Farmer Designers: an Art of Living 14 July 2021 - 17 January 2022
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Press kit Farmer designers: an art of living 14 July 2021 - 17 January 2022 at Bordeaux Museum of Decorative Arts and Design Contents Press release 5 The major themes developed in the exhibition 6 - 29 Exhibition plan 6 - 7 Singular agricultures 8 - 13 A newly appealing profession 15 The landscape: the face of farming 17 - 19 Regenerating soil: design in the service of fertile land 21 Nature design 23 Tools: when the farmer regains control 25 Reclaiming the production chain 27 ECAL installation under the direction of Erwan Bouroullec 29 A narration in images with Atelier CTJM 31 Misterien, a work by Barbara Schroeder 33 The off-site exhibition 35 The visit continues in the fields 36 - 43 Cultural programme 45 Exhibition curator and scientific committee 47 Staging and graphic design 49 Acknowledgements 51 The museum 55 Iconography / practical information / press contacts 57 "Wheatfield” - A Confrontation: Battery Park Landfill, Downtown Manhattan - with Agnes Denes Standing in the Field © 1982 Confrontation: Battery "Wheatfield” - A Cover: Market gardening, Malabo (Bioko island), Equatorial Guinea, 2016 © Jan Ziegler Malabo (Bioko gardening, Market Cover: Farmer designers: an art of living • Bordeaux Museum of Decorative Arts and Design • madd-bordeaux.fr 3 Press release Farmer designers: an art of living 14 July 2021 – 17 January 2022 One of the main roles of design today is to invent new reciprocities. While modernity has forged the idea that humans could control their environment and make nature their own, we now know that this is simply not the case. The current crises are our confirmation that it is time to change paradigm. Design has contributed to the invention of modern life, producing objects on an industrial scale, but it has a new role to play today. More than ever, designers are striving to respond to the problems raised, rethinking the social organisation of our everyday life. We are facing urgent questions: how can we feed, educate and care for ourselves? In English, the word ‘design’ is used with precision: fashion design, interior design, sport design. This exhibition is devoted to farming design. 20th-century industrialisation has profoundly transformed our soils in order to feed more people, more effectively: two concepts that are nowadays being called into question on all sides. Food has become an incredibly complex arena; from farm to fork, many different processes come into play to feed a growing population. Farmers face many challenges. Those known as “farmer-researchers” are experimenting with new practices. Like a designer, they are inventing new farming processes, taking into account the specific features of the context and tools, which they readily reinvent to adapt them to specific local characteristics. At the heart of their concerns, the land, topography, rainwater run-off, sunshine, winds and the biological cycles of fauna and flora are all elements that the “farmer designer” observes to develop their land and promote virtuous links for the soil and its crops. Farmer designers: an art of living aims to present a new generation of farmers who are looking to feed us while regenerating the soil rather than exploiting it. The exhibition makes soil our central focus, revealing new knowledge about its role, how it functions and the ecosystem that it harbours. It demonstrates the scales of crops and production, offers insights into new farming practices and reexamines the dimension of time. Here in France as well as on other continents, it explores the origins of a new culture that places people at the heart of unprecedented ties with nature and repositions them on an equal footing, as one of the links in the chain of life alongside living beings, plants and animals. A fresh perspective on the world to which we belong. It is not about shouting a warning cry but presenting inspiring adventures, projects and scenarios. The challenge is to imagine and reveal avenues towards a desirable – and possible – world. ► A major off-site component is offered throughout the exhibition; the visit continues in the farms and vineyards associated with the exhibition. From April, a dozen themed gardens have also been created in different Bordeaux neighbourhoods, sponsored by farmers, designers and figures from the world of ecology. This exhibition is presented at the heart of the Resources Cultural season (10 June – 10 August). The 2021 Cultural season gives pride of place to local movers and shakers through creations and artistic initiatives that offer everyone the opportunity to reexperience the city in a new way, together. A bridge between the two sides, it looks to be a socially responsible and eco-friendly cultural project that invites us to pay attention to everything that now makes up the real resources of the city and everything that surrounds us. Share the latest news from madd-bordeaux @madd_bordeaux #madd_bordeaux #paysansdesigners Château Coutet, Saint-Emilion, mars 2020 © madd-bordeaux