Discursive Seed Bomb

Discursive Seed Bombs in "At the Headwaters," Gary Indiana

Discursive Seed Bombs, an installation of language, seeds and agents-of-fertility (mud, mycelia, medicines), for the art exhibition "At the Headwaters", Gary Indiana, Nov 6-22. 

On November 15, poems and texts will be spoken out loud in an aleatorypublic reading and seed bomb making workshop. Seeds will be cobbled together with mycelia, soil and cut-up texts, and turned into seed bombs to be scattered along the Calumet watershed, to (maybe) generate new lives.

A copy of all contributions will be archived with event documentation. Contributors will receive an image.

Send poems via email to sacamixta@gmail.com, subject line Seed Bomb, before November 10.

Or by post by Nov 10 to:
Seed Bomb,
Attn: Meg Roman
P.O. Box 2405
Gary, IN 46403
Include your street mailing address if you prefer a printed documentation (as opposed to a digital image.)

Discursive Seed Bombs

 

Discursive Seed Bombs- a workshop within "At the Headwaters," an exhibition about the Calumet River at Miller Beach Art Gallery, Gary, Indiana. For we invite poets and wanna be poets to share something they have written with the river and its banks by sending their words out with the seeds. WE will ask for writers to submit work and share in our concrete/ cobb/cobbed/cobbled readings and throwings..

Group readings will be composed from sliced (shredded) poems, mixed with seed growing instructions (from shredded seed packets), medicine ingestion warnings, and slivers of text.

Photos from Discursive Seed Bombs in NYC, City Bird Gallery, September 28, 2015, as part of Lijiang Studio INDEX.

Lashihai Village puddle water

melt with us. about not being individuals

melt with us

An essay by duskin drum and me for the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest Issue #9.
We have also reprinted as a color pamphlet.
If you want a copy, write me at sacamixta at gmail dot com

“The refuse between mind and matter is a mine of information” Robert Smithson

One of the key concepts conveyed by permacultural practice is the reimagining of that which is in-between the barriers of a human built world: roads, fences, buildings. In permaculture, borders and edges are encounter sites where translation and adaptation between species encourages diversity and resiliency.

We humans also have edges. (1) We participate in multiple encounters and translations with the edges of other bodies within context-suffused mediums called “environments.”

The seed bomb is a permacultural meme that intensifies awareness of this participation. Popularized by microbiologist and farmer Yasunobu Fukuoka (2) and the New York’s Urban Guerillas circa 1973, seed bombs, a mix of seeds and compost rolled into damp mud balls, were also used by prehistoric farmers. Because seeds are lightweight, their mix facilitates distribution and germination by providing weight and protective cover; tossed over a border or fence, the ball, grenade, or bomb waits until rain melts it into the ground. As the seeds swell and cotyledons emerge, seedlings are supported by microbes and the chemistry of root and soil. (3) An amalgam of seeds, fungi, microbe and ground becomes a manifesto for the fullness of in-between.

continue reading at joaap.org

Arctic glitchscape

Digitally altered digital photograph, series of 10. 
2013.  Variable size

Region from Below: drifting in Southern Illinois

A Region from below is a landscape of energy hidden from view. With Compass, we examined this idea in a drift through Southern Illinois. The metaphor of a territory buried underneath, with perhaps insurgent potential is fitting for how Southern Illinois is like Chicago’s back 40, not only at the ‘bottom’ of the state, but also layered in time, for much of the physical power and materials, particularly coal, that helped build Chicago into an economic powerhouse were pulled out of this ground. Southern Illinois has been serially plundered since the early 1800s, starting with salt, then oil, coal, oil and more oil and now gas through high pressure deep well hydrofracking. More on Region from below: drifting in Southern Illinois at Compass in the Midwest Cultural Corridor 
2014