This conversation between Patrick Degeorges and Gabriela Benish-Kalná takes place within the framework of Transformative Territories and focuses on ArtMill as a living site of artistic, ecological and social experimentation. Rather than starting from abstract definitions of art or sustainability, the dialogue unfolds from the concrete realities of a place: a former mill, a hill, a lake, animals, neighbours, artists, farmers and scientists.
Throughout the interview, ArtMill appears not as an institution but as a medium — a shared environment where artistic practices, land-based work, research and everyday life are woven together. The discussion explores how such a site can support forms of transformation that are not only symbolic, but territorial: rooted in soils, species, infrastructures, social relations and long-term commitments.
By moving between questions of science, ecology, community, art and care, Patrick Degeorges and Gabriela Benish-Kalná reflect on what it means to practice art in a way that is attentive to place, to time, and to the complex interdependencies that shape living territories.
Patrick Degeorges
Dear Gabriela, could you introduce yourself and describe your current practice?
Gabriela Benish-Kalná
I’m Gabriela Benish-Kalná, currently director of ArtDialog, the umbrella non-profit organisation for ArtMill, our Center for Regenerative Arts. My mother founded the centre twenty years ago, and about three years ago my sister, our friends and I took on running it when she retired.
ArtMill is a community-based organisation. We work with a small core team that cares for the site and acts as steward of the local ecosystem and of all our more-than-human companions. My own relationship to ecology and territory goes back to my childhood: I grew up here, on this farm, and I feel deeply connected to this land.
Before returning to the mill, my background was in activism and grassroots organising. I spent almost ten years working in frontline movements, including at Standing Rock, in the resistance against the Dakota Access Pipeline¹, where about 10,000 water protectors opposed a corporation threatening Indigenous land and the water supply of millions of people. That experience was where, for me, the social and the ecological truly became inseparable.
After that I trained in fine-art photography, before gradually returning to ArtMill, where I reopened the farm. Over the past few years, my artistic practice has shifted towards community building, agriculture and the articulation between social and ecological issues. It has moved away from the white-cube gallery and become embedded in everyday practices. During my studies I also developed a methodology for what I call “regenerative arts”, which now forms the basis of our work here.
Patrick Degeorges
ArtMill has also evolved over time. How would you describe this shift, especially in relation to your focus on regeneration?
Gabriela Benish-Kalná
My own practice has changed, but ArtMill has always worked at the intersection of art and the environment. Originally it was called the Center for Sustainable Creativity, which reflected the discourse of that time. My sister and I followed the paradigm shift from sustainability to regeneration, because it’s become so visible that sustainability is no longer sufficient. We need regeneration as an active force.
Patrick Degeorges
And how would you define regenerative art?
Gabriela Benish-Kalná
Regenerative art is first and foremost a systems-thinking approach. It looks not only at historical, social and political contexts, but at how all these elements are interrelated. In the methodology I developed, I make a distinction between art about the environment and regenerative art. Rather than treating nature as a subject to be represented, regenerative art uses artistic practice itself as a force of transformation.
This includes regenerating ecosystems, but also regenerating the cultural and political discourses in which they exist — from post-colonial critique and the decolonisation of Euro-Western canons to building ethical, relational ways of living with more-than-human worlds. Much of this approach comes from grassroots organising: I translate what I learned in frontline activism and campaign work into the cultural and artistic field.
Another important dimension is the rejection of human exceptionalism and of the dominant Anthropocene narrative. Instead of fear-based, apocalyptic rhetoric, we advocate hope-based communication. Art can help us imagine livable futures, and that imaginative capacity is essential, because we cannot work towards change if we cannot first envision what we are striving for.
Patrick Degeorges
How does ArtMill function as a medium for this regenerative approach?
Gabriela Benish-Kalná
ArtMill has a long history of experiential learning and cultural exchange. It began as a summer camp for local children, who would meet young people from all over the world, learn new languages, make art and take care of the environment together. We later opened a gallery in the nearby town, creating encounters between international artists and emerging local practitioners.
Over time, we developed programmes for university students and expanded our experiential learning model, always connecting art with environmental protection and sustainability. This gradual shift from the ecological to the socio-ecological is why farming, ecosystem regeneration and connecting to more-than-human actors are now central to what we do. Through these practices we create a concrete environmental basis from which social questions can be addressed.
