THE OTHER GARDEN: A LIVING RESEARCH SPACE
ON VISIBILITY, INCLUSIVITY AND CARE WORK IN ACADEMIA
Işıl Eğrikavuk
All of this made me feel like the ‘other’ in my work environment. I felt like an outsider. Yet, I also knew that I was not the only person who felt this way, there were other faculty members and students who were not necessarily from other geographies, but still shared this feeling of ‘otherness’. I wanted to propose a project that brought together my personal experience at the institution, which is shared by many people like me, with a theoretical framework and an artistic practice. As Sarah Ahmed says, I believe “personal is theoretical” (Ahmed, 2017). This is also another reason why in this research exposition, I first write from personal experience.
I have worked at Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) since 2017. Although I research and teach in English, during my first years I found it very difficult to be included in the infrastructure of the institution. This stemmed from several causes, the first of which was the use of German as the main operating language of the university, including all postal and email communications, institute meetings, lectures, public discussions and especially bureaucracy. Even though I learned German quickly, the language of academic bureaucracy was hard to master. The second cause was the lack of diversity and inclusivity programs in our faculty, which virtually excluded non-European perspectives. We lacked a critical platform, which would enable both students and faculty members to meet and discuss these topics together, especially with regard to students, faculty and researchers of non-European backgrounds, who are underrepresented. Finally, social space is lacking, such as a café, a mensa or an architectural structure in our building, where students and staff could encounter, socialize and talk to each other. Our building did not and still does not meet any of these criteria.
Through ‘the other garden’, we also connected with different departments within the UdK, as well as other like-minded people in Berlin. I hold my summer term classes in this space and the students enjoy the experience quite a lot. Some students defined the garden as their “safe space” where they discover and enjoy new experiences and others defined it as “a fun and deeply engaging learning platform.” These are elements that are fully related to artistic connectivity, which are our need for mutuality, reciprocity and an urgency for a shared understanding.
Our research comprises several components:
-
Creating and conducting an interdisciplinary research practice that brings together social sciences with artistic and creative practice around critical and current issues, such as the climate crisis and community engagement.
-
Conducting research that recognizes and gives voice to those who are often silenced and underrepresented, research that practices care beyond gender-biased, patriarchal, colonial and mono cultural representations.
-
Creating an intersectional understanding of art and research and bringing it together with issues of ecology, diversity and biodiversity.
-
Being open to innovative research forms, such as artistic research that bring together theory and practice.
-
Being open to non-hierarchical collaborative practices that contribute to society.
-
While collaborating with others, viewing possible conflicts, problems and confrontations as part of the research process and involving them in the research instead of ignoring them.
In the summer semester of 2023, I held a class in the garden space called ‘Artistic Research’ with a focus on ecology, in which we looked at artistic practices that are interdisciplinary within these fields and the students created their own research projects. I also lead a special interest group with MA students from our department in this space, in which we do readings, and lead discussions on gardening practices in urban contexts.
In my practice as an artist and academicI have collaborated with many people including contemporary artists, musicians, writers, a chef, a TV talk show host, an Iraqi doctor working on cancer treatment in the US, Turkish coal mine workers in Germany, and small shop owners in one of Istanbul’s historic districts, including a barber, a real estate owner and street food vendors. Importantly, I did many collaborative projects and performances with my students over the years.
At the same time, collaboration and co-creation has enormous potential to grow quickly and unexpectedly. We presented ‘the other garden’ at several conferences, classes and workshops. Through our social media, many like-minded people connected with us from within Berlin. We also created a social space in our department, for gathering together.
Literature
Ahmed, S. (2017). Living a feminist life. Durham: Duke University Press.
Becker, C. (2013). Microutopias and Pedagogies for the Twenty-First Century. In M. Ambrožič & A. Vettese (Eds.), Art as a thinking process: Visual forms of knowledge production (pp. 46-54). Berlin: Sternberg Press.
Cizek, K., & Uricchio, W. (2022). Collective wisdom: Co-creating Media for Equity and Justice. The MIT Press.
Demos, TJ. (2020). The Preserve Journal, No: 2. Pp 28-41.
