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 The garden is a site-specific work carried out in the intermediate space between the buildings in Jan Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, Limburg. The latest version of the garden is unearthed by artist Nickie Sigurdsson and maintained in cooperation with participants, five Indian runner ducks, private seeds savers, and with generous support and guidance from farmer Wim Storken and horticulturist Yvonne Velthuis.
-In autumn 2021 Covid had kicked in again and the Jan Van Eyck Academie, went into full lockdown. On a systemic level, the pandemic has rendered visible the dysfunctional ways in which our work influence our lives and allowed for some unsolicited reflection on these matters. Although I found myself privileged to attend my studio practice almost during the entire pandemic, I felt the global state of things aggravated my own thoughts around work and care significantly, and highlighted both a personal and planetary state of exhaustion. In this time we were also re-arranging the way we worked in my collective, which led us to question the means of artistic production in general. I started wondering how I could defy material accumulation, how my work could welcome transient circumstanes, and how a caring scaffolding would inform the way I work in general.
+In autumn 2021 Covid had kicked in again and the Jan Van Eyck Academie went into full lockdown. On a systemic level, the pandemic pointed at the dysfunctional ways in which our work influence our lives and had allowed for some reflection on these matters. Although I found myself privileged to attend my studio practice almost during the entire pandemic, I felt that the global state of things aggravated my thoughts around work and care significantly, and highlighted both a personal and planetary state of exhaustion. In this time we were also re-arranging the way we worked in my collective, which led us to question the mental and material means of artistic production in general. I started questioning how I could defy material accumulation in my practice, how my work could welcome transient circumstances, and in what ways both my own work and the work of Soft Protest Digest could become more embedded in a local context and more “infrastructural”.
-Following this reasoning I decided to initiate a garden on the academic’s ground. Gardening became such a common activity for many during the pandemic, because I think more than anything, the process of gardening is an exercise in observance and maintenance which connect us to a more cyclical way of existence perhaps especially sought for in times of crisis and isolation. I soon realised when I took on the gardening work, that it was like the entire place came to life. I observed that when you show attention to something that generosity will multiply, and almost immediately some participants came to rescue with carrying compost and digging the raised beds, and the whole project started to become more participatory.
+Following this reasoning I decided to unearth the garden on the academy’s ground. Interestingly, gardening became such a common activity for many during the pandemic because I think that, more than anything, the process of gardening is an exercise in observation and maintenance which connects us to a more cyclical way of existence, perhaps especially prevalent in times of crisis. I guess that it also gives us a sense of control and empowerment, although most gardeners know that it is a very unstable form of control, that has much to do with collaborating and the discontentment and pleasures that come with it. When you finally realise that you are just the facilitator of the place of growth, whose work is to support, care for, maintain, assist, encourage and co-author with a multitudes of non-humans as well as humans, it becomes much easier. When I took on the gardening work, it was as if the entire place got activated. I saw that when you give attention to something, soon that generosity multiplies—almost immediately several participants came to rescue with putting the compost and digging out the raised beds, and the whole project suddenly became more community-oriented and participatory.
-The process was overwhelming and vulnerable too, because I felt I had engaged in such a big intervention exposed for everyone to watch. Questions like: ’how do you respect the heritage of the place?’, ’How much do you intervene?’ ‘Is disturbance ok?’, ‘is it ok to introduce ducks to the garden’ etc. was very present during the first part of the process.  At some point I guess I realised that I was just continuing a work ascending from others and it made my role seem more like a facilitator co-authoring with a multitude of collaborators non-humans as well as humans present as well as former.
+The initial idea with the garden was also to provide the JvE cafe with vegetables, but the circumstances e.g lack of sun, poor germination, snail invasion etc. didn’t allow for as much “outcome” as anticipated. I do find it more relevant that it became, in its own right, a “non-productive” place. The spatial intervention, called a garden, became a place where everyday knowledge, uncommon knowledge and embodied knowledge intervened with institutional bodies and grew as a green monster of possibilities, temporalities and resistance. Silvia Federici writes: “Can we think of gardens as more than a food source and also as a center of sociality, knowledge production, and cultural exchange?"<ref>Silvia Federici, Peter Linebaugh. “Re-enchanting the World”</ref>  Her words resonate with my questions: Can we think of gardens as a portal into understanding important histories? Can we think of gardens as sites of experimental ecological thought, sites of learning with our environment? And therefore can we also consider gardens as places of resistance, as places of commoning?
-The questioning was important and served as an entry into different problematics, histories, questions and reflections that I am still unfolding, and some of these thoughts I find it hard to pass on, as they somehow need to be embodied and experienced for oneself. However a lot of knowledge were accumulated in this process and I made a wikipedia page and a website archive as an attempt to share this rumination along with practicalities and therewith encourage others to embody land based work and knowledge for themselves and a new generation of participants to carry on this work. Finally addressing anyone involved with land-related matters, I think this paragraph by Silvia Federici put it quite accurately:
-“Can we think of gardens as more than a food source and instead as a center of sociality, knowledge production, and cultural exchange?”<ref>Silvia Federici, Peter Linebaugh. “Re-enchanting the World”</ref>
-In addition: Can we think of gardens as a portal into understanding important histories? Can the think of gardens as sites of experimental ecological thought, sites of learning with our environment? And thus, can we then think of gardens as places of resistance, as places of commoning?
+In keeping with my own mantra of making more infrastructural work, I made a Wikipedia resource and a website as an attempt to share the rumination accumulated during the process of making a garden, along with practicalities. This will hopefully encourage others to embody land based work and knowledge for themselves, the resources being a practical infrastructure for new participants at the JvE to possibly carry on this work as well.