SUMMARY
seeds festival | Earthdance
Plainfield, Massachusetts
2008 - 2016
seeds festival was comprised of workshops, performances, panel discussions, land projects, and generated artistic investigations, forming a unique and vital organism. seeds was co-founded by Margit Galanter and Olive Bierings in 2008, and is produced by Earthdance with different curatorial teams each year. seeds festivals took place at Earthdance, where Margit Galanter was Co-Director from 2006 - 2009.
seeds festival was originally called SEEDS (Somatic Experiments in Earth, Dance, and Science) until 2016, when its title changed to seeds festival, and chose to dissolve the acronym. After years of discussion about the racilaized challenges of working with the terms somatics and science, we decided to change the title as a move towards dismantling supremacist language as it relates to ecological practices.
OVERVIEW 2008 - 2016
seeds 2016
Curated by Christos Galanis, Hana Van der Kolk, Margit Galanter, Melinda Buckwalter, and Olive Bieringa
seeds 2016 is an interdisciplinary arts and ecology festival gathering artists, community activists, scientists, spiritual leaders, permaculture practitioners, and more for ten days at Earthdance. Through workshops, residencies, discussions, performances and artistic investigations, SEEDS aims to explore the potent space of art, allyship, movement practice, and ecology. By working with the connections between environmental racism, intersectional oppressions, power/territory, and privilege, SEEDS makes space for multiple voices and forms of participation while creating a space for embodied intelligence and collective inquiry.
The teachers for seeds 2016 were: Benoit LaChambre, Sherwood Chen, Marbles Jumbo Radio, Emily Johnson, Aiyana Masla, Margit Galanter, Shanna Goldman, Hana van der Kolk. Artists activists and academics in residence (AIR’s) included Marbles Jumbo Radio, Isa Leal, John Schade, Lailye Weidman, Melissa Tuckey, Mayfield Brooks, Cara Judea Alhadeff, Laressa Dickey, JoAnna Mendl Shaw, Bibi Calderaro, Cindy Stevens, Colleen Bartley, Deborah Black, Joe Dumit, Marlon Barrios Solano, Pedro Alejandro, and Paige Tighe.
Link to Activating Allyship
SEEDS 2010
Curated by Margit Galanter, Melinda Buckwalter, and
Olive Bieringa
The theme of this year’s 10-day long festival is NOURISHMENT. A crop’s environment – including soil, topography, and climate – imparts a characteristic taste and flavor and must be taken into consideration in cultivation. With care, through interaction we hope to create an ultra-lush, enriching, and regenerative culture in which to grow our art.
This year’s SEEDS workshops:
Benoît Lachambre/Extending the Comfort Zone
K.J. Holmes/Weathering
Pedro Alejandro/Soft Body/Soft Terrain
SEEDS Research Projects
Dave Jacke/Eden Arising:
K.J. Holmes/Pinecone
Plus performances, an ECO jam, discussions, films, artists-in-residence, green m-Art, and more.
SEEDS 2009
Curated by Margit Galanter, Melinda Buckwalter, and
Olive Bieringa
Directed by Margit Galanter
SEEDS 2009 focused on potentiality. Potential for new growth is generated in places where diverse organisms meet. In this year of potential political change, we invited this phenomenon into our interdisciplinary investigations, setting up social experiments.
In the first week, we had several workshops and a mini-festival in the fields of dance research and practice, sustainable technology, liberation ecology, and mycological remediation. The teachers included Jennifer Monson, Simon Whitehead, Rafter Sass, and Skott Kellog. The weekend mini-festival was dedicated to Green/Body/Local and CI as a social experiment. The teachers included: Sondra Loring and Kavitha Rao, Karl Kronin, Camille Renarhd and Mark Moti Zemelman, Kristin McArdle, Neige Christenson, Dan Bear Davis and Sarah Day, Tamin Totzke and Dustin Haug, and a Global Underscore facilitated by Spirit Joseph.
In the second week, we invited a group of independent resident artists and scientists to work in the retreat space, inviting them to collaborate with the land and with one another as was their interest. Rather than a typical format of expecting production, we invited artists to see what emerged from the uniqueness of the event. The artists participating were: Camille Renarhd, Chris Peck, Emily Moore, Gabriel Forestieri, Kayoko Nakajima, Kythe Heller, Lailye Weidman, Marissa Perel, Mark “Moti” Zemelman, Sakura Shimada. As part of this event, we invited artist mentors Daria Fain, Robert Kocik, and Beverly Naidus to present their work and be available as guides for the artistic research. Artist and 2008 SEEDS co-curator Jen Harmon facilitated the week’s residency.
SEEDS 2008
Curated by Margit Galanter, Olive Bieringa, Jen Harmon, Shira Lynn Wolberg, and Moti Zemelman
Directed by Margit Galanter
The focus of SEEDS 2008 was ecology. In basic terms, ecology studies the interactions of organisms with their environment and with one other. It is a rich term because it highlights feedback and interdependence. A broad use of ecologiinvokes the connections between realms as diverse as the natural world, social landscapes, human behavior, and imagination. Through the theme, the Festival explored ecology both as a subject of inquiry, an approach, and a metaphor, thereby inviting new applications and research.
Our public programming included films, lectures, workshops and performances, culminating in a final Community Day where participating artist residents shared their research findings in the form of performance, film, installations, and participatory projects. Additional events featured as Public Events included Lee Fogel’s Wishing Garden, Tish Petrushka’s Earth Magic, a film on Wangari Maathai by Lisa Merton and Alan Dater, a 350.org gathering connected internationally, a panel facilitated by Marissa Perel, a fieldtrip lecture demonstration at Tsegyalgar East, a Global Underscore, and films selected by Olive Bieringa.
The SEEDS Festival investigates arts and ecological research from a variety of fields of inquiry. It proposes several notions: that the intelligence of embodiment has specific offerings for our understanding of ecology, that artistic practice is a valuable tool and vehicle for this research, that when experiential research is shared, discussed, and archived, it indeed can benefit from and for this interaction, and that socially engaged research can mutually support the arts and the regenerative practices for the earth.
The SEEDS Festival was comprised of workshops, performances, panel discussions, land projects, and generated artistic investigations, forming a unique and vital organism.
Teachers and panelists: Andrew de L. Harwood, Andrew Faust, Arawana Hayashi, Aaron Jessup, BodyCartography Project, Bruce Hooke, Bryce Beverlin, Chris Aiken, Christopher Weidman, Claudia Wittman, Dana Salisbury, Daniel Lepkoff, Daniel Roth, Elaine Colandrea, Emmanuelle Pepin, Dr. Enoch Page, Jane Vorburger, Jen Harmon, Jennifer Monson, John Jasperse, Jonah Bokaer, Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren, Karen Nelson, Kate Bailey, Lailye Weidman, Liana Foxvog, Mark Lakeman, Martha Eddy, Marlon Barrios-Solano, Melle Dragon, Melinda Buckwalter, Ku and Dancers, Nala Walla, Olive Bieringa, Olivier Besson, Susan Schell, Suprapto Suryodarmo, Susan Sgorbati, Tamara Ashley, Terre Unité Parker, Tony Vacca.
