Zone 2 Source
Since 2013, Zone2Source has served as a dynamic testing ground for art and ecology, spanning its diverse pavilions, artist gardens, and the surrounding outdoor spaces of Amstelpark in Amsterdam South. Drawing inspiration from the park’s history as the site of the 1972 Floriade international horticultural exhibition, we collaborate with artists and the public to host exhibitions, research residencies, outdoor projects, performances, workshops, expeditions, and debates. Together, we explore new visions of the evolving relationship between nature and culture in today’s world.
As a testing ground for art and ecology, the Amstelpark has become a living lab for artistic experiments that radically reimagine the relationship between humans and nature. These experiments allow us to imagine and train new practices for a sustainable future by critically addressing and revealing the dominant colonial, extractive, and destructive power relations that connect the climate crisis and increasing social injustice. Our program is not characterized by doom and gloom but by imagination, inviting people to reconnect with all life around us and reshape this relationship by giving space to more-than-human entities and actors. The urban park becomes, in times of climate crisis, a contemporary space where fellow city dwellers (human and non-human) meet, and practice radically inclusive multi-species practices for a better society for all life. We see ourselves as a bridge between artistic research and the public, where artists’ research into ecological issues becomes a collective exploration.
More and more people see that a happier, healthier, and sustainable world is possible when we stop centering humans. When we center life at the heart of the debate, we find that ecological crisis cannot simply be solved by focusing on technology and economic growth. As we look closely, we find that the ecological crisis is a profound cultural crisis that requires addressing how humans coexist with the planet’s vast diversity of life. Reckoning with this vast ecological and cultural crisis urgently requires new images, new stories, practices, and experiences where humans and their creations are no longer seen as separate from nature, but as an essential part of it. This task does not fall only on the scientist – this particular task calls for artists and designers.
Zone2Source believes that art is a specific form of knowledge, alongside science, that plays an important role in one of the most pressing issues: teaching us to relate differently to our living environment. Our city is not only made up of nearly a million people but also billions of interconnected lives that actively teach us about the potential of learning from diverse cultures, human and non-human alike. Zone2Source aims for radical diversity and inclusion by giving a platform to these diverse human and non-human perspectives and celebrating the beauty of their interconnectedness. With Amstelpark as its testing ground, Zone2Source aims to set up transformative artistic research programs, projects, and exhibitions while experimenting with and imagining cocreated futures characterized by more-than-human communities living in balance on a shared planet.
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