Blog

OSE Tour in Austria

As already mentioned in this blog, Open Source Ecology will have a booth in the Subversive Fair event in Linz. This was arranged during the Invisible Intelligence conference organized by Peter Weibel and Franz Nahrada in November 2008 in Graz , where Barbara Pitschmann of Social Impact presented the Subversive Fair Project. The Subversive Fair is an art project sponsored by the City of Linz who will be cultural capital of Europe together with Vilnius, Lithuania, in 2009. So who would doubt that Open Source Ecology is also a very elaborate piece of art besides its very serious nature? Subversive fair plays with all the elements of a commercial tradeshow to present contributions to a different world where commerce and power is less important but culture and cooperation is important. The Subversive Fair enables Marcin and Sam Rose, close collaborator, to come to Austria – where Marcin has already been at the Third Oekonux Conference in 2004, when he was also giving a speech at a meeting convocated by GRAT (Group Appropriate Technology) in Vienna.Note the dates – Subversive Fair Linz from 14th to 18th of May.,


Beside and mainly after the fair, Marcin will also go on tour to various locations in Austria:


  • On Saturday the 16th he will have a first speech in Neulengbach in the Vienna Woods, hosted by Martin Kirchner and Florence Holzner in Barbara Hechts Villa Creativ. The theme will be the possible relations between cohousing, new work and open souce ecology. see here
  • On Sunday 17th Michaela Kohlbacher will get Marcin in Linz, There is a stay overnight at friends on a farm in nearby Wels, 
  • next day they go way south to Carinthia. There will be a TV interview with the local TV station in Bad Kleinkirchheim and a visit to the farm of Christian Mayerbrugger.
  • On Tuesday 19th Marcin will speak at Klagenfurt University about “Open Source and Mobility” (tractor, car etc) in room Z 109 hosted by Michaela Kohlbacher – Schneider
  • On Wednesday 2oth Michaela will drive Marcin north and drop him in Weiz, were at 10 AM there will be a meeting with the solidary Region Weiz hosted by Feri Berger. In the afternoon most likely Marcin will have to go by train to Vienna unless we find a host and a person who is driving up to Böheimkirchen next day
  • On Thursday 21st Marcin will be in Böheimkirchen at the GRAT center hosted by Robert Wimmer  – special workshop on thermal social concentrators
  • On Friday 22nd Marcin will be in Vienna
  • On Friday 23rd Marcin and Franz will visit an energy autonomous farm near Vienna. (Wolfgang Lösers Energiebauernhof)

Watch this space as this post is a work in progress!

28 Comments

  1. Lostchief

    marcin have you thought about checking out sepp holzers perma farm in Austria? Google his videos if you haven’t heard of him. He’s done some amazing things and may be time well spent if you have the spare time.

  2. Franz Nahrada

    Actually Sepps Farm (in the Tamsweg district) is close to where Salzburg, Steiermark and Carinthia meet. If any of the locals would volunteer to go up there with Marcin, it would be great. I have also some good examples in Carinthia in mind and we are doing active networking here….

  3. Marcin

    Franz, can you expand on which visits require prepared speeches – so I could prepare accordingly?

  4. Michael Koch

    May I ask who is bank rolling this trip?! True Fans?

  5. Franz

    No – its the combination of available resources. You might read the beginning of the post to see that there is an event in Linz paying for Marcins coming to Europe. And then there are people volunteering to organize local events and caring for transportation and accomodation. It can all be done on a joint and organized effort. I thought that is what peer economy is all about….

    Although we surely have some smaller troubles behind the scene in the moment since Ronny Wytek decided to go on vacation at this time and the Riegersburg event is in jeopardy.

  6. Alex

    I want to HEARTILY second the wonderful suggestion that you visit Sepp Holzer — make it happen! Could there be a more spectacular meeting of the minds?

    If you haven’t seen them, the three English-language videos on Holzer are often titled as follows:
    1, “farming with nature” – 37:10
    2, “terraces and raised beds” – 30:10
    3, “aquaculture” – 32:27

    The “aquaculture” video is here:
    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=235437896615994763

    And the user who uploaded it appears to have several other permaculture basics up as well: “Global Gardener” in particular. I would gladly send you a DVD collection of these and more.

