In May 2024, I launched Part 2 of DE-FENCE at NATURE Lab in Troy NY. For the installation event, participants helped install deconstructed fence posts (specially carved with compositions that emerged from community drawing exercises), and planted medicinal seeds and seedlings from the artist’s Food Forest Studio. We continued to discover already existing medicinal plants growing in the marginal spaces and edge conditions of the neighborhood, discussed neighborhood environmental health conditions, and discussed the ways that marginal medicinal plants can participate in the bioremediation and protection of the ecosocial communities around NATURE Lab. “The Line Becomes a Territory” is the header from a section in a forthcoming book entitled Ruderal Witchcraft by Margaretha, co-written with Oliver Kellhammer, and explores the ways that communities who want to resist the forces of capitalist accumulation can find power in, occupy, and expand boundary zones, edges and fence-lines.
Accompanying the installation are risograph printed zines offering a materia medica of neighborhood medicinals, and a large format map and design of the DE-FENCE medicine forest. Full project description here.
DE-FENCE Part 2: The Line Becomes a Territory
In May 2024, I launched Part 2 of DE-FENCE at NATURE Lab in Troy NY. For the installation event, participants helped install deconstructed fence posts (specially carved with compositions that emerged from community drawing exercises), and planted medicinal seeds and seedlings from the artist’s Food Forest Studio. We continued to discover already existing medicinal plants growing in the marginal spaces and edge conditions of the neighborhood, discussed neighborhood environmental health conditions, and discussed the ways that marginal medicinal plants can participate in the bioremediation and protection of the ecosocial communities around NATURE Lab. “The Line Becomes a Territory” is the header from a section in a forthcoming book entitled Ruderal Witchcraft by Margaretha, co-written with Oliver Kellhammer, and explores the ways that communities who want to resist the forces of capitalist accumulation can find power in, occupy, and expand boundary zones, edges and fence-lines.
Accompanying the installation are risograph printed zines offering a materia medica of neighborhood medicinals, and a large format map and design of the DE-FENCE medicine forest. Full project description here.