The VegLab – Vegetable Laboratory – is a community project focused on food production, nutrition and ecological relationships, with the aim of disseminating local knowledge and techniques for growing vegetables. Using long-standing traditional methods, innovative approaches and new technologies for gardening, the core of the project is a self-built geodetic greenhouse with a diameter of eight meters, which was built by a group of active citizens from Freistadt in March 2023 in the town moat near the castle.
Over the course of several months, the greenhouse became a place for collective work and care of the common plant beds. Workshops were organized on soil, compost and natural fertilizers, seed exchange and the interaction between plants, fungi and other creatures in the soil. The project was launched during the festival with a special program and in cooperation with the Czech collective Node9.
Idea, concept and realisation:
Juliane Kreiner, Stefan Kreiner, Johan Moser
Collaboration: Kernteam Otelo Freistadt
Thanks to: Johnny Bayles (Trillium Domes), Christian Klopf, Johanna und Tobias Steurer, Gerald Hauser, Bernhard, Franz und Josef Schenkenfelder, Silvia und Michael Pammer, Lisa Anderl, Martin Scheuringer, Erika und Andreas Kreiner, Kathrin Umdasch, Elke Kremser, Martin Zeiner, Ali Al-Nasir, Amanullah Khan, Gabriele und Leonie Wiesinger, Anna Clara Dimow, Bürgermeister Christian Gratzl, Stadtgemeinde Freistadt, AusbildungsFit Next Level Freistadt, Pfarrcaritas Kindergarten Sonnenhaus Freistadt, Kinderfreunde Freistadt, Richard Buckminster Fuller
Impressions
CV
Stefan Kreiner is interested in the visible within the invisible, in the perfection on a small scale. Coming from the area of photography, space and time are omnipresent in his work. For the project VegLab he put his photographic work on the back burner and dedicates himself to the pressing issues of our time: how do we want to live? What do we want the world to look like that we leave behind for our descendants? And there they are again: space and time.
Juliane Kreiner grew up in a village and loved to spend her time on her grandparents’ farm. Her job led her into the area of social work, where she worked with handicapped people, children, and asylum seekers. The later group tried to supplement their tight budgets by growing their own vegetables. This reminded Juliane how important and valuable a home is – the earth and the plants that grow and prosper there.
Johann Moser’s art is strongly shaped by an entanglement of analogue and digital techniques, something that can be seen very clearly for instance in his most current work Grafik-Generator. His interest in the project VegLab lies in the connections between architecture, nature, fine art, and technique. The results of this working process could be printed sheets on or live projections out of the self-made geodetic dome.