The Local Observatory for Ecosystem Services (LOfES) was set up during a collaborative residency with Hervé Senot at CAMAC in Marnay-sur-Seine, France. Under the guise of LOfES, we looked for farm work in Marnay-sur-Seine by distributing ‘Looking for Work’ notices. With no success, we began to perform unsolicited tasks such as gathering moss, collecting and removing rocks from crops, and manually un-flooding inundated fields around the village. Our self-directed tasks highlighted our fringe relationship to farming practices and food production. The tasks we performed were minimally helpful; impossible to complete and with little practical impact. Other projects undertaken during the residency visualised the hidden relationship we have as individuals to large-scale energy systems, attempting to create a link between local and global, personal and the universal. All works by Lizzy Sampson and Hervé Senot.
