‘On The Field’: Growing Caring Systems
in Collaboration with ART GENE’s REAL @ Barrow ‘Allotment Soup’. Where she, together with local residents, built and grew a live fabricated living communal space using mycelium spores. A living g space for producing, eating, sharing, discussing, and creating a manifesto of how we can develop a resilient substrate with a caring system, so we and the natural environment can grow, live and flourish together sustainably - On The Field
This artists residency was a live research and development to explore, experiment, discuss and collaborate in growing furniture from fungus’s living root system, mycelium. Mycelium is a network of fungal threads that connect to form a sustainable and eco-friendly bio fabrication material when grown within a substrate allowing it to colonize and obtains its nourishment.
This is a living process - which needs the correct nourishment, time, environment, climate, and air to breath. Each element symbiotically connected to enable the mycelium network to flourish or fail, and in itself, its production reflects the precariousness of natural/human ecosystems.
During the initial R&D test period, Samantha began to spend time with the different people who work on Allotment Soup, also known as ‘The Field’, to understand it’s ephemeral and seasonal nature. Observing, talking, working and listening. Ove this period, it became apparent, that there was not only a natural system growing on the field, but also a human system of people working on it in tandem, together, and caring each other. Art Gene, allotment holders and migrant volunteers, on their way, hopefully to their new permanent home. All making their mark on the field and sharing a communal understanding of the work needed care for it, without sharing a common language. So, Samantha began to create a ‘language of the field’, translating commonly used words that are used when growing food into codex to be used both functionally and also to grow and embed within the living furniture as a living testament of the people who have become part it, until like all things natural the furniture degrades and is put back int the soil to nourish it. Additionally Supported by Arts Council Englands DYCP.
