< Program overview

Imagine soil as a tapestry of interconnected beings living in layers like clay, sand, peat, rocks and other earthly ingredients like water and air and mixed by mycelium (fungi), bacteria, small worm-like creatures and tiny soil organisms. This living soil is scarcely noticeable to us, we don’t know much about it and we may not have any emotions towards it. However, every living being on earth is (in)directly dependent on this tissue filled with tiny wonders.

Soil Life is a long-term artistic research program developed by Platform DIS, which connects farmers, artists, scientists and other living beings to this earthly tissue. This exhibition shares the title and showcases an open essay on soil. It opens up new ways of learning, feeling, doing, and regenerating when tuning in to soil (life). Here different voices and imaginations come together to investigate the crucial role that soil plays in our ecosystems.

CHISTINE HVIDT (DK/NL)
Christine Hvidt is a Danish multidisciplinary artist based in the Netherlands and Denmark with a burning heart for the peculiar life forms and stranger-than-human intelligences inhabiting the earthly ecologies. Repositioning the ‘human’ within the rhizomatic entanglement of the larger community of life, Christine explores circumstances for respectful, humble and intimate connections with the places we are situated within, our fellow planet dwellers, and the complex interdependencies of life. These connections are found through embodied and technology-based artistic situations and experiments situated between poetry, art, research, science, technology, bioacoustics, performance, audio(visual) and relational work with ecosystems and the life inhabiting them. Christine holds a BA in Art and Technology (Aalborg University, DK) and an MA from Artscience Interfaculty (University of the Arts, The Hague, NL).
 

DR. MASHARU (RU/NL)
masharu (they/them) is an earth eater and an earth lover, a founder of the Museum of Edible Earth. The Museum of Edible Earth brings together a collection of edible soils from across the globe. The museum invites the audience to review their knowledge about food and cultural traditions using creative thinking. masharu's projects combine scientific research with a personal approach and cultural practices.

In 2011 they obtained a PhD in Mathematics and graduated with honours from the Photo Academy Amsterdam. In 2013-2014 they participated in the artist-in-residence programme at Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunst in Amsterdam. In 2018 masharu was an artist fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS-KNAW).

masharu's artistic as well as scientific work has been exhibited, screened and published in more than 30 countries. Venues and events include the Word Soil Museum in Wageningen, Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Modern Art Museum in Yerevan, African Artists’ Foundation in Lagos, Spanish Cultural Centre in Guatemala City and World Design Event in Eindhoven.

The work of masharu is supported by the Mondriaan Fund.

Compost as Superfood is the project by masharu studio (Dr. masharu, Sil Zeigarnik and others). It is supported by Soil Life (programme initiated by Platform DIS and Bodemzicht Foundation), European Media Art Platform, Ars Electronica and Creative Industries Fund NL.
 

SANNE VAASSEN(NL)
Sanne Vaassen explores the fluid transition of matter and phenomena within her artistic practice, such as the cycle of water, the transformation of trees during the seasons, and the evolution of language. Central themes in her diverse works are hence time and processes of change. In doing so, Vaassen’s work shares an interface with other disciplines such as ecology, geography, history and anthropology. Her work has previously been shown in several group and solo exhibitions nationally and abroad, including the Bonnefantenmuseum (Maastricht), SALTS (Basel), Unit 1 Gallery (London), and 601Artspace (New York). She was also a resident at the Jan Van Eyck Academy in 2014-2015.

HELEN WEERES (NL)
Helen Weeres (they/them) has a background in poetry, Literary & Cultural Analysis and Gender & Sexuality Studies. Helen is fascinated by (forgotten) folklore, pagan traditions and flipping the script on anthropocentrism. Their work as a maker ranges from poetry (performances) to the design of rituals and the instruments needed to perform them. These rituals invite participants to reflect on their relationship with their ecosystem and become ecologically active rather than anthropocentrically passive. In the past, Helen was part of the founding team of intersectional feminist collective PISSWIFE and of the interdisciplinary performance collective Mot. At this moment, Helen is, amongst other things, writer in residence at the Flemish-Dutch House deBuren.