[-empyre-] No Free Lunch

[Amanda McDonald Crowley]

On Mar 8, 2016, at 7:26 PM, hrn>refarm wrote:

> 
> sorry my delay but it’s spring time here and 24h per day are not enough..
> I’m a designer, portuguese but I live in cambrils, cataluña. I’ve started the refarmthecity.org project 8 years ago and since then I’ve been focus my work on research the urban agriculture universe: seeds, soil, low and high open technologies, sensors, urban material resources aka trash and building together workshops.
> 
> 


thanks Hernani!

What I find interesting is that here you're describing on the scale of your refarmthecity project, some of the same issues that Stefani and Marina were raising with their Food and the City mapping project. The issues are so complex and layered, that you only achieve interesting and useful results when you deploy complex systems thinking to the issues you're trying to address.

soil, seeds, compost, water, high tech, low tech, (no tech), sensors, compositing, salvaging materials from the urban waste stream (I'm sure Mary will talk to this too, when she finds time to contribute!!), building, community development, science, art, citizen action ...

Perhaps some of you might like to talk about how you build, nurture, and develop the kinds of complex communities of experts and amateurs you need to realize these such layered projects and conversations? And why is that important to how we think about food and art specifically?

I recall when both you and Stefani did residencies at Eyebeam, you both spent a lot of time working on developing collaborative partnerships. How did that happen and what were the successes and failures? And both of you spent time both upstate on Shu Lea Cheang's project farm at Andes, as well as time in New York City doing workshops and building out your ideas. What was the benefit of having both the city and the farm as locations to do your work and research?

Amanda