RESIDENCY 09/2024

ESTAÇÃO COOPERATIVA de Casa Branca, Casa Branca, Portugal

In 2024, Michela Dal Brollo and Inés Ballesteros participated in a residency in Casa Branca, an old railway village inhabited by a few dozen of people in the interior of the region of Alentejo in Portugal. Our focus during the residency was to work with the ingredients and natural materials that were available locally at that time and, with some abundance, spices of plants that manage to survive the heat of the driest season of the year in a decertified landscape, some of them centuries old, others arriving from distant lands, some wild, and some domesticated.

During the residency, we processed the plants we collected into food and biomaterial recipes, gathering as well some seasonal local recipes from neighbors.

This research was presented and transformed into an artistic video titled: Respigar Espinhos and a sculptural piece named MUTA, created with biomaterials. The two works were shown during an open event and exhibition at the museum Terras de Ferro. The interplay between these two works invites reflection on the landscape and territorial resources through the metaphor of the recipe. The final exhibition was accompanied by a food event where we prepared recipes discovered during the residency, cooked with living equipment tools: Cum-panis and Mud fire.

RESPIGAR ESPINHOS

short film

The film Respigar Espinhos presents itself as an experimental archive of biomaterial and food recipes research, accompanied by spatial and environmental reflections. The film highlights the connection to the local landscape, blending traditional knowledge and various processes of food recipes and biomaterial experimentation.

Inspired by thorns, mucilage sap, and fibers of local plants, the artists humorously personified the vegetal ingredients of the presented recipes, prompting reflections on the reciprocity between human bodies and plant bodies.

The movie was shown at Museum Terras de Ferro, casa Branca, Portugal and MUSE Museum, Trento Italy

MUTA

Sculpture

In the Alentejo tradition, women sew patchwork bags for bread made from fabric scraps. This technique inspired the creation of MUTA, pieces sewn together from self-produced bioplastic and plant-based papers. Muta is reminiscent of a map and skin left behind by a hybrid creature. The materials from which MUTA is made are derived from heat-resistant plant species such as cactus thistles and acorns, capable of surviving arid landscapes.

Produced in the context of the artistic residency at ESTAÇÃO COOPERATIVA de Casa Branca

with the financial assistance of the European Union. Culture moves Europe.

LIST OF EXPLORED RECIPES

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Intervention in Public Space, Residences, Uncategorised

livingequipment22 January 20247 February 2024

The Last Summer

A short film by Ines Ballesteros, Michela Dal Brollo and Alicja Nowicz

RESIDENCY and INTERVENTION IN PUBLIC SPACE 7/2023

Halo Kultura, Międzytorze, Gdynia ,Poland

In 2023 during fourteen summer days, Michela Dal Brollo, Ines Ballesteros, and Alicja Nowicz take part in the dynamics of the Międzytorze. To start relating with the space they use a tool called cum-panis, a self-made portable pizza oven.

During the moments of sharing, the phones used for filming pass from hand to hand, thus questioning who is the observer and who is the observed subject.

FILM SYNOPSIS

The last summer became a testimony of Międzytorze, a space in a postindustrial area of Gdynia (PL) that borders the city centre.

In contrast to the hectic surroundings, life in Międzytorze moved in slow motion, as if waiting for its end.

This temporary unproductive land breaks the density of the urban landscape, becoming the house of human and non-human inhabitants, welcoming erratic beings and wild plant species.

A group of homeless people gave Międzytorze new rules, transforming it into a place with its own internal geography. Areas called Portugal or Spain were public spaces furnished with objects rejected by the city, spaces with room for confrontation, mutual support, and sharing frustrations.

The story of Międzytorze is the same story of millions of other places in the world. The wild cherry trees and spontaneous plants were replaced by skyscrapers and its inhabitants were forced to emigrate, defining a new periphery. The summer ended and with the spring came the bulldozers to destroy this place as we knew it. Real estate developers lay the foundations for skyscrapers to grow.

Produced in the context of the artistic residency at Halo Kultura

Co-financed by the City of Gdynia and Flanders State of the Art.

