LET'S PAY OUR FARMERS TO END GLOBAL WARMING video by WayWard Films.
Baking Earth - Soil and the Carbon Economy video by Takeshi Kondo.
Visit the Baking Earth website beginning in early 2019.
About the project:
Baking Earth is a project by Lucas Ihlein, in collaboration with Allan Yeomans.The project focuses on the Yeomans Carbon Still, a recent invention by Allan Yeomans for measuring the carbon content of soils. The machine is intended to be used by farmers as a means of quantifying the carbon sequestration performed through their agriculture practices. In a future carbon economy, farmers could be paid for drawing down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through regenerative farming.
According to Allan Yeomans, up until now soil carbon testing procedures have been complex and prohibitively expensive. Simpler and cheaper methods of finding out how much carbon is in a farmer’s soil are needed to create the incentive for widespread change in agricultural practice.
Baking Earth premiered in the exhibition Shapes of Knowledge, curated by Hannah Mathews at Monash University Museum of Art, February 9 – April 13, 2019. For the exhibition, Lucas and Allan presented a fully operational demonstration model of the Yeomans Carbon Still, which was used to test the carbon content of soils of various farms throughout Victoria, NSW and Queensland.
Excursions to collect the soil samples involved Monash University students, scholars and members of the wider community. These events doubled as opportunities for learning about regenerative farming processes more broadly.
Alongside these material investigations, public discussions took place in the gallery involving engineers, climate scientists and carbon farming advocates about the potential viability (economic, legal, botanical) of an agricultural approach to carbon sequestration.
While the Yeomans Carbon Still is not yet an approved methodology for testing soil carbon, part of Lucas and Allan's goal at MUMA was to explore the viability of getting the Carbon Still accredited by the Australian government.
Acknowledgements
Baking Earth: Soil and the Carbon Economy has been supported by Australia Council for the Arts, Australian Research Council, Monash University Museum of Art, Kandos School of Cultural Adaptation, Create NSW, and Yeomans Plow Co. Many thanks to Rhiannon Sutton Yeomans for design and project assistance.
The project forms part of An artist, a farmer, and a scientist walk into a bar… co-ordinated by Kandos School of Cultural Adaptation (KSCA).
More info on Baking Earth:
The Baking Earth project website.Baking Earth is featured in the first edition of Regener8 Magazine - produced by the National Regenerative Agriculture Day.
The Yeomans Carbon Still and the Baking Earth project was featured in Acres Australia.
Read the exhibition catalogue for Shapes of Knowledge, published by Monash University Museum of Art. There's an essay by Joshua Harrison on Baking Earth on page 105.
Immediately following the exhibition at MUMA, Lucas Ihlein was invited to contribute an essay about soil for Kaldor Public Art Projects' education kit on artist Asad Rasa. You can read the essay here or download the pdf of the whole publication here.
"AUSTRALIAN FARMERS CAN REVERSE THE GLOBAL EFFECTS OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: CARBON NATION", article by Colin Taylor, The Weekly Times
Lucas Ihlein hosted a "Soil and the Carbon Economy Round-table Discussion" at Monash University Museum of Art on 23 March, 2019, featuring Allan Yeomans (inventor of the Yeomans Carbon Still), Louisa Kiely (Carbon Farmers of Australia), Dru Marsh (EPA Victoria), Lucas Ihlein (artist) and Niels and Maja Olsen (regenerative farmers).
Melbourne filmmaker Takeshi Kondo produced this short video about Baking Earth for MUMA - featuring Lucas Ihlein and Allan Yeomans.
Wollongong video makers WayWard created this 10 minute video entitled "Let's Pay Our Farmers to End Global Warming" which was featured in the exhibition at MUMA.
Baking Earth documentation and discussion is part of Groundswell at The Living Classroom, Bingara, September 2019.
Greening the Apocalypse, RRR radio Melbourne, 12 March 2019
"Shapes of knowledge: A conversation -
Maria Bilske in conversation with Hannah Mathews and Alex Martinis Roe", in Artlink, Issue 39:3 September 2019. Download PDF here.
Paul Isbel, "Review of Shapes of Knowledge", 7 March 2019, Arts Hub.
The above video is a recording of an Art Forum lecture by Lucas Ihlein for MADA (Monash Architecture Design Art) on 20 March, 2020. (Source)
Shapes of Knowledge - Exhibition catalogue