LASER Talks in JRC (Ispra): On Soil Sciences and Arts

Within the framework of the 4th EU Soil Observatory Stakeholder Forum, five artists, formerly in residence at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, will present their practice  and research related to soils and discuss the potential of the arts for soil literacy. Examples range from soil erosion and formation to building with local materials, interweaving stories of chemicals and agriculture through speculative law and policy, on post wildfires ecologies, and on land and landscapes between the natural and industrial.

Moderated by:Panos Panagos & Caterina Benincasa

EVENT INFO

When: Wed 23rd October, 14h CET Find your timezone here

Where: Online. Please register below to receive the WEBEX link to join a few days before the event
Access Info: Please register for the event via https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/EUSOForum2024 [the event takes place within the session ‘increasing soil literacy’]

Website ESDAC (European Soil Data Centre):
https://esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu/euso/4th-euso-stakeholders-forum 

Healthy soils are essential for achieving climate neutrality, halting the loss of biodiversity and providing healthy food. However, more than 60% of the EU’s soils are subject to one or more soil degradation processes. The recently updated Soil Health Dashboard, shows the location and estimates the extent of soil degradation processes in the European Union (EU). The proposed Soil Monitoring Law aims to make soil health monitoring obligatory, provides guiding principles for sustainable soil management and addresses situations where soil contamination poses unacceptable health and environment risks.

The 4th EUSO Stakeholder Forum is an annual event organised by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) whose purpose is to actively engage and exchange with the soil community, from policy makers and scientists to local actors, artists, civil society representatives and citizens. 

As part of this Forum, this art & science session will be an opportunity to learn about various artistic practices engaging with soil research – from soil formation, to contamination and regeneration. With one final provocative question: what can artistic inquiry bring to soil research and policies? We look forward to discussing and opening up further opportunities for the arts in Mission Soil. 

Agenda

SPEAKERS BIOS

Athena LaTocha lives and works in New York. She was raised in the Alaskan wilderness, and from an early age, has been fascinated by the shaping of the earth, both by natural events as well as humankind’s impact upon it. LaTocha’s process begins with deep observation of and research into the land in which she is working, which informs her artistic approach on all levels. Recent exhibitions include: Greater New York 2021, MoMA PS1, BRIC, Brooklyn, the Visual Art Center of New Jersey, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Plains Art Museum, Fargo, ND, Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, Bentonville, AR, among others. LaTocha currently has a solo exhibition of new work on view at JDJ the Ice House in Garrison, New York. Also, her solo exhibition Mesabi Redux opens at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe in New Mexico, on June 10, 2022. https://athenalatocha.com/home.html   

Ingrid Mayrhofer-Hufnagl is an interdisciplinary artist, architect, and researcher from Austria whose work bridges the realms of architecture, art, and science. Her diverse creations range from architectural installations, video art, and sculpture, to scientific research all infused with cutting-edge technology to explore innovative ways of synergizing the built and natural environments. By delving into scales from the planetary to the microscopic, her work wants to transcends human temporal and spatial perception, challenging our own understanding of existence and the unseen consequences of our actions. Ingrid holds a Ph.D. in architecture from the University of Innsbruck, where she leads groundbreaking projects on AI and architecture. Her artistic work has been showcased at numerous festivals and exhibitions. She is also the editor of "Architecture, Futurability and the Untimely: On the Unpredictability of the Past" and has contributed peer-reviewed articles to various esteemed journals. https://www.airchitecturalminds.com/

Ingrid E.M. Ogenstedt is a Swedish born artist working mainly on large sculptural projects and drawing. Fascinated by the natural world and the power of matter, materials and organisms, she tirelessly experiments with and develops large site-specific sculptures made of local materials, always pushing the boundaries of what can and cannot be achieved by adapting and morphing volumes and the natural at large scale. She has created site-specific sculptures for Moderna Museet Malmö (SE), the Luleå Biennale 2020 (SE), Wadden Tide, Blåvandshuk (DK) and Oslo Central Station (NO). Ingrid is currently based between Berlin (DE) and Stockholm (SE). 

