Conference: The Design of Regeneration: Reviving River Ecologies – Bioregional Finance & Alternatives [20.06]

The Design of Regeneration

Saturday, June 20
10.00 – 17.00
De Chocoladefabriek Gouda – Steenlandzaal
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This one-day conference on Saturday, June 20 consists of two thematic blocks: ‘Reviving River Ecologies’ and ‘Bioregional Finance & Alternatives’. The conference provides an opportunity to explore issues surrounding ecological regeneration in depth, both together and in discussion with Dutch and international specialists.

Relationships with the societal, cultural, and political context play a prominent role in this exploration, while we are simultaneously investigating the significance of this for the creative disciplines (art and design) and the role they might potentially fulfil.

The language of the conference is English.

Conference Programme

10.00 Opening / introductions – Eric Kluitenberg (moderator)

Part I: Reviving River Ecologies

In the morning program until lunch, we explore how ecological regeneration can be designed within sharply different contexts (geographical, political, cultural). What new perspectives can be outlined here? How to deal with the complexity of entangled ecological, economic, technological, and political systems?

The presentations focus these questions on markedly different river environments and their specific ecologies: the Dnipro riverbed in Ukraine, the quay walls of the Maas river in central Rotterdam, and the acoustic environment of the big rivers at Gorinchem, where Maas and Waal flow together.

10.30 Svitlana Usychenko & Fulco Treffers – Dnipro Integrated Vision

The Dnipro Integrated Vision project is a joint work of Ro3kvit, Urban Coalition for Ukraine, and Greenpeace, exploring the Dnipro River as a living system in times of fragility and transformation. How can regeneration be conceived at the scale of an entire riverbed? – in the darkest of circumstances after four years of war. The project aims to develop a vision for the Dnipro River. To show the unused potential. To create dialogue and share knowledge. To give alternatives. To inspire.

11.15 Pierre Oskam – Tidal Pools & Regenerative Design

TIJMAKERS is a pilot that investigates how existing, paved quay walls along the Nieuwe Maas can be ecologically enriched by means of modular tidal pools, made entirely of local and recycled materials. Taking this project as an example of a regenerative design intervention Oskam will expand this analysis into a more general discussion of regenerative design and issues of scale in actually delivering substantial ecological benefits.

11.45 Minji Kim – Acoustic River Ecologies – EMF listening in Gorinchem

Sound artist and researcher Minji Kim is studying massive water infrastructures and their acoustic ecologies. For our festival she has been doing field-recordings in and around the big rivers at Gorinchem, the symbolic point where Maas and Waal flow together. Kim has been recording sub-sonic phenomena using EMF microphones. These sound waves mostly produced by human activity, though inaudible to the human ear, have a tremendous influence on the living environment in and around the rivers.

12.15 Response & Discussion

13.00 Lunch break

Part II: Bioregional Finance and Alternatives

The afternoon program poses the question how usable and effective financial capacities can be developed to put ecological regenerative methods and principles into practice?

Issues of ‘scale’ play a major role in this: Should existing financial structures be ‘bent’ to bioregionally specific (agro-ecological) ways of working – as advocated by proponents of ‘Bioregional Finance’? Or should alternative models be developed instead, on a smaller scale, rooted in the local context and communities? More generally we want to explore how ‘ecological value’ can be expressed in terms of a shared economy for all forms of life?

14.00 David Bollier & Natasha Hulst – Relationalised Finance

Renown Commons theorist and activist David Bollier recently co-authored a paper with Natasha Hulst co-founder of Voedselpark Amsterdam and connected to Schumacher Action Labs and the Bioregional Weaving Labs, about alternative models of financing, rooted in local communities and economies that they refer to as ‘Relationalised Finance’.

How can such approaches provide models for more resilient local economies that also address vital ecological concerns?

14.45 Klaas Kuitenbrouwer – Value in a shared economy for all forms of life

Klaas Kuitenbrouwer is a researcher and curator at Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam and director of the Zoönomic Institute. He will discuss the ideas behind a new project that aims to contribute to a new way of determining ecological and economic value in a shared economy for all forms of life. How can we understand and express both economic and ecological value differently in a context of multispecies exchanges?

15.15 Respondent: Rob Lubberink

Rob Lubberink, researcher at the Centre for Economic Transformation at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences will respond to all three presenters in this session and draw out some issues for further discussion. This will open the floor for a broader discussion with the audience and the presenters

15.45 Closing Discussion

Register for the conference

Admission is free, we recommend to reserve a seat via:
info@groenehartbiennale.nl

Location

De Chocoladefabriek
Klein Amerika 20
Gouda

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Support

The Green Heart Biennale is financially supported by:
Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie, LEADER Hollandse Plassen, Province of South Holland, Municipality of Gouda, Co-financed by the European Union.