Colleen Hargaden joins us for this episode of Cultivar. We discuss anthropogenic minerals and her work with Fulcrum, her exhibition at Hunter Shaw Fine Art, rockhounding, prepper subcultures, and more.

Colleen Hargaden is a Los Angeles based artist working in film/video, sculpture, and installation. Her work uses time-based media to explore future-thinking and themes of ecology, art, and utility. Employing the forms and techniques of contemporary "survivalist" culture, science, and engineering, Hargaden's work responds to ongoing developments in technology, as well as the systemic social, ecological, and economic pressures that prompt their creation. Central to these concerns is a tension between humankind's historical narrative of dominance and the resurgent possibilities of nonhuman ecologies. Hargaden's work reckons with this precarious relationship, exploring potential alternatives through research-based practice and pedagogical exchange.

Follow Colleen Hargaden: @colleenhargaden / https://colleenhargaden.com/

Los Angeles-based artist Jeffrey Stuker joins us for this episode of Cultivar. We discuss his video work on view in Made in L.A. at the Hammer Museum, as well as the concept of second nature, butterfly mimicry, contemporary image culture, and the shared algorithms of 3D graphics and ecological modeling.

Jeffrey Stuker is an artist and is currently a coeditor of the journal Effects and the director of the Seeld Library, a project bringing together a community of thinkers whose scholarly and artistic practices explore the phenomenon of second nature. A central focus of Stuker's work is mimicry—both in nature, where it provides a strategy for the survival of certain species, and in digital imaging, which can manifest hyper-lifelike representations of reality. Stuker creates carefully rendered computer-generated images, planting coded historical, scientific, and industrial references within. These images exist as part simulation and part documentation; their factualness remains elusive or, rather, allegorical. Current and upcoming exhibitions include: Made in L.A. at the Hammer Museum; Painting Stone at Villa Lontana, Rome; The International Biennial of Photography, Thessaloniki Greece; and Objects of Desire at LACMA.

Follow Stuker: IG @jeffrey_stuker / https://www.jeffreystuker.com/

Istanbul-based architect, designer and thinker Aslihan Demirtas joins us for this episode of Cultivar. Demirtas discusses her use of soil as an artistic medium. Through her practice of "earthing," Demirtas removes dirt from urban abstraction in the megacity of Istanbul and reframes it as history—histories of bacteria, microorganisms, fungi, spent plant life, moisture, texture, and color. Demirtas discusses denizen caretakers of soil and how human intervention in the land has a unique history in Istanbul.

Aslihan Demirtas is architect and principal of the interdisciplinary studio Aslihan Demirtas Design & Research Office, based in New York and Istanbul. Her practice crosses disciplines in the forms of building, research exhibitions, and art projects. Often landscape becomes installations in her work.

Follow Demirtas: IG @aslihan_d / TW @uskumru / https://aslihan-demirtas.com/