The territory itself becomes a space that we “hold”, a point in our methodology expanded on from a concept developed by activist movements. On our land we can speak about regenerative agriculture, biodiversity and environmental protection, while also opening space for social and political issues. Eco-social transformation cannot happen without this grounding in material environmental action.
An example of this is our current agroforestry and reforestation project on the hill, developed within Transformative Territories. It is not only about planting trees; it also involves artists who intervene in the landscape through participatory and performative practices that bring in social questions. In a rural and often conservative context, it can be more impactful to engage local communities through a concrete activity like tree planting than through a conventional exhibition about geopolitical crises. From there, we can create spaces for deeper conversations — for instance with artists from Palestine, who speak about land, dispossession and the links between ecocide and genocide.
This is a form of gentle but strategic political engagement. At the same time, we continue to host exhibitions and to open the historic mill to the public. The mill itself has gone through two oppressive regimes in the last century and remains a powerful site of local memory. During the Nazi period, for example, millers secretly ran the mill at night to produce flour for people who were starving. Some of our visitors still remember this place as a refuge through their grandparents’ stories.
Through artistic practices, we connect these histories of resistance with present struggles, and with questions of inclusivity, diversity and solidarity. In this way, art becomes a tool to challenge prejudice and open people to perspectives they might not otherwise accept.
Patrick Degeorges
So the mill and the surrounding land give artists a form of legitimacy to engage with territorial issues, even if they are not from here?
Gabriela Benish-Kalná
Exactly. We see our role as one of holding space. The ArtDialog team itself is made up of artists, and we create these practices collectively. When we invite other artists, it is always within a collaborative framework. They do not arrive with a pre-defined project disconnected from the place; they enter into a living context.
As an organisation, we provide the historical, social and political context of the territory. We act as a bridge between the land, the local community and visiting artists. Given the history of oppression that has shaped both this region and its landscapes, this mediation is crucial. We see ourselves as stewards of the place, enabling others to engage with it in meaningful, responsible and regenerative ways.
Patrick Degeorges
Your projects sit at the intersection of ecological, cultural and social issues, which makes them difficult to place within standard funding frameworks. Institutions usually work in silos. How do you deal with this hybridity? How do you obtain agricultural funding as an art centre, or cultural funding for projects dealing with water risks or lake restoration? What is your economic model?
Gabriela Benish-Kalná
This question goes back to the role of stewardship within our community and team. We all wear many hats. Our approach is inherently transdisciplinary, and we see that as essential to any meaningful eco-social transformation. But the funding systems we operate within are not designed for this kind of hybridity.
On the ground, everything is interconnected. The animals grazing on the hill, for example, are part of an artistic project, an ecological system, and an agricultural economy at the same time. But when I put on my “grant-writing hat”, I have to separate and categorise all these dimensions into distinct boxes, because this is how the capitalist and institutional systems function.
For our most recent programme, which combined education, climate adaptation and artistic practice, I had to dismantle the whole project into separate grant applications, because existing calls for proposals are not adapted to transdisciplinary paradigms. This fragmentation is one of the reasons why it is so difficult to address the climate and social crises in innovative ways: each discipline has its own definition of the problem and of the solution.
Our economic model therefore consists in constantly separating and recomposing. We rely on multiple sources of funding — environmental, cultural, educational — which are written separately, then reassembled on the ground through our practice.
Patrick Degeorges
And what about your relationship with local political authorities? Recognition at that level seems crucial if these projects are to be sustainable.
Gabriela Benish-Kalná
Building that recognition has been one of our main priorities over the past year and a half. If we want to be able to develop sometimes quite radical programmes, we need to be well established not only with farmers and neighbours, but also with the local administration and political actors.
For example, our tree-planting project required almost a year of work through official channels: permits, stamps, meetings. What seems like a simple action has gone through three municipal council meetings. I have consulted with the local mayor and with the Department of Environment, which has been very supportive of our plans and has helped move our paperwork forward. This creates a dialogue between different levels of local governance.
