Annemie Maes is a member of the So-on collective, which consists of artists, filmmakers, activists and researchers. They want to confront the audience with different views, different possibilities and the approach of other communities to stimulate the debate on economic, political and cultural sustainability.
Annemie Maes will turn the wall in the Brug into an installation in progress. The documentary wall is like a scrapbook, with pictures, videos, and interviews Maes gathered during her field research. The installation connects art, education, ecology and activism. In the documentary installation Politics of change [# 1 Mahila Samiti] is the first case study in a larger project. In this phase, the focus is on women empowerment through alternative training and the construction of bottom-up networks. More concretely, Maes documents the functioning of Barefoot College in India.
The Barefoot College is a community in Rajashtan, India, where illiterate women can get a technical training. Barefoot College strives for better and free education, employment, energy supply and equal rights and opportunities for women. Their campuses are entirely powered by solar energy and have a system of water purification. The classes are made out of recuperated material, in the spirit of architect Buckminster Fuller. In the meantime, Barefoot College’s philosophy has spread over a network that has grown organically throughout India and even Africa.
The women at Barefoot College learn how to solve their everyday problems in a sustainable way and strive for a more balanced society. They personally provide their villages with sustainable energy in the form of solar panels and make sun lanterns. Some of them even cook on solar energy.
However, something that is a pure necessity in these parts can inspire the West to find solutions for current climate and environmental issues. Because the Barefoot College project proves that a different approach is possible, as long as we invest in people and their abilities.
It is the intention to follow up this project with workshops given by the female Barefoot Solar Engineers in Brussels and Amsterdam and Dutch and Belgian artists at Barefoot College. A documentary is currently being made about the women at Barefoot College.
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