[DIEGO]

Click on the image to see it bigger…

Me and Lucas gave a talk yesterday as part of the Lunch Time Lecture series at SCA, to whoever wanted to know a bit more about what is actually happening in the courtyard beside the library: Tending.

After brainstorming about how to tackle the (not) lecture we resolved a few points: 1 we wanted to be fun and light, the guests were on their lunch break after all; 2 we wanted it to cover what is Tending, what happened so far, give a short over-arching idea of the concept of Art as social relations, give a short overview of a few art projects which dealt with the concept of food (or food production) as art and gardening (or ecological co-habitation) as art; bring the Tending project outside of the art bubble, by placing it in the wider debates now pressing society; present what we (me and Lucas) do outside of Tending; bring in the presentation other fellow travelers so far; invite all guests to participate and walk to the garden.

To keep it snappy we decided to break it in short sections, of 5 minutes each, with one person only speaking at any given point. Somewhat I felt this delivery would give better the idea of plurality within the project: different voices having all a fare share of attention.
Heather spoke of her involvement, and of the community surrounding the SCA campus, an important aspect which allows Tending to truly ingrain itself in a much wider social reality.
Incidentally there is going to be a Verge planting happening this w/e in Rozelle, see Heather’s corner for details.
Great way to get to meet the local green promoters.

We offered some mustard greens and lettuce from the garden to all, and thanks to Daniel’s questioning of the disengagement on our behalf with the bureaucracy surrounding the implementation of the project, we adventured into some interesting conversation about social dynamics and transparency, or the lack of.
We will surely talk more about his ideas and questionings.

Above there is a fantastic thought map by Lucas, with which he presented the complexities underlying the project, yet, the simplicity of growing and letting grow, overshadow and mellow down the implications.

Thanks all for coming to the talk, I will be tending on Thursday next, pop in, have a tea.

[DIEGO]

So, here it is, Tending day September 2.
But first a few more things about August 28..
The Open day was a nice rumbling day of teas and chats (as Lucas wrote below) with all sorts of individuals, most of whom were looking for the Ceramic Department of the campus (one courtyard along from Tending).
Many found it amusing and interesting that with Tending there is de facto the possibility of having gardening as an art subject (well, kind of, nothing official as a subject there), and support was eagerly collected 🙂
On the day we also met with the Friends of Callan Park group, a local advocacy group set-up as far back as 1998, when the then government unveiled the plans to redevelop the extensive grounds.
Sydney College of the Arts is within Callan Park, so it is very important to start communication with this group about the fate of the environment around the campus.
I myself had already participated at a couple of meetings of the groups in the past years, and therefore I’m marginally familiar with the issues.
There is going to be a number of activities organized by the lobbing group this coming Sunday, 12 September, in conjunction with History Week, you can look at the flier here. So come along to learn about Callan Park in the past, present and auspicable future.

But lets take it in steps, and go back to Thursday the 2nd of September, which was marked by the very welcome rain, indeed it rained for 4 days!
The garden beds are doing quite well, with the potatoes already sprouting in Baruchello’s, Marty Jay’s, Cesare and Anthony’s beds..
you see, me n Lucas jokingly decided to give names to the various elements, and being art-inclined kind-of-people we gave ‘arty’ names to them, so the 4 existing potatoes experiments (two in wire, two in tyre) are Baruchello, after Gianfranco Baruchello, Italian artist, wire; Marty jay, Sydney artist, wire; Cesare, after Cesare Pietroiusti, another Italian artist, tyre; and Anthony, after Anthony Gormley, English artist (which we don’t really like that much).
Plenty of elements still to be named, we’re very open for suggestions, so come down, have a look at it and tell us what makes you think of 🙂

Anyway, for the day we wanted to set up a second compost bin, so that we can turn the left-overs from Betty’s cafe’ and aerate them, speeding up the process of composting.

Above we can see Lucas adding cardboard (carbon reach material) to the compost bin, already filled with food scraps (nitrogen rich material).
We also fitted the tap with a split, so that we could water the gardens without unplugging Liz Day’s watering system for the grass farm, and got a bunch of more mulch, so that we wouldn’t need to water that much anyway.

One last addition to the day , and the garden, was a donation from Jack, a refugee agave, a beautiful plant that we all agreed looked very much at home in its new.. home.

So, that takes us to next Tending day, which as I mentioned before, will be on this coming Sunday 12, rather than Thursday, as we will be meeting more locals during History Week’s events.
🙂