What does it mean to have a piece of land to experiment upon, to care for, and have responsibility under/over/inbetween? The land is a substrate for organisms under/over and inbetween it’s surface. It is a double-bind relationship: The land looks after you, and you look after the land. It’s Maaland.*

In Finland, many people own small pieces of land and forest, often inherited.. Literally, passed-along family trees. Imagine it may be possible to de-fragment the land, bringing it under common management, like a hard-disk. What would be the protocols of access and retrieval of information? What might be the open-source ‘code’, ‘hardware’ or ‘wetware’ that comes with the land?

Organised within the context of RIXC’s Renewable Network and Pixelversity 2013 theme ‘Techno-ecologies’, including resilient agricultural infrastructure, art+bio-science collaborations, agroforestry, open hardware, and Commons management, we made an open call for participants to engage directly with the above subjects or initiates infrastructure which can support the exploration of these subjects.

The 4-day schedule of activities is open plan (see latest draft below), and may change.

A group of ~15 persons from different backgrounds and interests will gather on Kemiönsaari/Kimitoön in South-west Finland, to explore this double-bind relationship from different perspectives. Hosted by Kimito-proto-dojo house, a personal house of 2 families, and includes a wood/materials workshop, mini-fablab, indoor & outdoor workspaces. From 8 remote international participants also joined the occasion in online video-chat spaces, sharing their ideas, their experience and and in some cases their bit of their land with us.

See programme summary & list of participants below.

* Maaland combines both the Finnish & Swedish words for land used in SW Finland.