Where the Leaves Fall – Issue 5

Where the Leaves Fall Issue 5 is available now on loremnotipsum.com. The themes for this issue focus on water, technology, and cosmos, alongside a series of dialogues.

Where the Leaves Fall is born out of and informed by a series of conversations held at and with OmVed Gardens, in London, UK. Until recently a wounded and tarmacked wasteland, OmVed has been transformed into a diverse eco habitat with a wild flower meadow, an orchard and a vegetable garden. Through collaboration with artists, architects, chefs, musicians and horticulturalists, it is exploring the nature of the relationship between people and our connection to the environment. It facilitates exhibitions, workshops, concerts, dinners and discussions, creating collaborations around the topics of food, creativity and ecological transformation. As physicist and ecologist Fritjof Capra said: “It is only by connecting to nature that we can know who we are.” Maybe it is also true to say that it is only by connecting to ourselves that we can know what nature is. Knowing more about ourselves and knowing more about nature are one and the same thing. OmVed has partnered with the UN World Food Program on events to highlight worldwide disparities and to speak about the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Content

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.

Details: Where the Leaves Fall – Issue 5

128 pages, 24 x 17 cm