Adjustability – the most important thing when practicing permaculture.
One year ago, I hung this quote on the wall in a bright shiny studio while taking my first steps in permaculture ethics. And now, as I write, recollecting and reflecting on my journey into this philosophy, I would say that permaculture is about connecting.
Linking people and practices together was the original idea that brought dancers, researchers, permaculture designers, and different types of practitioners to the Duncan Dance Research Center in October 2021. The Moving Ground call initiated by the Duncan Center was a platform designed upon permaculture principles with an emphasis on sustainable innovations to organize landscapes and build embodied experiences of dance. Coming from different practices and locations we gathered in Athens with one great purpose in mind: assist in the creation of a community garden that explores site dance, permaculture, and ecology. And here is where the first step of care occurred.
Care is about proximity. My strongest memories of the Moving Ground program were about people and connections. During that time, caring came to appear individually or with others. To give you examples: I witnessed colleagues embodying their care for the land by planting a seed in the yard. I overheard permaculture designers brainstorming sustainable ways to live on this planet and voicing concern for caring for the earth. And lastly, I admired how dancers/choreographers embody issues of sustainability, caring, land, weather, food production, etc. into their performances to increase awareness about environmental issues. Experiencing these moments, I perceived permaculture design as a social practice, a walk, a course of meetings, readjustments, and connections. Right over there, as I was merging with this creative environment around me, feeling moved and inspired, my project, third space started flourishing.
[…]
In February 2022, Duncan Center welcomed me, and my artistic partner to its home. We traveled from our hometown Thessaloniki to Athens for a ten-day residency with the scope to approach permaculture principles and bring into being a new peripatetic project. Looking back now, I feel the hospitality we experienced and the relationships we built with people was the first form of care, the one of ‘caring for one another’ that consistently helped me understand that permaculture is more than design, art, or vision but rather, a mentality, a form of practice of taking care of people and the planet.
Permaculture places emphasis on locality (Haluza-DeLay 2013), to the transformation of our cities and landscapes. So, there I was at a dance school in the suburban town of Vyronas, ready to collect aspects of a sense of this place. At the time of the residency, the friendships and the talks, the mapping and unpacking of the notion of permaculture put the care of place at the heart of my attention. We can imagine, we can design, and we can have an input of creating sustainable ways to habit the earth. This realization marked the beginning of Third Space.
The third space is a peripatetic participatory performance that employs permaculture principles in the city, working with the first ‘observe and interact’ principle. For this project, I mapped a walking route for participants through the urban (green) spaces of Vyronas and Hymettus (Athens), where the public space functioned as a vehicle for social expression.
As I mentioned, observing and interacting is permaculture’s first design principle. This guiding principle is the combination of two states. This means that in permaculture theory, the act of attentively, perceiving, and stating a situation with care is attached to the mutual, reciprocal action of inter-acting.
Observation is fundamental to permaculture. It is not only considered a form but as a person’s ability to create a functional permaculture design. Permaculture theory explains that the ‘three Os: observe, observe, observe’ are forming the necessary core of its system. Feel and caring for nature means first observing its system. With the right observational skills, we can act. And that is how we make the change, by devoting ourselves in favor of nature. As the father of permaculture, Bill Mollison, once said, “Work with nature, not against it”. Observing nature and learning from her is an effective direction permaculture suggests toward understanding and building a relationship with the physical world. But there’s more to it than that.
Οbservation applies to somatic practices and dance too. Dancing is close to permaculture theory. To dance with someone else means also to observe the other partner. It means to sense and observe the somatic patterns that someone else close to you carries. As I mentioned above, care is about proximity. If permaculture is about connecting elements of a system, then dance work interconnects dancers who explore physical and conceptual languages through and beyond their bodies. Dance is active observation, a practice of taking care of your partner and simultaneously looking after your body. Dance is a self-care tool, likewise. Nelson reflecting on the eco-somatics of permaculture states that: «For a soma, observation is in itself a form of interaction. Observation implies a differentiation between the role of witness and the subject or the object of investigation. In the somatic discipline of Authentic Movement the relationship between a mover and a witness is fundamental. The mover moves while the witness observes. A key implication is that being observed changes how one perceives oneself. The practice of these roles supports their development both inter-personally and intra-personally. In permaculture one observes the processes of a place before attempting to make changes to it» (Nelson 2018: 24).
