This interview features a conversation between Patrick Degeorges, Fernando García-Dory, and Sergio Bravo, exploring the intersections of art, design, and territorial transformation. The discussion focuses on collaborative practices with rural communities, the concept of territoriality, and the ways in which artistic and design interventions can support ecological, social, and cultural regeneration.
Throughout the conversation, Patrick guides the dialogue with questions aimed at understanding both the philosophical underpinnings and the practical applications of their work. Fernando and Sergio reflect on their experiences with community-led projects, participatory design processes, and long-term engagements with landscapes, forests, and rural livelihoods, highlighting how collaboration, knowledge exchange, and situated approaches can shape transformative territories.
The interview offers insights into the methodologies, challenges, and values that underpin projects in which art, ecology, and social engagement converge, providing a rich account of how communities and practitioners can work together to inhabit, care for, and regenerate their environments.
Fernando García-Dory :
Maybe I can start by introducing you to Sergio Bravo. He is a cultural practitioner working across different fields. He is trained as an architect and also works as an artist and designer. Born in Chile, he grew up in Sweden, where he is now based. He is currently undertaking a PhD at Umeå University, focusing on collaborative processes for territorial regeneration.
Sergio has been involved with INLAND for quite some time, which has made collaboration easier and more coherent. He is also developing a project in the north of Sweden, in a peripheral area. One of the places he has been working in is Kiruna, where he has been developing, together with his partner, a project resembling a cinema school for young people in northern Sweden.
Kiruna is particularly interesting because forestry has long been a key component of the local economy. At the same time, the forestry industry in Sweden is increasingly contested for its environmental impact, especially in terms of ecosystem simplification and the dynamics of monoculture plantations. Sergio’s work there focuses on rivers and riverine ecosystems that traverse these forested territories. He has also recently been working further north-east, in the Arctic region, where he is developing a new proposal.
Patrick Degeorges:
Perfect. Thank you Fernando! Nice to meet you Sergio !
And Fernando, you are an artist and agroecologist. In 2004, you founded the Shepherds School (Escuela de Pastores), and since then, you have developed projects and exhibited your work internationally, including at Tensta Konsthall, the Van Abbemuseum, SFMOMA, Documenta 12, and the Gwangju and Athens Biennales. You have received several awards and distinctions, including the Socially Engaged Art Award from Creative Time (New York), the Chamberlain Award, and the Baltic Art Award, and you were a finalist for the Rolex Prize. You are also a board member of the World Alliance of Nomadic Pastoralists, and you currently live in the INLAND Village. In 2009, you founded INLAND – Campo Adentro (Spain), a long-term project connecting art and rural life. Based in Madrid, Mallorca, and the mountains of northern Spain, INLAND combines an art collective, a shepherds’ school, a publishing house, and a wide range of collaborative actions rooted in rural territories. INLAND is an arts collective dedicated to agricultural, social, and cultural production, working both as a platform for artistic research and as a collaborative agency.
Then I’ll start with my first question. Why did you decide to become an artist, and how would you describe the path that led you there? This is more of a biographical question.
Sergio Bravo Josephson:
Very early on—already during my master’s studies, and certainly just after—I became deeply interested in processes of sustainability transformation. I was trained primarily as an architect and designer, but when I started my own practice, I quickly realised that many of the projects I was involved in were essentially forms of greenwashing. They operated within the same conditions that had produced climate change in the first place.
That made me feel that I didn’t really understand sustainability yet. I needed to learn it differently—by engaging directly with land and with people, and by working collectively on practical ways of transforming our livelihoods.
At that time, I was living in Stockholm, and I began to approach communities involved in urban farming on the city’s peripheries. Many of these communities were composed of migrant populations, occupying or cultivating land collectively, sometimes informally, through farming or permaculture practices. Through these experiences, I was introduced to ecology, permaculture, and other practices that allowed me to understand sustainability in a much more grounded way.
This was also when I met Fernando, who was doing an artist residency with Hospice in Stockholm. That was really the starting point.
Fernando García-Dory:
If I may add some context: this was happening at a time when the Swedish welfare state, which had been very strong in the 1970s and 1980s, was shifting towards a more neoliberal model. Many public institutions were dismantled, including programmes designed to support migrant integration through gardening and agricultural training.
