What is the time of the school, the time of the body, the time of the planet and the time of the garden?
with Sophie Krier
commissioned/ produced by <rotor> Centre for Contemporary Art
in the framework of European Capital of Culture Bad Ischl Salzkammergut 2024.
artistic-pedagogic garden project and open-air learning space in the kitchen meadow of ECOS, high school for business, health, and social affairs
location: Bad Ischl ( a beautiful town in Upper Austria, along the rivers Traun & Ischl, at the foot of the majestic Katrin Mountain…)
From 2022 to 2024, a semester-based, artistic-pedagogical process and open-air learning space were cultivated on the grounds of the HLW Bad Ischl. Together with Sophie Krier, the Garden of Moving Time was developed in dialogue with teachers, students, and related experts and initiatives.
Küchenwiese (meadow adjacent to the kitchen) is the name given to an outdoor area located between one of the school buildings and the Sissi Park, and along the riverbank of the Kaltenbach and Traun water bodies. Which kinds and ways of learning can a plot of land host? Which (past & future) forms of life can it enable, protect, and give a voice to? Can it become a space for the collective self-realization of a school community?
Sophie and I introduced process-based participatory art, hands-on workshops and seasonal semester exercises, thereby extending our art practice to the school curriculum. Students and teachers were invited to connect to the cycle of life: learning about regenerating soil, and more-than-human companion- and kinship. For instance, visual soil analysis using the vernacular technique of chromatography revealed the presence, and absence, of soil life at the site of the garden-to-be.
Human Sun Dial and the Workshops
Rooted in the concept of care, which plays a central role in the student’s education at the HLW (a secondary school for economy, social management and care), the Garden of Moving Times reclaims our relation to Earth-time understood as time to recenter and replenish ourselves – as opposed to time as a measure of production. In the garden, broken relations with vegetal, animal, mineral, and ancestral worlds can be repaired, across time and perceptions.
Alles hat seine Zeit (everything has its time)
Karl Rossmann, teacher and watchmaker and co-initiator of the project.
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Credits
The »Garden of Moving Time« was artistically realized by Daniela Brasil & Sophie Krier and created in close cooperation with dedicated teachers, students of the HLW Bad Ischl and numerous experts and project partners from the region and beyond. The project was initiated by Birgit Lurz, Anton Lederer, Margarethe Makovec, Rainer Posch, Karl Rossmann, and Wolfgang Schlag, and was produced by <rotor> Centre for Contemporary Art in the framework of European Capital of Culture Bad Ischl Salzkammergut 2024.
Photos: Pia Fronia
