Tilling Roots and Seeds: biodiversity crisis and a better future for agriculture

Tilling Roots and Seeds is an international cooperation project with European cultural collaboration around research capacity and artistic practice on the plant biodiversity crisis and the sustainable food system in Europe. The project is developed by Quo Artis (Spain) as main partner, the University of Barcelona, Kilowatt (Italy) and Ars Electronica (Austria). The University of Barcelona team is made up of Dr. Mar Redondo Arolas, associate professor of Fine Arts and principal researcher, Dra. Eva Figueras, professor of Fine Arts, Dr. Joan Vallès, professor of Botany and member of the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio-UB) and the Institute of Catalan Studies. Dra also participates. Teresa Garnatje, from the Botanical Institute of Barcelona-CSIC.

The project uses art as a tool to awaken a critical understanding of global change: how humans generate it and how it affects our food consumption systems. Innovative solutions for changes in consumption and production patterns require the commitment of those involved in agriculture and food production, as well as the voice of communities and their traditional knowledge.

The overall aim of Tilling Roots and Seeds is to expand the capacities and opportunities of the EU's creative sector to contribute to combating the biodiversity crisis and environmental degradation of our time and opens up opportunities for artists to collaborate with the scientific sectors and agricultural to imagine future sustainable scenarios. It also transfers knowledge and disseminates good practices and results to the cultural and scientific sector, as well as to the general public.

One of the first actions of the project is the call for artists for three grants for research residencies in creation and a production grant, framed within the project. Botanical-artistic activities will soon take place in urban gardens in two Catalan towns.

This project is based on the lessons learned from the Roots and Seeds XXI project, funded by the EU and carried out by a very similar team (exactly the same as regards the members of the UB group).

Since 2018, the aforementioned UB work team has carried out a common journey, following the traveling international exhibition project in tribute to the 130th anniversary of the birth of Pius Font i Quer (exhibition and catalog Mimesi and Metaphor. Tribute to Pius Font i Quer) . The mutual interest in knowing how artists and botanists approach nature, how we observe and interpret it, and the coincidence in flora and herbarium as sources of knowledge, inspiration, respect and creation, was the seed of a collaboration that has been bearing fruit until the present.

In 2019 we organized the international meetings HerbArt, Art and science in confluence, based at the Faculty of Fine Arts (UB), the Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences (UB) and the Botanical Institute of Barcelona. We gathered scientists linked to the IBB and the EtnoBioFiC research group, researchers and artists from the UB research group, Potion, art, poetry and education, and Fine Arts academics from different national and international universities.