The PROBE project "Soiled" looks at ontological, temporal, and material relations we form with soil. Through workshops, hands-on experiments, and design fiction sessions, Soiled explores how we can transmit notions of our bodies being constituted by and returning to soil, how we can explore soil's temporality in relation to our mortality over time, and how we can imagine novel soil care practices through the livingness of soil.
The first workshop of this PROBE project focussed on inquiring soil ontologies. This part was designed and facilitated by cultural geographer Dienke Stomph and Environmental artist Kate Foster. The film ‘(De)composition of bodies of human and bodies of soil; bodies in continuous exchange’ gives an impression of what arose through the workshop in which we experimented with storytelling, drawing and composting to inquire into bodily relations and the relational meanings of human and soil. We critically probed, not just soil but especially human, by attempting to open our human presence to the rhizosphere. To open up as humans to the (de)composition of our bodies and soil bodies; as bodies in continuous exchange. The film was finalised in collaboration with Pantea / Studio informal.