One of these urban farming projects in Stockholm was abruptly closed when the responsible department ceased its activity. The land was either meant to be privatised or left unused for future commercial development. However, a Peruvian migrant who had been involved in the project decided to stay. With his old tractor, he began to cultivate the land independently.
He developed a visionary idea of collective land use, which became an important gathering space for migrant communities. People from Russia, the Middle East, and other regions came together, bringing their own agricultural cultures, crops and food traditions. It became a self-managed, post–welfare-state kind of garden.
Sergio contributed by designing some of the buildings on the site. And I think it’s fair to say that this was a very influential moment for him—seeing how people could come together, think differently, and create alternative forms of living, while he could put his skills at the service of that process.
Sergio Bravo Josephson:
Yes, that’s really how I got started. After that, I became involved in academic teaching. I began experimenting more, and I was quite radical in the way I worked with students, encouraging them to collaborate directly with communities like these.
Over time, I started working more closely with INLAND. I realised that the way INLAND organises itself resonates with many similar practices elsewhere. INLAND also created connections with other communities, such as Casa dell’Agricoltura in Italy.
Fernando García-Dory:
At Casa dell’Agricoltura, where Sergio and I met, we worked with villagers from Castiglione d’Otranto, a town that had lost much of its population as young people moved north to work in factories. The community decided to create a new local economy based on land regeneration.
The surrounding land was dominated by olive tree monocultures heavily treated with glyphosate. Some areas were so polluted that signs warned people not to enter the groves. The villagers began recovering heritage wheat seeds and built a molino di comunità, a community mill. This became a clear case of a transformative territory: today, many young people have jobs linked to organic farming in the area.
Sergio contributed by designing spaces to reintroduce animals for grazing. The use of glyphosate was based on the mistaken belief that olive groves needed to be kept completely free of weeds. Instead, we introduced donkeys, which are very effective at managing vegetation naturally.
Sergio Bravo Josephson:
And once we had the donkeys, we needed to build shelters for them. I brought students, and together we worked with local materials—bamboo and river reeds—to construct the structures.
Patrick Degeorges:
That helps clarify many points. I’d now like you to elaborate more precisely on your own practice: how you work, what you do, and how you define your role. You’ve already mentioned working with migrant communities and revitalising neglected or abandoned territories, but could you be more specific about your methods and focus?
Sergio Bravo Josephson:
My practice developed through the combination of teaching and direct engagement with communities, where I put my skills as an architect and designer at their service, often in collaboration with artists. This led me to focus increasingly on rural areas and on communities engaged in forms of territorial resistance.
Over time, I realised that this approach could also form the basis of a PhD. When a call was launched for doctoral projects focused on community practices and sustainability transformation, I applied with a proposal based on conducting research together with INLAND in Spain, as well as with other communities.
My research examines how community-led projects, through design research, can generate different forms of sustainability transformation. I also realised that many of the key concepts shaping these practices come from Latin America. In my PhD, I engage with the concept of territoriality as developed in Latin American thought, and explore its relevance for contemporary Europe, particularly in relation to social and environmental injustices in rural areas.
As Fernando mentioned, in Italy there is a strong divide between the rural south and the industrial north. In Sweden, we see almost the opposite situation, with the north under pressure from neo-colonial extractive practices. In Spain, I look at the struggles of shepherds and the functioning of pastoral systems.
Alongside my work with INLAND, I also collaborate with a community in southern Chile called Histórico de Campo, which works to preserve forests and maintain traditional territorial practices. Finally, I am also developing a project in Kiruna, in northern Sweden, as Fernando mentioned.
Patrick Degeorges:
I have several questions. You use the word territorial—territoire in French, territory in English—but you seem to use it in a very specific way, largely influenced by Latin American thought. What do you mean by this term? It appears to carry a conceptual meaning that is not commonly used in Europe. Could you elaborate on that?
And secondly, you have described the context of your practice, but could you give more concrete examples of what you actually do? How do you engage with the public? How do you work with communities—through which stages? How do you gain legitimacy? How do projects take shape in practice?
Perhaps you could first clarify what you mean by territorial, and then return to your concrete projects.
