MULTISPECIES URBANISM DEPARTMENT with Debra Solomon

MECHANISMS OF PROTECTION II : On Rights of Nature with Marjetica Potrč and Sabina Rodrígues Van der Hammen

Following the theme of mechanisms of protection, the upcoming episode explores how we can safeguard nature’s inherent right to exist and flourish, focusing on the legal framework of the Rights of Nature and complementary approaches that shield ecosystems from exploitation. The conversation unfolds within a vibrant landscape of translocal action, from Ecuador’s constitutional recognition of Pachamama as a legal subject to Slovenian Waters Act referendum, raising the question of which concepts can mobilize imagination and take root in practice. Our two extraordinary guests are Marjetica Potrč, an internationally acclaimed artist and architect who has collaborated closely with local and Indigenous communities worldwide, and Sabina Rodrigues van der Hammen, an environmental activist, lawyer, PhD researcher, and defender of the Thomas van der Hammen Reserve in Bogotá. Both are passionate advocates for land rights, uniting art, law, civil disobedience, community action, and creativity to shift mindsets and protect ecosystems alongside the communities that care for them. Drawing on Krater’s experience, the episode is grounded in Colombian legal innovations and situated practices, examining how legal declarations are intersecting with everyday civic action—and how such alliances may foster transformative eco-social change in the current political climate. Marjetica Potrč is an artist and architect based in Ljubljana. Her practice, which ranges from visual essays and architectural case studies to on-site community-based projects, cuts across disciplines to merge art, architecture, ecology, and anthropology. Her work emphasizes collaborative processes that reflect the power of collective action and shared knowledge. From 2011 to 2018, she was a professor of social practice at the University of Fine Arts/HFBK in Hamburg, where she taught Design for the Living World, a class on participatory practices. In 2024, her research-based project Agreements with the Natural World and the Assembly of Living Beings on care and defence of fragile urban nature by local communities in Bogota was exhibited at Fragmentos, Espacio de Arte y Memoria. Sabina Rodrigues van der Hammen is an environmental activist and lawyer with a Master’s degree in Law from the University of Los Andes. Currently a doctoral student in Law and a professor at the Environmental and Public Health Legal Clinic at the same university. She is a member of various citizen groups defending the environment and the right to the city in Bogotá, Colombia. Hosted and curated by Gaja Mežnarić Osole. Produced by Evano.  .......... Tracklist. 25 min: Music by Bionic and The Wires – Moss Playing Keyboard. https://bionicandthewires.com [https://bionicandthewires.com/]. Video Link: https://youtu.be/zZeNkB54bds [https://youtu.be/zZeNkB54bds]; 60 min: Jan Eerala - The Final Cut - 15/10/2020 - Makholma Forest. https://www.eerala.com [https://www.eerala.com/]. Sound Description: https://www.rupuranta.net/weblog/filet/201015/ [https://www.rupuranta.net/weblog/filet/201015/]; 95 min: Excerpt from AMOLAB MIX by 198319831983. https://soundcloud.com/198319831983 [https://soundcloud.com/198319831983]; 112 min. Ariel Kalma - Orguitar Soir. ariel-kalma.com [https://ariel-kalma.com/] You can find related references in this document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/159K9FT9XAooToQoHQPgL0yNT-l57or06jCeNJUCPkh4/edit?usp=sharing [https://docs.google.com/document/d/159K9FT9XAooToQoHQPgL0yNT-l57or06jCeNJUCPkh4/edit?usp=sharing]

MECHANISMS OF PROTECTION: Stockholm's Banquet of Feral Occupations

The Banquet of Feral Occupations premiered at Krater in 2023, where we served complex discussions alongside delicious food, asking a diverse group of public figures—including university professors, fellow artists, activists, and directors of cultural institutions — to collectively explore the shared responsibility of maintaining Krater. The Banquet originated as part of a Feral Occupations, a series of artworks featured at the Graphic Biennial in Ljubljana, occupying guests with questions on the production of public goods: public land, public discourse, public workplaces, public ecologies.  As Krater’s concerns are neither isolated nor coincidental, this time, we are inserting feral seeds in the halls of IASPIS, the Swedish Arts Grants Agency, with similar intentions: to serve Balkan Fika alongside an urgent call to rethink mechanisms of land protection.  In Stockholm, guests were invited to consider what kinds of feral strategies, within the existing frameworks of art, cultural heritage, nature protection, and institutional regulations—we dare to imagine in advocating for the land, its pioneering ecosystems, and its cultural practices. As a consequence of systemic flaws shared across geographies, our common learnings aim to provoke feral actions beyond the Krater site. Our reporter, Bitsy Knox, moved through the Banquet, capturing fragments of conversation, followed by commentary from one representative per topic. Hosted and produced by Bitsy Knox from Cashmere Radio in collaboration with IASPIS Curated by Danica Sretenović and Gaja Mežnarić Osole We want to extend our gratitude to all Feral Banquet guests and special thanks to the contributors of the podcast. By order of appearance Inna Zrajaeva, Elena Carlini, Robert Gioielli, Corina Oprea, Jonas Dahlberg, Eric Andersson, Josse Thuresson, Evelina Mohei, Paola Torrez Nunez del Prado, Poppy Bell, Munish Wadhia, Sarasvati Shrestha  Many many thanks to Magnus Erikson, head of applied arts at IASPIS, supporting the feral project and having exquisite taste in cooking. Many thanks to our fellow artists in residence who helped realize the Feral Banquet and supported us in many other ways: Michele J Castro, Josse Thuresson, Munish Wadhia, Carin Blucher, Karin Keisu, Alexandra Anikina, Keira J Fox, TK Sandeep and Bitsy Knox. Last but not least, thank you to Åsa Ståhl, without whom none of this would have happened.

