(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Of: Elisabeth Medbøe
The liner bounces around me, waiting for goodies to pop up as I pave the soil and disperse animal manure. Along with fields and all kinds of insects in the earth, traces of past times are constantly emerging: potsherds with fine patterns and rusty pieces of metal. This is food land owned by the municipality in Oslo, which with great joint efforts by users and others with a long-term urban environment perspective was saved from demolition a few years ago.
But in the mind a murmur nonetheless murmurs. Food soil is a limited resource that is not adequately valued and taken care of. Every minute, worldwide, 30 football pitches with fertile soil are disappearing. Why is the food soil so vulnerable? At the same time, we know that the world's population is increasing. Access to sufficient nutritious food is a human right. How can we secure this human right for the future if the food soil is wasted away? Parallel to the climate crisis?
Socially engaged art is regularly sought after, while many believe that the art sphere should not carry such a responsibility – that it would be instrumental art, and that is five words. It was certainly innovative in its time when French philosopher and politician Victor Cousin in 1836 launched the slogan Art for art, which means that a work of art should be judged only on the basis of art's own laws. The work should be independent of the more or less random moral, religious or social trends of the time. He was based on Immanuel Kant's aesthetics. It amazes me that Kant's aesthetics are constantly referred to as a norm – was he not also a child of time and place, and characterized by that when he defined art's own laws?
The driving force for artists has always been a search for insight and recognition. That was also the case for the Impressionists as they explored light and color, even though it fit in with the mantra art for the sake of art. But we live in a different time, a different kind of knowledge society. We are bombarded daily with information from all over the world. It creates tension, turmoil, pain – but also inspiration and receptivity to new opportunities. What we do locally is related to what's happening around the world.
Artists can seek out research-based knowledge themselves, be in dialogue with researchers, ask critical questions, call for questions from different perspectives. It is all in the catchment that inspires and challenges artistic work.
If instrumental art is defined as a willingness to be part of a larger context beyond the work itself, most artists throughout art history will have had a desire and ambition for just that. In our time, it is a question of artistic freedom, where one chooses to take in the society and the challenges we face. Explore, process, acknowledge and communicate.
More than 90 percent of the food we eat comes from soil. When the earth is threatened, it gives every reason for existential reflection. In the exhibition EARTH | Lost topsoil is lost forever! we explore how artists and researchers together can put food soil on the agenda. The ambition is precisely that art should be included in a larger context than the work itself. The challenge is to explore forms of collaboration and artistic expressions that carry a weight of content.
Medbøe is a visual artist.
