UrbanBeeLab

Everyting is different, and everything is still the same.
An exchange project for Europalia India about people, plants, food & traditions.
keywords: Politics of Change, Resilient Communities, Urban Agriculture in Brussels and Mumbai (people, plants, food, traditions)
a seed is a seed is a seed

There is a fast growing movement all over the world, in which citizens are creating urban food systems. These are sustainable, integrated systems of food production, processing, distribution, marketing, consumption and waste management in an urban landscape. These initiatives are motivated by economical needs of citizens in times of crisis as well as a growing awareness that we should develop forms of agriculture and food distribution which are less taxing to the environment and provide higher quality food. Localized food systems significantly change the lifestyle of those involved in it. They change production and consumption patterns and encourge self-governed cooperation among citizens, leading to more socially viable neighborhoods. They contribute to social cohesion, a growing awareness of environmental issues, and a new appreciation of the challenges of food production.
The project builds further on existing communities already practicing urban agriculture in Mumbai and Brussels. Each of the participating communities will work with a selection of similar plants, and in every participating garden the full cycle of an urban food system (from production to waste management, from seed to seedpod) will take place.
The development of the project over time (seasons) will be covered by the community itself, creating a multilayered and rich narrative which is oscillating between east and west, taking ecological but as well economical, political and social approaches into account. The observations, stories, pictures, discussions, songs and recipes will be uploaded on a shared online platform which is designed for collective project building. The platform supports distributed knowledge creation for all aspects in the form of a community memory.
The title (a seed is a seed is a seed) is inspired on the Continuous Present, a literary style developed by Gertrude Stein¹⁾. It is a metaphor for a different view on the same subject, the same time-slice described over and over again, from a different point of view.

This exchange project wants to survey and compare in an artistic way multiple 'community memories' in Mumbai and Brussels, starting from identical actions as reclaiming public space (rooftops, waste lands) and food growing in the cities. The created content originates out of the interaction of nature and society through various day to day activities, with a focus on the growing and processing of food in urban communities.
To design a common understandable and practical working model, we will work along the metaphor of a (living) herbarium²⁾.
We will apply an ethnobotanical approach, drawing upon the relationships between people and plants. The communities will (re)present themselves and their position in society starting from the plants they grow and how they grow them.

Each herbarium specimen contains actual plant material as well as label information such as Family, Genus, Species, 
Botanical Name, Local Name, Locality, GPS Co-ordinates, Habitat, Description, Collector(s), Collection Date, Collection ID, etc.  
Thus, a herbarium records the past, providing users with documented occurrences of plants in specific locations over the time.

Following the structure of the living herbarium, we attempt to uncover the geo-political control of land use, food sovereignty and social justice. This juxtaposition of communities constructs an open discursive framework to tease out a range of issues in relation to food sovereignty and food urbanism.

For the local execution of the a seed is a seed is a seed-project we will build upon the experience gained through the 'Mahila Samiti'³⁾, a former project realized in India in the Politics of Change-series.
Politics of Change is a collection of documentaries, anthropological films and online database projects in which the connections between grassroots activism, eco-technology and networks of people are investigated.
We choose a total of 8 communities to work with, all of them involved in urban agriculture - 4 in Brussels and 4 in Mumbai. We select a number of plants, similar for all communities, and set up an exchange program for growing the same kind of seeds in different conditions.
Geographical, meteorological, ecological, political, economical and social differences will create a diversity of stories, all providing from the same simple act: the growing of a similar plant.
The common every-day actions will lead into the investigation of topics as seed sovereignty, the appropriation of public space, food security and the dealing with sustainable cities. We will put a specific attention on the 'permaculture appraoch' within the communities. This holistic mode of life⁴⁾ is described as :

'the art of creating beneficial relationships' and as 'the science of connections'. 
Permaculture merges traditional wisdom with contemporary ecological research. The idea of mimicking the patterns of
natural systems can be applied to everything, from planting edible landscapes to the way a performance is designed,
from organising an act of creative resistance to putting on a wild party'.

Drawing on the merits of Politics of Change, a seed is a seed is a seed belongs as well to the section of the OpenGreens project. This project, initiated by Annemie Maes since 2009, covers different bottom up approaches for designing human environments that have the stability and diversity of natural ecosystems. It covers the integration of urban agriculture, honeybees and their role in urban ecosystems, renewable energy systems, food sovereignty systems, natural building, rainwater harvesting and urban planning along with the economic, political and social policies that make sustainable living in cities possible and practical.