Ulfborg, Wednesday 14th of August 2024
Today the opening of “Art-Nature Lab Workshops and Lectures” brought us to a special and unique place where a necessity put into practice became a reason for living, a ‘mission’.
We have been guests of the Heritage Cultural Farm founded twenty-five years ago by the Danish shepherd Berit Kilerich who wants to share her 800 sheep and all her knowledge and skeels about them. Here she is taking care of the sheep, landscaping and biodiversity in a holistic way. The land is opened to everyone and there is no fencing. During these last days, the doors of the farm were opened also to Marija Kozomora, a Serbian eco designer and founder of the slow-fashion brand Kozomora. Today we experienced a tour in the land with the sheep led by Berit (1 hour) and a workshop on eco-print and natural dyeing of textiles conducted by Maria (4 hours).
Despite the difference of generations, crafts and backgrounds their working languages and universe of values were in harmony. Bering was explaining us her reasons to keep alive a project like her farm based on the interaction with young artists and students that visit her place to learn not only some skills or to buy natural wool, but also to be able to say to themselves: “small is beautiful”.
This is the deal here at the farm.
Meanwhile, opening her workshop Maria mentioned a holistic approach affirming that each change we make to one part, we make it for the whole. She moved us towards a deeper level of consciousness in one of our daily life activities: the choice and purchase of clothing. How to be less chemical? How to avoid the huge waste of energy? How to use and be aware about the existence of natural resources? She put the emphasis on the craft skills and on the slow production. Teaching us the basis of the eco-print she let us discover a technique surprising and unpredictable. As she said: “Eco-print has a lot to do with let it go”.
Another deal.
I’d like to end with some of the questions Maria asked us during her workshop. They concern a personal work of awareness and respect for the planet, which is the motivation that drove Antonella Diana, for the second year, to curate this project.
“What do you feel when we are surrounded by nature?”
“Have you ever asked yourself how the colors got into the clothes you are wearing?”
“Have you ever thought that it is our right to know what is behind them?”
At the end of the day, provocatively, I asked Beril: “Well, to live like this, you need to have a lot of time, you even risk to be considered a time-waster…”
This was her reply: “It depends on what you look at, what values you have for yourself. Everyone is able to do just a little change that will change much more if we could understand each other more and better.”
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