Terrra Dialogues : Interview with Gilles Clément

TERRRA is a trans-local hub for exploring new ways of living, new alliances with nature, better balances between production and consumption. Located in the Carpathian Mountains, in Brezoi, Romania, it offers a space to valorise traditional knowledge, in dialogue with recent technological and environmental advances. TERRRA is also a network of activists acting at the intersection of ecology, architecture, artistic practices, pedagogy and research, through a multitude of practices and projects at different scales. TERRRA will host a branch of the School of Planetary Gardeners, a "disseminated educational project" initiated by Gilles Clément in different parts of the world. Its location will be used as "didactic" material for teaching traditional and contemporary practices of restoring living landscapes (the living).

Below, a video dialogue with Gilles Clément on the occasion of a workshop organised in July 2021 in Brezoi. How can we value a unique craft and traditional know-how in an economy that is programming them to disappear? For whom is the learning of these practices intended? Gilles Clément evokes the Romanian artisanal construction practices as a treasure of know-how to be protected, developed and transmitted to future generations. In this sense, the TERRRA hub and the School of Planetary Gardeners will welcome young people who question current practices and are looking for alternative ways of doing. In the longer term, the aim is to change practices through action, and to raise awareness in order to enhance this artisanal know-how and to change the current economic thinking.