Sergio Bravo Josephson:
I first encountered the term territorial in Europe, actually, while working with Casa dell’Agricoltura in Italy. There, the term was explicitly linked to Latin American references, particularly to the Zapatista movement in Mexico. I had also encountered similar ideas in other Latin American contexts.
When I started my PhD, I realised that something was being done differently in Latin America—especially in how people engage with land—and that these approaches were influencing certain practices in Europe as well.
In the context where I work now, in northern Europe, territory is often understood primarily as something that divides. It is associated with power, control, and boundaries—something to be observed or managed from the outside, rather than lived from within.
Fernando García-Dory:
You mean territory understood as a surface to be exploited as a resource?
Patrick Degeorges:
Or territory as defined by the state: a bounded space that you possess, defend, or administer—but not something that inhabits you, or that you inhabit.
Sergio Bravo Josephson:
Yes, exactly.
In the Latin American context, territorial was appropriated by Indigenous communities, farmers, and other groups living under various forms of pressure—colonial, extractive, or political. They used the term to express that working with territory means working from within it.
Territory is understood as something living and relational. In many Indigenous contexts, people speak of living territories, where humans, non-humans, histories, practices, and forms of knowledge are deeply intertwined. Everything is relational, and therefore everything is political.
This is something I am studying in depth in my PhD, so it is difficult to fully summarise here. But I draw on scholars such as Arturo Escobar, particularly his book Designs for the Pluriverse. Escobar uses territorial not to describe a bounded geographical space, but a lived world—a dense assemblage of relations between humans and non-humans. Thinking design as territorial means designing from within these situated worlds, rather than applying abstract or universal solutions. Territorial design thus becomes a political and ecological practice oriented towards autonomy, care, and the re-habitation of the Earth in plural ways.
Patrick Degeorges:
I see. And from this idea of re-habitation that underpins your work, could you give us concrete examples from your practice?
Sergio Bravo Josephson:
Yes. To explain this, I need to clarify how I understand community, which is also why I was drawn to INLAND and to Fernando’s way of working.
I am not referring to community in the communitarian sense often used in Anglo-American contexts, where it is primarily about identity or belonging—such as Indigenous communities, immigrant communities, or even groups formed around shared interests.
Instead, I am interested in community as people coming together around a shared deficit or urgency—often related to climate change, environmental degradation, or the marginalisation of rural territories.
Fernando García-Dory:
That’s interesting, because we once discussed how community has become an overused term. In the United States especially, it is often linked to authority and governance.
Sergio Bravo Josephson:
Exactly. I find more resonance in the etymological meaning of community, which an Italian philosopher—whose name escapes me at the moment—has analysed. The word comes from cum in Latin, which refers to care and obligation. Community is about caring together for something, and this duty is not a burden, but a gift.
This connects deeply with my Latin American background. For example, we have the concept of minga, which I think expresses this idea very well.
Fernando García-Dory:
Minga refers to a traditional form of collective work and mutual aid found in several Andean Indigenous communities. More than an organisation of labour, it reflects a relational understanding of community based on shared responsibility, reciprocity, and care for the territory. It is an active process, not a fixed social group.
There are similar practices elsewhere—moba, for instance—where people come together for a day of collective work for something communal. What is beautiful is that these moments are also celebrations. We have experienced this with shepherds: people work together, share food, exchange knowledge between generations. It is labour, but also hospitality.
Sergio Bravo Josephson:
Yes, it’s about co-hosting.
Fernando García-Dory:
You might gather to repair a fountain or a path, and it becomes a moment of celebration. Older people teach younger ones; people bring food; relationships are built through doing. This is very central to INLAND’s practice, and to Sergio’s work as well.
Sergio Bravo Josephson:
And this is quite uncommon in architecture and design, which are usually very individualistic disciplines.
In my practice, projects are set up in a way that is close to this idea of minga or moba. We create situations where people gather collaboratively around a shared task—something that needs to be done. For example, building shelters for sheep, constructing beekeeping structures, or, in the case of the forest project, building a pavilion in the middle of a eucalyptus plantation as part of a process of restoration.
Through this process, a community emerges around a common goal—in this case, restoring a damaged forest ecosystem.