Designing a walking route with care.
For the Third Space project, the observational and interactive permaculture acts are examined through the prism of choreography, dance, and walking art. Most
importantly, though, the dramaturgical design process of the project vacillates between urban scenography and public space. The residency period in Athens lasted ten days. Going from Thessaloniki to Athens to effectively map the walking route and provide an experience to the participants for the project to come. Arriving in Athens and after the great hospitality and care we received from Penelope Iliaskou and the rest of the Duncan Center people, my work partner (artistic advisor: Anastasia Barka) and I decided to spend our first three days exploring and mapping the area around Duncan Dance Center, which was still unfamiliar to us. We specifically mapped the sites of Vyronas and Ymittos that surround the center. We start observing all the area characteristics: the diversity among buildings; points of green and sounds of birds; meeting points that provide unexpected interactions; going from silent streets to busy streets; graffiti; roads with uphill and slopes; stairs and benches; natural parks; playground and pocket parks; orange trees; Amphitheaters made from concrete, etc. Later for the project purposes, we shifted our attention to more specific points that piqued our interest to start steadily developing the walking route’s dramaturgy. We perceived bus stops as waiting areas; City signs as canvases; playgrounds as strongly curated spaces that provide context for playful activities; Small pocket parks as points of rest; Squares as meeting places/ and or potential stages; natural parks as spaces for recreation; Benches as points of rest and observation that negotiate proximity.
As we accessed the areas the new project was going to explore and collect data, we proposed another two walking rounds around the Duncan Dance Center area, but this time accompanied by an architect and choreographer. Walking, observing, and discussing with people from different disciplines felt very enlightening. Their vocabulary and points of view enriched our interpretations. Dimitris, the architect, talked about the urban street design of Athens and the styles of construction that exist, he explained how parks are related to the natural environment and can be viewed as places for recreation (a common ground), he spoke about building aesthetics (textures, light, visual interventions) and finally, he reflected on the phenological approach of wandering. On the other hand, the discussion with Despoina (choreographer) centered around public urban areas, the construction of experience, and the perception of place. Lastly, talking about agency and participation we wonder what the proper vocabulary is to introduce the participants in the process of observation and interaction.
The residency was now over. Taking all the information, and documenting, we proceed towards the creation of Third Space. «The city in scenographic frames digresses to “a third space” which is at once imaginary and real, and constantly oscillates between the two» (Henri Lefebvre 1991).
Permaculture in Athens City
The third space peripatetic project comes from somatic | scenographic | social | public space.
| Somatic space
The philosophy of permaculture is about reconnecting to the earth and recognizing the human role in the earth’s system. The scope of the third space is to re-imagine human-nature relations and create “a caring for the earth | caring for each other” space narrative. For this project, the eco-choreographic approach is not measured by its outcome but also by how it relates and contributes to environmental and social systems beyond the art. As such, a somatic space becomes a space that stimulates mobility, is multisensory, and places the body in.
| Scenographic space
Permaculture fosters the use of public space in many ways for efficiency, and diversity. The project emphasizes an embodied sense of being in and experiencing the urban space as an active agent, real and imaginary, dramatic and scenographic. Thinking about the variety of experiences in the same place, third space re-imagines ways of inhabiting public space by «perceiving the city as a collection of scenographic settings» (Tang 2018). By focusing on the latent tendency toward daily drama-action, the concept dramatizes the actual space and challenges the common image of the city. Tang writes about the power of scenography in urban centers to generate a situation and cause pleasure, claiming that «urban scenography, like constructing situations, acts like a new kind of ‘game’, of imaginatively connecting things, plotting narratives, and finally enacting them, with certain playfulness and joy of arbitrary interpretation and creation. This game relies on the fascinating and dramatic potentials of the everyday objects […]» (Tang 2018). Based on urban scenography, the third space views the city as a collection of scenographic settings. Treating buildings, roads, pocket parks, and squares, as frames, theatricalizes the real space and challenges the common perception of the city. The third space is an invitation towards rethinking how we gather and the practices that we share when we do.
| Social space
Permaculture is a social movement attempting to imagine and enact new ways of being and inhabiting the earth. Permaculture encourages us to observe and care for patterns that are already in public spaces and try to re-establish connections between people and the environment. Studying the ‘social’ of urban spaces, the project care about the links between public space and how they meet people’s natural and human needs.
