Opening Workshop
Ecological Entanglements across Collections – Plant Lives and Beyond

Join us for the opening workshop of the 4A_Lab Academy “Ecological Entanglements across Collections – Plant Lives and Beyond” online or in person at the Forschungscampus Dahlem in Berlin. The academy will explore the role of plant life in artistic and aesthetic practices, human knowledge production, and theoretical critical thinking across histories, communities and geographies. It invites participants to collectively (re)think human entanglements with vegetal and non-human life.

The first day 'Discourses, Imaginaries and Common Sense' opens the discussions with a critical reassessment of environmental thought as inseparable from religious and political constellations, racial and colonial dominations, the arts and aesthetic practices, history of science, and plant biology. Its opening workshop features renowned international researchers, such as Giovanni Aloi (School of the Art Institute of Chicago), Etienne Benson (Max PIanck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin), Anna Blume (State University of New York, FIT), Monica Gagliano (Southern Cross University, Lismore), Peter J. Schneemann (Universität Bern), and Thiago Lopes da Costa Oliveira (Research Fellow Ethnologisches Museum, SPK, Berlin).

A lecture performance “Holding Patterns; An Archive of Atmospheres” by radio artists and academics Kate Donovan and Ella Finer rounds up the day. The performance is an artistic research-exchange project in which the artists are interested in the metaphorical conditions of archives and their atmospheres. From the giant scale of a holding pattern of a plane in repeated movement to the intimate scale of holding a stone, a seed, a bone, a tape, a living moth—the performance explores how to hold on to something and attend to the holding.

Admission is free and open to the public. No registration required.

Hybrid option for all lectures – register on the KHI website.

The academy is organized by the 4A_Lab, a research program of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut in cooperation with the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz. The program is part of the Berlin Science Week. Detailed information about the academy program on the KHI website.

© Keydesign by Bijan Dawallu.