too dangerous for the kids to be around which I of course respect. Only way to get around this issue is to have them make terrariums, which are just essentially just dry Ecospheres. Does this divert from my original plan? No not at all I can still get what I need out of the workshop as it still discusses the narratives and education of ecosystems, gives the kids the opportunity to watch something flourish and grow over time using its own resources and show cases how micro ecosystems live in a sustainable clean environment

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At the base route of my idea I am looking into educating people on the ecosystems that are so important to our society. Highlighting human behaviour and sustainable attitudes. How every element of nature right down to the organisms and the important roles they play in the preservation of our planet. Asking individuals to construct their own Terrariums gets them thinking about these ideas and their behaviours towards natural spaces however small

I'll be conducting writing workshops to increase the level of intrigue by adding a personal connection to an object they've made and have to look after and nurture. It sparks imagination and allows them to play with the speculative whilst discussing important topics as listed previously. From this I will be reading those stories and creating my own visual tapestries, bringing these stories to life creating a much bigger sense of importance into the topic of ecosystems and how important they are to use humans and the earth

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-capitalism
-utopian
-dystopia
-ecologies
-social structures
-environmental behaviours
-human destruction
-natural spaces

Natural spaces have been used for assessets to man kind for materials and land ownership by building housing and high rise buildings. However nature still reclaims sights of abandonment and introduces new and different species "our first step is to bring back curiosity... the knots and patchiness are there to explore"

Mushrooms, a metaphor for classification and valuation that structures the global trade system

Foraging- a vital part in environmental and social progress "they show us how to look around rather then ahead"

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Brain storm of ideas and questions for utopian writing workshop.

Potential dates I am thinking of for this workshop are Wednesday 12th July, Wednesday 19th July or Thursday 20th July. Dates I know most of class will be there and present and may open it up to others if they are willing to travel in

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Wednesdays session we were asked to think about space regarding our end of year exhibition

Rough thoughts and ideas
- want the subject of terrariums and utopias to have a clear correlation ( this is where sewing comes into play)
- Like the idea of hanging work from centre wire that spans across room
- could also use wooden structures to suspend some works from depending on scale (will have both fabric work and written Narratives)
-would also just be as happy with floor and wall space (whatever really works best)
- Need to conduct writing workshop soon to figure out plan of action
- Cathy's words "work should be spotlighted" this could have an impact on the undertone of the work and could be something to play with

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Apart of my major project presentation I conducted a workshop asking participants to depict their ideal utopia using a pre- constructed terrarium as a catalyst for an already established terrain. Positioning themselves inside their own little enclosed ecosystem using the speculative to establish what they envision their ideal environment to be. I plan to bring these stories to life, responding through a collage banner/tapestry.

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"Back to Earth considers ecology as embedded in everyday practices and agencies. Rather than celebrating escape strategies from Earth, reserved for the few, the project roots itself firmly in the messy and complex realities of the ground we all walk on."

"Part of an ongoing project that began at Serpentine in 2019, the exhibition invites artistic responses to the climate emergency, bringing together different kinds of research, materials and approaches from around the planet to offer insights into artists’ concerns, ideas and hopes for the future."

"Just as human behaviour is the impetus for and continues to contribute to climate change, the need for transitions to new processes and ways of thinking has never been greater"

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How can art respond to the climate emergency?

Back to Earth is Serpentine's long-term, interdisciplinary programme addressing the ongoing climate emergency . This multi-year project invites over sixty leading artists, architects, poets, filmmakers, scientists, thinkers, and designers to respond to the environmental crisis. With the support of partner organisations and networks, these collaborators are devising artistic campaigns, protocols and initiatives that act as catalysts for change .

Back to Earth considers ecology as embedded in everyday practices and agencies. Rather than celebrating escape strategies from Earth, reserved for the few, the project roots itself firmly in the messy and complex realities of the ground we all walk on.

