Where the Leaves Fall #5

The themes for this issue focus on water, technology, and cosmos, alongside a series of dialogues.

A BODY OF WATER

In our first theme of this issue, we examine how ice, traditionally a symbol of eternity and stasis, has become a metaphor for change and decay in contemporary art. We also look at what it means to live on an island, surrounded by water, feeling the sea’s abundance alongside the threat of water shortages; and our meditation on OmVed Gardens’ pond draws on writer Astrida Neimanis’ theory of hydrocommons – looking at how water runs across nature, binding and connecting it and, implicitly, us.

NATURE AND TECHNOLOGY

We hear from John Francis Serwanga, the World Food Programme’s hydroponics expert, about how modern agricultural techniques are transforming school gardens in Zambia, allowing vegetables to grow even in places where the soil is less fertile. We also look at how businesses are using biomimicry to adapt natural phenomena into technical designs; and the way our relationship with technology will dictate how we navigate our way through the climate crisis.

AMONG THE STARS

Our photographic essay looks at what satellites can tell us about ourselves, giving us a historical overview of how we live our lives and our impacts on our planet. Science writer Jo Marchant describes the awe felt by astronauts looking back at earth and how most of us don’t confront our fear of the vast unknown in the same way. And we explore a smaller cosmos with early 20th century naturalist and filmmaker F. Percy Smith, who used his ingenuity to photograph and reveal nature’s intricacies in his microscopic portraits of everything from flowers to frogspawn.

DIALOGUES

Writer Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck looks at the link between switching off from email and improved mental health. Rachelle Robinett forages for edibles near her apartment in New York, US, and Jonny Keen explores the places abandoned by humankind that provide a new start for the natural world.

Product Dimensions: 240mm x 170mm

Pages: 128

Wild Alchemy Lab is a new transdisciplinary platform from experimental botanical studio Mama Xanadu: a vehicle in which to navigate our fractured relationship with nature and the cosmos through both a scientific and esoteric lens. We take up the macro-microcosmic vision of the Hermetic axiom ‘as above, so below’ - all aspects of universal phenomena correspond and relate to one another. This places our work at the intersection of plants, planets and people.

Alchemy is the arcane art of transformation, the physical and psycho-spiritual practice of elevating the base elements of our experience to a noble state. Central to alchemical philosophy is the death process: death begets life. To evolve beyond crisis, outdated systems and thought forms are dissolved to be reconstituted into a new, more valued way of being. Through an act of collaboration and co-creation, with nature as our guide and medium, we explore ways to distil our experience and transform its vital force into an embodied sensory ecology.

Issue 6 Greenwash

Where the Leaves Fall #4

The themes for this issue focus on mutualism, interconnectedness, and pandemic, alongside a series of dialogues.

A MUTUAL FEELING

The issue opens with a look at how our lives are inextricably entangled with the lives of other species, and the way that artists and creatives are attempting to recognise this. We examine the legacy of George Washington Carver, the black son of a slave owner, whose insights into soil preservation and crop diversification in 19^th century America preempted the concerns of modern regenerative agriculture. And Brazilian chef and author Bela Gil argues that agroecology could be the key to ending climate change and food poverty.

OUR ROOTS ENTWINED

We find out how a 16^th century guru living in northern India has inspired ecology lessons in contemporary Dubai, and learn about the tenets of the Bishnoi community who were eco-warriors before the term was invented. Deepti Asthana’s photographic essay explores life for teenage girls in a remote Himalayan village. And Catherine Gilon connects colonial interventions in Nilgiris, southern India, with the current threat to native species and destabilisation of the ecosystem.

A CHANCE TO REFLECT

We examine how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected food security, with an insight into how people are finding local solutions to the collapse of global supply chains, focusing on initiatives in India, the Philippines, Sierra Leone, Colombia, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, the US and the UK. And how the gardens in Domiz 1, the oldest and biggest refugee camp in Iraq, have become a symbol of hope to the camp’s 32,000 inhabitants.

DIALOGUES

Writer Maia Nikitina explores the way in which the Russian myth of Baba Yaga has evolved to reflect the country’s changing relationship with nature. Ellen Miles makes the case for nature access as a human right. And Sol Polo is inspired by artist Maria Laet’s work seeking to mend the divide between humankind and the elements.

Product Dimensions: 240mm x 170mm

Pages: 136

Sirene #11 (Autumn 2020)

32x23.8 cm / 100 pages / printed on paper made from recycled algae

Features:

Blue Humanities. The Ocean of Square Sails. Under the Sign of Alicudi. Bryan Di Salvatore. Nineteen Ways of Looking at a Wave. The Sea on Foot. Folegandros. The White Ships. San Blas Archipelago: the Water Lands of the Guna.

