SymbioticA Presents: Sunlight, Soil & Shit (De)Cycle

Ionat Zurr, Oron Catts in collaboration with Steve Berrick
Sunlight, Soil & Shit (De)Cycle
5 to 26 Feb Tue-Sat 10am-4pm - Opening Event 5 Feb 6.30pm


3SDC is a contestable food systems project about Agricultural Technology (AgTech).

The work is a performative durational experiment that includes public workshops, a symposium, a dinner party, live streaming of the event and a documentary. The work will take place in February 2022, during the Seedbox's Community Garden event.

Sunlight, Soil and Shit (the 3 S's) are the three elements our technological utopian future farming is trying to live without. "AgTech" (precision-agriculture intelligence) aims to automate and control food production, while non-standardised elements such as sunlight, soil and shit are removed in favour of artificial light, substrates and fertilisers.

In times of ecological crisis, there is a vital need for seriously playful artistic interventions into these fantasies of separating humans from Nature. By using aesthetics to intervene, sense and gain data of the different processes involved in food manufacturing we are allowing the public to consider their own relations with both Nature and human-made technology.

SymbioticA's 3SDC builds resources to enable the community to accelerate metabolic rifts in agricultural innovation. This project considers whether the precursor to sustainable food systems will be the creation of a metabolic rift - were the means of production will grow ever distant from nature. An ecosystem of technologies that enable and promote transparency, networked experimentation, education, time and climate equity and hyper-local production.

We bring together partners from industry, government, and academia in a research collective that's creating collaborative tools and communities to explore contestable agricultural systems.


Fervor Dinner

Fervor as part of the Sunlight Soil and Shit exhibition presents a gourmet sustainable food ...

Coming together to share food and wine is the perfect medium for discussion in every part of the world! Join Fervor alongside Perth-based sommelier and wine educator, Trent Everitt; for a five-course paired degustation, in a post-symposium celebration of Sunlight, Soil, and Shit, as we reflect on the important relationships within our food system and how we can imagine things differently going forward to live more harmoniously with nature. Not for Her sake, but for ours.

Thursday 10 Feb:
https://events.humanitix.com/fervor-as-part-of-the-contestable-food-systems-symposium10feb2022

Friday 11 Feb:
https://events.humanitix.com/sunlight-soil-and-shit-friday-11th-of-feb-2022


Symposium event info & registration

The Contestable Food Systems Symposium
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-contestable-food-systems-symposium-tickets-251723651217

This one-day curated in-person symposium will explore and contest some of the fantasies surrounding tech based future food systems. It will focus on the attempts optimise and standardise food production by removing uncontrollable variables such has sunlight (shorthand for seasonality and weather) and soil (or more generally, what we used to call nature).

The idea of decontextualising biological outputs from ecological systems in the name of sustainability will be unpacked by a range of epistemologies by speakers from different disciplines.

In AgTech's narrative, the means of production are growing ever distant from nature, in which we can achieve "abundance without consequences". But more likely, AgTech calls for a metabolic rift; a state when a broken nature can no longer be able to provide us with means of existence. Can we imagine different food futures?

Speakers include: Tarsh Bates, Ionat Zurr, Heather Bray, Svenja Kratz, Oron Catts, Bede Mickan, Catie Gressier, Julia Powles, Steve Bull & kelli mccluskey.

The final session of the symposium is the Automated Cultures Digestion panel (both online and in-person). This 1hr discussion will be beamed live via the Community Garden Festival Website (to register head to thecommunity.garden).




Exhibition Opening: 5 February 6.30pm to 8.30 pm

Exhibition: 5 - 26 February Tues - Sat 10am - 4pm

Symposium: 10 February 10am - 5pm

Fervor Dinner: 10 and 11 February 7pm - 10pm

Vaccine Passports are only required for the opening & dinner events