Arable Bodies
Next Nature Network • Design Academy Eindhoven
The 1960s “green revolution” allayed food security fears, despite a population explosion. In our time, soil and climate crises have caused those fears to resurface, bigger than ever. The UN predicts that by 2080, the 10-11 billion-strong planet will have no arable land.
“Arable Bodies” is an immersive video installation, set in 2080. It follows scientific predictions of the most likely planetary conditions after a global 3-4 °C temperature increase. In the north, new arable land, uncovered by melting ice, has enabled agriculture; everywhere else, arable land has shrunk to dramatically low levels.
The rich New North faces enormous pressure to feed the planet by expanding croplands and intensifying land use. Every acre matters; deforestation is rampant.
The video installation, set in Nuuk, a prominent New North city, reveals the main character, a designer who developed the “Arable Bodies” project: a wheat garment, meant to prove that wheat can thrive without monopolizing arable land. Because wheat can’t grow in the global south anymore, it generates enormous profits for the New North, but it also causes precious fertile soil to erode.
By growing biodiverse plants in their homes and vertical gardens, sustainably-minded Nuuk citizens hope to free up arable land for reforestation. The project’s participants make even their bodies available as a surface for growing wheat. In return, they demand reforestation of croplands to the size of the total surface area of their bodies.
In the background, a radio news broadcast reveals what’s become of our world, the global south.
