Enacting, Experimenting, Negotiating, Learning, Unlearning, Co-creating

Here you can follow the journey of a live test tube experiments that are enacting, discovering and exploring locally the research and findings that are presented in the other sections of this diverse garden. You can peek into multi-layered forms of current and on-going activities, experiments and findings of Angelina Kumar’s socially engaged and artistically sustainable practice. What you will find is a range of paths being explored such as teaching sustainable design, co-creating the LDD foundation, making local sustainable connections with other fields of expertise and the navigation and negotiation through a range of systems and structures that are embedded within The Netherlands. It is through these paths of enactment that the on-going journey of unlearning, learning and discovering alternative ways of imbibing sustainability will come to fruition.

Systems and Structures

When trying to redesign and create a new socially sustainable project many variables start to come into play. Various types systems and structures are interlaced together and can or do play a role in the designing and implementation phases. Interactions with some of these systems and structures are inevitable and must be critically recognised, analysed and dealt with accordingly and others are choice options to draw from in order to incorporate pertinent elements that will add to a balanced flourishing ecosystem. Some of these types of systems and structures are different types of like?. There are multiple techniques and terminologies that accompany these constructs and considering what they impose or bring with them must be questioned and examined constantly.

The discovery of these source has come about through various activities such as: Researching alternatives by joining focus research groups for specific topics such as “Who is a Professional Artists” conducted by art and culture students from the Erasmus University Honours Research and the Regenerative studies of the young innovators honours students from Utrecht University students, Conducting interviews and field research with individuals and project representing diverse fields of experiences working on the topic of sustainability, ranging from architects, artists and social innovators.

Through teaching sustainable design to design students at the HKU The HKU University of the Arts Utrecht, disruptive design concepts and system thinking exercises were put through a mini test tube and enacted on a local scale by connecting with a local partner De Arm.

“The only thing that is being sustained is our unchanging habits” – Seaspiracy Documentary

(Not the best title… leaves room for speculation of the validity of the documented actions and the results.)

Capitalistic Terms:
Started from the bottom up, self-made, worked their way up the ladder. So, when a system* says "Start from the grassroots, not at the top"* . What's really being said is... as mentioned above....work your way up to the top...But you see sustainability is not about reaching the top, it's about dissolving that liner ambition.

(*anonymous referenced anonymous)

Making things quantifiable for control.

Resources including time, land, parts of the ecosystem. Give it a value, to quantify it. Conglomerate it, reduce its quality to quadruple its quantity, add and create mass demands at the expense of the everyday person and their survival. (1) (2)

"Capital has one sole driving force, the drive to valorize itself, to create surplus-value, to make its constant part, the means of production, absorb the greatest possible amount of surplus labour. Capital is dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more; the more labour it sucks. The time during which the worker works in the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has bought from him."(3)

A lot of the individual that live in these quantifiable economic structures don't qualify their personal lives and actions the same way as economists does. Instead, the individual tents to work relentless towards surviving in the economic world they find themselves in, without taking into consideration the hours, ideas, efforts and energy it takes for them to contribute to the economic structure that is using them. This over expenditure of personal quantifiable resources could happen for various reasons such as a lack of knowledge, lack of choice, external and personal circumstances, a deep passion for a cause or vision, out of survival, out of habit or what has been imparted through culture traits, characteristics, traditions and more.


Donna Haraway mentions that Karl Marx points out when he talks about dead labour – “The kind of building of labour into the machines to further extract value. Without the need to have, you know pesky actual workers in the factory. The drive towards roboticisation to extract value from dead labour.”(4)


1. Rotten Documentary,
2. 3. The Economy is Spinning Pg. 48 and 55,
4. Donna Haraway, 28:51mins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-2r_vI2alg)

Alma Holm - Architect from South Africa

Alma Holm is an architect from South Africa with a passion for sustainable architecture. Alma offered to explore The Creative Playground project to see how we could make the space greener and sustainable from an architectural perspective. During her research process, I became curious as to what sustainable architecture means to her and what the approaches are towards sustainable architecture in South Africa and the Netherlands.

Through our conversation I understood that a lot of the architectural concepts are about building an individual icon. For Alma architecture is about people and being a connection between people and nature. Architecture is the opposite of keeping nature out. Emulating the way nature works, by working together with what is already in the surroundings area in combination with the social structures and connecting ecosystems that are already set in place. These things are essential for the building to last.

“Creating by understanding and seeking out what the local vision and needs are.”

“Perspiratory design and co creation enhances circularity and the need for natural systems and space in this time period when we’re working from a distance.”

“Circular way of building is also with a long-life span in mind, but a long-life span which is adaptable, which can change. I tend to veer away from rigid structures which is incapable of changing.”

“Sustainability should not be a fashion it should be the norm and the foundation – I’d hate for it to be a trend as it would be disastrous if we only incorporate sustainable ideas in the buildings environment now because every bodies doing it and then discarded in a few years’ time…….. It is a constant search… the method of making and the materials we are using today, if we keep researching can be even more sustainable in the future.”