The Landscape Rehearsals

The practice was invited to exhibit in the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale as a response to the Curator’s Special Project: ‘‘Food, Agriculture and Climate Change’’ within the overarching theme “The Laboratory of the Future.”

The Landscape Rehearsals explores indigenous ways of knowing and managing the land – opening the debate on place-based food production systems for a changing climate. A large drawing in the exhibition depicts clachán settlements and roinn dáil – an indigenous landscape management practice found in the Pre-Famine landscapes of the west of Ireland. As an egalitarian way of being on and working with the land, roinn dáil took place in challenging and wet ecological conditions tethered to small patches of fertile land. In roinn dáil, the community found ways of articulating the ground to make it productive and responded to seasonal growth patterns by moving their animals to higher pastures for summer grazing.

Further explored in this exhibition – through video – are today’s landscapes of Nigeria’s Ogun State, which offer parallels to roinn dáil. In Ijebu Itele and Ijebu Ife in Nigeria, we explore the landscape management practices of iroro and makiyaya of farmers and pastoralists, respectively. Collaborating with local agronomist and landscape architect Seun Gbogboade, these videos advance his advocacy work on the ground – to mitigate conflict and advance regenerative ecologies between these communities in Nigeria’s Ogun State.