INLAND (Fernando Garcia Dory, Sergio Bravo)

Crossroads Tamboo, 2024

Campo Adentro, or Inland in English,  is a collaborative agency started in 2009 by Fernando García-Dory based in various locations in Spain. It provides a platform for diverse actors engaged in agricultural, social, and cultural production. During its first stage (2010 – 2013), Inland was engaged with artistic production in twenty-two villages across Spain, with nationwide exhibitions and presentations, and an international conference. Today, Inland focuses on land-based collaborations and economies, and communities-of-practice as a substrate for post-contemporary art and cultural forms.  It runs a radio station and an academy, produces shows, and makes cheese. Its projects have been exhibited at the Casa do Povo, São Paulo (2015), Istanbul Biennial (2015), Arts Maebashi in Japan (2016), Serpentine Gallery in London (2020), and documenta fifteen (2022).

 

Mobile agricultural practices, such as nomadic pastoralism and transhumant beekeeping, represent an adaptive strategy to changing climatic conditions.  Both also are supported by rangelands, grassy or shrubby areas that are the primary environment in Pakistan, providing forage for livestock and supporting millions of pastoralists, from a rich diversity of communities such as the Gujjar, Pashtun, and Baloch, the Rohi, and Rebari.  They move their animals to access the different rangelands, from alpine pastures in the Hindu Kush-Himalaya, Karakoram and Pamir ranges in the north, arid and semi-arid plateaus and scrublands in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan in the west, to the sandy deserts of Thal, Thar, and Cholistan in south Punjab and the Sindh.

Pastoralists and mobile beekeepers contribute significantly to food security, local economies and biodiversity.  But they also face numerous challenges from land degradation, land grabbing, socio-political marginalization and competition over natural resources, unfavorable policies, climate change and environmental hazards.

Pastoralists are not officially recognized, so their contributions are often not accounted for in official records.  Pastoralism in Pakistan, as in Spain where Inland is based, is declining due to these various socio-political and ecological challenges.

For Lahore Biennale, INLAND proposes an insight into this way of life, that the agro-cultural group also practices with their flock of sheep, translated into different forms, a collage or composition of archival materials, a sound piece on the beehive as a humming choir, and a temporary architectural structure at Nasir Bagh, called Crossroads Tamboo.  The structure will host different talks and workshops during the Biennale, open to the public, and a colony of bees.