Being present in the community is crucial. We buy grain and hay from neighbours, invite them to our events, open days and exhibitions, go to local gatherings — even firemen’s balls or football games. We also employ local people on the farm and they sometimes get involved in our programmes, introduced to artistic practices and encouraged to participate.
If we want to change the discourse here, we have to be deeply embedded in the community.
Patrick Degeorges
So it’s also about building trust.
Gabriela Benish-Kalná
Exactly. Trust comes from following through on what we say we will do, and from people knowing us on a personal level. Being known (and hopefully understood) is the first step towards being respected — even if, in a rural context, being a female farmer can make that more difficult. Still, it is improving with each generation, and my sister and I also have the advantage of having grown up here and gone to school with many of the people who are now taking over their family farms. But it is a full-time job.
Patrick Degeorges
You are describing a whole ecology of neighbourly and solidarity-based practices. This is part of building the “medium” you need in order to work in the territory.
Gabriela Benish-Kalná
Yes. Openness is key. Even in the off-season, this is our home, but people come by for coffee, and these small gestures have a huge impact. Respecting local people, even when we disagree politically, is essential. My activist background has helped me to have difficult conversations without becoming defensive or dismissive.
By being open over time, by exposing the community to difference and to the diversity that exists here, we slowly begin to challenge prejudice and stereotypes. But it is a long-term process.
Patrick Degeorges
In the framework of transformative artistic practices, we speak of “methodological hospitality”: being open to others, but also creating the conditions for co-construction. You practise this with artists in residence, but does it also extend to local people who are not artists? How does this hospitality translate in practice?
Gabriela Benish-Kalná
I also like the term “art of hosting”. For me it means being open and accessible. Many of our programmes are designed around local interests. That is why we developed, for example, the KlimaHouse project with the Czech Environmental Partnership Foundation, and why we always include activities for children alongside exhibitions.
This year, for instance, we organised clay-building workshops that contributed directly to the foundations of our climate-adaptation greenhouse. “Climate adaptation” is still an obscure topic here, but by connecting it to traditional building techniques — the way people’s ancestors built — it becomes more accessible.
The same applies to agriculture. When we talk about planting hedgerows, we start from the memory of grandparents who had them on every field, as windbreaks and ecological corridors. From there we can move towards conversations about heat islands in huge monoculture fields, rising temperatures, and their impact on villages and older people.
Cultural heritage plays a crucial role in making these issues understandable. We also work through local traditions — communal meals, celebrations when something new is built, neighbours gathering to mark an event. These may not look like art, but for us they are central artistic and social practices.
Patrick Degeorges
Thank you Gabriela! Another important dimension concerns science and the way you collaborate with scientific practices. Questions of sustainability are usually addressed through techno-scientific approaches, often without artists being involved. When one speaks about climate adaptation, one usually imagines agronomists, hydrologists or geologists defining what should be done. How, as artists and cultural practitioners, do you engage with these highly technical fields? How do you work with scientists on the territory? Is it an art–science model, or do you think this way of framing collaboration is insufficient?
Gabriela Benish-Kalná
The key lies in community. Because community building is at the heart of what we do, we are able to bring together people from very different fields. For example, on the KlimaHouse project, we are working with a climate adaptation expert who is also part of our community, alongside artists and architects. This makes collaboration much more fluid.
It is essential that scientific and ecological knowledge be integrated into artistic practices if they are to have real impact. We cannot just improvise: we need to know what we are doing. Not all of us can become scientists, but we can learn to work with them, and to co-create projects with their expertise.
We have already hosted our first two research residencies, and this programme will continue. But science does not only come from outside. In this rural context, indigenous and vernacular knowledge, oral histories and long-standing practices often reach the same conclusions as scientific research. For instance, a local herbalist told us that birch trees are no longer thriving here and will be going extinct with the rising temperatures. We then found scientific studies confirming this. The knowledge existed locally before it was formalised by science. Both are valuable, and both are welcome in our community.
Patrick Degeorges
Could you tell us more about your Climate House, as an example of a project where art, science and social transformation come together?
Gabriela Benish-Kalná
The KlimaHouse is inspired by the work of Helen Mayer-Harrison and Newton Harrison, pioneers of environmental art since the 1970s. Their Future Gardens project, developed in Santa Cruz, consisted of Buckminster Fuller domes simulating different future climates and ecosystems. Later, in their project Peninsula Europe, they explored future habitable zones on the continent.
