2. STOP HUNGER
Lorena Guillen Vaschetti
Working title: Line Garden
INTENTION
Hunger is one of the largest and mostcomplex problems humanity faces today. One in ten people around the world are living in hunger today.An estimated 820 million people did not have enough to eat last year, and thesenumbers are escalating due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Hunger is not a feeling in the belly due to skipping a meal or two: it is a mental, psychological and sensorial change that occurs when your life -and that of the ones you love-is at risk because of the absence of food. There are various scientific answers to its cause:some say hunger is a logistic problem, others that it is a result of global warming. In 2020 theNobel Peace Prizewent to the United Nations’ World Food Program: a powerful message to the world that peace and Zero Hunger go hand-in-hand.
There is more to ending hunger than simply providing food to those who lack sufficiently. We need to create new ways to grow, share and consume our foods;to promote sustainable agriculture, to engage societiesinto creating community seed banks,discussingfood security, nutrition and foster agro-biodiversity. While these urgent topics are slowly beingaddressed, as an artist I have been invited to make a work reflecting upon Hunger for a park in Odsherred, a rich agriculturalareathat does not know hunger per se,and whose land’s produce is so special that it is known as the country’skitchen garden.Raw ingredients from this area are used bythe finest and world-wide-famous restaurants in Denmark.
Photo: Sketch from Lorena Guillen Vaschetti
Photo: Sketch from Lorena Guillen Vaschetti
"I am interested in creating experiences that moves and affects the audience in a physical and emotional way. "
This is what I propose for Anneberg Park: Along and lush sustainable vegetable and fruit garden -50 meters long and 10 meters wide -that has a pathway running in the middle of the long side of the piece. This narrow passage allows only one person at a time to walk through it. At the beginning of the path, the person walks in the idyllic garden, enjoying its beauty, its smells and discovering new perspectives and scales. As the walk continues, the pathway goes lower and lower, deeper into the ground, loosing the visual relationship with the garden. Senses are affected: a scent of soil, a change in temperature, the unexpected sound experience of being in narrow path between 4 meters walls, and more. There is no sustenance at sight. The horizon vanishes. A feeling of unrest reigns. As the walks continue, the path returns to the ground level again slowly gaining light, skyline and view of the surroundings.
The idyllic garden becomes present again and is experienced from a new perspective. This piece brings together contrasting realities that are usually far away from each other in geography, and sets them side-by-side. The garden per se should seem natural, designed using some perennial grasses and herbaceous plants inspired by the way in which they grow in the wild, but including seasonal vegetables, fruits and edible flowers. The garden becomes an idyllic representation of the nature’s generosity, a world where the thought of hunger would be impossible. The path is its opposite. Line Garden would be placed with east-west orientation: on both equinoxes the sun will illuminate the whole pathway both at sunrise and sunset. The exact location is yet to be considered and decided on site.
Central to this piece are the roles of the local agricultural and garden communities. Their knowledge and expertise are part to a cultural heritage to be admired and celebrated. It is fundamental that they working allstages of the production with their information and their hands, creating a feeling of ownership of the piece, and pride. It is with them that the elements and the seasonal rhythm of the garden will be decided. Their seed will grow in their land. It is my hope that twill become an iconic piece for the mand a reference in Denmark, a work expressing their long-time-built expertise in dialogue with an extraordinary soil. The maintenance will offer the chance and challenge of shared responsibility, and the produce will provide an ongoing opportunity to reflect upon, and practice, the sharing of food.
"I trust Line Gardenwill offer an inspiring and moving sensory immersion into the complexities of Hunger both in its making and its life as an art piece in Annebergpark."
A FURTHER SUGGESTION
Parallel to Line Garden, I would like to take this opportunity to make a second proposal / suggestion for Anneberg / Odsherred UNESCO Global Geopark: A Sustainable Agriculture and Garden Library and Seed Bank It would serve different purposes, among them:
-To condense the local and national knowledge of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of natural agriculture and gardening.
-To root the information related to the Danish Kitchen Garden.
-To promote sustainable agriculture and gardening.
-To create a local seed bank for saving and exchange, to add to the contemporary efforts to conserve crop genetic diversity.
-To inform the importance of a sustainable nutrition.
-To offer a place to meet social actors and exchange knowledge and produce in ways such as workshops, talks, market, etc.
-To serve as information center for the Line Garden, informing engaging the community in and giving schools the possibility to work in it.
Lorena Guillen Vaschetti
I am an Argentinian artist, architect and mother. I studied anthropology and have worked with photography, focusing on the construction and re-construction of personal memory.
Moving into sculpture, I became particularly interested in creating work that involves the audience at different levels: sensorial, mental and emotional. Art can offer the opportunity to revise the way we feel and see ourselves, and the world around us: a challenge and responsibility I am captivated by.
