ON AND OFF CAMPUS: LAB-GROWN CULTURE

Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe perform in Cooking Sections’ When [Salmon Salmon [Salmon]]. Photo by Chris Kayden

The Fisher Center has gone global with Common Ground, the fourth edition of the Live Arts Bard (LAB) Biennial festival. In partnership with the Open Society University Network’s Center for Human Rights and the Arts (CHRA) at Bard, Common Ground brings together artists from all over the world to explore the relationship between food, land, and politics. Three of the biennial’s four programs are taking place abroad, with a series of commissions from artists in Colombia (curated by Juliana Steiner), Palestine (curated by Emily Jacir), and South Africa (curated by Boyzie Cekwana). Funding from CHRA will allow these artists to dive deeply into issues of importance to their local communities, with projects focused on reviving Indigenous agricultural traditions, responding to the loss of specific food cultures and ecosystems, and mapping the various ways that humans have shaped and interacted with their environments.

The final series brought questions of sustainability and climate action back to Annandale with the first of two four-day festivals curated by CHRA Director and Distinguished Artist in Residence Tania El Khoury and Gideon Lester, Fisher Center artistic director and chief executive. From October 13 to 16, 2022, the program celebrated the harvest with two world premieres from artists renowned for their work on food systems and conservation. Cooking Sections’ When [Salmon Salmon [Salmon]] invited viewers to a trio of performance installations examining the impacts of salmon farming on the culture and ecology of the surrounding communities. Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network Distinguished Artistic Fellow Vivien Sansour’s The Belly is a Garden led participants on a site-specific guided walk of the Bard Farm, encouraging them to appreciate the biodiversity of the campus landscape, trace the connections between all living things, and explore the ways that we can nurture each other’s growth and strengthen our necessary interdependence.

From May 4th to May 7th, 2023, Common Ground will mark the beginning of the growing season in the Hudson Valley with a second festival featuring world premieres by Kenyon Adams and Chef Omar Tate, Tara Rodríguez Besosa, El Khoury, Suzanne Kite MFA ’18, and Jordan Weber. A series of digital and in-person talks about art, activism, and food politics will take place throughout the year-long program, providing a broad range of perspectives and possible solutions to the disconnect between our food systems and the natural world. As the seasons change, participating artists and scholars will continue to collaborate across borders and oceans, asking difficult questions about ownership, preservation, and collective action, and working together to imagine how our choices can shape a more equitable and renewable future.