FoAM - Amsterdam

Instagram: theunkarelse

Timeframe: 2002 -

Founded in 2002, FoAM Lab in Amsterdam works at the intersection between art, technology and ecology. The studio is project-based and its methodologies have been gradually shifting towards fieldwork since 2010. The studio includes four gardens in Amsterdam, three of which are public: the edible garden at Jan Mayenplein, which has focused since 2008 on native edible herbaceous plants; De Tuin van Jan, a small public park we designed with teams of local residents led by five experts from 2013 onward, also at Jan Mayenplein; and finally MidWest Experimental Station at Cabralstraat 1, an urban orchard which serves as a hub for citizen science and artistic experimentation with a focus on climate adaptation and urban ecology.

Sphaerae

Sphaerae is a semitransparent portable pavilion for synaesthetic compositions, new imaginaries and transdisciplinary experimentation.

Fieldguide to Random Forests

Research and essays from the programme with contributions by Maja Kuzmanovic, Nik Gaffney, Ian Ingram, Driessens/Verstappen, Wilfried Hou Je Bek, Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, Michelle Gerearts, Tivon Rice, Jan de Graaf, Jeroen van Westen, Antti Tenetz, Jacqueline Heerema, and others..

Delta Casus

First results from the field exploration of the multi-species futures in the Dutch river delta region, on invitation by the Embassy of the North-sea.

Future of the Delta

A fieldwork team investigates future perspectives of the Dutch delta region from a multi-species perspective. Can the effort of looking from their vantage-points open up space for new insights, deepen our empathy for the aquatic world and the creatures of wet, dry and intertidal worlds?

Anthropocene: tended wildernesses

At present the landscape of the Anthropocene is starting to reveal itself to us in all of its devastation. It looks like it needs our tending.

Random Forests

This research programme looks at what the arrival of AI could mean for landscapes and non-human inhabitants. What are fundamental ingredients for environmental literacy and how could these be made accessible to an AI?

MidWest Experimental Station

In 2015 FoAM ams works to establish an urban experimental station in Amsterdam West at the MidWest neighborhood coop, aimed at horticultural, ecological and culinary field experiments. The 40 x 12 meter area used to be one of two playgrounds belonging to the former school building. The old pavement will be replaced by a lush orchard of grass and fruittrees. A 6 x 4 greenhouse is under construction offering controled space. This is an open call for anyone who seeks space to develop field experiments of any duration or size.

Boskoi

A mobile phone app that helps you map and navigate the edible landscape

Hiking with Monsters, a curriculum

A semester of fieldwork and embodied research practices, where design students dive into the world of a wild animal in their area.

How to walk like something is around you

Artist Catherine Harris has called for ‘unconditional hospitality’ towards the natural world. I think what I experience in the rainforest in Kerala, the wetlands in Coorg and among the clouds in the Nilgiris is that, for some of us, this unconditional hospitality may take some getting used to.

Machine Wilderness

Machine Wilderness is a project prototyping artificial organisms as functional agents within biomes and landscapes, actively contributing to biodiversity.

Mammoth Soup

The Hague-based Satellietgroep invited Theun of FoAM Amsterdam as an artist-in-residence for two months of cultural research on the Zandmotor. On this giant artificial sandbank that has been constructed at the coast near the Hague as an innovative method of coastal defence, fossils can be found that have been deposited along with the sand from the North Sea floor. During the two-month residency I gathered a sizeable collection of fossils. It is pretty amazing to find these objects and hold them in your hand. It made me wonder if they grant access in some way back to the ancient past. Can anything from those times be experienced through these bones? Would they perhaps still have a taste?

Animal Property Rights, Totems and Zoöps

In "Animal Property Rights, a theory of habitat rights for wild animals" John Hadley explores if animal territories could form the basis of an alternative approach to conservation.

Machine Wilderness - ARTIS

An artist-in-residency programme at ARTIS Royal Zoo in Amsterdam, exploring how human technologies can act as bridges to animal and plant worlds. Could our technologies be technologies of environmental empathy, kinship and solidarity?

1000 portals

In the past few weeks I went to the park everyday, and pretend it's a beautiful forest.I found some interesting insertion points to re-connect with this environment.