Guston Sondin-Kung Cosmological Gardens: Land, Cultivation, and Care is the first in an ongoing series of workshops and projects by the Center for Arts, Design, and Social Research (CAD+SR) in partnership with the Associazone Culturale Matilde Pianciani, Spoleto, Italy. Over four successive Fridays and Saturdays in October-November 2020, a globally diverse group of activists, artists, agronomists, farmers and scholars will meet online to engage a range of concepts related to agroecological practices, including soil and land, care pedagogies, and herb and seed heritages. We will discuss community initiatives informed by transdisciplinary agricultural thinking, including a wide-range of Indigenous knowledge and other structures of social cooperation and production. These conversations will redefine gardens, growing, and growth through broadly sustainable processes that involve both human and non-human entities. We will consider racial and environmental justice as ontological and political projects. Cosmological Gardens is led by curator, artist and architecture theorist, Pelin Tan (Mardin, Turkey), CAD+SR Senior Researcher, with CAD+SR’s research staff, Chris Bratton, Dr. Dalida María Benfield, and Mary Ellen Strom. Confirmed speakers include Maria Puig-de-la-Bellacassa, Elizabeth Hoover, Vivien Sansour, Otobong Nkanga, Luigi Coppola, and Ou Ning.
Photo: XiSan village, Pearl River Delta, Guangzhou, photo Pelin Tan, 2018