As a practitioner, researcher, and designer, I then ask: who needs to be involved? Neighbours, members of INLAND, but also other forms of expertise. The process is planned as a collective encounter, often conceived as a celebration. We meet on site, situate ourselves in the territory, and engage in different activities—such as soil sampling—sometimes guided by biologists or ecologists.
Fernando García-Dory:
In the forest project, for example, we worked with local activists from Proyecto Roble, a grassroots association focused on addressing fire risk while supporting rural socioeconomic resilience. We even recorded conversations with them.
Sergio Bravo Josephson:
This creates an interdisciplinary group—artists, activists, scientists—working creatively towards social and ecological change. The aim is not only to shape a project, but to work with the project as it unfolds.
One particularly meaningful moment occurred during discussions about eucalyptus trees. Scientists described eucalyptus as invasive, even “fascist,” because of how they suppress other species. At the same time, an artist in the group questioned the language we were using. She reminded us that eucalyptus trees are migrants too—they are not responsible for having been brought from Australia to Spain. This opened a reflection on how we talk about migration more broadly in Europe.
These kinds of discussions only emerge through this plurality of perspectives. That plurality is essential to my practice.
Patrick Degeorges:
I have two questions. First: did you give a name to this eucalyptus project?
Sergio Bravo Josephson:
Yes. The project was called THINK A FOREST.
Fernando García-Dory:
The idea was to reflect on the many imaginaries of what a forest is. These imaginaries come from fairy tales, from environmentalist traditions, from romanticism. German Romanticism, and later movements like the Sierra Club, promoted an idea of wilderness rooted in deep ecology, privileging non-human presence.
However, even in the Amazon, forests are the result of long-term human management. In our context, native forests of chestnut and oak were historically spaces of grazing, wood gathering, and leaf collection. The idea of nature as something separate from humans was later institutionalised by forestry services in Spain, particularly during Franco’s era, when shepherds were expelled and fast-growing monocultures were planted.
Patrick Degeorges:
So THINK A FOREST is about understanding the forest as a territorial space—a place to inhabit.
Sergio Bravo Josephson:
Yes. To learn how to inhabit it, and how it has been inhabited. Grazing, for example, has always been part of caring for this forest.
Patrick Degeorges:
Which brings us back to the idea that forests are the result of long-term care and management—something we have forgotten and now need to recover.
Sergio Bravo Josephson:
Exactly. In this case, it is about cultural forest restoration.
Fernando García-Dory:
This led us to question the politics of rewilding—what it actually means.
Patrick Degeorges:
It seems paradoxical to speak of rewilding when you are talking about re-inhabiting.
Fernando García-Dory:
Indeed. We are inspired by approaches such as analog forestry, developed by Ranil Senanayake. The idea is to regenerate forests using native structures and functions, while also integrating species that have value for humans. It is not about returning to an untouched wilderness, but about regeneration.
Patrick Degeorges:
So increasing biodiversity leads to greater resilience.
Sergio Bravo Josephson:
Yes, exactly.
This long-term perspective is central to my practice. These projects are not quick fixes. They require time, collaboration, and patience. Results may only become visible something like in twenty years.
For architects and designers, engaging in these processes is crucial. It changes how we understand time, care, and responsibility. It shifts our role towards long-term processes of living with—and caring for—multiple worlds.
Patrick Degeorges:
It’s not easy. You’re saying that you need to create a community of concerned people and bring them together. How do you establish legitimacy as an architect, artist, or practitioner to do that? That’s the first challenge.
The second is that these processes take time. They need to be institutionalized in some way because the work can span 20 or 30 years. You need an institutional framework or alliance to maintain care over time, far beyond your own direct intervention. How do you approach that?
Sergio Bravo Josephson:
Yes, that’s exactly what we’re exploring—and to be honest, we don’t fully know yet. But I think a key part is having a platform like INLAND, which exists over time. Fernando might add more, but INLAND takes responsibility for sustaining these long-term processes.
I’ve seen this in practice, for example, with shepherding and recovering transhumance routes between highlands and lowlands. These are not short-term projects—they require continuity and a supportive structure. In a capitalist framework, you might call this a brand, but INLAND is something different.
That’s why I find this approach—and collectives or platforms like INLAND—so compelling: they offer an alternative way of organizing economically, socially, and creatively around long-term struggles and responsibilities.
