This year LASERZURICH is hosted by SAE Sustainable Agroecosystem Group in the Department of Environmental Systems Science at the ETHZ together with Life Science Zurich, University of Zurich.
TALK ONE
Future of Soil – Plant interactions
29. August 2023
What are the soil management practices that can be implemented to face our changing environment? How can it be different between agroecosystems?
How can we ensure that biodiversity and a living community are sustained or regenerated in soil?
How can we enhance and improve the relationships between the soil and plants) How to foster a resilient cropping system?
What strategies can artists use to raise awareness in the public realm and what does the public need to know about soil and its ecology?
Science Speakers
Dr. Tania Galindo Castaneda
Postdoctoral researcher, Group for Sustainable Agroecosystems, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Departement of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zürich
Dr. Kevin Vega
Postdoctoral researcher, Group für Sustainable Agroecosystems, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zürich
Art Speakers
Dorothea Rust
Research, performative relationships, the body and the soil
Monica Germann and Daniel Lorenzi
Drawings carbon cycles and carbon sequestration in the soil
TALK TWO
Resilience, Nutrition, Food Systems.
05. September 2023
What is resilience in relation to your research and nutrition?
How can we feed plants so that they can feed us properly?
How do we enhance our food systems to face the climate crisis?
How can we raise awareness through art about ways to transform plant systems and their sustainably?
What new kinds for communication strategies can we use to educate people about plants and food in the future?
Science Speakers
Dr. Nwokoro Charles
Postdoctoral researcher, Group für Sustainable Agroecosystems, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zürich
Prof. Dr. Johanna Jacobi
Assistant professor, Group for Agroecological Transitions Research, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zürich
Art Speakers
Vreni Spieser
Installation about human migration and plant migration
Barbara Bietenholz
circular economies for our plants
Dr. Sandro Steudler
An artistic / scientific journey to new ecological niches of plants
ZURICH-BASEL PLANT SCIENCE CENTER
Department of Environmental Systems Science www.plantsciences.uzh.ch
WITH SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS Stadt Zürich, Kanton Zürich, Kanton Graubünden – SWISSLOS, Pro Helvetia, Schweizer Kulturstiftung, Casinelli – Vogel – Stiftung
BIOGRAPHIES OF SPEAKERS
Dr. Tania Galindo Castaneda Plant and Soil Biologist, SAE
Dr. Tania Galindo Castaneda is a plant and soil biologist with expertise in root microbiology. Tania is an experienced manager of research projects developed in laboratory, greenhouse, and field trials. Her technical skills include plant phenotyping, molecular biology, microbiology, laser ablation tomography, greenhouse plant maintenance, bioinformatics, and biostatistics. She has developed her research in Colombia, Mexico, USA, and Switzerland. Tania focused on the interaction between root traits and the biotic and abiotic soil environment. She also explored the functions of the root microbiome in the nitrogen cycle in plants with contrasting root phenotypes growing under low nitrogen. Tania’s ultimate professional goal is to help produce sustainable, biological-based solutions to plant health and fertilization, such as biofertilizers and biocontrols.
Professor Kevin Vega SAE D-USYS ETHZ
Prof. Dr Kevin Vagas research interests are primarily focused on the development of sustainable and resilient cities and wider urbanized landscapes with a particular focus on novel vegetation and soil ecologies, ecosystem services, and equitable urban greening. His work has largely taken place in the city and surroundings of Zurich where he has examined the distribution and ecological connectivity of urban green spaces. Additionally, he has investigated the genetic connectivity of wildflowers in and around the city and the effect of seed sowing and wildflower promotion on genetic diversity. More recently he looked into socioeconomic patterns in the distribution of tree cover and urban biodiversity with relation to the equitable promotion of green space. His current project expands this to focus on novel soil ecologies and services throughout the urban-rural continuum examining these soils from environmental and cultural perspectives to help promote sustainable agri-urbanisms. usys.ethz.ch
Dr. Charles Nwokoro SAE D-USYS ETHZ
Dr. Charles Nwokoro is a Cropping Systems Agronomist and a scientific officer in the SAE Group. He has over 25 years of farming experience and has been collaborating since the last decade with smallholder farmers in Africa. He worked together with them to develop context-specific and affordable agricultural innovations that aim at improving their livelihoods. Charles' interests are to co-create, validate, and extend impactful agricultural innovations to marginal farmers and to support SHFs sustainably and profitably adaption to the climate change. For his PhD Charles worked on Cassava-Maize Intercropping System to sustain smallholder Livelihoods.
