Soil Club: a tutto bosco

The Soil Club is a multiform space for dialogue and exploration dedicated to the actors of eco-social transformation who are situated in the Alps but act with a planetary consciousness.

In the Val Gardena (IT) the Soil Club explored the world and the interdependencies that hold it together by taking the local forest as a starting point. We spent a Saturday morning and lunch time in a forest around Urtijëi/St. Ulrich/Ortisei, joined by scientists, artists and pedagogists to explore where an engagement with the forest and its ramification can take our understanding of the world.
 
Kim Kaborda, a designer, sociologist and member of the Feminist Hiking Collective, invited us to hike caringly, that is, paying attention to the well-being of our fellow human hikers, but also being open to the vitality of the flora and fauna around us. She also took us on a meditative journey with the help of a text by Canadian anthropologist Natasha Myers and invited us to put ourselves in the body of a plant.
 
Filippo Favilli, researcher at the Institute for Regional Development of Eurac Research, introduced us to the ecological importance of the wolf and answered the many questions the participants had about the coexistence of wolves and humans.
 
Doris Ghetta introduced us to the works of the sculptors Gregor Prugger and Antje Majewski on Pilat. Both artists work very closely with the forest: Prugger as a wood sculptor, who has set up his studio on the edge of the forest, and Majewski, who includes the forest itself in her works.
 
On the way back, Herwig Prinoth, researcher at the Natural History Museum of Bozen, introduced us to the geological layers of the Val Gardena mountains and located today’s climate collapse in the history of the earth. About 242 million years ago there was a radical climate change that only 3% of the species survived and after which it took 4 million years for life on earth to develop again.
 

We thank the Biennale Gherdëina for the invitation and the support.

Thank you Fanni Fazekas and Timon Weber for the images.

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