Chiara Famengo

WaterWays: an invitation to re-imagine the ecology of Regent’s Canal restores and regenerates broken relationships between humans and the living organisms of the Regent’s Canal.

The project explores the canal’s biodiversity and lived histories to understand and challenge the way we generate, collect and store environmental data. At the core of the project is Canal Observatory, a commission by the artist collectives AusBlau and Applied Logic that have co-created a digital game for environmental data collection. By looking at the biodiversity of Camley Street Natural Park and recognising it through “canal emojis”, Canal Observatory reflects on who can collect data, how this is accessible as well as how we can reimagine our relationships with our surroundings.

Behind the scenes, WaterWays creates an ecosystem of alliances recognising agency to those who have been working with water and data for much longer than the curatorial team; the project involves scientists and botanists, Central Saint Martins students working on projects to protect the ecosystem, local inhabitants closely linked to the aquatic environment, as well as artists and creative practitioners.

WaterWays: an invitation to re-imagine the ecology of the Regent’s Canal was curated by Chiara Famengo, Fergus Wiltshire, Jiaqi Liu, Kylee Kim, Marjorier Ding, Yixiong Cui from the MA Curating Contemporary Art Programme as part of the Graduate Projects 2022, Royal College of Art in partnership with the Open Data Institute (ODI)’s Data as Culture.

As a curator, educator, and urban-ecology researcher, my practice explores the potential of the arts in assisting a move towards solidarity, ecological belonging, and environmental justice.

As such, I conceive the curatorial as akin to a decentralised, mycelium network that expands through multiple threads of engagement, reaching multiple disciplines, communities, and practitioners.

I have stepped away from direct gallery contexts in order to work in alternative cultural spaces such as nature reserves and gardens where curators can foster art-based forms of grassroots community self-organization aiming to protect, restore and regenerate the lives of humans and more-than-human beings.

I am currently working with and for spaces such as the Bethnal Green Natural Reserve in London, and the MetaForte association in Venice. I am collaborating with their local communities and their international creative practitioners and developing art and educational programs around urban ecology, horticultural knowledge, and indigenous plant knowledge thereby bringing together the work of several different strands of long-term research.

While designing these micro, localised, complex responses, I am also trying to create platforms of solidarity for remembering, exchanging, and learning together across borders and nations.

With a particular focus on Venice, my hometown, I question the role and unexplored potential of international contemporary art events such as the Biennale. I raise questions about hyperlocal responses on the one side and access to global networks on the other.

I work towards multiple scales of change from my intimate experience with local surroundings to form a new type of global collectivity.

Past, present, and future projects include:

The Ecology Survey, Community Learning Programme at the Bethnal Green Natural Reserve (London, United Kingdom, 2022); Make the Deserts Bloom, La Wayaka Current residency in the community of Coyo, (Atacama Desert, Chile, October 2022); Piantagruél, Public Programme at the MetaForte Association (Venice, Italy, June 2022); WaterWays, An Invitation to re-imagine the Regent’s Canal ecosystem, RCA graduate project at Camley Street Natural Park (London, United Kingdom, May 2022). One-third of the collective Making Interspecies Relations with the curators Mattie O’Callaghan and Pierce Eldridge.

Canal Assembly, Event at the Central Saint Martin University

(Un)learning Canal's Ecosystems, Workshops at the Camley Street Natural Park

Canal Observatory, AusBlau Commission at Camley Street Natural Park

Canal Observatory, Digital Game by AusBlau and Applied Logic

WaterWays is an art project that connects humans to other living organisms of the Regent’s Canal. Through Canal Observatory, a newly commissioned digital game for data collection co-designed by artist collectives AusBlau and Applied Logic, interviews, stories, ecological findings. WaterWays seeks to understand the health of this ecosystem in the hope of remedying and rebuilding relationships. The research is presented in the form of three chapters: Voices of Water; (Un)learning Canal Ecosystems; and Archiving Futures.

WaterWays: an invitation to re-imagine the ecology of the Regent's Canal was launched on the 21st of May 2022 at Camley Street Natural Park, London.

In Collaboration with:

AusBlau

Applied Logic Studio

Becky Horne

Medium:

Public Programme, Commission, Online Exhibition, Curation

The understory of the Bethnal Green Natural Reserve

Foraging walk with the Bethnal Green Natural Reserve community and the London-based forager Rights For The Weeds

I am currently working with the Bethnal Green Nature Reserve community to collaboratively design an experimental Ecology Survey. This survey aims to highlight the value of often-overlooked urban plants (‘weeds’) to the local community, by emphasising not only the important work we do to care for the reserve, but also the ways in which the reserve takes care of us (emotionally, spiritually, mentally and physically).

Over the summer season, the botany team have organised a series of walks which aim to build a living archive of botanical knowledge that will be accessible to current and future friends of the reserve both online and on site. Besides sharing stories, remedies and recipes, during these walks we will observe and learn from the plants themselves, as well as collectively explore what a community-organised ecology survey looks like.

In Collaboration with:

Ailo Ribas

Medium:

Public Programme, Community Activism, Curation

Piantagruél, MetaForte, Venice, Public Programme, Curation

Piantagruél is a collective exploration of the Venetian lagoon, its islands, its inhabitants and its most hidden treasures.

Commissioned by the MetaForte in June 2022, it resulted in a two-weeks public programme of foraging walks, herbal remedies making sessions, explorations of ancient Venetian recipes and talks with the local communities.

Piantagruél aimed to rediscover the plants of the Venetian lagoon as a gift to receive with gratitude and not as a product to consume and extract. It was a collective understanding of lagoon ecosystems through body, mind, spirt and emotion.

In Collaboration with:

MetaForte

Barena Bianca

Tocia! cucina e comunità

Prometheus _ Open Food Lab

Spontaneus

Medium:

Public Programme, Curation

Activism Community Ecology Ecosystems Local Sustainability

Make Interspecies Relations is a month long online residency, longing to connect to ecological spaces, across borders and within the digital; it brings Venice, Australia and the United Kingdom together to build an online environment focused on ecological practices, theories and pedagogies. The curators, Pierce Eldridge, Mattie O'Callaghan and I, will present sound, imagery, written work and interactive artworks from artists of each region as a way to build connections between ecological spaces and places.

As we journey through these spaces, spanning across different regions, we have looked to the potential of creating companion networks, envisaged as a digital library of interactive resources and shared relations.

Make Interspecies Relations acts not as a simple resource centre, but instead as a platform where the entanglement of people, places and practices can come together to grow and connect. We aspire to create a platform that has accessibility options integrated for a myriad of users to interact and exchange at their preferred visual audio settings.

To be presented with Nextdoor ARI, 29 Aug — 9 Sep 2022, online at: https://nextdoorari.com/events

In Collaboration with:

Pierce Evan Eldridge

Mattie O'Callaghan

Medium:

Online Exhibition, Curation

Chiara Famengo

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Royal College of Art