    Go see Holzer and bring a video camera please! 🙂

  7. Lost Chief

    All the sepp holzer videos and every other major permaculture videos thats online are all on my myspace profile. Its worth looking at my profile and even more so there are tons of rare articles about permaculture and off the grid living in my blogs. http://www.myspace.com/lostchief

    You can see more NEW sepp holzer videos from a recent trip to WA state on the website http://www.permies.com/

    I have all the Mollison Vids and slose to 40 more permaculture vids on my main myspace profile page.. I say download a copy of them using youtube or orbit downloader. I have a downloaded copy backed up.

    Actually i have close to 200 permaculture documentaries in my downloaded video collection along with many videos on DIY self sustainable building and projects if any of you want to shell out a few bucks for a drive i can make you a copy and mail it to you no prob.

    Peace

    P.S. It would be seriously sad if you dont find a way to meet with sepp. You will for sure leave with a new understanding of some great ideas. Watch his videos on the permies website of a lecture he did. He explains how to easy make ponds ect ect.. This guy really knows how to read nature. Coming from my Half Cherokee blood and a life of much of my free time in the woods i understand how he reads nature and its beautiful..

  8. Marcin

    Just watched the aquaculture video that Alex suggested. Truly amazing. Factor e Farm has slopes that make terraces and ponds very attractive. I will make sure to take an opportunity to visit Sepp if possible.

    2 years ago we put in irrigation for the orchard. We discontinuted using it, and not it’s clear that water catchment is the way to go. Plantings on keylines and terraces will do it. To get there will take many years of work.

  9. Franz

    Good if its inspirational.

    I think that this system is approriate in certailn conditions. Sepp Holzer is great when it comes to the area that he is very familiar with. And he is also learning a lot on his frequent consulting tours. But that does not prevent him or anybody else from making mistakes when it comes to different conditions, environments, landscypes, climates. There is a lot of generalisation and pattern languaging still to be done.

    An article on Sepp in the German Wikipedia (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sepp_Holzer) lists several cases where there has also been quite a disaster in projects he was working with. For example, an artificial hill in Jennersdorf was destroyed by a landslide. There is a lot of arguments going on on this and the case is at the courts. The conclusion is that we need to be very careful in judging.

    Krameterhof obviously works, but partly the income stream results from guided tours (30 Euro per person) and media production. Sepp is not an Open Source Ecologist, much of the material is proprietory and is not systematically documenting the process. I never know if he has ever been confronted with the idea of systematically and intentionally sharing all knowledge, maybe that would be a very good effect of a possible meeting with Marcin.

  10. Franz
  11. Lost Chief

    I think this is sepps best video.
    http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-6656144440632078205&hl=en&fs=true

    And another of his videos that gives a little more info on the ides of the video above..
    video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=7037201501836169163&hl=en&fs=true

    Oh and a great video called (A farm for the future) This video gives a good idea of how planting food forests is more productive over planting annual crops of veggies. http://www.viddler.com/player/ce56603d/

    Personally i would say that anyone thinking about getting off the grid or becoming self sustainable watch all the videos in this post. The 2 SEPP videos are 30 min long and the farm for the future video is under 20 min.

  12. Lost Chief

    Sorryi messed up the second SEPP video link.. Here it is..
    http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=7037201501836169163&hl=en&fs=true

    Again all the videos above and tons more are on my myspace profile..

    http://www.myspace.com/lostchief

    Peace people..

    Hope your enjoying spring..

  13. Lost Chief

    Yeah i know im trying to raise the post numbers on this website hahaha

    But seriously here are 4 more videos off SEPP HOLZER. The videos are from a recent trip he made to Washington State.

