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1. project
   Making kin - the web Nicolas Galeazzi
   19 May 2019
   posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi

   'Troubled Gardens' are cultivated by making kin with the multiplicity of our research. We want to mingle, mix and merge different aspects of our researches into each other, so they create affinity, friends, siblings, partners, kids - kin. Donna Haraway proposes to make kin with things, species and other ‚companions‘ in order to web another "we" - an other idea of the social and with this a possibility to become-with our habitat than to colonise it. 

   The experiment in this block is to ‚adopt‘ aspects of someone else’s research and accept it as part of your own research. Adopting means taking care of someone else's, as it would be your's!

   During the opening week, we all have put an aspect of our research free for adoption and picked a basked with an adoptee to care for it and integrate it into the life of our research till the Half Way Days of this block. There we will set it again free and hand it over to new parents - who will care for it till the end week where the original parent will find their research aspect back, changed, part of the culture of another research and richer in experience!

   This cluster of posts shows the trajectory of the adoptees and the all new and old parents are invited to share and tell stories of their adoptees.

    

    
2. postgraduate program
   workshop
   Troubled Gardens
   Workshop 2 :: Westland / BUITEN/DEHORS straying
   29 April 2019
   posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
   Vincent P. Alexis
   case of: Nicolas Galeazzi
   
   Making kin – the web
   

   Not far from the Zenne Garden a wasteland area expands along the canal. It is one of those areas looking empty, lost and not taken care of. BXL WILD LIFE and BUITEN/DEHORS is a collective of research and experimentation which proposes to consider the urban as the natural environment of man. Since 2012 the collective focuses on the relationships between maintenance, property, and inhabitation of areas. This year BUITEN / DEHORS decided to start on a piece of land located between Digue du Canal and rue des Goujons in Anderlecht, the establishment of what is called an adventure playground*.
   This project is part of a broader research questioning the place of children in the city, the practice of an anti-authoritarian education, the citizen's auto-construction of the city, radical ecology as a reconsideration of the relation between man and his environment. As so it can be seen as an outcome as well as the beginning of something unexpected.
The adventure field is as much about the physical structure that we try to put in place as its context.
The land, located in an area of current "urban renewal" belongs to a private developer, Atenor, lurking for the right moment for exploitation. Officially considered as a wasteland, it is one of those areas looking empty, lost and not taken care for. Its current inhabitants are most invisible, the soil polluted and the (non-)maintenance very diverse. BUITEN/DEHORS is occupying it with no authorization.
The structure is made of second-hand wood, thrown by people in the street, collected daily in the surrounding neighborhood, Cure-ghem. Like our knowledge of the site, it is gradually built up according to our weekly onsite visits. It is built and destroyed, with no preconceived plans, by us and the children passing by. An ongoing process, to be continued in many different ways.

   
   *The first junk playgrounds were based on the ideas of Carl Theodor Sørensen, a Danish landscape architect, who noticed that children preferred to play everywhere but in the playgrounds that he designed. In 1931, inspired by the sight of children playing in a construction site, he imagined "A junk playground in which children could create and shape, dream and imagine a reality". He aimed to provide children living in cities the same opportunities for play that were enjoyed by children living in rural areas. The first adventure playground was set up by a Workers Cooperative Housing Association in Emdrup, Denmark, during the German occupation of the 1940s. The playground at Emdrup grew out of the spirit of resistance to Nazi occupation and parents' fears that "their children's play might be mistaken for acts of sabotage by soldiers". Source wikipedia -adventure playground, 12/04/2019

    
3. postgraduate program
   workshop
   Troubled Gardens
   Workshop 1 :: Zenne Garden digging
   29 April 2019
   posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
   Kobe Mattihys
   case of: Nicolas Galeazzi
   
   Making kin – the web
   

   This is an elaborate permaculture garden with many small experiments from water cleaning plants to interspecies labour. Kobe, who will also be one of the dedicated mentors - is working in this garden for 12 years together with a collective of various artists and activists. It is quite a sensitive ecosystem. Not only these human relationships and diverse projects but also the wild animals and insects that are populating the area have to be taken care for while entering this garden. What does this mean for us how can we become their companions?
   We will engage and relate to this 'refuge' situated somehow hidden behind industries along the neglected Zenne river throughout the whole block. It will be our primary place of gathering, and therefore we will also physically support the collective in gardening and construction work

    
4. information
   postgraduate program
   Troubled Gardens
   Workshops and Companions 29 April 2019
   posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
   Making kin – the web

    

   The workshops of this block will be 'gardens' - and therefore for once of spacial nature. I propose to ask these gardens to be our teachers, to learn from them, to let them put us at work, to ask them to suggest a practice to us, to make them structure our time and our collective research attempts etc. The gardens are the 'education' framework and the 'atelier.'

    

   For this, we need interpreters and people who have tools, figures or behaviours to engage, read and work within the workshops. These interpreters - probably we will call them ‚companions' - will build a network, a web of knowledge, together with us and amongst themselves. I would like to invite quite some of them to accompany us - sometimes alone sometimes in couples or groups.

    

   For further details watch out for following posts.

    

    
5. information
   postgraduate program
   Troubled Gardens
   Three Days a Week 24 April 2019
   posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
   29 April 2019
   28 July 2019
   Making kin – the web
   

    

   To engage in gardens and use them kind of as our ‚atelier‘ needs a certain regularity.  Therefore, I propose to meet more or less three days per week. To all of these days one or more companion shall be invited. These days may resound the three ecologies proposed by Felix Guattari:

   One day we will focus on gardening (the environmental ecology), helping with planting, weeding, constructing etc. whatever is needed to do.

   One other day we will engage in weaving the social tissue by exchanging and discussing ideas, experiment with practices, and sharing the work on the adoptions.

   On the third day, we want to give space to the development of the individual research ecologies, for a shared reading relevant texts (which might reflect the mental ecologies). Our ‚companions’ will join us on these days, connect to our practices or propose a specific approach from their side.

   Of course, these days are not apportionable in ecological categories, and the practices will strongly interrelate. We will have to find out together how these foci can influence the practices and how we develop rituals and methods that help guiding us through the various experience of ecologies and ecosystems.