The Soil Factory Working Group supports discipline-transcending collaborations exploring current and emerging ecological and social issues, with particular attention to this region’s watershed, terrain, and waste streams. The Soil Factory (TSF), based at Ithaca’s periphery in rural upstate New York, is an intellectual, experimental, and physical commons composed of an engaged cohort of artists, scientists, farmers, culture workers, and civic leaders. The working group’s 2024-25 programming explores interventions which remediate or transform damaged landscapes. The working group invites collaborators – artists, agriculturists, designers, and performers – to live and work on site as part of TSF's residency. Curation is premised upon generosity and horizontality, with a commitment to advancing the careers of unorthodox artists and practitioners from parts of the United States that are underrepresented in contemporary art discourse. Invited residents engage in public-facing projects: exhibitions, workshops, skillshares, film screenings, concerts, community meals, publications, and informal conversations. Residents and the public interact with a range of ongoing on-site landscape projects including an experimental circular bionutrient garden and a marshy meadow garden of native plants. TSF programming provides a platform to support people from disparate classes, backgrounds, and affiliations to gather to work for a habitable, beautiful, and just future.
- Dan Torop (Art)
- The Soil Factory
