Hands-On! From Land Art to Land Care
A participatory online gathering with M Vulfson & Evgenia Emets
Can art enact real ecological change? Can an artistic action interrupt destruction, protect a place, restore relationships, or help a landscape come back to life?
In this gathering, we invite you to explore these questions with us by exploring artistic actions of the past and their ecological realities as well as experimenting together with possible actions of land care for the future.
‘I believe that art can change the world. That art can have a real, felt impact not only on the physical world we inhabit but also on the relationships we build between us humans and with other species we share this planet with. Art is how we tell stories — and stories is how we dream worlds into being.’
In the past seven decades, we’ve seen art shift from telling stories about Earth to actively caring for her. From artist-run community gardens, sustainable farms and regenerative projects to performances that halt mining machinery, clown shows that empower people to stop forest cuttings and land projects that resist constructions of highways. Hands-On! speaks to art that doesn’t just bring awareness, but that brings real, felt change to communities, making space for humans to transform their relationships with the land.
This participatory gathering takes us through examples of artistic projects of land care of the last seven decades, sharing hands-on approaches that combine legal, popular, social and ecological care for the land.
Through stories, artworks and discourse, we’ll travel across decades of hands-on artistic practice, discovering how artists have responded to ecological threats, worked with communities and contributed to the care and recovery of land. We’ll look beyond the artworks themselves to explore what they made possible, the strategies behind them and the changes they set in motion.
We will then explore these questions from our own imaginaries. Working in pairs, you’ll be invited to explore what artistic action can be taken in the face of an imminent threat or as a continuous practice of care.
Together, we’ll share our ideas, discover unexpected possibilities and connect them with artistic strategies that have already been put into practice
We will invite you to reflect on where each of us stands in relation to ecological change, and the potential role of our creative practices therein.
Bring your curiosity, reflections and a willingness to imagine art beyond its familiar boundaries. Leave with inspiring examples, practical approaches and new possibilities for acting through art in the places and communities you care about.
See you online soon!
Maria & Evgenia
M Vulfson is an arts writer, critic and researcher focusing on ecological art and social movements. Driven by the belief of the power of art to have an impact on the world we live in, her writing weaves together social struggle, ecological science and art theory. She is a regular contributor to Contemporânea, where she writes on ecology, decolonial struggles and queer theory, and has bylines in The Observer, Volume by Archis, maat extended, Futuress and MUBI Notebook, among others. She is the founder and former editor of culturala, an arts and cultural theory journal, and co-founder of Films of Resistance, a decentralised screening resource of Palestinian cinema.
Evgenia Emets is an international artist, poet and founder of Eternal Forest Global. She works across drawing, calligraphy, language, ecology, film, artist’s books, performance and large-scale land-based works.
Her practice explores the relationship between human culture and the living world, with a focus on forests as places of memory, intelligence, transformation and long-term continuity.
LinkedIn: emetsjane
Instagram: eternalforestglobal
Website: https://www.eternalforest.earth/
Telegram Group Eternal Forest Community: https://t.me/eternalforest