A keynote presentation Tuesday on “Gardening as Insurrection” will open a three-day series of workshops, performances and discussions hosted by UWindsor’s Incubator Lab.

“Life in the Soil,” March 7 to 9, aims to encourage public engagement and cross-disciplinary dialogue towards understanding the complexity of living soil and its importance to all life on earth. Its interactive events led by artists, activists, farmers, and scholars are free and open to the public, however some events have limited space and require advance registration.

Two scholars from Queen’s University will lead Tuesday’s keynote at 5:30 p.m. in the LeBel Building’s SoCA Gallery: Robert Lovelace, a continuing adjunct lecturer in the Department of Global Development Studies, and Ruth Lapp, a doctoral candidate in cultural studies.

They will explore the phenomenon of the garden as a site of provisioning and renewal, considering how “insurrection” — rising up — occurs at multiple spatial and temporal levels of the garden, including with soil, plants, and the humans that tend it.

Other events scheduled include:

• a soil microscopy workshop at 10 a.m. Wednesday;
• a performance, Reawakening, at noon Wednesday;
• a panel discussing aspects of urban soils at 2 p.m. Wednesday;
• a creative movement workshop at 6 p.m. Wednesday;
• a panel that will discuss in part, the relationship between geology and wine, at 10 a.m. Thursday;
• a workshop by the Deep Earth Treatment Centre at 1 p.m. Thursday.

This last event features a participatory element: organizers invite attendees to bring a soil sample collected from a site of “rebellion” or a “contested” site.

See the event website for a detailed agenda and registration information.