KOOZ The exhibition at Framer Framed takes its name from the groundbreaking 1975 book by Masanobu Fukuoka, on ecological thought and practice: The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming. Could you expand on the relevance of this text in terms of how it has shaped your practice?

ILIANA FOKIANAKI Fukuoka’s book came to my attention since it is one strand of ecological thought that also discusses care theory, which I have been researching with The Bureau of Care for a few years now. It is an important book; arriving from a non-Western context and legacy of farming, specific ways of cultivating and treating land that have been traditional to Japan and Korea — it caused a global sensation in the 1980s and has remained popular ever since. It is a book that is based on concepts and paradigms that are lost in time. It offers a simple but very solid approach of care for land, care for the human, care for the fair share, insofar that it promotes minimal interference and following the ‘tropes’ of nature, if you will.

KOOZ The research developed by Fukuoka is part of a body of work that prompted scientists and scholars such as David Holmgren and Bill Mollison to coin the term permaculture in 1978 as a notion which was rooted in local cultures, customs and practices. How does the exhibition seek to re-define permaculture?

IF The exhibition does not seek to re-define permaculture as such — rather plays with the term to discuss its values and concepts in the cultural field, aiming to discuss the permanent culture of permaculture. What could it mean to think of permanence in a world that is slowly collapsing in front of our eyes? I am experimenting with ways to think of permaculture as a format of thinking, as a process that can be expanded and discussed through the curatorial of the exhibition itself. We use a ‘zoning’ system to organise and lead viewers through the exhibition — I was lucky enough to share this vision with the exhibition designers, Tal and Katharina Sook Wilting.

KOOZ As you say, the exhibition is organised through the permaculture zone system. Could you take us through it and the statements it pursues?

IF The exhibition layout operates more or less along the contours of a house and its surroundings. In the garden we see the ‘shepherd’ sculptures and plant drawings of Nora Severios, the lamenting stones of Edgar Calel or the fabric paintings by Citra Sasmita on revivals or revisitings of feminist tropes in traditional Balinese painting. Meanwhile in the house, we visit other works: Denise Ferreira da Silva & Arjuna Neuman's film essay Soot Breath on pollution, extraction and care as a mechanism of survival; Bik van der Pol's works with two far-flung communities with similar responses to climate catastrophe; Himali Singh Soin's mystical tale of a mountain being devoured by both statecraft and nuclear pollution alike; Kyriaki Goni's response to gross touristification and climate catastrophe, and more commentaries on colonialism and its effect on plant migration. I felt that this assembly was one way to approach some of the aspects of climate catastrophe today — by projecting them onto the immediate and small-scale: our habitat, our house.

KOOZ The exhibition foregrounds the legacy of knowledge systems that have been thriving despite and separate from heteronormative patriarchal Western hegemonies and colonial violence. As a curator, how do you approach the format of the exhibition as a knowledge system?

IF Exhibitions, I feel, do not have limits, given that they ignite the imagination and that is limitless by default. They have limits in their political potency and they have sometimes spatial limits: they are bound by walls and they have to end somewhere. But the role of art in my humble opinion is this, to make us think further, to light fires in the soul and the mind.

KOOZ Through artistic practices that call for degrowth, the exhibition explores examples and imaginaries of sustainable futures. In the words of Amitav Gosh, to what extent is the current climate crisis a crisis of the imagination?

IF Indeed, we are in a crisis of imagination and unfortunately a lot of contemporary art that abides with the rules of the market does not point us this way. I am always looking at the misfits; those who operate outside neoliberal market systems. Such artists are often the ones who have more to offer in terms of a sociopolitical imaginary, for possible futures of equality and polyphony.

KOOZ Albeit grounded in the local, the exhibition strives for planetary consciousness and intersectional awareness. In wanting to connect a sustainable past with a sustainable future, to what extent does this require shifting from a global to a planetary approach?

IF To quite an extensive extent I think. It is interesting that you ask this because we get confused at times, but the global as a concept goes hand in hand with globalisation, and evidently neoliberalism. So to think of the planetary pre-supposes an emphasis on the broader context of an entire solar system or beyond. It may also imply a wider scope that includes other planets or celestial bodies — while both terms often refer to things on a worldwide scale, "planetary" can sometimes imply a broader perspective that includes the entire solar system or beyond. But most importantly, the term planetary today recognises what exactly permaculture and many other theories highlight, the interconnectedness between species, and our interdependency. So it is very different to the anthropocentric perspective of the global, which again given that it is connected to neoliberalism, omits to underscore these interspecies interdependencies. This while acknowledging humanity's role as a dominant force shaping the planet's future, or de-futuring.

Bio

iLiana Fokianaki is a curator, theorist and educator based in Bern, Athens and Rotterdam. In spring 2024 she was appointed the new Director of Kunsthalle Bern. Her research focuses on formations of power and how they manifest under the influence of geopolitics, national identity and cultural and anthropological histories, with a special interest in the ethics and politics of care. In 2013 she founded State of Concept Athens, the first non-profit institution of its kind in Greece, which she directs to this day. State of Concept has worked with artists such as Forensic Architecture, Kader Attia, Sanja Ivekovic, Laure Prouvost, Jonas Staal, Metahaven a.o. while collaborating with international curators such as Antonia Alampi, WhW and Nick Aikens. Her books, GOSSIPS-womXn gather and The Bureau of Care: A Handbook, will be published by Archive Books in 2024.

Federica Zambeletti is the founder and managing director of KoozArch. She is an architect, researcher and digital curator whose interests lie at the intersection between art, architecture and regenerative practices. In 2015 Federica founded KoozArch with the ambition of creating a space where to research, explore and discuss architecture beyond the limits of its built form. Parallel to her work at KoozArch, Federica is Architect at the architecture studio UNA and researcher at the non-profit agency for change UNLESS where she is project manager of the research "Antarctic Resolution". Federica is an Architectural Association School of Architecture in London alumni.