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Threads 3.12.20 – We Have Sound 20.12

Threads 03.12.20

We Have Sound 20.12

Music

Raime – Passed Over Trail

Call Super – Milkweed

Camp Of Wolves – Collapsed Adit

Triad God – Chow Bat Por

Heathered Pearls feat. Danny Scales – Muscle/Maintain/Feen

Nosaj Thing – No Mind

Arthur Russell – I Take This Time (Live 6/24/84)

Cktrl – Will The Feelings Leave

The Cinematic Orchestra – Lessons (Dorian Concept Remix)

Dr…um – Gloomy Monday

Pursuit Grooves – Footprints Galore

Cornell Campbell – Bandulu-Hard Time featuring Ra…

The Revolutionaries – Kunta Kinte Version 1

Mark Pritchard – Be Like Water

Kamran – Kamran

Boardgame James – Specialised Movers

Elf Kid – Golden Boy (Hilts Remix)

Ikonika – Please

Zha – Shattered

Etch – Distrust

Coco Bryce – Deep Into The Jungle

Sound Source Direct – A Made Up Sound

Wardown – Thanks for Comming

Claude Speed – Backwards Track 3

Craven Faults – Hard Level Force

Griffit Vigo – Ancestral Vibe

Scratcha DVA – Storm_Original_Mix

John Beltran – Moth

Andy Stott – Faith in Strangers

Food for thought

I visited Detroit a little over eight years ago, an inspiring place at an important time in its history – shortly before the city filed for bankruptcy in 2013. The cities population had been in steady decline since the collapse of the industry that the motor industry was built for.

 

It is important to be careful about fetishising the crumbling of Detroit; for many residents for whom Detroit was a place to call home the fact that the city was in flux would have been a source of at best friction, and at worst desolation. But Detroit seems to have an enduring ability to overcome adversity and to build from the ground up. For some, the collapse of the economy had brought about the opportunity for a new way of life; Freed from the burden of the usual expense of city living – and with an abundance of unused spaces around them they had begun to grow things there.

 

At this time the transformation of the landscape was captivating and my interest was largely aesthetic. Retrospectively, having spent more time growing food to eat myself, and having read about farms and farming I see it differently – less about a hopeful but dystopian juxtaposition and more about a re-tuning of our relationship with the most fundamental parts of our living.

 

Detroit perhaps more than anywhere embodies the hapless use of resources of the last century, and of our arrogance in trying to shape the environment around our wants. But what emerged amongst the concrete of decaying grand buildings, factories and once neat suburbs of an ailing city showed how we could grow food close to home. It also shows that given the time and the space doing so is something that people are drawn to do; and are nourished by.

 

Large scale farming – regimented fields of single crops or livestock and long transport chains are as big a testament to our carelessness as the metropolis they supply. Like the industry that funded the motor city, economics is the driving force for change as well as malfunction as agricultural methods are often devised to meet market forces demanding for more produce at lower cost.

 

As dystopian as our current days may feel, a total collapse of this version of society seems unlikely anytime soon. As long as we are all here we all need to eat – farming and agriculture is at the sharp edge of our irregular relationship with nature, and farmers are too often at the sharp edge of our poorly distributed economies. The fate of many who owned or worked the land in the drought stricken southern plains of 1930’s America is an example of how farmers are often the first in line to lose out when things go wrong.

 

 

 

Sources

Living Soil: A Documentary – from the Soil institute looking at how large scale farming can adapt new methods to protect and enrich the most vital component.

 

James Lovelock explaining Gaia theory – how our planet could be considered an organism full of complex symbiotic relationships.

 

This Land Is Our Land: The Farm Crisis In America – 1986 documentary about the state of farming and the market forces affecting farming.

 

Dairy Farming in the UK in the 1960’s – a short documentary from the 1960s about dairy farming.

 

Motown to Growtown: Detroit’s Urban Farming Revolution – exploring Detroit’s urban farms and farmers.

 

 

Cover image: Arthur Rothstein