Saint-Emilion, Château Coutet, Farmer designers: an art of living • Bordeaux Museum of Decorative Arts and Design • madd-bordeaux.fr 5 Exhibition plan 4 5 6 7 8 10 A day in life of Three video The Vavilov a farmer. Yeasts portraits of Water and Nature’s Institute Félix Noblia, and new farmers living things potential and seed Larrous farm bread conservation 11 3 Children’s Regenerating soil COURTYARD B workshop COURTYARD A Tools for an agroecologial transition Singular agricultures: The pioneers 2 12 The standardisation When the farmer Sébastien Blache of living things regains control Adama Dialla Pierre-Olivier Clouet Odile Fabrègue et Christian Varin Ernst Götsch ECAL x madd-bordeaux Perrine et Charles Hervé-Gruyer The question of scale at the Sepp et Josef Holzer heart of farming ECAL Caroline Miquel installation under the direction Xavier Noulhianne of Erwan Bouroullec 1 13 Time for Shaping reflection the landscape The time required Entrance Exit 6 Farmer designers: an art of living • Bordeaux Museum of Decorative Arts and Design • madd-bordeaux.fr Farmer designers: an art of living • Bordeaux Museum of Decorative Arts and Design • madd-bordeaux.fr 7 Singular agricultures Portraits of 10 farmers – researchers After the war, France spreads out its agriculture to an industrial scale to rebuild the country. The Marshall Plan leads the farmers to exchange their horses for tractors. In their ships, the Americans bring, as well, the first hybrid maize from the Midwest, sulphates and sulphur. Who would have refused to produce more in a less exhausting way? And yet, the farmers cannot cope. The government offers them to gather the plots to increase the size of the farms. The living things are rationalised and made profitable. The agriculture has entered an era of productivism. The farmers were driven to dive into a system of which they were promised the benefits, until they became dependant and lost their instinctive understanding of the soil. The exhibition aims at presenting a new generation of farmers who are searching for a way to feed us while regenerating the soils and the ecosystems, rather than exploiting them. Those actions also have an impact on global warming. In the manner of a designer, these farmers experiment with new processes of production. They are inspired by ancient knowledge, that they associate with contemporary technologies, in order to implement new environment-friendly practices. Those practices also permit to project in a lifestyle, frequently collective, and to reinvest a profession in which they want to master the entirety of the production chain, if possible, from the field to the plate. Coming from very different backgrounds, these farmers-designers test, adapt, get inspired by each-other and elaborate progressively alternative ways of doing for the future. In Nouvelle-Aquitaine, in Brazil, Austria or Burkina Faso, these farmers share their experience and transmit their knowledge and methods. Sébastien Blache and Elsa Gärtner - Le Grand Laval Farm, Montélier, Drôme In 2006, Sébastien Blache left the natural history museum where he was a naturalist and ornithologist and took over his grandfather's farm in the Drôme region. His main goal is bringing back the living in the agricultural sector. For birds, insects and small animals, he plants hedges and sets up dozens of nesting boxes tailored to different species. His polyculture farm includes an orchard, a chicken coop and a flock of sheep. Planting trees all over the farm and growing fruit, cereals and legumes significantly contribute to developing biodiversity. His farm is a green setting for wildlife, with grazing animals and a pond. It is an island in the heart of the monotonous landscapes of the Drôme region. “Planting trees is not enough. You have to make an effort to bring in biodiversity. With as many living things as possible, we are optimising the possibilities of service provided. We trust nature.” Adama Dialla - Boulba, Ziniaré, Oubritenga province, Burkina Faso Adama Dialla grows corn, sorghum, okra, bissap, sweet potatoes and peanut over three hectares. The different plots of land are also planted with fruit trees and leguminous plants that serve as livestock fodder such as pigeon peas. Raising chickens and sheep contributes to the fertile balance of the farm that provides food self- sufficiency for his family and that provides him with an income. Since beginning to farm in 1990, Adama’s farming practices have changed a great deal, particularly thanks to her meeting in 2016 with the local association AIDMR, a Terre & Humanisme partner, which encouraged her to adopt a global agroecological approach: managing soil fertility, creating and using different types of composting, combining and rotating crops, rationally managing water, adopting agroforestry principles, etc. She has thus created an “agroecological island” according to an adaptable model designed by AIDMR, based on the specific characteristics of the local context. This island presents a diversified production system of integrated crop and livestock farming, in which trees take pride of place.