Weedeater

Nance Klehm is a self-described “steward of the earth.” She is an ecological systems designer, a permacultural grower, a horticultural consultant and a talented and much sought after teacher and speaker.  She is respected internationally for her work on land politics and growing for fertility. Meeting her for the first time feels as though you are catching her mid sentence and mid-stride. Weedeater trots alongside Nance through various landscapes, gathering together a collection of her thoughts and philosophies on everything from wild, uncultivated weeds to human waste composting to “the dark cosmos”— soil. An accurate portrait of Klehm would be impossible to confine to a formal or traditional documentary narrative. Instead, Weedeater attempts to sketch Klehm’s character as well as reflect the depth and complexity of her intimate relationship with the earth and all of its inhabitants in the unique and intimate structure and style of this experimental film.

Discussion with Nance Klehm following screening.

This Land/That Land: Discussions About Political Ecology and Place is a program series supported by the Humanities Without Walls consortium, based at the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Humanities Without Walls consortium is funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The series precedes the exhibition The Earth Will Not Abide, on view at Gallery 400 in the spring of 2017.