Working on Common Ground closing conference

If design can help us to counter the ongoing ecological devastation of the earth, and can support the cultivation of mutually supportive relations between humans and non-humans, this should inform not only the cultural imagination, but also governmental policies, legal frameworks, and broader social infrastructures.

The Working on Common Ground conference takes its starting point in Have we met? Humans and Non-Humans on Common Ground, the Dutch contribution currently on view at the 23rd Triennale Milano International exhibition. 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 (Life Wolfalps EU) demonstrate the Dutch and Italian capability for actively including the needs of non-human life.

The exhibition and programme of Have we met? take the Zoöp organisation model as their reference frame. Zoöp is short for Zoöperation, a cooperation with zoë (Greek for "life"). Developed at Het Nieuwe Instituut, but now operating independently, the Zoöp model helps organisations learn—and implement—ways of collaborating with the ecosystems they participate in and determine how they can become symbiotic bodies that contribute to ecological regeneration. Exploring a range of collaborative tools developed by practitioners across art, design, agriculture, data- and marine sciences, Have we met? probes a foundation from which to organise the common ground of a multispecies society. The programme Working on Common Ground expands on what is on show by exploring the sensitivities, organisational tactics, legal and policy strategies required to foster multispecies communities. It looks into the possibility of Zoöperations in the Italian context and at design’s role in their development.

Speakers: Caterina Benincasa (Italy), Embassy of the North Sea (Netherlands), Joost Emmerik (Netherlands), Marianna Frangipane (Italy), Klaas Kuitenbrouwer (Netherlands), Laura Scillitani (Italy), Stefano Maffei (Italy), Fiona Middleton (UK), Bertram Niessen (Italy), Maike van Stiphout (Netherlands), Studio Ossidiana (Netherlands), Nicoletta Tranquillo (Italy).

Moderated by Tara Lewis and livestreamed through the website of Het Nieuwe Instituut. With the support of the Embassy and the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Italy.