The movie was shown at Halo Kultura, Gdynia, and in the Archipel site and Het Bos, Antwerp.

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All Posts, Exhibitions, Intervention in Public Space

livingequipment30 October 202230 January 2024

Art go East

EXHIBITION and INTERVENTION IN PUBLIC SPACE 10/2022

Biennial for Contemporary Art, Leipzig, Germany

In the context of the ART GO EAST biennial we participate in the exhibition “To enchant” at Poege Haus In Leipzig together with the artists, Aleksandra Majzel, Gijs Watershoot and Rien Schellemans

We use the exhibition space as an open studio space to organize an intervention in public space.

“The living equipment” intrudes a small portion of public space. We proposed to the participants a game to create a story by reimagining infrastructures and characters of the surrounding space. Each invented character, needs another participant to complete and animate it.
The Gelatinografo and cum panis were the devices used to imagine a place with other relationships and gravity. The intervention in public space concludes with the creation of a small publication.

Fotos: Nathalie Valeska Schüler

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All Posts, Intervention in Public Space

livingequipment13 May 202230 January 2024

Stone Soup Session

INTERVENTION IN PUBLIC SPACE 05/2022

Supported by the research group B&M reinvented (RAFA), Den Dam, Antwerp, Belgium

On the occasion of the soup session, we presented our research methodology on a work-in-progress site of the Den Dam, Antwerp, under the bridge of the ring (R1).

We present ourselves with Ruotala, our portable studio on wheels. We introduce our methodology of research and show how we use our research tools Living Equipment to collaborate with “liminal” public spaces of Antwerp.

The food prepared was made with collected spontaneous weeds. The artists talk about each plant present in the recipes introducing their strategy to reproduce and transform human-build environments and how their behaviors can be an inspiration for artistic methodology.

On the menu and protagonist of the Soup session:

-Soup with nettle, wild hops, elder ground and garlic mustard.

-Garlic mustard pesto.

-Wild hops in oil.

-Sourdough bread with nettle flour

-Japanese knotweed cake

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All Posts, Intervention in Public Space

livingequipment24 September 20217 February 2024

Open Laboratory Weeks

INTERVENTION IN PUBLIC SPACE 23-24 09/2022

Supported by the research group B&M reinvented (RAFA), Antwerp, Belgium

https://www.ap-arts.be/evenement/body-material-reinvented-open-laboratory-weeks

As a contribution to the Open Laboratory, we temporarily activated a common space in the parking space of the Academy at Blindestraat.

We perform Cum-Panis to prepare food together with the participant and we perform the Gelatinografo to print on location. On this occasion, we used for the first time a Living equipment – Mapping Tool specifically made to map the threshold space of Antwerp.

These tools were used to open conversation about the potential of so-called “liminal places”.

During the “Open Laboratory Weeks”, we create situations to share knowledge around the following questions: How can we use liminal places for diverse and heterogeneous urban practices? How can we as artists and citizens reclaim them as public spaces?

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All Posts, Intervention in Public Space

livingequipment19 July 20207 February 2024

Stone Soup

RESIDENCY 07/2020

Supported by Kunstenplatform PLAN B Antwerp, Belgium

Stone Soup, is inspired by an oral story in which two travellers travel from village to village. When they arrive in the village, they announce that they will make a soup with just a stone, they only ask each resident to bring a vegetable. In the end, the entire village eats the soup they made together. With that story in mind and equipped with nothing more than a portable oven and some kitchen utensils, we made an itinerary from Antwerp to the Ruppel River, where we spent the night in residents’ gardens and cooked with what was available. Using local ingredients and knowledge of how to make something with them to organize a collective meal.

Stone soup is conceived as itinerant research, to experiment with a nomadic methodology in rural areas.

The Living Equipment cum-panis and gelatinografo have been performed during the itinerary in Noeverm in the Ruppel region. The collected materials, about the territory’s ecologically and socially complex history, have been edited into the Stone Soup publication and redistributed on the location.

You can find a diary of the itinerary here and an interview with the artist here .