For the Autumn event in the series, focus is brought to the changing flora of the city, the soil and root networks, along with the matter of rocks and minerals. What information do these material elements of our environments carry, what did they witness, what stories do they remember, and over which timescales? As plants shed their leaves, and contribute to the natural enrichment of soil, how can we follow this seasonal process? By looking down into the ground, the event listens into soil and root systems, along with minerals, as what supports and feeds all of us. As plant life is profoundly adept at surviving and flourishing, what might it teach us in this time of crisis and transition? And if human health is dependent on minerals, how might we feel the earth as a partner to our bodies?

Such questions are supported by probing into the natural, evolving environment of Spreepark. In conjunction with a focus on the ground, and the geological matters of rock found at the park, the event also considers the sky above and the atmospheric qualities of air. From shifting weather patterns to accumulations of pollution, the air, along with plant life, is key to what makes human life possible. The ecological interconnectivity between roots and breathing, minerals and survival, earth and sky, are brought forward in this event, which will find creative expression in the performance and presentation of new sound and radiophonic works.

Description: Intense high and low frequencies form an immeasurable, soft pressure around the horizon and we feel a dry wave cascade underfoot. In front of us a receding landscape: a force that threatens to consume all in its way if its two sides should ever meet. Instead, I wonder about indistinction, or other small victories of thought. ‘encounter / cascade’ is a work for quadraphonic electronics that plays with sensorial scales of time. The work is based on interviews and research in bioacoustics which point at newly discovered links between noise pollution, more-than-human communication and geomorphology. Here, sound is more than a force but a vital material pressure that is woven between lives, livelihoods and landscapes. 

Samuel Hertz is a sound-artist/researcher working with sonic networks of environmental and climate science. His work has recently been exhibited and performed in spaces such as the Ars Electronica Festival, Palais de Tokyo, Akademie der Künste, Fylkingen, IMAX theaters, deep in the Pacific Ocean, lunar radio transmissions, and on the International Space Station. He is currently a PhD researcher in Geography focusing on the use of sound for uncovering obscured layers of environmental violence.

Wild Design is an artistic research framework attentive to circumstances prevalence in human-environment relationships. It provokes through today’s polemic associations to the word “wild” and the presupposed definitions of “design” to think about the environment beyond naturalistic terms and to recognize decentralized forms of human agency. The workshop will draw on methodologies from around the world, such as gambiarra, creole gardens and other non-anthropocentic forms of agriculture. We will explore ideas such as technological/material disobedience, housing as a verb, ambiguity, expenditure, emergence, unpredictability, excess, entanglement and, above all, responsibility. We will put our hands on experiments for materially and bodily engagement with some of these ideas. The workshop includes a presentation, readings, discussions and an installation experiment.

Monai de Paula Antunes in as an artistic researcher interested in Communication and Complexity together with their material, spatial and political entanglements. Her work engages with the rich materialities and multiple cultural traditions, drawing attention through them to peripheral manifestations of cybernetics and ecology. Presenting itself as infrastructural, her practice decentralises and connects by producing participatory artworks but also through the reforming and interweaving of things as an art form. She has recently been awarded the Villa Romana Prize 2024.

Under strict security measures, a firebug that has been living in the Plänterwald since the 70’s will guide us through the ruins of this park for human entertainment. After more than half a century of constant laughter and screams, the sepulchral silence that today dominates this mythical landscape allows us to listen attentively to the voice of this small insect. Between choreographies, flapping wings and its work as a pollinator, the firebug takes the time to share stories such as that of the traditional plant communities that grow in the ironworks of the 20th century, that of the weeds that resist glyphosate, the story of the flowers that will not die with climate change and also some mythologies of forbidden plants. In short, great post-industrial attractions that you will never find on your screens.

Marcela Moraga lives and works as an artist in Berlin. She studied “Art in Context” at the Berlin University of the Arts, as well as visual communication at the HFBK Hamburg and graduated from the Universidad de Chile. Her works have been exhibited at Kunstverein Braunschweig, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst nGbK, Centro Nacional de Arte Contemporáneo Santiago, Chile, Kunstraum Rozenstraat, Amsterdam, and many other venues.

Swamps & Stars is supported by the Berlin Senate’s Spartenoffene Förderung.