Beyond Walls x The Soils Project
LECTURE PERFORMANCE BY BEYOND WALLS
20 AUGUST TARRAWARRA MUSEUM OF ART, HEALESVILLE, AUSTRALIA
Beyond Walls is invited to give a lecture at TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville (Melbourne), Australia. We are excited and honored to present ‘REMEMBER THE SOIL: Diasporic Perspectives on Soils’ A lecture-performance by the Beyond Walls Collective. With Glenda Pattipeilohy, Jeremy Flohr, Suzanne Rastovac and Armando Ello.
Agency, co-creation, reciprocity and empowerment form the core pillars of Beyond Walls’ approach. Though our historical and contemporary trajectories may differ, coloniality and modernity have disrupted humans’ connection to soils. Yet, it is not lost, erased or forgotten, unless we stop remembering who we are. Commencing with the public program REMEMBER THE SOIL at TarraWarra Museum of Art, Beyond Walls will unfold their practice as a diasporic collective situated in the Netherlands, collaborating with both institutions and communities. The Amsterdam-based collective shares their perspectives on soils through a diasporic lens and connects their positionality to the bigger story of resisting colonial erasures through research, storytelling and art. By delving into their individual as well as collective connections to soils and fostering active participation, Beyond Walls aims to connect to peoples and their stories in Australia.
Other speakers are Charles Esche, Director, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands; and Dr Victoria Lynn, Director, TarraWarra Museum of Art; and Dr Michelle Antoinette, Senior Lecturer and Researcher at Monash University.
The program dives deeper into decoloniality and the museum. The title of The Soils Project comes from Munir Fasheh, who proposes four ‘soils’ as core to life on earth. They are earth soil, cultural soil, communal soil and affection-spiritual soil. These are the soils that humans must nurture in order for us and all life on the planet to be cared for and nurtured by the soils in return. In what ways can the metaphor and matter of soil enable museum and cultural workers (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) to rethink the very structures that have been developed by western modernity and coloniality?