Resources
A community of thoughtsmiths who have inspired us, as well as our own published writings, projects and talks hosted elsewhere.
Our books

Artists and the Practice of Agriculture:
Politics and Aesthetics of Food Sovereignty in Art since 1960 (Routledge 2023)
A book by Silvia Bottinelli with an extensive conversation with Artist as Family in the chapter, Experiences of Human and Other-Than-Human Interconnection through Agriculture in Contemporary Art.
This chapter begins with an analysis of the work of artists and designers—like Giuseppe Penone, Bonnie Ora Sherk, Joseph Beuys, Global Tools, Gianfranco Baruchello, Fritz Haeg, Kamin Lertchaiprasert and Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Artist as Family — who farm to experience countercultural lifestyles that challenge capitalist mindsets. Even though their efforts are often interpreted as utopian, I argue that their work is founded on responses to failure and dynamic adaptation. – Silvia Bottinelli

Food for Degrowth
Perspectives and Practices (2021 Routledge)
Edited By Anitra Nelson and Ferne Edwards, this collection breaks new ground by investigating applications of degrowth in a range of geographic, practical and theoretical contexts along the food chain. Degrowth challenges growthism and advocates for everyday practices that limit socio-metabolic energy and material flows within planetary constraints. As such, the editors intend to map possibilities for food for degrowth to become established as a field of study.
Included in this collection is a chapter written by us, Replacing growth with belonging economies: A neopeasant response, Patrick Jones and Meg Ulman.
To buy the book, or listen to a reading of our chapter, please use the buttons below.
Buy paperback | Listen & Watch

Perma/Culture:
Imagining Alternatives in an Age of Crisis (2019 Routledge)
Edited By Molly Wallace and David Carruthers, this collection offers a number of constructive models in response to current global environmental challenges. This book makes a significant contribution to current eco-literature and will be of great interest to students and researchers in Environmental Humanities, Environmental Studies, Sociology and Communication Studies.
Patrick contributed Chapter Three to this anthology, which he titled, Reclaiming Accountability from Hypertechnocivility, to Grow Again the Flowering Earth. It is a rare example of scholarly work that derives from a lived response to what he describes as the problem of foregrounding technology and backgrounding connection to and knowledge of land. It draws on Indigenous wisdom holders and his own ancestral traditions, which are still carried in his much more-than-human body and are accessed by returning to a animist-spiritual practice and becoming custodial in one’s everyday actions again.
You can purchase a hardcopy, paperback or ebook by clicking the button below.

re:)Fermenting Culture
A return to insight through gut logic (2017 TreeElbow)
Patrick’s writing of this book has been an experiment of forms and senses, which places equal responsibility on the gut – the enteric nervous system or First (or primal) Brain – to inform the book’s trajectory as another significant centre for logic and knowing. The mind in Western thought dominates everything, constructing a Cartesian blindness that is inherently patriarchal and thus, I argue, constructing a gender-lopsidedness that has contributed significantly to climate, species, social and ecological ruinations. To uncover this assertion I’ve gone right back, well before Descartes (he is just part of the succession of such lopsidedness), back to early Greece, to Hesiod and his misogynistic rewriting of the Pandora myth, and to the related myth of Prometheus and Epimetheus – a precautionary tale of twinned opposites concerning technology and memory that has long been forgotten.
This publication is currently out of print, but you can download the pdf below. If you’d like to support our work and future works feel free to make a donation.
Download PDF | Donate

The Art of Free Travel
A frugal family adventure (2015 NewSouth) ABIA shortlisted 2016
We had built a rich community life in southern Djaara country, but in late 2013 we found ourselves craving an adventure. This was a road trip with a difference, a road trip to honour the lands we cycled to and living as cheaply as possible − guerrilla camping, hunting, foraging, gifting our permaculture skills, and living mostly on a diet of speared fish, feral tucker, and the occasional fresh road kill. We spent time in Aboriginal communities learning from Elders and other knowledge holders, joined an anti-fracking blockade until we won, documented and shared on our blog freely found edible plants, and dodged speeding cars and trucks on the country’s most dangerous highways.
The Art of Free Travel is our story of a rule-breaking year, applying permaculture principles to the road and finding community along the way.
Our community of thoughtsmiths
David Abram
John Berger
Wendell Berry
Katrina Blair
Robert Bly
Stephen Harrod Buhner
Uncle Charles Davison
Daniel Deardorff
Charles Eisenstein
Silvia Federici
David Fleming
Alan Garner
David Graeber
Peter Gray
John Michael Greer
Shannon Hayes
Heather Heying
James Hillman
David Holmgren
CJ Hopkins
Rob Hopkins
Stephen Jenkinson
Derrick Jensen
Sandor Ellix Katz
Paul Kingsnorth
Eduardo Kohn
Satish Kumar
Pat McCabe
Iain McGilchrist
Michael Meade
Tao Orion
Bruce Pascoe
Bec Phillips
Martín Prechtel
Fred Provenza
Jill Purce
Annie Raser-Rowland
Akilah S Richards
Jen Ridley
Deborah Bird Rose
Martin Shaw
Merlin Sheldrake
Rupert Sheldrake
Vandana Shiva
Victor Steffensen
Gail Thomas
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Francis Weller
AaF ELSEWHERE
Meg Ulman interview on Mahasoma Podcast
Meg Ulman interview on Mamamia Podcast
Patrick Jones interview on Sustainable World Radio
Patrick Jones featured in the Belgian film We Have Time
Patrick Jones interview on Subtle Disruptors Podcast
Patrick Jones at Poetry and Poetics
Patrick Jones goat story by Happen Films
Patrick Jones opinion piece in The Sydney Morning Herald
Artist as Family story by Happen Films
Artist as Family featured in Thames and Hudson’s ecological art anthology
Artist as Family story in ABC national blog
Artist as Family on Radio National
Artist as Family at the Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney
Artist as Family in The Age

Some days it has felt like an impossible venture to live outside corporatised, digi-industrial food and energy systems. The learning we have gone through over the past decade to put nourishing food on our plates and keep warm by our own labour has been extensive.

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| We live, love and labour in Djaara Mother Country, on unceded sacred land |
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