The New Farm

Contemporary Rural Architecture

Daniel P. Gregory, Abby Rockefeller

Recent generations of farmers have reinvented the family farm and its traditions, embracing organic practices and sustainability and, along with them, a bold new use of modern architecture. The New Farm profiles sixteen contemporary farms around the globe, accompanied by plans and colorful images that highlight the connections among family, food, design, terrain, and heritage.

Visit a Tasmanian sheep shearers' quarters with a dramatic coastal view and a bamboo-wrapped farm shed in Kentucky. Learn from a fourth-generation poultry breeder and newcomers who have stepped off the corporate ladder and into the barnyard. Projects include an olive oil grove and mill in California, the storied Stone Barns Center in New York, and organic farms in Canada and across Europe. An introduction places the design of these farms in a lineage of celebrated architects including William Wurster, William Turnbull, Edward Larrabee Barnes, Marc Appleton, and Tom Kundig.

Daniel P. Gregory is a longtime magazine and website editor and author of Cliff May and the Modern Ranch House. He graduated from Yale, received his PhD in architectural history from UC Berkeley, and lives in the Bay Area.

Details: Hardcover
Size: 8 X 10 IN
Pages: 192
Color: 150
Publication Date: 06/30/2020
Rights: World

THE GARDENS OF EDEN

As green commentators speculate about the future of environmentalism in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, it is more important than ever that green thinking should grow and evolve.

​In issue 5, we explore new approaches to ideas about climate change. Some articles propose big green changes which might fit into a ‘post-corona’ portfolio of green proposals. Some reflect on the outcomes of existing green approaches, and others interrogate the purpose and ethics of new technologies that aim to improve the environment.

The Belonging Volume

The Belonging Volume takes a planetary perspective to reflect on the significance of our existence and that of the intricate network of ecosystems we inhabit. It explores how intimate knowledge of nature can enable us to feel at home outdoors, and how finding wonder in our everyday lives can profoundly impact our worldview. It listens to the voices of the younger generation and ruminates on the concept of intergenerational equity, and it hears stories of collective action to tackle some of today’s most pressing issues. It inspires us to humbly step back from our anthropogenic view on the world so we may find belonging in nature and come home to ourselves.

Features:

Ocean Pools. Among the Waves of Mayumi Oda. The Sky Above the Boats. High Latitudes: Integrity at the End of the World. Paddle Your Own Kayak. Oxides. Surfing Explorer Peter Troy. Sand: Between Land and Sea.

32x23.8 cm / 100 pages / printed on paper made from recycled algae

The themes we explored for the second issue of Where the Leaves Fall focused on death, journey and seeds, alongside a number of essays in the dialogues section. 

ALL THINGS MUST PASS

In this section we look at how Ana Mendieta celebrated her own mortality in her work, exploring the cycle of life and death and our connection with nature. Transcending the spiritual and philosophical to the actual, Antonina Savytska’s visceral images of the last months of her aunt’s life paints a stark and honest portrait of our relationship not just with death, but the life that leads us there and the patterns and behaviours of the ancestors that live through us. And we look at how societal conventions around death, developed to make the process as comfortable and acceptable as possible, are being challenged by environmentalists with the aim of ‘greening’ the system.

THROUGH OUR JOURNEY

We begin our exploration of journey (as well as the cover image) with The Flower Laboratory’s reuse of heather flowers leftover from a fashion shoot as art, as communion, as rehabilitation. Then we explore the Russian cultural phenomenon of the dacha, the plot of land and residence beyond the city boundaries where people can escape to nature. With ayahuasca, another way to commune with nature, we question the impact of yagé tourism on Indigenous communities.

LIVING WITH SEEDS

Seeds are a ubiquitous part of our daily lives and in this section we explore different seed interactions – whether it’s searching for endangered flora in Kyrgyzstan, understanding how seeds are used to communicate with ancestors in Zimbabwe, discovering the world’s largest seed in the Seychelles, or exploring the structure and ways seeds disperse through the camera’s lens.

DIALOGUES

Our dialogues offer a range of ideas and different perspectives, including climate change activism in Africa, how death should be celebrated as a part of the food cycle, the water element, bringing climate change to our doorstep, the ecosystems that thrive above our heads, and drawing a garden in motion.

Product Dimensions: 240mm x 170mm

Pages: 128

In issue 3 of IFLA!, our writers and illustrators called for profound change. Now we begin to ask what that change, in all its complexity, might look like.

​To protect our environment, we must learn from all corners, disciplines and backgrounds. Luckily, from theatre to pollution, and architecture to waste, at IFLA! we’ve found no shortage of ideas.

Following a tumultuous 2018 for climate action, at IFLA! we've been thinking about profound change.

 In issue 2 we consider how best to prioritise Indigenous voices, redesign design questions and take a look at a long history of attempts to change the weather. We look at peat bogs and algae; cosmetics and tungsten bulbs, and untangle a few more strands of humanity's greatest challenge.