The GARDENING OF SOUL: RESOURCES OF PERSPECTIVES conference explores diverse real or symbolic aspects of gardening. It covers the care for the environment, general well-being, community, specific individuals, and sustainable practices from the perspective of current curatorial strategies, contemporary artistic expressions, and broader social contexts.
The conference focuses on capturing the metaphorical complexity of the garden and gardening and the interpretation of specific socio-cultural approaches that associate these phenomena with care, nurturing, cultivation, cooperation, or sharing, into the creative process. As a key perspective is the issue of interdisciplinarity understood as a tool enabling a comprehensive capture and interpretation of key themes shaping current social discourses.
The conference program is devided into three thematical blocks focusing on areas of creative practices, curatorial approaches, and exploring connections between artistic caregiving with philosophical, historical, environmental, and urban discourse.
The selection of conference contributions is carried out in collaboration with the organizing institutions of the Ústí nad Labem House of Arts, Faculty of Art and Design at Jan Evangelista Purkyně in Ústí nad Labem and with the contribution of institutions that have been actively involved in the GARDENING OF SOUL: IN FIVE CHAPTERS project, such as: Skaftfell Art Center Seyðisfjörður, Dowd Gallery – SUNY Cortland, Kharkiv Municipal Gallery, Kunst Meran / Merano Arte, Museum of Fine Arts Split, PRECEDEE Hong Kong, <rotor> Center for Contemporary Art Graz, Schafhof – European Art Forum Upper Bavaria Freising a The Trinity Session Johannesburg.
Beside artists, art curators, and researchers, the conference also includes participants who are representatives of garget groups and collaborating community organisations involved in the project of GARDENING OF SOUL: IN FIVE CHAPTERS.