Patrick Degeorges:
Exactly. These practices take time, and trust must be built within the community. You need legitimacy to work with them, but you also need assurance that what has been initiated can be sustained over decades, so that the intended effects can truly materialize.
Patrick Degeorges:
Exactly. One key insight from the Transformative Territories approach is that we need to rethink how we value an artist’s work. In these processes, what’s being valued isn’t a tangible object but the facilitation itself—architects designing their practice while engaging communities, bringing people together, supporting forestry or environmental work. Traditionally, this isn’t considered part of an artist’s role.
So, the question is: why is the artist’s touch important in facilitation? Where does artistic singularity manifest? How is it different from what a professional or technician might do?
Fernando, have you explored this? I recall in the MOOC you mentioned working on some kind of “bonds,” but I wasn’t sure whether you meant environmental or financial bonds.
Fernando García-Dory:
Yes, something along those lines. Social-environmental impact bonds. Essentially, it’s a financial mechanism within a network to support social and environmental projects.
Patrick Degeorges:
Let’s return to the main question. We need to rethink what it means to be an artist in connection with a territory. When an artist—or a practitioner such as an architect or designer—engages in community work or regeneration, they do it differently. They bring something beyond technical facilitation.
So what is this “artistic touch”? Why is it necessary to bring communities together, to create collective outcomes? What is the unique role of the artist, as opposed to a technician?
Fernando García-Dory:
It’s subtle. Technicians or experts follow tested processes, a series of steps to be implemented. Artists, on the other hand, often disrupt the process, question it, and explore what emerges. We introduce elements that awaken resonance, emotion, or even a sense of transcendence. It’s a mix of affective, emotional, and sometimes even sacred dimensions. For me, good art connects with these layers, even when religion no longer holds a central place in society.
Sergio Bravo Josephson:
Exactly. A good artist thinks differently, represents something in a new way, or engages creatively. That’s crucial. From a design perspective, how we act also matters. There’s a creative element in finding ways to intervene when faced with challenges. Designers, artists, and even architects, when they discover the right “ingredients,” as we try to do at Inland, can create something entirely new and impactful.
Patrick Degeorges:
You use the term “religion” deliberately, as a way to connect people. But, for example, in the eucalyptus project—think the forest—what makes it an artistic project?
Sergio Bravo Josephson:
That’s the question we’re always asked.
To give an example, the approach to the eucalyptus project illustrates it well. First, we connected back to the pavilion we created for Kiruna. That pavilion supported a local economy, and we were already asking: what happens to this structure afterward?
We realised we were using considerable resources to build it, so we asked: can we extend its life? Can we avoid waste? Experimentally, we designed it to be dismantled. Then we brought it to Inland, without knowing exactly what it would become. Fernando noted there was a eucalyptus plantation in need of restoration, so we placed the structure there. We created a forest, but transformed it into a “forest pavilion.”
Fernando García-Dory:
Repurposing materials and uses is part of creating infrastructures to inhabit the forest. For example, with Inland Academy, we studied soil chromatography—examining how the soil retains damage—in a visual, interpretive way. Chromatography is ecological science, but we approached it visually.
We also developed other exercises. For instance, we printed all the regional forestry policies and turned the documents into pulp, which we mixed with eucalyptus materials collected from the forest, creating paper literally made from policy papers.
Sergio Bravo Josephson:
So it’s really about the process, right?
Fernando García-Dory:
Yes, about rethinking the material itself. Paper is something we usually take for granted, but the infrastructure behind it is heavy. Northwestern Spain produces a large proportion of Europe’s paper from eucalyptus plantations, notably for brands like Navigator, found in nearly every office. The production has a huge ecological impact.
We also created a sound piece reflecting the similarity between the sounds of burning and rain, and introduced music—forest instruments like gamelan from Indonesia, played collectively using instruments made on site from natural materials.
Then we “sistered” this forest with one in Indonesia, collaborating through the Mondeland group. We also made sculptures using ceramics glazed with soils from the burned eucalyptus forest. Fire transformed the minerals, producing unique colours and textures.
Sergio Bravo Josephson:
Fernando, could we say that the restoration of the eucalyptus forest drives these projects forward? The restoration itself isn’t the artwork; the artistic output emerges through what happens around it.
