valentina karga

[valentinakarga-blog]

http://www.pnat.net/jellyfish-barge/

Jellyfish Barge is a floating agricultural greenhouse, able to purify salt, brackish or polluted water using solar energy. Jellyfish Barge is built with low-cost technologies and simple materials, also appropriate to the self-construction paradigm. It consists of a wooden base of about 70 square meters that floats on recycled plastic drums and supports a glass greenhouse for crop cultivation.

[valentinakarga-blog]

“… Jellyfish Barge is a floating agricultural greenhouse, able to purify salt, brackish or polluted water using solar energy. Jellyfish Barge is built with low-cost technologies and simple materials, also appropriate to the self-construction paradigm. It consists of a wooden base of about 70 square meters that floats on recycled plastic drums and supports a glass greenhouse for crop cultivation….” Pnat.net – Jellyfish Barge Greenhouse

[valentinakarga-blog]

Bruna Esposito, Renewable Energy Systems, 1996 (Feces, photovoltaic fan ) dimensioni variabili Roma

[valentinakarga-blog]

Training in beekeeping

[radical-exploring]

Interdisciplinary seminar at the Berlin Summer University of the Arts

Date: September 1st - 6th 2014

Place: UdK Berlin & the city

Fee: 325 €

No. of participants: 12 to 15

Language: English

Application deadline: August 4th

Lecturers: Valentina Karga & Rosario Talevi

apply ...

[valentinakarga-blog]

Effective transfer of tacit knowledge generally requires extensive personal contact, regular interaction and trust. This kind of knowledge can only be revealed through practice in a particular context and transmitted through social networks. To some extent it is "captured" when the knowledge holder joins a network or a community of practice.

tacit knowledge

[valentinakarga-blog]

'One part is conceptualizing and ordering the world, and the other is accepting the world as it is. Those two things together shape the visual arts.'

interview with Agnès Varda, 1960's

[valentinakarga-blog]

[valentinakarga-blog]

We are happy to invite you to the opening of the Summer School for Applied Autonomy on the 21st July, the new project of BerlinFarmLab.

The Summer school for Applied Autonomy is a research initiative interested in capturing the complexity of the technical know-how but also the mental state and the social skills one needs for self-sufficiency. Exploration of thematic fields such as self-reliance, open source knowledge, collaboration and self-reflection is at the very base of this project.

The school welcomes everyone, but its capacity is small; it can support only two residents per rotation. Residents must engage for a stay of one or two weeks. After the end of each rotation and the beginning of the other, the two groups overlap for one day, so that the first group transfers their knowledge to the next one. The days are structured via tasks and lessons, while each person is free to propose his own topic of research. 

After the opening, residents will be living there and will be needing your support in forms of exchange for things or services they cannot produce. Please contact:     [email protected]

Sincerely yours,

Valentina Karga, Antonia Märzhäuser, Mascha Fehse, Julia Boström, Robert Eckstein,

Veronika Homann, Lilli Unger, Petja Ivanova, Friederike Müller, 

Ivy Lee, Mischa Vogel

P.s: This is a self-organized event, so please be kind and spread the word.  Here the event on facebook.

[valentinakarga-blog]

Last Friday we had the luck to have a workshop with Brian Edlefschen Lasch, solar expert. Brian explained us how solar energy works, how to size and deign a solar energy system, how to measure Volts and how to make cable connections. We managed to install the whole system and recharge the battery of the electric drill! DIY video tutorial to come soon. Thank you Brian! now we know how to built a small off-grid system!

[valentinakarga-blog]

From experimentation with the material and Jan's help, we came to realize that the triangle is the strongest element which we can use for the cabin construction. And big enough to fit one tall standing person!

[valentinakarga-blog]

We are very happy to start again the making of a self-sufficient system season! First important things to survive are food and water, so this is what we 'll do first. A series of more workshops to follow on aquaponics, solar cooking, solar energy, composting and DIY shelter. The workshops are part of the Seminar "Self-sufficiency in the era of the new Commons" offered at the Berlin University of the Arts (Studium Generale). You are very welcome to join, but please RSVP first because places are limited. 

[valentinakarga-blog]

the theory of degrowth

Degrowth (in French: décroissance,[1] in Spanish: decrecimiento, in Italian: decrescita) is a political, economic, and social movement based onecological economics and anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist ideas. Degrowth thinkers and activists advocate for the downscaling of production and consumption—the contraction of economies—as overconsumption lies at the root of long term environmental issues and social inequalities. Key to the concept of degrowth is that reducing consumption does not require individual martyring and a decrease in well-being.[2] Rather, 'degrowthists' aim to maximize happiness and well-being through non-consumptive means—sharing work, consuming less, while devoting more time to art, music, family, culture and community.[3]

[ethel-baraona]

‘ASTRONEF 732’ Space City

François Dallegret. Paris avril 1963

In ‘’Astronef 732’’, an early ‘’Graphos’’ ink drawing from 1963, Dallegret conceived a ‘’Space City’’, to be shot to Mars ’’for the purpose to studying the reactions of younger generations to conditions of extreme crowding in relation to speed’’. With these preoccupations-radical living, machines, speed-Dallegret aligned himself with the great innovators of the 20th century, among them Le Corbusier, Buckminster Fuller (who exhibited a geodesic dome at Expo 67), and Joe Colombo, whose vision for streamlined modular living corresponded with Dallegret’s own futurism.

