THE BODY GARDEN

Decreasingly a distant dream, the idea of colonising Mars is slowly getting closer. We have a new blank piece of paper in front of us. Untouched, barely discovered and with just a small amount of local resources to start from. Contrary to the sleek sci-fi bliss of Hollywood movies, filling in this page will be difficult, conflicting, and challenging.

The Body Garden starts from the idea that, for lack of better alternatives, organic waste created by the human body becomes increasingly valuable on Mars. What was once regarded as trash initially turns into a vital resource to create a self sustaining (eco-)system on the red planet.

Evoking the aesthetics of vertical farms, the installation sheds light on 3 specific bodily materials: hair, skin & sweat. Divided in three steps, each volume highlights both the necessary tools to harvest a specific material, the bodily material itself, and its potential use within a self sufficient eco-system. The latter step respectively highlighting agricultural purposes, the creation of clean breathable air, and the production of drinking water.

This Mars-based, human-centred approach, amplifies the egocentric position humans have within the ecosystem on earth. It illustrates the unfulfilled potential and one-sided relation of the human body within a multi-species ecosystem.The scarcity of resources on Mars therefore exposes our questionable relation with other life forms on earth. It illustrates our dependance on species while we - mistakenly? - positioning ourselves as a dominant form of life.

The Body Garden can both be seen as a mirror to question our role on Earth, and a stepping stone to reposition ourselves within an interplanetary context. What started as a human-centred project, could eventually turn into an engine which fuels a bigger independent eco-system in which both humans and other species co-exist.

timing | 2019 - 2020
collaboration | Pleun van Dijk
commissioned | non:agency
curator | Petra Lilja
coördinator | Jenny Lee
exhibition partner | Volvo Studio Stockholm