Charles Nwokoro is currently contributing to projects assessing the farming systems' resilience to climate sustainable, nutrition in secondary cities and agronomic project management. Charles also works as a Scientific Officer at the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture (SFSA) worldfoodsystem.ethz.ch ethambassadors.ethz.ch
Johanna Jacobi Assistant Professor of Agroecological Transitions D-USYS ETHZ
Prof Dr Johanna Jacobi leads the Agroecological Transitions research group at ETH Zürich. She studied Geography, Biology and Social Anthropology. For her PhD studies at the University of Bern, she conducted research together with the organic cocoa cooperative El Ceibo on the resilience of cocoa farms in Bolivia to climate change. After a postdoctoral project at the University of California, Berkeley on agroforestry, she lived and worked in Bolivia for several years, doing research on food system resilience and sustainability in Latin America and Africa. Her research focuses on agroecology as a transformative science, a practice, and a social movement, and on power relations in food systems with approaches and methods from political ecology. usys.ethz.ch
Dorothea Rust
Dorothea Rust lives in Zurich. She studied art and MAS Culture/Gender Studies, at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). She trained in New and Postmodern Dance and collaborated with dance artists and musicians in New York. Here Dance performances incllude (art) performances, interventions, translocal and collaborative works on different continents. She co-organises /co-curators performance, music and discursive event platforms. She has won residencies and awards and her guiding principles are relational thinking, the relationship to other living beings, organisms and to the other that is foreign to us and possibly irritates us! www.dorothearust.ch
Barbara Bietenholz
Barbara Bietenholz was born in Zürich She studied at ZHdK and pursued her education in France at the Ecole Nat. Sup. des Beaux Arts de Paris. There she majored in Printmaking. She also studied in the USA for a BFA in Fine Arts and Illustration at the University of the Arts College in San Francisco. She attended SVA summer school in NY, with Jerry Saltz /Robert Storr and studied in Salzburg with Sandro Chia /Painting and Andreas von Weizsäcker/ on monumental paper sculpture. Today, she works as a conceptual, site related artist. Mediation is also an important part of her practice as well as inter- and transdisciplinarity.
Monica Germann and Daniel Lorenzi
Monica Germann and Daniel Lorenzi completed their art education at Zürcher Hochschule der Künste. They have been working as an artist duo in the fields of drawing, installation, electronic music and performance art for over 20 years. The large-format wall drawings, created by the artist duo on site for the duration of an exhibition, are shown in numerous museums and galleries in Switzerland and abroad. Studio grants took them to Rome, Paris, Berlin and New York for longer stays. Their works have recently been featured in solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Memmingen DE, Kunsthalle 8000 Zurich and Kunstmuseum Olten. www.germannlorenzi.com
Suresh Kumar G
Suresh Kumar G, is a performance artist, arts facilitator, arts mentor, and gardener based in Bangalore, India. In his earlier practice, he focused on large-scale installations and site-specific sculptural works that addressed social and environmental issues within his community. His work challenges conventional notions within contemporary art and operates outside the commercial and gallery context. He is the initiator of projects such as Samuha and SarjapuraCurries, and co-founded BAR1 and SARLA. Currently, through SarjapuraCurries, he is actively involved in archiving and reviving the lost knowledge of wild vegetables and greens through natural farming methods. www.sarjapuracurries.com
Dr. Sandro Steudler
Sandro Steudler resides and works as a visual artist primarily in Zurich. He also works as a curator and runs Kunstraum Luke in Zurich. He completed his studies at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, The Zurich University of the Arts and his doctoral thesis was completed at the University of Fine Arts, in Hamburg. He has had numerous national and international exhibitions and teachingpositions at art schools. Since 2003, he began working on the multi-media project, «Der Bau», which continues to grow as an artistic statement as well as a creative/philosophical and an art-science experiment. www.sandro-steudler.ch www.der-bau.ch
Vreni Spieser
Vreni Spieser works intellectively intellectually and performatively, often with reference to architecture, often with ephemeral, and temporary results. Her work is about turning away from the centuries-old Eurocentric view of the world and adopting a postcolonial perspective. The preoccupation with ornamentation serves as a common thread. Her work is a product of invasion, migration, adaptation, transformation. Vreni Spieser works on the creation of alternative spaces that read as a counter-position within our culture where a critical reflection on the given is possible and where the imagination of another, possible life can be realized. She was on the curatorial team at Helmhaus, Zurich for the exhibitions between 2019-21. www.vrenispieser.ch
Leonardo / ISAST (US), University of Art and Design Linz (AT), The LASER Hosts Global Network #LASERTalks #arselectronica21
THE EVENT
This LASER ZURICH event constitutes an immersive presentation by six researchers in four parts. They focus on how and why the production of our food will change in the future to incorporate the concepts of wild plants, cultivated plants and in-vitro plants. This event is related to the current Art Science Node Artists in Residence Program in CHIC: a 2020 EU Horizon project. It will feature presentations by artistic and scientific researchers (three talks, a film, an AR exhibition, and a discussion). Read More →
LASERZURICH Welcomes you to: Air_Waste_Health_Water_Energy_Soil
The words in the title- "Air_Waste_Health_Water_Energy_Soil - form the themes for our art exhibition in Art Platform Gleis70, to which we invite you to experience. Today, the state of our earth, climate, air, waste, health, water, energy and soil are major problems that need our attention. The air is becoming more and more polluted, our energy consumption is growing rapidly, our waste threatens our health, toxins are increasingly being dissolved in the water and soil, many species are dyingand life on earth is threatened by climate change. Read More →
LASERZURICH is a series of salon evening events and stands for “Leonardo Art, Science, Evening Rendezvous”. This is an international network of over 25 groups that feature the merging of artists and scientists together in one evening. LASERZURICH’s collaborators include Life Science (Zurich University) and The Volunteers of the WWF (World Wildlife Fund)Read More →
IN THIS EVENT WE PREMIRE A NEW FILM Natura Urbana / The Brachen of Berlin BY MATTHEW GANDY AND FEATURE DISCUSSIONS BY A TRANSDISCIPLINARY PANEL: Christoph Kueffer, Mathew Gandy, Bárbara Maçães Costa, Kevin Vega and Jill ScottRead More →
