Art, Technology And Hemp: All That And More In This Castle In The French Countryside

By Franca Quarneti, Via El Planteo.
In the French countryside, a couple of chic Parisians turned hemp farmers came up with a project that combines art, technology, and nature.

The most curious of all? This kind of ecological, cannabis, and intellectual amusement park is located in a castle dating from the time of Louis XVI, on a 980-acre site.

Strictly speaking, 1,530 Le Marais, the project by Victoire de Pourtalès and Benjamin Eymère, seeks to be a refuge for artists, with an annual cultural program.

As reported by Christopher Bagley for Rob Repport, one of the first artists to intervene in the estate was Thai architect Kulapat Yantrasast, who designed an outdoor stadium made of wood and hempcrete (concrete made from hemp). Cultural and community events are held in the stadium, along with occasional fashion shows.

 

 

 

 

 

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Yantrasast’s next project for the castle is the construction of a small village of two dozen houses for artists. These will be made from hempcrete and will be available for overnight stays by all kinds of visitors from the creative community.

Hemp, art, and technology: a life project

The castle's inaugural art exhibit, Phytocene, created by a biophysicist and two musicians, involved placing sensors into the hemp crop to track the convoluted way cannabis plants communicate with each other. The result? An amazing piece of art that combines video and sound that is projected in the old barn of Château du Marais. How is it available? As an NFT.

In addition, de Pourtalès and Eymère turned to technology to record climate data that they will share with neighboring farms, in a bid to create a more sustainable connection between farmers and the land.

Instead of selling their hemp crop directly, the Parisians are betting on manufacturing products from the plant (in alliance with small, established manufacturers), creating textiles and oils in addition to hempcrete.

Traceability, meanwhile, will be guaranteed by blockchain technology. According to Eymère, "the blockchain will allow full traceability, from the seedling to the final material." 

But this is not the only thing that the entrepreneurial couple is up to: what is coming is an artisanal hemp-based gin. Although her friends question her ambition to embark on many projects, Victoire de Pourtalès acknowledged: “Yes, I am ambitious. But we are doing it little by little. It is really a life project”.

Photo "CC" Via Wikimedia Commons.