[valentinakarga-blog]

The artist Valentina Karga shares her diaries from her adventures in search of self-sufficiency:

What does an urban garden in a European metropolis have to do with a Mars simulation base in the desert in the USA? The two stories recounted in this book unfold in antipodal places and contexts. They have, however, something in common. Self-sufficiency is a field of various interests, from individuals or small communities wanting to be autonomous for economical, ecological or political motives to the military and its desire to conquer new extra-terrestrial territories.

With contributions from Joseph Redwood Martinez and Sandra Teitge.

Limited edition!

You can order the book here

[valentinakarga-blog]

We have increasingly used data systems to trade virtual food as a speculative object.

[valentinakarga-blog]

Mr. Spoqui is a Portugal based family zine. Its creators are four siblings: Tiago (13), Blanca (16), Milena (19) and Amanda (21).

This issue’s topic is “Plastic food” and I was happy to do an interview with them.

1. How did the idea of Berlin Farm Lab came out?

BFL is a realization of a dream. As my thesis for the school of architecture I designed the, at that time called “Greenwashing manual”, and Berlin Farm Lab is the realization of that design. After I graduated from architecture I received a grant from the Graduate school of the university of the arts in Berlin to continue my research on self-sufficiency and really apply practically what I learn. My thesis is a manual for a DIY system that you can apply to your place to live a bit more (or, totally, if you want and can) self-sufficiently that can be adapted to space, needs, aesthetics, budget, climate, local resources. So, I got this manual and scaled down to my personal needs for the summer time in Berlin (the winters here here are too cold to grow food), and now I am building it, step by step. I don’t know many architects who materialized their thesis, so I consider myself very lucky. It’s a two-year’s plan, so last year I managed to be one month totally autonomous regarding food, but next year I plan water and electricity.

2. What we can find in your garden?

My garden is mobile. It changes place and content every year. This year it was in the garden of my friends’ Raphael dead grandpa’s house and I now I am looking for a place for next year. There you could find historic shorts of potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, beets, onions, strawberries, spinach, swiss chard, kale, a variety of herbs, fish, a compost toilet, a solar cooker, a rocket stove, a semi-finished biogas digester and my humanure in the state of composting.

3. What were the limitations (but specially) the challenges of the project?

The biggest limitation is the constant need of the human person to take care of the system. The lifestyle of self-sufficiency can be urban (accepting also the fact you may have to move it every year) but is not compatible with a nomadic lifestyle. After I install the system for that particular summer months you I want it to run, I cannot leave anymore. This year I left one week to visit my family and all my fish died. There was a technical complication and there was no one there to solve it.

4. What was the most incredible experience during this experiment?

 Hard to choose one. I would say the most fascinating part was from the harvest to the table in 10 minutes. I found incredible the experience of harvesting, cooking and eating there, on the spot. It reminded me of when I was a kid in my grandparents’ garden; I would cut a tomato and eat it just like this.

5. The past Saturday (15th of September) was your last day of the experiment in the garden. How do you feel about the result?

I felt really healthy eating all these fresh organic vegetables from the garden for 30 days. And the social aspect of the project filled me with a lot of positive feedback, which is exactly what I need to go on. 65 people came by and exchanged products and stories, which made the garden, become more like a social space at the end. That was an aspect I didn’t plan and I didn’t control; it just happened and evolved. I am happy to go back home and order pizza some days I have much to do and no time for cooking, but on the other hand my diet is not as perfect as in that month. I already feel the difference in my body and miss my own vegetables. The ones from the super market are not as appealing.

6. Which direction is going to take this project now?

Now I am back in my office in the graduate school together with my biogas digester that I am still trying to optimize. I am producing a small publication about the 30 days in the garden, which is going to be published by crap is good press, I am continuing the research on self-sufficient systems and I am trying to find a new home for my project. All this until March. From April and on I will start again the same experiment but more complete; I want to include self-sufficiency on energy and water. And then live 60 days totally autonomous.

7. After your personal experience, what advices would you give to someone that wants to start his own self-sufficient garden?

To be enthusiastic because it is a really great project to do, but also to take into account that this project needs discipline, patience, a lot of personal time and care. And to check the BerlinFarmLab blog for information: www.berlinfarmlab.com

8. What do you think about actual alimentation patterns?

I wouldn’t worry so much about chemicals and junk food. Of course they are still everywhere but I am quite hopeful that the way society deals with food is changing. Thanks to the internet, food awareness is raising and people are rediscovering how they like their food. Too many options and too much information though can cause confusion. If during the 90’s we had the junk food problem, today we have the opposite extremes; for example raw-foodism or any other of these dogmatic alimentation ideas. Eating exclusively raw-food as a manifestation of being super healthy is equally problematic as eating junk food, maybe even scarier because it’s a well though action that requires a lot of effort and knowledge. My interest lays more to the contemporary foodie model. They know a lot about food and they prefer more original well-cooked comfort food rather than gourmet extremities. They love organic farmer’s market, slow food, and experimenting at home with a bit more complex cooking processes: making fresh pasta, cheese, brewing beer, making your own soya sauce, ice cream, even chocolate are some examples. It is amazing how much information you can find on the web for such “unusual” cooking processes.  I think I am talking more for a combination of the foodie and the maker subculture.

Thank you Amanda!