KLab - Assemblages (Summer 2017)

Positioned within and beyond the Columbus building courtyard and gardens, KLab: Assemblages will look to related organisms, and organizations, to investigate the complex material and social assemblages that form Chicago’s urban ecosystem. Looking to the class environment as its own assemblage, students will be encouraged to pursue both individual research interests and methods of collective inquiry as we investigate material histories, contemporary conditions, and speculative futures. Class projects will encourage investigation of the sticky conglomerations that form when position ourselves among and between communities of human and nonhuman organisms, and we will take a critical look at interdisciplinarity and collaboration in contemporary artistic practices. Integrating critical readings, lectures, presentations, field trips, skill-building workshops, and discussions, students will be asked to design and build sculptural structures and surfaces that propose new forms of social and ecological engagement.  There will be at least one group project with opportunity for students to design their own contribution.

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RR2-bella walters

Humanity has a habit of taking on a passive stance on reform that doesn’t affect them directly. This can be seen in governmental policies, ecological impact, and world history and reflects in humanities views on impacting the natural world.in his essay ‘getting back to nature’ William Cronan criticizes current human notions of wilderness in order to challenge humanities passivity to their part and impacting the natural world. Cronan begins be commenting on the cultural stigmas that currently surround the wilderness and how humanity has separated it self and made the wilderness a place to praise God, domesticate, and tame . Nature is no longer considered environment that we see an impact but instead a vacation spot that maintenance of is left to another worldly power out of human kinds reach…

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A fun and easy to use set of companion planting guides. 

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Final Project: Embedded arms in the companion planted bed underneath our Apple! 

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Grafting Workshop

Resources:

Grafting and budding fruit trees

Leonard B. Hertz

www.extension.umn.edu/garden/yard-garden/fruit/grafting-and-budding-fruit-trees/#tools-and-materials

List of Grafted Plants

Jonathan Landsman

https://www.thespruce.com/list-of-grafted-plants-3269544

Artist:

Axel Erlandson/ Sam Van Aken/ Guerrilla Grafters

Paul Perez

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Paul’s Final Project

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Seaweed ArtProject Critique#2

Reflection of assemblage has inspired me to seek connections with my relationship with seaweed.  These relationships developed from bio-engineers rethinking sustainable agricultural practices through biomimicry.  Kelp requires fewer resources to grow while repairing the ocean and converting carbon dioxide into oxygen.   These discoveries inspired me to revisit histories and spaces overlook because of linear thinking.  I want to visit my own Mexican history of migration patterns and agriculture from the 20th century (The Green Revolution, and USA deploration laws) using my own misunderstanding of seaweed to help find differences and comparisons.  

I want to present as a projected immersive environment in which the viewer is surrounded by a computer-simulated underwater plant/ algae scene.  My goal is to create a foreign space that changes how the audience once perceived the function of the space.

Paul Perez

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Tentacular Thinking.

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The size of our class and working on projects in the garden pushed me to create a ‘shared experience’ through food. I think the underlying themes of layered assemblages, generosity, and trust were best communicated in my project. I made food from my home, by background, which in turn prompted me to take on a more dominant, caring role through the way I presented the piece. Now, I wonder how my quilted trivets, the only physical objects that still remain after the piece, will continue to live in my life. I would like to revisit the concept of ‘the meal’ and start digging into the complexities that come with presenting food/experience as the art itself. I would also like to investigate non-invasive documentation techniques, while still keeping the meal itself very contained to the people present. 

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In class critique documentation #1-bella walters

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Reading Reponse #2

Donna Haraway, “Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene

"What if western philosophy and political economics became unthinkable in the best sciences, whether natural or social?"  I find this in query compelling to think about: contrasting the Greek's scientific observation and how it affected how they perceived order of things, natural and social.  How did the method of foundry, fermenting, cooking change the way they interacted?  Each contains a process of gathering materials which feel like continuous growing or gathering.  As well as, a process of combining materials and testing the transformation under stresses of duration and temperature.  There was to my best knowledge no collection of big data sets of information or lab that had the ability to break down materials into more separate materials.  I wonder what the culture of bacteria interaction with human body would have affected Greek politics.

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Reading Response --

In the William Cronan text, I think about ‘wilderness’ in relation to lingo of people around me. The usage of phrases such as, ‘that’s wild’ has become normalized and de-mystified to the point where it doesn’t actually hold much weight. I notice that the human body doesn’t always realize its own impact and changing on ‘untouched’ spaces, but often becomes bothered by areas that do show signs of previous presence. The idealized space of ‘wilderness’ can simply be the spaces around us at any given moment.

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Harvesting Wild Edibles - Curly Dock Seeds

Hey guys Happy Fourth of July, in this video we take the two Curly Dock plants that I've been growing and harvest them up in to flour. This process is a litt...

How to harvest dock!

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use this recipe to make salves, balms, and cosmetics!

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Batik is a resist dye process that uses wax, fabric, and dye. Batik peaked in Java, Indonesia, where all the materials are readily available. At home, you can create your own batik textiles by melting some wax, dipping a tjanting tool in the wax (or a paintbrush if you don’t have batik tools on hand), then drawing onto the fabric. Once the wax is completely dry, submerge the cloth in a dye bath. Let the fabric dry. Place the fabric wax side up on a flat surface, and place newsprint over it. Then, iron away the wax. Once the wax seeps through the paper, switch in a new piece. Continue until no wax remains. Repeat dye process as desired! 

‘Batik Textiles of Java’ is up at the Art Institute in galleries 57-59, through September 17.

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I revealed a shift in the way I am approaching my individual project. Instead of focusing on themes such as time and preservation, I hope to foster a shared experience through a meal.  Some ingredients will be sourced from the garden, but the main point of the piece will strive to be more about the experience of sharing flavors/scents/dialogue in a very specific setting- catered to our class. Ideally, this 'shared experienece' will continue to develop and influence far beyond the parameters of simply ingesting the meal.

I arrived at this next step via making three chutneys: apple, mint, and basil, and then not knowing what my reasonings were.

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healing garden project proposal