Haseman, B. (2006). A Manifesto for Performative Research. Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy, No. 118. pp. 98-106. doi: 10.1177/1329878x0611800113
Kester, G. (1999). Dialogical Aesthetics: A Critical Framework For Littoral Art, Grant Kester. Retrieved October 28, 2020, from https://www.variant.org.uk/9texts/KesterSupplement.html
Kester, G. (2005). Conversation Pieces: The Role of Dialogue in Socially-Engaged Art. In Z. Kocur & S. Leung (Eds.), Theory in Contemporary Art Since 1985. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Retrieved 2020, from http://www.publicart.usf.edu/CAM/exhibitions/2008_8_ Torolab/Readings/Conversation_PiecesGKester.pdf
Kwon, M. (2002). One Place after Another : Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Ramirez, K.S., Berhe, A.A., Burt, J. et al. The future of ecology is collaborative, inclusive and deconstructs biases. Nat Ecol Evol 2, 200 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0445-7
Jennifer Rowsell & Peter Vietgen (2017) Embracing the unknown incommunity arts zone visual arts, Pedagogies: An International Journal, 12:1, 90-107,
DOI:10.1080/1554480X.2017.1283996
Sullivan, G. (2005). Art practice as research: Inquiry in visual arts. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
After negotiating with the university’s regulations, we succeeded in establishing ‘the other garden’ in early 2022. Our garden has been functioning actively since the last two years. We have been growing many different kinds of neophytes, joining climate days, holding artist and researcher talks, classes, lectures there as well as functioning as a garden and a social space. Some examples from our talks included an artist who works on making bio-plastics from potato skin, an academic/researcher who works with immigrant communities and their relationship with their plants which they brought from their homeland, or a workshop on making food from foraged food.
I view ‘the other garden’ as an artistic research platform as well, where students learn from the practices of guest artists and researchers as well as from hands-on growing neophyte plants and observing the soil throughout the year.
In our age we cannot think of ecological and sociopolitical issues as separate. Yet, as an artist and academic I would specifically point to how artists and creative thinkers can contribute to awareness of climate related problems. The artistic practice here also lies in building stronger dialogues and relationships not only with the students but also with artists, communities and groups in the neighbourhood area that thus enlarge our connectivity with larger and more diverse groups of people and living beings. This brings us once again to the ideas of artistic connectivity, which includes recognizing our need for a sense of community, belonging and safety. It is in this space that our potential as humans to grow lies, just like that of our neighbouring plants.x
Introducing my initial idea to a group of MA students, I started collaborating with them on designing a garden concept. We decided that this garden would not only be a green area where we would grow plants, but a living research space, which would put ‘otherness’ in focus. In this space, together with my students, we wanted to hold classes, organize talks and lectures on the intersection of art and ecology, as well as grow wild plants, namely weeds, which are often considered ‘others’ in gardening. Our focus has been on growing ‘neophytes’, a certain type of wild plant not native to a geographical region, yet introduced through human influence. In our first year, we found eight different plants from different geographies which had migrated to Germany hundreds of years ago through world fairs, wars and colonization. By involving the neophytes as our collaborators in the garden, we wanted to create a bio-diverse space in which we would include plants, insects and other living forms and search for ways of possible collaboration. We also wanted to look for ways of collaborating with our neighbours in the university district.
I am a huge believer in collaboration and co-creation because I believe there is a need for more socially engaged, creative, innovative and connective research in today’s universities. I believe that many universities will benefit from such work due to its socially engaged and creative propositions and the way it connects different communities. is why artistic connectivity is so significant. Connective practices can provide a participatory and collaborative atmosphere by activating students, supporting teachers as well as researchers and facilitating students in innovative and interdisciplinary ways as well as engaging with local groups, and that is where its potential to create change lies.
On a larger level, ‘the other garden’ is both a physical and a metaphorical space for re-thinking our positions and interconnectedness to each-other, to less visible living beings and to the world, by critically raising reserach questions and exploring them. It is a space that is open to new and creative ways of thinking, challenges existing structures and theoretical discourses as well as the position of living beings, without a hierarchy among species. As art historian TJ Demos says:
Connectivity, co-creation and collaboration involves many challenges. While establishing ‘the other garden’, we also experienced conflicts and confrontations. Our first confrontation was with university management. They strictly opposed our idea of digging into the ground, and we had to negotiate by agreeing to have raised garden beds instead. They were also very strict about what kinds of wild plants we could grow there. We had to carefully select, plan and present what we would grow there beforehand to the university management. Still, we chose to view them as collaborators in the process instead of opponents.
Since 2017, I have been teaching artistic research as a methodology class at the UdK. As explained above, artistic research proposes research as a collaboration between theory and practice. In my 6 years of experience at the UdK, I have observed that students learn immensely through conducting practice-based research. In the summer semester of 2023, some student projects involved researching Berlin’s forageable food paths and making digital maps, researching and experimenting with soil fertility through discarded cigarettes or finding out the history of trees in Berlin and designing a card game. These projects include a written paper accompanying the practice-based part and reflect related literature and theories within their subjects.
For system change to actually be a compelling politics, it has to be systemic and comprehensive, climate solutions have to be one with sociopolitical ones. Decarbonization has to be linked to anti-racism, to economic justice and equitable access to technology, to clean air, water and soil, to democratisation and political inclusion. These are all environmental concerns according to an intersectionalist ecology. (Demos, 2020).
In 2021, I decided to move from these personal experiences into a practice-based form and proposed a project that would bring together art, research, community, ecology, diversity and inclusivity. Bringing together my pedagogical philosophy based on equity and equality and my goal of a more open and inclusive university, I proposed establishing a garden in the backyard of our university building.