Echoing the global response to the climate crisis, Back to Earth is a complex web of interconnected research, interventions and activities. Interdisciplinary at its core, Back to Earth manifests across Serpentine's onsite, offsite and online programmes. It shares its resources in order to amplify ongoing projects or campaigns around the climate emergency, as well as to develop new ones. Back to Earth asks: What new ecosystems can foster agency within organisations? Which kinds of research-sharing, resource-sharing and collaborative working practices can help us find multifaceted responses to complex problems? How can arts institutions bring visibility to climate actions that create positive change for communities, places and imaginations around the world?

Back to Earth emerges out of the Serpentine's long-standing engagement with ecology and extinction, beginning with the 2014 Extinction Marathon co-curated with artist Gustav Metzger, and with General Ecology, our related long-term research project. Find out more and for ecology news, sign up for our newsletter .

Participants and project team

Back to Earth participants

Participants include: Maria Thereza Alves, David Adjaye , Etel Adnan, Black Quantum Futurism, Carolina Caycedo , Judy Chicago, Revital Cohen & Tuur van Balen , Cooking Sections, Agnes Denes, Manthia Diawara, Torkwase Dyson, Olafur Eliasson, Brian Eno, Jane Fonda, Formafantasma , Fernando García-Dory/INLAND, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Macarena Gómez- Barris , Jack Halberstam, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Bhanu Kapil, Karrabing Film Collective, Rudy Loewe & Jakob V Joyce, Metabolic Selves, Yoko Ono, Tabita Rezaire /AMAKABA & Yussef Agbo -Ola/ Olaniyi Studio, Giles Round, Tai Shani, Sin Wai Kin, Himali Singh Soin , Superflux, Swoon, Bones Tan Jones, Sissel Tolaas , Dineo Seshee Bopape and Katy'taya Catitu Tayassu, Cecilia Vicuña, Studio Ghazaal Vojdani , and Vivienne Westwood and many more.

Posters by: Adham Faramawy, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Asad Raza, Ben Frost, Black Quantum Futurism, Bones Tan Jones, Cooking Sections, David Adjaye, Es Devlin, Etel Adnan, Gabriela Hearst, Himali Singh Soin, Hyphen-Labs X Allison Akootchook Warden, Jacob V Joyce and Rudy Loewe, James Bridle, Kate Raworth and Ruurd Priester, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Koo Jeong-A, London Fieldworks and Gustav Metzger, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Manthia Diawara, Martino Gamper, Newton Harrison, Parag Khanna, Pedro Reyes, Radha D'Souza and Jonas Staal, Raymond Pettibon, Revital Cohen & Tuur van Balen, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Seba Calfuqueo, Torkwase Dyson.

Back to Earth project team

Back to Earth is curated and produced by:

Sarah Hamed, Assistant Curator, Exhibitions Rebecca Lewin, Curator, Exhibitions and Design Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director Lucia Pietroiusti, Founder, General Ecology Kostas Stasinopoulos, Associate Curator, Live Programmes Jo Paton, Former Chief Producer Holly Shuttleworth, Former Producer

Further collaborations are also taking place across Serpentine.

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How can art respond to the climate emergency?

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 Drying Temple, 2022. Dyed cotton tensiles, reclaimed pine frame, medicinal plants, recycled cellulose cable ties

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- Visually immersive
- Interactive
- Aromatic
- Medicinal plants for healing
- Creative and innovative use of textiles
- Aiming to heal humans connection to nature and its resources
- Accompanying sound piece
- Works will be transported around and used in traditional healing practices
- Sustainable methods of making

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Interesting use of composition, materality, juxtaposition of objects to digital works and the occupation of different spaces and how this informs the work

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'Darkness Retreat' 2021

A digital exhibition commissioned by Legion Projects, you can view the environment HERE.

Please view on a desk top computer.

The retreat took place in a nondescript hostel room in a German ashram found on the internet. Inside the otherwise ordinary room every crevice and opening was gaffer-taped and the only door led to a blackened hallway, all of this to keep out the light.

