Beneath the pavement, not the beach conference | Grounding project

On November 21 2020, the opening conference «Beneath The Pavement, Not The Beach» took place and brought together artists, philosophers and soil scientists from different countries to build an alternative map of the heterogeneous soil space. Among the participants are Nikolay Smirnov, Karine Bonneval, Oron Catts, Polina Khanova, Ben Woodard, Terraforming project research team, Farming the Uncanny Valley research team, Yulia Timofeeva. Conference program: Beneath the pavement, not the beach*. But what is under the pavement: land, territory, resource or living matter? Our perception depends on our role and goals. The cartographer sees empty land for layout, the farmer - a fertile resource, the scientist - a complex system that has developed over many years, and the explorer sees the reservoir of petroleum, lying in the depths, and potential profit. Matter of the earth has many dimensions which defines our culture much deeper than it seems at the first gla