How do the body and environment co-construct each other through a set of practices and relations?
Care for the earth
Score#0
Once I was told that
To care for the earth
Is a collective way of walking
Towards social health
Follow the patterns along with your co-walkers.
Central to permaculture ethics is care for the earth. Earth, like humans, is a living organism. As a living entity, the earth needs care to live, breathe and sustain itself. In permaculture theory, caring for the environment means practicing things that sustain the earth’s health. Earth care practices can be found in caring for the soil, care to recycle, care for saving energy, garden care, and caring for climate, among others. Caring for the earth means also caring for places (Haluza-DeLay, Berezan 2013). Yet we know that the context of a place is multi-dimensional. The context may include the physical, social, cultural, and economic environment, building development, urban mobility patterns, location, form, etc. It is necessary, in permaculture design, to have a sense that a place interconnects all the above elements, as there is an interdependence of one with the other (Taylor Aiken 176).
Photos: Third space Poem 1, 2, 3, 4 + walking map. Credits: Anastasia Polychronidou
How can permaculture be applied to life in a city?
The EDN Atelier: Moving Ground was co-organised and hosted by Duncan Dance Research Center and took place on June 1st – 2nd in Athens, Greece. The third space project is the outcome of the Moving Ground open call/residency I received a few months ago and took the form of a participatory walking route around the neighborhood of Duncan Center. For this project, I connected an eco-choreographic approach to the practices of permaculture care (‘caring for the earth- caring for each other’), and I invited the participants to form and construct their ‘dramaturgical interpretations’ (Shearing 2014: 40) during their walking experience. On this stroll, the participants meet street signs hung in trees or placed in unorthodox public spots that guide them towards their walk and stimulate engagement with Athens’s landscape. The walk aims to provide an active and embodied engagement with the environment while reflecting upon the permaculture of observing and interacting. In the first half of the walk, the dramaturgy is centered on observation.
Third space views the city as a large ecosystem that needs to rebuild its resources to sustain its life. Brown claims that we «might think of a city’s characteristics in terms of an ecosystem such as a forest. A mature forest has a forest canopy, which in a city is the top of tall buildings. Mid-sized buildings can be analogous to the forest understory. Small buildings and other human and natural structures are parallel to a forest’s shrubs and ground cover. Finally, the city equivalent to a forest’s soil could be streets, sidewalks, and yards. Once we look at the city’s elements as opportunities to create beauty through design, we begin to find solutions» (Brown 2012: 16).
In the third space, the public space becomes the stage of action. Focusing on starting where you are, as proposed by permaculture theory, walkers start their one-hour route with the intent to meet signs, poetically written, that address matters of earth-caring, such as climate change, planting/community gardening, non-human species, ecology, nature. Reflecting on the diverse ecological problems, the city of Athens carries, the work tries to demonstrate walking together and caring for the city’s living system and sustainability. I trust we can envision new ways of living in urban areas and build caring relationships with each other. If we improve environmental health, we ‘plant a new ecology’ (Parlange 1998: 581) for the city and its residents.
Care for each other
Walking together with care.
The third space is a walking-art project that uses a hybrid participatory-based form of care for one another, and re-imagines human-nature relations in the city of Athens. For this project, public space is viewed as a space that fosters togetherness, a form of social engagement where different purposes, practices, and commons come together. As such, the project focuses on the benefits of public space in the city, the ones of social interaction and exchange.
The third space is about the collective experience of a group walking together. The walk is embodied, participatory, an instinctive mode of responsiveness and connectedness. Walking makes an encounter possible. In this project, the participants walk through spaces that brace mobility and place the body in.
