The Truth of Less Damaged Spaces and the Art of Open-source/science Food Forests
Deep Live Gathering 2023 in Serbia at Forest University
In 2023, it was the second time I joined Deep Live Gatherings initiated by Deep Adaptation Forum. In 2022, I dropped into the gathering in Montenegro (see my notes about it). This year, I chose to join an event hosted by Forest University that appears on the border with the national park “Fruška Gora” in Serbia (more info about this ‘being’ is here under the ‘Art of Symbiocenic Living’ subtitle).
Thanks to that gathering, I met Mirjana Grabovac, one of the founders of SEEEN (South East European Ecovillage Network). She came from Croatia to visit Forest University in her search for partners in the field of decolonized, trauma-informed, climate-aware, transformative, and regenerative education. I hope to contribute to restarting SEEEN in 2024 with my experience in university relations (see the current working group) and contacts in the Balkan regenerative-eco-tourism ‘scene’.
I won’t describe the event’s program and mention the people involved. Here is just one of the key outcomes that I’ve got personally and would like to share for reflection that I got during the circle guided by Jelena Radošević who describes herself as:
an ecologist and a yoga teacher from Zagreb, interested in the relationship between the human and him/herself, the human and all around him/her, the human and nature… which are, in a way, all the same relationship, in the relationship between the subtle and the tangible and how to translate it.
Jelena has been visiting Fruška gora through the project EUREKA implemented by associations Green Transition (Zelena tranzicija) from Serbia and Tatavaka from Croatia to create new spaces for communication on climate change.
Less Damaged Spaces
Sometimes, quite rare, in very rural places, I feel something I don’t have exact words to describe. Let’s say it’s the feeling of being part of that territory and/or the whole world. In those moments that could last a few minutes, I feel very safe and calm and welcomed by my surroundings, kind of coexisting with everything or being on the territory of a fairy tale like in A.A. Milne’s ‘Hundred Acre Wood’ (inhabited by Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends) or Tolkien’s Old Forest where Tom Bombadil lives.
It is also very the same as in childhood you have a feeling of enjoying being just because you are, and there is nothing that disturbs your attention at this moment. Most probably, cats feel something like that, and for us, it’s obvious that they are enjoying that existence in these moments.
What I think now about these rare rural places that induce that belonging/’being-with’ is that they contain a feature of some absolute truth and beauty, because they are less damaged by people or just-less-damaged-whatever-it-means than all the other landscapes and biotopes that we were exposed to from the moment of birth. And that less-damaged places could remind us of how healthy and true could be the whole planet and that the whole planet is our home. And those places could also heal at least a bit of our damage so then we can go and heal more damaged places on the planet.
I try to explain it with common words, but I also suggest we need a new ontology. It could use e.g. Gaia theory concept and G. Albrecht’s Symbiocenic perspective or/and an old forgotten/diminished ontology that is based on all that land and water spirits, fairies, and elves that we locked in the realms of mythologies, but artists like Marco Pogacnic are up to bring it back.
This part of the article has a version in Russian —Истинность и целительность малонарушенных ландшафтов.
From Parks to Open-Source (Open Science) Food Forests
I worked on this note to post it a few weeks later. I’ve got back again at Fruška Gora, but a bit more east from Forest University — in a large village Beočin. There are mostly meadows, fields, and middle-size monoculture gardens. Gardens are not henced, so anyone can come close and look at all these fruit trees planted in long raws and cut to stay in a particular size which is convenient for ‘agriculture routines’.
Do these gardens look ugly or as concentration camps for plants — a plantation, or as a fab?
Someone would say it’s pretty nice, well-ordered, and accurate. For sure, it could be a wide range of opinions/views on it.
My point is that encountering less-damaged places such plantations could raise more questions and reflection. My questions are:
- yes, fruits from these plantations are still food. But do they have all those components (and in enough amounts and quality) even if ‘scientists say ‘yes’’ they have? (but we even know that they also they ‘no’).
- What if the beauty of the fruit tree and its surroundings is also a mark that shows that fruits have a perfect balance of their components, size, and ‘energy’ (whatever it could mean)?
I believe that in general beauty mirrors healthiness. The contrast between ‘less damaged places’ and plantations, between human-engineered parks and forests that grow by themselves leads me to a vision of public and private Open-Source/Science Food Forests (OSFF).
It could be such a few hectares of regenerative spots that:
- are self-sustainable without human intervention in general (with only significant care for the parts of food production and harvesting)
- have regenerative and climate change adaptive features
- originally designed with the vision of landscape beauty e.g. coping patterns from natural places known for their calming effect.
- purpose to be educational (for schools) and research (for universities) spots with an open citizen science approach, so all the related documentation (permaculture design, landscape model) and data (e.g. micro-climate monitoring) is publicly available for study, discussions and participation.
I suggest also that the design of such places and how they grow year by year could be considered as a new kind of contemporary art. Symbiocenic Art where co-creators are nature and life themselves. The true art that you can’t buy and sell (unless it’s a private food forest property), but you can quote (by e.g. photos and video), remix (by getting ideas and experience from open-source documentation), and steal (picking up fruits and nuts to plant their seeds in your surroundings) for your own permaculture and art endeavours.
Actually, I wouldn't come to the concept of OSFF without a few days spent at Forest University together with Andrew Gryf Paterson — a Helsinki-based artist-organiser, cultural producer, educator and independent researcher who advocates open source culture almost in all his projects. Andrew visited Serbia soon after Deep Live Gathering, he made this audio and a long read that reflects his experience here on Fruška Gora”.
OSFFs also could be an organic part of Symbiocenic Environments — a framework that I work on for long-term cooperation between universities, ecovillages, and nature reserves.
More info
- There are already a few initiatives on the intersection of open-source and ecology/gardening — Open Source Gardens based in Berlin, Food Forest Open Source Hub by an international team of One Community, and US-based Open Source Ecology initiative by Marcin Jakubowski.
- Forest Gardening in Wikipedia
- Čair, the traditional Crimean garden system (in Wikipedia as well, the article exists only in Russian)
- I asked Google’s Bard to write an essay and a white paper about Open-source Food Forests, here is the result.
Some of my other ‘Balkan reports’:
- Serbian Ecologists
- Interview with Nara Petrovic (Slovenia)
- Immersing in the Light of Albanian Nature and Culture
- Reflections on Tivat Tourism Think Tank 2022 — Regeneration for Montenegro and the Western Balkans. 2022 Montenegro.
- Unaware (Unconscious) Violence and Seeds of In-action. Deep Live Gathering 2022 in Montenegro.
- Expats in the Montenegro Countryside (in Russian)
- Social Slow Travel: Lowcost&Zerowaste (it’s a more general overview, but it’s heavily based on the latest experience in the Balkans)