Before Newton Harrison passed away, I worked with him on developing a future garden at ArtMill. We are now continuing this work with one of his former students, Leslie Ryan, who is also a climate adaptation specialist. We are reinterpreting the original concept and turning it into a living laboratory where people can physically experience future climate conditions. This direct experience makes climate change tangible, rather than abstract.
The KlimaHouse will also be a gathering space for the community. Architect Jan Fabián is working with us on this dimension, and artists in residence will develop practices around it. It is located within the Inter-Species Refuge and is directly connected to our permaculture and agroforestry systems. It is therefore a fully transdisciplinary project, linking ecology, science, art and social life.
We are also in touch with a sister site in Serbia, in a place whose current climate corresponds to what ours will be in 2050. In the future, we want the two sites to be digitally connected, so people will be able to observe and compare conditions in real time. This allows us to think of territory not only as land, but as a network of connected places.
Patrick Degeorges
Has the Climate House project already entered the construction phase?
Gabriela Benish-Kalná
We laid the symbolic foundation last summer during our public clay-building workshop, and the architectural plans are in a collaborative back-and-forth and still being developed, as we are now newly integrating a large agricultural greenhouse into the project. This production greenhouse will lead directly into the KlimaHouse. It will be connected to the stables, so manure and compost will circulate through the system. Construction should start around May or June and be completed by August 2026.
Patrick Degeorges
You mentioned working with data and scientific inputs on the hill. What was the role of this research?
Gabriela Benish-Kalná
We worked with Františka Tulingerová, an agroforestry student who wrote her thesis on the Inter-Species Refuge project. She conducted soil tests and thermal imaging with drones as part of a larger site analysis. This data helped us design the agroforestry system, the hedgerows and the placement of species, in order to reduce erosion, increase biodiversity, and create alleyways and corridors for both humans and non-humans.
My sister Natalia, who leads our farm-to-table programme, also carried out a botanical inventory of the site to determine which species should be protected, which can be grazed, and how to manage rotation. A beekeeper helped us choose the best locations for hives. All of this cross-disciplinary knowledge was essential to shaping the territory responsibly.
Patrick Degeorges
You also mentioned “mapping allies”. What does that mean?
Gabriela Benish-Kalná
Working on ecological and political issues requires knowing who is around you. We mapped local organic farms, cultural institutions, environmental organisations, and also individuals who share similar political values. This includes everything from small local shops to national foundations.
Because I had lived abroad for many years, I had to relearn how the Czech environmental and cultural landscape works. We even mapped unused land, monoculture fields and farmers experimenting with regenerative practices. Having this network of allies is crucial: it allows us not to be an isolated international centre, but a locally rooted actor supported by people who understand and stand by what we are doing.
Patrick Degeorges
Very good. To conclude, I would like to return to the question of transformation. You speak of transformative artistic practices, and ArtMill appears as a medium through which these can take shape. How would you describe the kinds of transmission that this medium enables? You mentioned the socio-ecological dimension, but perhaps you could relate this to concrete projects or modest examples.
Moreover, if transformation is to occur, it must be recognised and sustained over time — not only held in space, but also held in duration. How do you support this continuity and durability? And finally, there is the question of reciprocity: how do you give something back to the territory? How do you ensure that what is produced truly reaches those it is meant for, rather than remaining simply an artistic output for a specialised public?
Gabriela Benish-Kalná
I will begin with reciprocity. For me, it operates across a spectrum, from the very small to the more structured. On a daily level, it is something that people experience quite naturally: planting a carrot and later eating it, feeding a horse and receiving in return the calming effect of its presence. These small gestures form part of a continuous exchange, a balance within an ecosystem. The place itself — the environment and the milieu — makes this give-and-take almost self-evident.
At another level, there is a form of reciprocity between the Mill, its programmes and the local community. We will be opening part of the hill of our Inter-Species Refuge to people walking or foraging for mushrooms and herbs. All the trees we plant are edible species, some of which are disappearing from the region, and this resonates with local traditions of gathering. The idea came from a conversation with a neighbour — a friend of our mechanic — who told me how he used to forage on that hill with his grandmother before it was fenced off for a horse pasture. By reopening part of it, we are giving something back.