I believe walking can form a power of community and care for one another. Walking together in public implies a connection, a familiarity that can develop a community link between people and space. On the manner of togetherness in space, the work’s first intention is to propose an intimate/caring way to engage with urban space, a conscious dramaturgical decision that can offer privileged perspectives on the place and the individual. Joseph Pierce and Mary Lawhon reflect on the dynamics of walking as urban practice using the term ‘observational walking’ a «reflective project of wandering around to better understand an area’s physical context, and the spatial practices of its residents» (Pierce and Lawhon 2015). Concentrating on the impact of walking in the urban environment, the third space focuses on the benefits of sharing spaces with others as a practice promoting social interactions and a sense of engagement with space. The level of connectivity with the other participants and the affiliation with the place strengthens observation and interactivity.
The application of the first principle of permaculture to this work is in harmony with choreography and dance. The project developed a context for eco-somatic practice. In the second part of the walking tour, the dramaturgy is centered on the principle of interaction and construction of relationships with co-walkers in the public space. The interconnection of permaculture to somatic practices bridges ecology with embodiment. Nelson declares that «permaculture is to ecology what somatics is to kinesiology, psychology and phenomenology. Permaculture offers values, aesthetics and principles that apply ecological study toward practical means. The growing of food and creation of housing are common applications of permaculture design. Care-taking is permaculture’s central ethic, valuing people and ecosystems equally» (Nelson 2018 19).
In this peripatetic route, participants meet the performative language of poetry that stimulates engagement with the urban city. Every frame they encounter as they walk comes with a poem that sheds light on different themes of permaculture, such as food production, gardening, climate change, nature, and urban settings. The text is constructed in the form of poems, attached with choreographic instructions. The poems carry a certain performative rhythm that stimulates movement expression (Barbour 2019). Poems are an invitation to encounter. They are also about interacting, connecting, sensing, imagining, and caring for our bodies and others. Walking by observing and walking by interacting forms a collectivity in embodied decision-making and a feeling of care that results in a choreographic construction implemented by the participants. And just like that, the pursuit of caring for each other arises.
Bibliography
Barbour K., Backyard activisms: Site dance, permaculture and sustainability, Choreographic Practices, 10(1), pp.113-125, 2019.
Brown J., Permaculture design, in «Natural Life», 148, pp.14-17, 2012.
Haluza-DeLay R. and Berezan R., Permaculture in the city: ecological habitus and the distributed ecovillage, Lockyer J. and J. Veteto (eds.) Environmental anthropology engaging ecotopia: bioregionalism, permaculture and ecovillages, Berghahn Books, New York and Oxford, 2013.
Henri L. and Donald N.S., The production of space, Blackwell, Massachusetts, 1991.
Nelson M., Embodied ecology: The eco-somatics of permaculture, in «Choreographic practices», 9(1), pp.17-30, 2018.
Parlange M., The city as ecosystem, in «Bioscience», 48(8), pp.581-585, 1998.
Pierce J. and Lawhon M., Walking as method: Toward methodological forthrightness and comparability in urban geographical research, in «The professional geographer», 67(4), pp.655-662, 2015.
Shearing D., Scenographic landscapes, in «Studies in Theatre and Performance», 34(1), pp.38-52, 2014.
Tang M., Tactics of the Other Everyday, From Urban Scenography to Architecture, 2018.
Taylor Aiken G., Permaculture and the social design of nature, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 99(2), pp.172-191, 2017.
Anastasia Polychronidou is a dramaturg, maker, and researcher of performing arts. As an independent researcher, she focuses on site-specific methodologies and social theories. Her lectures and workshops on walking as a participatory method have been presented at conferences: Theater Critics and Performing Arts Department, University of Athens (Greece 2021); IFTR Performing Arts Department, University of the Arts (Iceland 2022), Walking as Research Question Conference, University of Amsterdam (Netherlands, 2022), Connective Symposium, Fontys School of Fine and Performing Arts (Netherlands, 2022). Since February 2022 she is a member of the Advisory Board on Public Space, in the City Space Architecture non-profit organization in Bologna, Italy.