Patrick Degeorges:
Exactly. What matters is that, when facing a territorial challenge, you begin to imagine new forms, new ways of seeing, coexisting with, and planning with it. It’s not a single monumental effort.
Sergio Bravo Josephson:
There are many layers. Placing the pavilion in that specific context, and allowing it to evolve through exploration, is part of the artistic output.
Patrick Degeorges:
Yes, and this brings us back to re-inhabiting. It’s a dialectic: re-inhabiting and being re-inhabited, transformed by the very process of habitation.
What you’re describing is this: we engage with a eucalyptus forest patch for its regeneration. Regeneration isn’t the end; it’s about building and caring for a relationship with the forest. Through this care, we ourselves are transformed, inspiring new forms of production—artistic, socio-artistic, new connections, and experiences. We are inhabited by what we are learning to re-inhabit.
Sergio Bravo Josephson:
It leans towards ontology.
Patrick Degeorges:
Exactly—a chiasm between caring and being cared for. In French we say soignant–soigné: when you touch someone’s hand, their hand touches you too.
It’s the same here. By engaging in rehabilitation, you begin to dream differently; you are re-inhabited by the dreams of regeneration itself.
Fernando García-Dory:
You’re right—it transforms you. When we first approached the eucalyptus forest, I came from environmental activism that essentially hated the tree. The instinct was to eradicate it. But we started to rethink that position.
We developed speculative artworks, even using AI, imagining trees with distillation units, able to convert themselves into eucalyptus oil. This became an alchemical process: transforming poison into medicine.
Through this, I began to see the trees as companions. Together, we transitioned something unhealthy into something else. We designed a hammam structure where the burning leaves released heat used for distillation—destruction and transformation happening simultaneously. It became a narrative of preservation and regeneration, both emotional and ecological.
Patrick Degeorges:
That’s important, Fernando. It reminds me of a conversation with Gabriela about ArtMill, with a tree species affected by climate change. The question wasn’t just how to replace the damaged trees, but how to accompany their decline, to ensure a “good death,” a ritualised, meaningful process.
This is similar to what you’re describing with the eucalyptus. Artists shift perspective, asking different questions and rebuilding meaning around what is inevitably lost, rather than relying solely on technical regeneration or environmental ideology.
Sergio Bravo Josephson:
That connects well to an earlier situation: in the forest with a mixed group, environmental scientists thought everything should be cut down, whereas artists considered these beings as living entities to care for.
Patrick Degeorges:
Yes! Instead of saying “we must remove these trees,” the question becomes: how can we help them die and transform into something else? And through that, we ourselves are reinvented as we reinvent the place. Fernando, would you agree?
Fernando García-Dory:
Exactly, that’s our approach.
Patrick Degeorges:
It’s subtle. It reminds me of Thierry Boutonnier’s work planting trees with people. At first glance, it’s simple: plant a tree together and “adopt” the work. But the meaning is entirely different. Through that gesture, everything transforms: relationships to place, to others, to oneself. The specificity of that process is deeply artistic.
Sergio Bravo Josephson:
And isn’t that what art has always aimed to do? Even in a great painting?
Patrick Degeorges:
Exactly. It doesn’t diminish meaning or the exceptional quality of the artist. It simply relocates exceptionality. And this doesn’t preclude producing fine art—it’s about expanding the field of artistic activity. It allows local inhabitants, professionals from other disciplines, to become practitioners of change, with artists as facilitators helping others find their creative place in transformative processes.
Sergio Bravo Josephson:
Yes, exactly.
Patrick Degeorges:
I’m proposing ideas here; do you have concrete examples?
Sergio Bravo Josephson:
Honestly, I’m enjoying the discussion—it’s hard to explain otherwise.
Patrick Degeorges:
I’m glad we’re aligned. I hope our interviews, methodological sheets, and eventual papers will become a shared corpus—something to build curricula, work in different contexts, deepen understanding, gather examples, and develop a common language. A simple language to discuss territorial transformation and, ultimately, change the cultural conditions for action.
Patrick Degeorges:
Yes, and it will allow us to create new situations, and perhaps new institutions.
more in the second part of the interview !