There is also the lake next to us, of which we are, in a way, stewards. Even though it is part of an industrial fishery, we have a relationship with the fishermen. When the lake is drained, they give us fish, which I then distribute to our neighbours — an old miller’s tradition. In this way, the land gives, and I act merely as a medium between the place and the people.
Keeping the Mill at least partially open is another form of reciprocity. Historically, people came here to have their grain milled and would stay for hours, talking and socialising. We do not want ArtMill to become a closed, private place for an international artistic community; it should remain a space that shares its history and continues to function as a place of encounter.
Patrick Degeorges
If we shift perspective slightly: could you give an example of a transformative effect — a practice that has been developed here and has left something that endures on the territory?
Gabriela Benish-Kalná
That is difficult, because anything that is fully open to the public involves long and complex administrative processes. But I can describe what we are slowly building. We have recently rented a piece of forest from the municipality, with the aim of opening access to a group of very old oak trees — several centuries old. There will be a small public space there, with an invited artist working with one of these elder trees. It is located along a cycling and walking path used by tourists in summer and by local people who forage or commute through the area. We are gradually creating small stations around the Mill that are accessible to the public.
Another example is the houseboat by the lake, where a resident Palestinian artist painted a mural. Locals often come there to sit, enjoy the view and gather mushrooms nearby. The mural, inspired by Palestinian plants and linked to the Transformative Territories project, has transformed this former residency space into a public place that will introduce the lake regeneration project.
More broadly, what we consider transformative artistic practice goes beyond discrete artworks. The permaculture mound garden we built, for instance, is shaped as an ancient spiral — a powerful symbol — and also designed to retain water. It was constructed collectively with artists, students and members of the community during Covid. It has since become a flourishing pollinator and permaculture garden, self-composting and functioning as a site of learning, gathering and food production. Sometimes artworks appear in the garden and slowly decompose back into the environment.
At present, we are also building ponds for an endangered frog species — the first one we found, we named Judith Butler. It can be difficult to distinguish whether what we are doing is environmental regeneration or artistic practice, because for us, as practitioners, the design and care of these ponds can be itself an artistic act.
This is why, for me, there is a very fine line — largely a matter of framing — between everyday agricultural or regenerative work and artistic intervention. They constantly merge into one another.
Patrick Degeorges
What emerges from this is that the meaning of art itself changes. It is no longer the modern idea of the exceptional artist standing apart. It becomes an art of living or an art of inhabiting — a way of doing politics, of relating to others, of caring for places. Art lies in the manner of doing things: how you build a pond, how you allow it to emerge in relation to the land, the water, the animals, the people. That is where a new meaning of art appears within transformative practices.
Gabriela Benish-Kalná
That reflects how my own practice has changed. If I take the pigs to a field so they can eat nettle roots and regenerate the soil, that, for me, is also a part of my artistic practice. The challenge is how to frame and translate such acts so that their meaning can be communicated.
Patrick Degeorges
It is like herding: when you watch a shepherd, you are not just seeing efficiency, but a way of being with animals, dogs, slopes and landscapes. Each herder has a different manner. This is what we mean by transformative practices — not limited to art, but present in every field, even accounting.
Adding the territorial dimension anchors these practices: how do they make a difference in a specific place?
Gabriela Benish-Kalná
And artists also play a role in communicating these practices. Art is not there to illustrate science, but it can create languages, imaginations and frames that allow people to understand why these patterns matter.
Patrick Degeorges
This resonates with Tim Ingold’s work, especially Making: learning through doing, through a milieu. Perhaps that is what artists can create — the conditions for new kinds of learning.
Gabriela Benish-Kalná
Yes, creating the conditions.
Patrick Degeorges
Learning how to learn differently — that is what art enables through reflexivity and decentring. And for that, we always need a medium. ArtMill is such a medium.
¹ Standing Rock refers to the resistance led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and their allies against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) in 2016–2017. The movement opposed the pipeline’s planned route near the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, arguing that it threatened water sources, sacred sites and Indigenous sovereignty. It became one of the largest Indigenous-led environmental justice movements in recent U.S. history, bringing together Native nations, environmental activists and human rights advocates.
