The Working on Common Ground conference takes its starting point in Have we met? Humans and Non-Humans on Common Ground, the Dutch contribution to the 23rd Triennale Milano. In Working on common ground, Het Nieuwe Instituut, who put the exhibition together, collaborates with cheFare, agency for cultural transformation from Milan. The conference investigates the Dutch and Italian environments to discover both overlapping characteristics and location-specific aspects of two ecological realities and explores the potential for fostering multispecies communities.
The dominant agricultural practices of the Netherlands and northern Italy serve as an extreme example of how human and non-human relations have become fraught in industrialised economies. For example, industrial pig and poultry farms sustain extremely cost-efficient and exploitative conditions for living beings on the inside while creating harmful conditions for life in their surrounding areas as well. At the same time, newly created natural reserves (like the Marker Wadden) in the Netherlands and projects in Italy (for instance Wolfalps EU) demonstrate the Dutch and Italian capability for actively including the needs of non-human life.
Speakers
- Caterina Benincasa (IT)
- Embassy of the North Sea (NL)
- Joost Emmerik (NL)
- Marianna Frangipane (IT)
- Klaas Kuitenbrouwer (NL)
- Laura Scillitani (IT)
- Stefano Maffei (IT)
- Fiona Middleton (UK)
- Bertram Niessen (IT)
- Maike van Stiphout (NL)
- Studio Ossidiana (NL)
- Nicoletta Tranquillo (IT)
The conference is moderated by Tara Lewis and will be livestreamed here. Read more about the participating speakers on this page.
Free tickets are available here
