From April 22nd to April 27th, we encourage you to visit The Hosting Lands ~ co-curated by our dear alumni and regular DAI guest Aziza Harmel (DAI, 2013) ~ and take part in a collaboration with an invited artist Dharmendra Prasad at Fanefjord Fælled, Møn. Dharmendra (Bihar, India) focuses on building spaces for the preserving and sharing of rural knowledge in local communities. During the residency, he is going to meet people in Møn, who hold ancestral knowledge of the histories and stories connected to the local landscapes, and who live by and in alternative temporalities - that is: bodies who do not adhere to the fast and production-oriented time of western capitalism. Week-long residency at Hårbølle will conclude with a public workshop and gathering on April 27th.
For the duration of the stay, Dharmendra invites locals to join him in building the social straw sculpture. This communal work together will be a chance to get to know each other, share stories, knowledge and interest, and inspire each other in creating and following experimental life trajectories within the ruins of colonial and plantation capitalism.
In solidarity with Dharmendra's community work in Nadaon, where he is developing the "Agrarian Library" - a cultural space for the caste-marginalized kids and youth of the area, who is often forced to leave education for low-status and underpaid work - The Hosting Lands organise fundraising to Dharmendra’s local village project. Orginisers set a wage of 150 dkk amount for each hour someone is assisting, and learning from, Dharmendra’s work with hay and grass sculpture. Then, The Hosting Lands will donate the funds raised to the local village project.
In this collaboration, The Hosting Lands are directly inspired by the beautiful solidarity work between Kaspar from Skolen for Livet and Augustino from the Jabungo Foundation, who are building a school, organic farm and medical centre in one in rural Tanzania. In the initial process of building Skolen for Livet, Kaspar invited parents to work for free, which allowed the school to save money which could then be distributed to Augustinos project.
The Hosting Lands hope that Fanefjord Fælled can become a site for hosting such gestures of trans-local solidarity, mutual aid and resource redistribution. They firmly believe in the importance of rehearsing and expanding such practices to the artworld, and ecological activism in Denmark and beyond.
If you find an hour, or two, or more to meet and assist Dharmendra during his stay, please get back to The Hosting Lands with the dates and time(s) you will be able to join, so they can organise everything .
If you have questions, do not hesitate to contact Ida Bencke: 60487910 or ida.bencke@gmail.com or contact@hostinglands.com .
More about Aziza Harmel