Join us as we create links between culture and agriculture.
Land, Food & Transformation: A De-Composium
Saturday, June 15,
1:00 – 5:00 pm
Aldo Leopold Legacy Center
E13701 Levee Road, Baraboo, WI
This event is open to the public and free of charge. An optional tour of the Leopold Shack will precede the event at 10:30 AM at a cost of $5.00.
Out of the primordial ooze of decay comes a nutrient-rich environment that gives rise to the next wave of life. This happens literally of course: in the soil; in our pickle jars and wine casks; to our corpses and to our constructions. It also happens in art, music and literature. In Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Jacques says:
“And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then from hour to hour, we rot and rot;
And thereby hangs a tale.”
The rot leads us to the ripe and the tale is told through religion, philosophy, art, and science.
An upcoming symposium—Land, Food and Transformation: A De-composium—is an opportunity for people to take a closer look at the biological, practical and metaphorical processes of decomposition and how they affect our land, our food, and our health. This symposium will take place on Saturday, June 15, from 1-5 PM at the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center, E13701 Levee Road, in Baraboo. The event is open to the public and free of charge. An optional 2 hour tour of the Leopold Shack, will precede the event at 10:30 AM cost is $5.00.
The De-composium will explore three approaches to the theme: the analytical, the practical, and the expressive. The analytic presentations (by a team of UW Madison soil scientists and a social scientist) will be mixed in with the practical (composting) and the expressive (poets, musicians). Curt Meine—conservation biologist, Leopold biographer, musician, and Senior Fellow with the Aldo Leopold Foundation—will open the afternoon’s gathering.
Serving as a starter culture, invited composers will respond to “Germinations”’—an original symphony in D by the class-grass quintet Graminy—by decomposing it, creating something new out of its themes. This artistic process will echo natural processes and will result in three new “D-Compositions” that will be performed at Fermentation Fest –A Live Culture Convergence in Reedsburg this October.
Wisconsin’s Poet Laureate Max Garland and poet Margaret Rozga, a social justice advocate and civil rights activist, will read from their own work. Verse Wisconsin co-editors Wendy Vardaman and Sarah Busse will run a Poetry De/Composition Station, where poets and non-poets alike can try their hands at composing (and de-composing) new poems. The afternoon will conclude with a facilitated conversation.
The goals for this symposium are to create a nutrient-rich environment for discussion, bringing people together across disciplines, using different ways of expression, to enrich our culture, our land, and our communities.
This event is presented by: Wormfarm Institute, The UW-Madison Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, Verse Wisconsin and the Aldo Leopold Foundation. It is made possible in part through grants from ArtPlace, the Sauk County Arts and Culture Committee, the Wisconsin Arts Board and the National Endowment for the Arts.
More events coming soon!
A Live Culture Convergence October 4 – 13, 2013
The Wormfarm Institute presents a food and farming festival with a focus on fermentation… and fun! Farmers, chefs, artists, poets and cheese makers converge in the beautiful working lands of Sauk County, Wisconsin with a series of tastings, demonstrations, cooking classes, art events, brewing seminars, farm tours and more. Click here to learn more and to register for classes.
Featuring: The Farm/Art Dtour, including:
- farm-based public art installations
- Roadside Culture Stands
- farm fresh produce
- Field Notes (rural education sites)
- pasture performances… and much more!