Darkness Retreat is a response to the physical and tactile nature of the room the retreat took place in; where surfaces and shapes extruded and morphed once the lights were out. It is also a response to the interior space of the mind, which - when somewhere between sleep and wakefulness - spilled into the exterior during this period of self-imposed sensory deprivation.

Darkness Retreat presents itself as a series of spoken letters to Aoife, a close friend of the artist who she met at art school twenty years ago. Aoife was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer during the development of the project. She died in a room at St. Joseph's Hospice in 2019. Aoife worked with film sets and props, and as the pieces for Darkness Retreat developed it became clear that her aesthetic had made its way into the work. How much space does grief occupy? Does it have a lumen? And where does the memory of someone go when they are gone?

3D models by George Eksts

Web design by Matt Woodham

Score and sound design by Mark Dicker

Produced by Una Hamilton Helle, Legion Projects

Supported by Arts Council England and The Henry Moore Foundation

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Plan to take a trip to gather materials to make tapestry. Already have materials at home but are in need of more craft materials

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Head for the BLUE DOOR at the rear of the Church Building as you turn on to Manor Park Grove.

Current Scrapstore shop opening times:
Tues - Fri 10am - 4pm
PLUS......... 1st Saturday in the month 10am - 2pm
The Scrapstore Birmingham collects & sorts materials, or 'scrap', donated by individuals & businesses for redistribution to individuals & organisations supporting play & creativity. Card and cash payment accepted.
New stock is coming in each week.

What's in the Scrapstore...

There is a constant supply of materials entering the scrapstore:

The store officially opened its doors in October 2011. Birmingham PlayCare Network's (BPCN) Scrapstore supports the reuse of unwanted materials that have been donated by businesses and individuals across Birmingham. We collect and sort waste/surplus materials which would often be diverted to landfill and redistribute it to out of school providers, schools, community groups and individuals

The Scrapstore offers out of school providers, schools, community groups and individuals the opportunity to access a wide range of high quality materials, save money and promote the reuse of waste materials.

BPCN will help businesses to reduce waste, save money, help the environment and make links with their local community. The waste, as scrap, will be re-used across Birmingham with over 1,000 childcare establishments, plus increasing numbers of parents and guardians who are joining BPCN to access the Scrapstore.

Local businesses who contribute may be able to use their donations as a direct contribution to their corporate and social responsibility commitment.

We can collect waste free of charge from the Birmingham area. All we ask is for the scrap to be clean, safe and ready to collect.

If you have any materials that you feel may be suitable and wish to donate please contact us. We can then assess your materials and arrange a collection/delivery date and time

To donate or for further information, please email Pip at Birmingham PlayCare Network pip@bpcn.org.uk

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The Scrapstore Birmingham - Birmingham PlayCare Network

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Our shop is open to everyone. We are the Scrapstore behind the BLUE DOOR at The Hollymoor Centre, Northfield B31 5ER. Head for the BLUE DOOR at the rear of the Church Building as you turn on to Manor Park Grove. Current Scrapstore shop opening times: Tues - Fri 10am - 4pm PLUS.........1st Saturday in [...]

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Workshop opportunity to work with an artist collective. Conducting my utopian writing workshop and terrarium building

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Following on from the major project presentation, I made appointments with people,whenever the time was right, to ask for a written response as what they thought to be living in the ecosphere/terrarium. These were the responses I got throughout the few couple of weeks.

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I wanted a fresh start with my old ecosphere so decided to make a new one mainly focusing on a Terrarium instead. I want to use this going forward in workshops as a new canvas. observing how it changes individuals responses in the workshops. It was also nice to have more of a personal connection to what I was doing by taking myself out to build this allowed me to reconnect with the reasons I started this project in the first place. To learn and connect with nature in fun and creative ways by sharing my love and passion of nature.