    Some new info that was not covered in his main 3 videos. Worth a watch because the videos below show more of his personality and a little better details..

    http://www.permies.com/permaculture-forums/1308_0/permaculture/sepp-holzer-videos

  14. Franz

    Thank you for the material. I think it is very helpful in understanding the complex issues. Would be fantastic if Krameterhof could grow into a Global Village, some media-savvy people up there to help us understand the fine granularity of processes and their balance. Would be great if there was a language to communicate this better, a design language, a pattern language, a tool to communicate things that traditionally could only be understood by deep immersion and experience. Is it possible? Thats a very crucial question.

  15. Lost Chief

    Marcin. Are you taking video recording equip and extra storage/batteries for this trip? it would be great to get some decent lenth footage from this trip so we can all benefit from your journey. I know its going to be very enjoyable.

    Peace

  16. Inga

    # Marcin says:
    April 30th, 2009 at 1:15 pm

    Franz, can you expand on which visits require prepared speeches – so I could prepare accordingly?

    Hi Marcin and Franz,

    I am Inga – The English Trainer, an American living in Klagenfurt since 2005. Michaela Kohlbacher has asked me to do the interpretation during your talk at the university here in Klagenfurt. I agreed without know what I was getting into! I am a translator (the written word) from German into English and on a few occasions I helped out at very small gatherings as an interpreter (spoken word).

    After checking out the various blogs etc. I find out that we are talking about very special tractors, solar energy, global villages…I’m overwhelmed by the enormous scope of your work. The subject line of the original message asking for interpreters read: ‘environmentally open sewers’! It was not sent by Michaela. Having lived and traveled in the Far East for over 12 years, I was intrigued by this very strange subject.

    To finally come to the point: if this is going to be a ‘regular’ lecture and you expect a simultaneous interpretation will be rendered, I have to disappoint you!

    What I can do is the following: if you can set up this event as a very informal, casual talk, via projector show lots of drawings and/or photos of the various tools to support your talk, I can give you consecutive interpreting. If you already have a script of your talk for Klagenfurt, I’d love to have a copy of it to familiarize myself with the special vocabulary.

    I don’t have the email address of either one of you, hence this very public notice.
    BTW, I am not charging anything for my ‘services’, this will be my contribution to the cause.

    I’m looking forward to meeting you, maybe already in Linz.

    All the best,

    Inga

  17. Marcin

    There is a video of the last presentation that I gave at Oekonux 4:

    http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/?p=611

    My Austria presentations will be based on this general content.

    And there is also a partial transcript of the talk:

    http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Oekonux_4_OSE_Transcript

    Inga, please study the transcript – as it contains the various key phrases that I will be using.

  18. Inga

    Thanks Marcin,
    especially the transcript is going to be a great help. I shall watch all of the videos of your various presentations again. See you in Linz!

    Inga

  19. Sasha

    It would be nice if you could visit me. I am 200 km from Wiena. Town is called Sombor.

  20. Franz

    Its going to be a little bit too far, Marcin has a tight schedule here (20th). There is a day still flexible, but I would prefer to get as many connections in Austria going as possible.

  21. Franz

    Marcin just arrived at the airport in Vienna and I picked him from there. We have some talks and I will post about it tonight.

  22. Lost Chief

    So they are letting Poles into austria now? hahahahahahah

    Joking aside i hope all goes well and im looking forward to the reports from this trip.

    Peace

  23. Sasha

    Ok Franz, I hope you guys make the most of this !
    Go OSE go!
    🙂

  24. Jeremy

    Have fun over there! The trifold brochures are available here: http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=OSE_Trifold_Brochure

  25. Franz

    Note that the program has been updated!

  26. […] just got a copy of this TV interview that we did back on the OSE tour in Austria. Michaela from Earthship Austria organized this particular event. The interview took place at a […]

  27. OSE TV Interview – Austria Tour |

    […] just got a copy of this TV interview that we did back on the OSE tour in Austria. Michaela from Earthship Austria organized this particular event. The interview took place at a […]

  28. Franz

    finally I managed the interview in Carinthia to go online

    http://www.kult1.tv/die-videosuche/kult-gespraech/marcin-jakubowski

    seems the sound is broken at the end and thats why they did not air it.