DESIGNING ECONOMIC CULTURES with Bianca Elzenbaumer

What happens when a designer shifts her focus from creating objects and graphics to designing economic cultures? By choosing not to engage in representational design activities, produce prestigious exhibitions, or build her career in prominent academic positions, Bianca's daily commitment to social change in the Vallagarina valley attracts (young) people to stay. Discover how her 40-year project vision transforms disturbed Alpine valleys into vibrant rural settings through fizzy drinks production, a mobile pizza oven, situated pedagogies, and groundbreaking research into land commons. In the face of escalating climate change, biodiversity decline, and social isolation, she leverages the community economy theories of feminist geographers J. K. Gibson-Graham to reshape economic practices and improve the livelihoods of all living beings. Bianca Elzenbaumer is a feminist design researcher based in the Italian Alps and a founding member of the design practice Brave New Alps and of the community academy La Foresta. She is a member of the Community Economies Institute. From 2021 to 2023 she was the co-president of the International Commission for the Protection of the Alps. Her 40-year research plan focuses on supporting and creating community economies and commons starting from the places she lives in. She completed her doctorate at Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2014. She holds an MA in Communication Art & Design from the Royal College of Art and an MA in Mediation and International Peacebuilding from the University of Bologna. 🎤 Hosted and curated by Danica Sretenović and Gaja Mežnarić Osole from Trajna/Krater collective.  💻 Produced by Görkem Özdemir. ♫ Music by Ida Hiršenfelder (beepblip), There is still hope in life excerpts (2024). The School of Feral Grounds is an educational programme produced by ⁠⁠⁠Krater Collective⁠⁠ [https://www.instagram.com/kratercollective/] as part of the ⁠⁠⁠Future DiverCities⁠⁠⁠ [https://future-divercities.eu/] project.

MULTISPECIES URBANISM DEPARTMENT with Debra Solomon

While recording the podcast series in mid April Ljubljana, we transitioned from summer to winter in just 4 hours, highlighting yet another reason why robust ecosystems in our cities are crucial for combating the climate extremes ahead. In a conversation with infrastructure activist Debra Solomon, we discuss the imperative for new forms of just urban development and spatial practice that foster reciprocal relationships between humans and more-than-humans. The discussion delves into speculative fabulation, envisioning a scenario where every European city establishes a department for multispecies urbanism to respond to the intersecting challenges of climate change and democracy. By addressing topics like ecosystem defragmentation and biodiversity corridors, more-than-human water purification, soil organism and its remediation, decommodification of food and more, the department engages with diverse locations across Europe, showcasing the conceptualization and implementation of a multispecies sensible public administration in locations like Kuopio, Liepāja, Marseille, Athens, and Londa.  Debra Solomon (NL) is an artist and infrastructure activist with over 25 years of experience in public space. Her work merges art, infrastructure activism, and social sciences, focusing on biodiversity, climate crisis, and the multispecies right to the city and subsequent right to the urban metabolism. In 2019, Solomon coined the term multispecies urbanism and showcased the concept in the Dutch Pavilion at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennial. Currently pursuing a PhD in Urban Planning at the University of Amsterdam, Solomon is also the founder of Urbaniahoeve – Social Design Lab for Urban Agriculture. Since 2010, Urbaniahoeve has been involved in critical spatial practices centered on interspecies care relations and biodiversity production. Urbaniahoeve’s current project is the 56-hectare Amsterdam Zuidoost Urban Food Forest, (called VBAZO) in Amsterdam Zuidoost. VBAZO is produced by the Urbaniahoeve collective (Debra Solomon and Renate Nollen) with local human and more-than-human communities. 🎤 Hosted and curated by Danica Sretenović and Gaja Mežnarić Osole from Trajna/Krater collective. 💻 Produced by Görkem Özdemir. ♫ Music by Ida Hiršenfelder (beepblip), There is still hope in life excerpts (2024). The School of Feral Grounds is an educational programme produced by ⁠Krater Collective [https://www.instagram.com/kratercollective/] as part of the ⁠Future DiverCities⁠ [https://future-divercities.eu/] project. Support Krater Collective [patreon.com/KraterCollective] on Patreon and help us build resilience and continue work on giving a voice to feral nature, practices and people.

ON CURATING ECOLOGICAL CARE AND REPAIR with Gilly Karjevsky

For the opening conversation, Gilly Karjevsky will delve into curatorial approaches and formats rooted in ethics of care for our communities, our cities, and the planet. Derived from the word 'curare,' meaning 'to cure,' Karjevsky will offer radical imaginaries on tending to and healing our fractured relationships within urban ecologies by repositioning curatorial practice outside traditional institutional frameworks to engage with site-specific, multispecies contexts. Gilly Karjevsky is an urban curator based in Berlin. Her current research focuses on Collective Autotheory and urban curating post-planetary turn. As a guest professor for social design at HFBK in Hamburg and curator in residence at the MArch at CSM in London, Gilly brings a wealth of knowledge to the table. She's also a founding association member at Floating e.V since 2018, where she curates the Climate Care festival. 🎤 Hosted and curated by Danica Sretenović and Gaja Mežnarić Osole from Trajna/Krater collective. 💻 Produced by Görkem Özdemir. ♫ Music by Ida Hiršenfelder (beepblip), Voluminous Movement of a Watery Earth excerpts (2024). The School of Feral Grounds is an educational programme produced by Trajna [https://trajna.com/] as part of the Future DiverCities [https://future-divercities.eu/] project.