HAPTIC HORTUS

INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED SUSTAINABILITY STUDIES (IASS), SFB AFFECTIVE SOCIETIES | SUSANNE SCHMITT

Touching Plants, or: How to Turn a derelict Nail Salon into a Botanical Garden for Week

The multi sensorial installation „Haptic Hortus“ brings stories and experiences of encounters between plants and humans at the Botanical Gardens Berlin to a downtown site that holds complex histories of touch, too: a former nail salon right next to the urban gardening collective Prinzessinnengärten. „Haptic Hortus“, created by anthropologist and artist Susanne Schmitt, responds to the ethnographic research project „Touching Plants“ (FU Berlin).

During Science Week, the site-specific work will be activated through a sensory ethnography workshop with anthropologists Prof. Sandra Calkins and Cornelia Ertl, through a movement-oriented special edition of the experimental knowledge lab „Moving across Tresholds„, and a workshop with sound artist and composer Felix Classen where we explore acoustic hapticality and resounding contact making in a site shared by different forms of life.

Workshops/Activations:

November 1st, 8 - 9.30 pm
Hapticality as acoustic encounter

On the first day of the installation, sound artist Felix Claßen (https://felixclassen.com) takes participants on an acoustic exploration of Haptic Hortus' material layers. Playing with transduction effects an contact microphones, we fold and unfold connections between sound and touch and experiment with the often untouchable materials found at Botanical Gardens as resonant sound bodies.

Please register for the free workshop by sending an email to rosa.duemlein@fu-berlin.de

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November 2nd, 4 - 6 pm
Sensory Ethnography Workshop

The Sensory Ethnography Workshop focuses on the role of the senses, especially of touch, in knowledge production and multispecies affecting in gardening. We start with an exercise for somatic attunement and a short theoretic input based on our fieldwork in the Botanical Garden. After that, the participants have the opportunity to encounter vegetal beings on their own, embedded in a common gardening care practice. How does it feel like? What can we know about plants by touching them?

Please register for the free workshop by sending an email to cornelia.ertl@fu-berlin.de

Please note that on November 2nd, public access to the installation will only be from 6-8 pm.

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November 3rd, 8 – 9.30 pm
Hapticality in a different light. Nighttime phytography and electric energy

‘Moving across Thresholds’ (MaT) is an ongoing experience-based knowledge lab curated by choreographer, Renae Shadler and facilitated by various guests. This installment of MaT (https://movingacrossthresholds.com/) takes the series of events away from its usual site in Kreuzberg to Studio Nagelneu next to Prinzessinnengärten (https://prinzessinnengarten.net/). The hybrid format will continue its live offering within its interactive Gathertown world, carrying with it the threshold of simultaneously connecting both IRL (in-real-life) and URL (online).

The evening, facilitated by Dr. Susanen Schmitt, moves along propositions for encounters with sources of "artificial" light, its nuances and its absences. We do so by taking cues from the different sources of light and shadow that the space holds: light from beamers and projectors, daylight and its dissappearance, sources of light on the street next to the Studio Nagelneu, and last but not least: the UV light that is used to create and harden artificial nails and grow plants alike. By throwing and avoiding shadows, creating and disabling light(s) the site creates an opening to think about plants as sensorial beings who need light for nurture and offers a reflection to think about the nighttime ecologies and economies of Neukölln through the lens of electrified land lit up landscapes. Partcipants are welcome to bring flashlights or lamps.

Supported by the NATIONAL PERFORMANCE NETWORK - STEPPING OUT, sponsored by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media within the framework of the initiative NEUSTART KULTUR, Aid Program Dance. 

Free registration: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/moving-across-thresholds-tickets-400812199077