For the past week, Suhee and I have been carefully going through about 47,000 words of transcriptions from our interviews with farmers over the past few years.
From this text, we’re slowly making sense of what we learned, and really, of what has happened since our first meeting with a Korean natural farmer all the way back in 2011.
It’s interesting to be piecing the timeline together. On the surface, we’ve both changed our views a great deal since we began this project. Yet, it’s hard to say how, because it does not feel like a ‘root of your being’ kind of change, but more like a realization that you have a few roots you didn’t know you had. That’s always nice, to feel a bit more rooted. And also kind of ironic, as Suhee and I are traveling about so much lately — are roots dangling from an airplane still rooted?
Right now, in the studio space, we have a stack of beautiful handmade paper on the desk which was donated to us by a kind man named Sunil. He runs a social enterprise called Paper Stuff that works directly with craftspeople in Nepal who craft paper from the local wild Lokta plants.
We saw this while looking for local sustainable sources of materials for the show and thought “Wow! This is something beautiful and really positive that they are doing.” We contacted them about the show and they’ve been kind enough to donate the extra stock they had lying around to the Final Straw. Thanks to this donation, we have a few little surprises in store for our exhibition guests. But you’ll have to visit to see what they are (or watch the blog next week).
At any rate, this coming Tuesday (26 Nov), a selection from the aforementioned 47,000 words of farmer prose will be displayed in a gallery along with our photographs and clips of the film, and a little bit of a physical interactive element, too.
Have a look the show, and stay tuned for a recap of our upcoming panel discussion at Edinburgh College of Art with these Scotland-based ecology superstars:
- Dr. Emily Brady (Edinburgh University, Professor of Environmental Philosophy)
- Mike Small (Director of Fife Diet, Europe’s largest local food project)
- Ben Twist (Director of Creative Carbon Scotland)
We’re happy these three individuals have signed on to chat with the engaging Chris Fremantle as panel chair, and are looking forward to hosting a roster of guests from around the UK.
Well, till a bit later then, after the show perhaps. For now, maybe have a look at the sky and let me know what you see from over there?
This is an amazing story dear friend! and those papers look amazingly beautiful manufactured by natural resources not by chemicals…This is something authentic!!