https://www.ingridogenstedt.com/ 

Panos Panagos is a senior scientist at JRC (Joint Research Centre, European Commission). He has more than 23 years' experience in environmental modelling and policy developments in the European Commission. Panos Panagos has been the project leader of EU Soil Observatory.  Panos supports a wide range of policies in the EU, including the EU Soil Strategy 2030, the proposal for a Soil Monitoring Law, the Common Agricultural Policy, and the Zero Pollution Action Plan. Panos is also responsible for the scientific and technical support of the JRC to the HORIZON Europe Mission “A Soil Deal for Europe”. He leads the innovative soil health assessments such as the ones in soil erosion, soil organic carbon, soil nutrients and diffuse pollution. He has more than 220 publications in peer-review journals and he has been awarded the Web of Science highly influential scientist award (7,000 influential researchers worldwide) for the last 5 years (2019-2023). https://esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ 

Margherita Pevere

Margherita Pevere is an artist and researcher whose practice glides across biological arts and performance with a distinctive visceral signature. Her inquiry hybridizes bio-technology, ecology, environmental politics, gender and death studies to create arresting installations and performances that trail today’s ecological complexity. Her body of work is a blooming garden crawling with genetically edited bacteria, cells, sex hormones, microbial biofilm, bovine blood, slugs, growing plants and decomposing re- mains. She would not be the artist she is today without the many collaborations across art, science and humanities. Together with Marco Donnarumma and Andrea Familari she co-founded the artists’ group Fronte Vacuo. She is member of the Finnish Bioart Society, of The Queer Death Studies Network and of The Posthumanities Hub. She has completed a PhD at Aalto University on biological arts and queer studies.

https://margheritapevere.com/

Jemma Woolmore is a media artist, originally from New Zealand and based in Berlin. Her practice explores the spatial and emotional possibilities of light, sound and image in immersive and performative environments. Currently, she is investigating how immersive experiences and game environments can become tools to tell meaningful stories from other-than-human perspectives and build better relationships with ecologies. Topics that fascinate her are the entanglement of earth systems with human systems, making the invisible visible, storytelling as a tool for change and amplifying non-human perspectives. Motivated by the provocation ‘How can my work challenge and motivate audiences to take action, to become engaged?’ she’s driven by cross-disciplinary collaboration and loves to push towards projects that bring together art, science and technology. 

https://jemmawoolmore.com/ 

Caterina Benincasa is the curator of the JRC SciArt project, where she supports artists across the world to discover and engage with the research developed at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC). With a background in Physics, Philosophy, History of Science, Contemporary Art and World Heritage Studies, she is particularly interested in entangling the arts and science/science-for-policy systems, exploring the interface of epistemology and aesthetics, and questions relating scientific rationality, artistic inquiry and societal engagement.

https://science-art-society.ec.europa.eu/

Interesting soil knowledge and data resources to explore: 

Soil Atlases https://esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu/Atlas 

Soil Maps https://esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu/resource-type/maps 

ESDAC themes https://esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu/content/esdac-themes 

SPONSORS 

Leonardo/ISAST LASER Talks is a program of international gatherings that bring artists, scientists, humanists and technologists together for informal presentations, performances and conversations with the wider public. The mission of LASER is to encourage contribution to the cultural environment of a region by fostering interdisciplinary dialogue and opportunities for community building to over 50 cities and 5 continents worldwide.

The Joint Research Centre (JRC) is the European Commission's science and knowledge service which employs scientists to carry out research in order to provide independent scientific advice and support to European Union (EU) policy. 

The EU Soil Observatory (EUSO) is a dynamic and inclusive platform that provides the relevant Commission Services, together with the broader soil user community, with the knowledge and data flows needed to safeguard and restore soils. EUSO aims to be the principal provider of reference data and knowledge at EU-level for all matters relating to soil. https://esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu/euso 

The JRC SciArt project was established in January 2016, with the objective of triggering innovation in research and bring together science, art and society. Strongly influenced by the JRC mission of doing science in support of policy, it gives scientists, artists and policymakers the opportunity to meet and work together. They discuss, investigate and explore the wide intersecting plains between art and science, with a tension towards impacting our collectivities. Yet, in the first instance, the project tries to create a safe haven to freely roam possible worlds, pursue impossible projects and to embrace failure. As such, it is part of the ongoing innovation of the JRC as service to the European citizen.