Land and Solidarity; presentations by Ez North (Landworkers’ Alliance), and Kathrin Böhm, chaired by Rebecca Beinart
After Growth is a symposium, a gathering of bodies and minds, but it is also an invitation to construct another future. At its core is the belief that prosperity does not depend on economic growth, and that – in the face of ongoing climate catastrophe – there is an urgent need to find new ways of living within planetary boundaries.
The concept of ‘degrowth’ emerges from the confluence of activism, ecology and economics, though it also sits within a larger cultural field of creative and artistic practice. Rather than producing blueprints of utopian visions, many of the contributors to this symposium work towards the creation of spaces where post-capitalist forms of life can be incubated.
This is an edited recording from Day 2 of the symposium, hosted at Nottingham Contemporary on Sunday 20 March 2022.
Ez North helps to coordinate Cultivating Justice, a collaborative project between Land In Our Names (LION), the LandWorkers’ Alliance LGBTQIA+ organising group, and Farmerama. Ez’s background is within NHS healthcare, but he’s spent the past few years doing food growing and other land-based work in the South West.
Kathrin Böhm is a London-based artist working internationally whose practice focuses on the collective re-production of public space; economy as public realm; and the everyday as a starting point for culture. Since the mid-nineties, Böhm has expanded the terms of socially engaged practice to an unprecedented scale and breadth of operation in which she co-produces complex organisational, spatial, visual and economic forms. Over the last two and a half decades she has, together with others, developed new infrastructures including Culture is a Verb 2018-21; Company: Movements, Deals and Drinks, 2014-ongoing; the Haystacks Series, since 2013; the Eco-Nomadic School, 2010- ongoing; and International Village Shop with Myvillages, 2007- ongoing.
Many of Böhm’s works stem from long-lasting collaborations. She is a founding member of the international artist group Myvillages, since 2003; the art and architecture collective Public Works, 1999 – 2012; the Centre for Plausible Economies, since 2018; and a new workers cooperative Uno Ino, 2021.
Rebecca Beinart is an artist, educator and curator, based in Nottingham. She develops research-based, collaborative and site- based projects that evolve through long-term engagement with places and people. She makes sculpture, installation and performance, and uses live engagement and public dialogue to reflect on collective histories and futures, social and environmental justice, knowledge-making, and the politics of public space. Rebecca is currently Engagement Curator at Primary, an artist-led space in Nottingham, running a public programme of commissions, workshops and events - centring co-production and community led processes.